AMAZON VOD addon keeps on updating programs and movies

[Tarun75]

Hi ,

I am in India ,I started facing the issue couple of days back. I have installed AMAZON VOD on Kodi 18, LibreElec 9.0 version, update #209 from Millhouse 9. I am using Rpi 3+ platform .When I click TV programs folder, the AMAZON VOD displays message on top Right corner of Screen "Found XXXXX" , seems it tries to updated program list. But this goes on and I am not able to explore any programs and movies in the folder. Please help .

[Varstahl]

Just let it finish?

[Tarun75]

left it for hours but still the same.

[Varstahl]

If anything went wrong you can back out, close kodi, delete the .pvcp file (not the .pvdp) file and try again.

[Tarun75]

Deleted .pvcp file but the problem persists. Is there a way to stop the update of catalog and to browse folders for movies and programs. It does not allow to browse the contents.

[Varstahl]

You can press Escape at any time and go back.

[sheldonmaschmeyer]

In Canada at least, every time I click something, such as "Action and adventure movies" it starts the Amazon VOD Found... notifications which can take some time. It would be nice to have an option to pre-download all the information at once, perhaps in the background, and have it update at a predefined time such as daily, every three days, once a week or, manually. Kinda like a database. It is a great add-on app otherwise but, not as quick as the YouTube or Netflix apps. Just needs download scheduling similar to a TV guide update.

[Varstahl]

Technically it's planned, but at the moment there are other priorities.

Also, it's easy with YouTube and Netflix, because the way they sort stuff around makes actual sense, contrary to what Amazon provides.

[Nautigsam]

Well... I'm afraid that you don't understant that this makes the plugin completely unusable so maybe it should be of higher priority.

[Varstahl]

Well, I'm afraid that you don't understand that I'm the only developer keeping the addon alive to the best of my abilities with the little time I have at my disposal, so maybe you should just use a browser. Just sayin'.

There have been several changes in the amazon backend, last of which happened a week ago or so, it literally makes no sense to fix this issue that admittedly plagues a small number of users, when most of the scraping has to be completely thrown out of the window. I was planning to do it from quite a while, but since Amazon started blocking legitimate PC users from watching anything 720p and up, I kind of let this in maintenance mode, especially since I'm the last dev standing.

So, sorry if my/the project priorities are not aligned with yours, but that's how it is.

[Varstahl]

If someone feels brave enough to try, I have a (mostly) working PoC live on my fork. You can grab primevideo.py from here and replace it in your addon installation. You should probably backup your cache files as well if you want to be able to revert, since the new version will wipe out all cache.

Some numbers (which I'm quite proud of):

• 2 minutes to load 14 pages of results with 247 non cached movies
• 7 seconds to load 14 pages of results with 247 cached movies

In the worst case scenario, you're still looking at improvements by at least an order of magnitude.

The prototype is still rough around the edges, for some reason I appear to have broken the Watchlist, but everything else should be working fine and the loading speed are so faster it's insane. Feedback about current problems with it is very welcome.

[Varstahl]

Interesting. Didn't happen for me but I guess a few of the problems I solved in the previous version and decided not to address in this one could cause issues, or maybe it's just a metadata parsing problem. I'll check when I can, thanks for reporting.

[irfus]

Replacing with the primevideo.py fails, with the following errors in the log, when searching or listing any page.

`2019-07-23 22:05:09.760 T:1151357808 ERROR: EXCEPTION Thrown (PythonToCppException) : -->Python callback/script returned the following error<--

• NOTE: IGNORING THIS CAN LEAD TO MEMORY LEAKS! Error Type: <type 'exceptions.KeyError'> Error Contents: u'type' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/default.py", line 5, in EntryPoint() File "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/resources/lib/startup.py", line 57, in EntryPoint if 'search' == verb: g.pv.Search() File "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/resources/lib/primevideo.py", line 545, in Search self.Browse('search', xbmcplugin.SORT_METHOD_NONE) File "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/resources/lib/primevideo.py", line 389, in Browse node, breadcrumb = self._TraverseCatalog(path) File "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/resources/lib/primevideo.py", line 312, in _TraverseCatalog self._LazyLoad(node[nodeName], pathList[0:1 + i]) File "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/resources/lib/primevideo.py", line 993, in _LazyLoad page = next((x['href'] for x in cnt['pagination']['paginator'] if x['type'] == 'NextPage'), None) File "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/resources/lib/primevideo.py", line 993, in page = next((x['href'] for x in cnt['pagination']['paginator'] if x['type'] == 'NextPage'), None) KeyError: u'type' -->End of Python script error report<-- 2019-07-23 22:05:10.024 T:1151357808 WARNING: CPythonInvoker(17, /storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/default.py): the python script "/storage/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.amazon-test/default.py" has left several classes in memory that we couldn't clean up. The classes include: N9XBMCAddon4xbmc7MonitorE,N9XBMCAddon9xbmcaddon5AddonE,N9XBMCAddon7xbmcgui6DialogE`

[Varstahl]

You need to delete both caches, .pvcp and .pvdp from addon data.

[irfus]

Happens with a fresh install of the addon, replacing the file before first use.

[Varstahl]

Well, it will be fixed in time, it's pre-alpha for a reason :D

[irfus]

I can post debug logs, if required.

[Varstahl]

Won't be useful, I might have already fixed it on changes I didn't publish yet, will ask if needed.

[harshgandhi]

Hi. Installed the plugin today. Using Indian prime video. Opening any Section such as Movies starts loading pages. I get a notification 'loading page xx'. Keeps doing this for a few hours. Haven't got till the end as I'm currently at page 30. Is this a known issue? Can this be bypassed?

[Varstahl]

Ugh, must be a bad connection. There are several methods planned but didn't make the cut yet. The next feature will be proper pagination, so that will reduce the strain heavily.

[federicodisante]

Hi @Varstahl. I was experiencing the same problem of @harshgandhi. I'm from Italy. I installed the add on in LibreElec 9.2 from @Sandmann79 repository. Follows the head of the addon.xml file.

<addon id="plugin.video.amazon-test" name="Amazon VOD" version="0.8.1" provider-name="Sandmann79, Varstahl"

[Varstahl]

@federicodisante as I said on new installations there's some heavy caching to do, so it's relatively normal that loading new sections, especially with lots of results, takes a bit of time. On slow ADSL connections, it can take a lot of time, the first time around, but from the second run forth it should be faster. Atm there's no way around it, until I code something for slower connections.

Unless no results show and "eventually" everything gets loaded (even if on slow connections you might need to enter the directory twice) then it's working as intended.

[federicodisante]

@Varstahl Thank you for your work on the add on and for you quick replay! Have a good 2020 !