Showanalyzer results shared by two computers?

[spillz564]

I'm surprised I couldn't find this question by searching here but here it goes:

I've purchased a key and am running Showanalyzer and DVRmsToolbox on Computer 1 running Vista Media Center (32bit). I use it only for skipping commercials and it works well with default settings.

I have another computer (Computer 2) running Vista and this computer also accesses recorded TV from computer 1. But it does not skip commercials.

So, I'm trying to somehow copy the output from Showanalyzer on Computer 1 to Computer 2, so that Computer 2 will automatically skip commercials too.

I tried copying all the data from c:\users\public\Dvrmstoolbox\CommercialsXml from Computer 1 to the same path on Computer 2, but it didn't seem to work.

How have others addressed this issue? To me it seems like a waste of processsor powere to have both Computer 1 and Computer 2 scan the same recorded TV files (which are on Computer 1), so I'd like to just use the results from Computer 1 for Computer 2.

Thanks!

[Serra]

Can't answer the question specifically, but I found that when I was having a problem like that, it was a problem with the way that the program was accessing the files. The path may need to be the same for both.

In other words, don't use G:\vidoes\
use something like \\videoserver\videos

[spillz564]

Thanks Serra. I'll try and play around with the path and see if it helps things out later today. I'll report back on the results.

In the meantime if anyone has any other suggestions, or can explain how they got a similar situation to work, I'm all ears.

[spillz564]

It worked!

Basically, here's what I did to get it to work (for anyone else that is having the same issues).

1a) Set up the directory C:\Users\Public\DvrmsToolbox\ to be shared on Computer 1 (This assumes that you have already installed DvrmsToolbox and Showanalyzer on Computer 1)

1b) Set up your Recorded TV directory to be shared (the folder where your Recorded TV is stored)

2) On Computer 2 I installed Dvrmstoolbox and Showanalyzer.

3) On Computer 2, I opened DVRMSToolboxSettings

3a) Went to Filewatcher tab, double clicked on the Output directory field, and selected the shared folder for the Output directory (in my case it was \\Living_Room-PC\DvrmsToolbox_LR\Output) Make sure to use UNC paths "\\"!

3b) I did the same thing for the Watched folders, except I navigated to the Recorded TV folder (ex: \\Living_Room-PC\Recorded TV)

3c) Navigate to the Commercial Skip tab, double click on the Commercial Path field and navigate to the shared "CommercialsXml" folder.

Basically that's it. When I checked several programs, the commercials skipped on Computer 2 just as they do on Computer 1.

Thanks for the suggestion to use UNC paths Serra. Hopefully this will also help others out that are trying to use the output from one computer to skip commercials on another computer.