Scripts in this directory can be used as query engines for Movie Data.  These can be configured to be called directly by the MythVideo plugin.

To create a new/different query engine you need to implement the following options in a program of your own:

-v           display 1-line describing name, version, author etc
             (hopefully to be used in a future configuration dialog) 
-i           display 1-line of info describing what makes this script unique
             (hopefully to be used in a future configuration dialog) 

-M <query>   
             displays a list of 'movieid:Movie Title' lines that may be 
             possible matches for the query.  The lines should be ranked 
             by descending priority.

-P <movieid> 
             displays a list of URL's to movie posters.  The lines should be
             ranked by descending value. 

-D <movieid> 
             displays a list of 'name:value' pairs describing metadata. 
             Possible 'name' fields (case sensitive) that MythVideo 
             currently understands are: 
             
                Title         - movie title (string)
                Year          - release year (int)
                Director      - movie director (string)
                Plot          - few line description of move plot (string)
                UserRating    - this is popularity rating from 1/10 (float)
                MovieRating   - this is a MPAA rating (string)
                Runtime       - length in minutes (int)

Additionally, any line starting with a '#' is considered to be a comment and is thrown away by the VideoManager.  This may be a usefull way of showing debugging (for example, specify a '-d' flag for your script and run mythfrontend with a -v' for verbose mode.  In that mode, the VideoManager will display the command executed and its output).

The command and its command line options are set via the 'General Settings' in the 'Video Settings' configuration.  As the full command line can be specified, keeping the command line options standard is not a requirement, but certainly helpful.

FURTHER INFORMATION
-------------------

Feel free to subscribe to the development mailing list at:
http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

A list that's restricted to the CVS commit messages is available at:
http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-commits

or, just email me directly:  Tim Harvey <tharvey (at) alumni.calpoly (dot) edu>

