Sapphire Browser

• If you haven’t already patched your AppleTV consider using AwkwardTV’s Patchstick.
• Download the Sapphire Plug-in Here or through AwkwardTV’s ATVLoader.
• Unzip and place the Sapphire.frappliance folder inside the directory: /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/ (on your Apple TV’s OSBoot partition).
• Restart your Apple TV (restart Finder)
• Access the Sapphire main menu using your Apple TV.
• Go to the Settings Menu and select Populate Show Data. This import tool will go through your /frontrow/Movies/ directory collecting file information (size, duration, audio & video format) used when browsing through Sapphire. ATVFiles XML files will also be imported with this tool.
• Be patient. The import tool can take a considerable amount of time depending on how many files are in your collection. During testing, a fresh import on ~1 Tera byte worth of TV Shows took about 5 minutes. The import might be slower if you are using the airport (wireless connection).
• Once the import has finished, you might want to tag the files you have already watched, or tag your favorite files. The best way to do this is to select Browse Shows from the main menu. Once you have found a directory or file you wish to “Mark as Favorite” or “Mark as Watched”, use the right arrow to toggle to the Mark mode. Select the file/directory and mark appropriately. To toggle back into “Select” mode hit the left arrow.
• If you would like to fetch TV Episode information for your media collection, this would be a good time to run it. Sapphire fetches episode information from TVRage. To do this, go to the Settings menu and select Fetch TV Data. While this tool is running it will ask you to select from a list of TV show titles to match the current file being processed. See the Sapphire File Formats if your files aren’t successfully being imported.
• Enjoy your fully personalized Unwatched and Favorite Shows menus packed full of Episode information!

There are three naming conventions Sapphire currently supports for TV Shows:

1.    Show.Name.S##E##.<anything>.ext

• Ex: The.Sopranos.S03E11.avi
• The.Sopranos.S01E02.randomstuff.avi
• REGex representation is [\. -]?S[0-9]+E[S0-9]+

2.    Show.Name.#x##.<anything>.ext

• Dexter-1×15.avi
• Dexter-2×02-random-stuff.avi
• REGex representation is [\. -]?[0-9]+x[S0-9]+

3.    Show.Name.###.<anything>.ext

• Dead.Like.Me.203.avi
• Dead_Like_Me.111.random_stuff.avi
• REGex representation is [\. -][0-9]{1,3}[S0-9]{2}[\. -]

Any separator inside a file name (dot, dash, space) are interchangeable and indifferent to Sapphire.

You can place the above REGex representations into this REGex Tester to see how Sapphire will react to specific file names you might have.

Sapphire currently supports the following file extensions*:

• Video Files -
  • {3GP, ASF, ASX, AVC, AVI, DIVX, DV, FLI, FLV, M2V, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, OGM, PLS, TS, WMV, XVID}

• Cover Art -
  • {GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, TIF, TIFF}

*playability of video files is determined by having the appropriate codecs installed (Perian, Flip4Mac, etc).

View file information in a preview pane.

The file preview displays specific details about the file including the audio and video decoding information. File specific details can be imported all at once using the file data import tool, or individually when browsing the files. Once you have ran the Fetch TV Data tool all of your correctly named files will have all the extra information you love gocking at.

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Switch effortlessly between playing and managing your file tags.

In all three browsing modes, it is possible to switch into a marking mode by using hitting the seek buttons on the Apple TV remote. In this mode selecting a file or directory will allow you to modify their tags respectively. Marking “All” will tag an entire directory (and subdirectory). This is extremely useful for tagging entire TV Shows or seasons as “Watched”. Marking files to “Retch TV Data” will force them to be rechecked the next time you run the Fetch Tool in the settings menu.

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Collect TV Show information directly from TVRage.com.

This Because it just doesn’t make since to enter all this information manually especially when your TV show collection has hundreds of episodes. The Fetch tool will do all the work for you by pulling all your episode information directly from TVRage.com. If Sapphire can’t make a 100% match with a given file, it allows the user to choose the correct TV Show (or skip the file because it is a ’special movie’). If the episode has a screen cap, Sapphire will grab that too as long as your Apple TV has write privileges where your files are located. (more…)

Automatically Collect information about your media library.

Inside the Settings Menu is where you find this beast of a tool. Using this tool for the first time will take several minutes to complete, especially if your media library contains lots of goodies. It is highly recommended that you run the import when Sapphire is first installed. Once the import is completed, file browsing should not be hindered by the meta data getting updated. This import process will also import ATVFiles XML format files. (more…)

Settings Menu.

The settings menu offers several ways to change the display settings of Sapphire’s main menu. For the most part, the default settings shouldn’t get too annoying. The data gathered from the anonymous reporting (file names) is used for debugging current & future features.

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Traditional file browser.

Using the default browser allows you to… browse your file collection unfiltered. All accepted file types (AVI,MPG,MPEG,MP4,MOV,WMV,FLV,DIVIX) will display, but will only play if you have the appropriate codecs ( Perian , Flip4Mac ) installed.

Filters out all your favorite files.

Inside the Favorite Shows Browser all the files appropriately marked as “favorites” will appear ready to be played.

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