HI
I m pretty new to the xbmc, so I m sorry if this is a question asked and answered many times before. I have searched, but.....?
Still getting hang of xbmc menu and adding movies have made me puzzled on: "why make it so difficult"!
I use ACE as my new skin. Used Aon MQ4 before that. It is fast and pretty. Just what I wanted. Still I want to add elements to my main menu so I kan differentiate between Kids, Sci-fi, Action, Drama, Fantasy and so on. Ace gives me an easy option to add more menu elements (still why no more than 5 extra), but to sort the movies I have to add a tag to it to connect it to a playlist that I can attach to a menu-element. It works, but it is a pain in my ass going through nearly 2000 movies like this. I m in a process of ripping more than 1000 DVD right now.
In the original Movie menu element I could just add a folder. I have split my movies into the genre I want, by seperating them into different folders. To use the scraper to define the movie don't work. A kid movie could be tagged as sci-fi, drama, action, kids and so on, when I just want it as a kids movie.
When I add a new menu element, name it sci-fi (or what ever), why can't I just add a folder to this menu? I cant understand that this would be hard to code as this option is for the original movie menu elemet. This would be the easiest and most simple way to control my movies. There must be others that misses this to
It could be an option for this that I haven't seen. If not...Why not
?
And why can't the menu be more flexible. Why can't I just add as many menu elements that I like.....
Still don't get me wrong. I am realy impressed with xbmc and ACE, but still......why so hard for the user??
Br
Harald
Welcome to the XBMC forums.
If I understand the gist of your post correctly, you can define/assign your own genres (as well as override the scraped ones from the movie site) for your movies by using
NFO files (wiki). When you list the movies in your library, select the Genre view.
I know where you are coming from, and so I will give you my advice on how to fix this, and prevent it from happening in any skin you use.
It is very easy to create a Folder and call it Sci-Fi and drag all the movies you think are Sci-Fi into it. However, XBMC uses Scrapers to figure out what each movie you have, and these Scrapers assign Genre's to each movie. Each movie could contain several Genre, which is why it is messed up when the Sci-Fi Folder is displayed in ACE.
To fix the Genre problem, you need to download a Scraper (I'd recommend MediaElch -
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=136333) and run that against all your movies. Then with 3 click on each movie, you can assign them the Genre you want. Sure this takes a little time (I have around 2,000 movies and did this for each one), but once finished, no matter what version of XBMC you are using, or what Skin you choose, all your movies will have the Genre you originally setup.
Again, I know it's a little bit of extra work, but trust me, too no longer have to worry about what version of XBMC you're using, or what skin you're using this month, everything will look Awesome.
So the easy part of ACE is, once you have the Genre's, you can just create a menu element called Sci-Fi (or Cartoons, Action, etc), and point it to the Science Fiction Genre. I have this setup in ACE with Cartoons, NewTVShows, Sci-Fi, and a few others, and it works great (and the Wife and Kids love it too).
Hi
Thanks for answering. I may be rambling away and sort of listing everything I want in one post, but yes I do know about the NFO files. I haven't tried it as it looks more time consuming than just tagging movies to a playlist. I can't make NFO for every 2000 movies, can I ??. What I miss is this:
1 - From main menu make a new menu-element. ACE does this with easy (still to limited to the number. Why can't I have 10 new menu-elements?). :-) working.
2 - Give my new menu-element a name. Like "Action". :-) working.
3 - While editing "Action" have an option to select a folder. :-( wish for this.
4 - Select my "Action" folder and every movie in the "Action" folder is listed under "Action" menu-element. :-( wish for this.
5 - When I add a new movie to my "Action" and update my library the new movie will be listed when clicking on the "Action" menu-element.
Is this possible and if not...why not??! This way Im not depended on the scrapper, I don't have to tag or write a bunch of NFO-files. The movie is listet below action automatically as part of the folder!! The genre is defined by me. I can call a menu-element what ever I like and sort them according to my own wishes. The scrapper can work along and give the right info and artwork for the movie but have no saying in where I want it displayed.
This would for me make xbmc/ Ace the ultimate media server...even if it is by far right now....
I don't mean to be ungrateful. This system is free and it is developed by talented and dedicated folks. Thank you!!!!
Br
Harald
By using a Scraper (like I listed MediaElch), you not only will create an NFO file for each of your movies, but you also will download all the Movie Posters, Banners, Disc Images, and Actors information, Movie Plot, rating, etc.
So to answer your questions:
1. ACE is limited to only adding a few menus because the way XBMC is setup. If you need more, you need to stick to AEON MQ4 for now (and MQ5 should have a lot of the good stuff that ACE has, you just have to wait for it to be released).
2. You can name each menu item whatever you want. Like I said I have Cartoons, NewTVShows, and a few more.
3. Because you Scraped all your movies, and assigned Genre's to each one, you no longer have to assign any folder.
4 and 5. What ever menu name you have created (Action, Drama, Cartoons, etc), you just have to point it to the Genre you wish it to display (Action, Drama, Animation, etc). When you add a new movie, and Scrap that movie, you can assign the Genre you want for that Movie. Then when XBMC updates, it will automatically load the movie into whatever menu item has that Genre. You need to do nothing in XBMC other than do an update.
One other benefit of using MediaElch to scrap your movies, is you can assign custom made Genre's, which is awesome, as I've created a NewTVShow Genre, and and a Kung Fu Genre. Makes finding those items easier for everyone in the house.
Thanks all!!
I think maybe the fault is that Im to much of a newbie. I will take all your advices and solve it!!
Thanks!
Harald
I'm not sure I understand exactly what your problem is.
You want to put eg kids' movies into a folder called 'kids' and then be able to put 'kids' on the homescreen (whether as a main-menu or sub-menu item)? And do the same for Sci-fi and others?
If so then you can use playlists to do that, it's very straightforward. Make a playlist (in Videos > playlists) which points at the folder (or combination of folders) you want, and then add that playlist to the home screen in Skin settings. Or have I misunderstood?
Hi
Yes, the playlist option is what I do now. No problem. It just that when ripping thousands of DVD I wish just for a more simple solution. Like:
1 -First make a new main menu-item and call it, lets say: Sci-Fi.
2 - Make a folder and call it Sci-Fi.
3 - Fill the folder up with all my Sci-Fi movies, and adding new movies long the way.
4 - From the Sci-Fi menu select "select the folder you want to attach to this menu-item". I then browse to my Sci-Fi folder and click "ok".
5 - Now every movie in the folder I have selected will be listet under the menu-item "Sci-Fi" no matter what any scrapper are telling us. If I want to add "GodFather" as Sci-Fi it will rest comfortable inside the list when clicking on "Sci-Fi" from the main menu because I have put it in my Sci-Fi folder.
6 - I know I can't do this now but I wish for a simplisity like this.
7 - Of course the scrapper can be used to add movie information, images and so on, but it will not affect my choice of genre.
I will try the advice from Powerhouse and see if I can manually select genre when adding movies with the MediaElch scrapper.
Br
Harald
I still don't see the problem.
You make a playlist that points at the 'scifi' folder.
Stick that playlist on the home screen.
Any movie you chuck in the 'sci-fi' folder comes up when you click on the 'scifi' button.
You don't need to touch the genre. It doesn't matter how you scrape. The only work is setting up a folder and playlist at the start - a one-off - and then sticking the films you want into that folder and updating your library. In fact it sounds pretty much like your list.
<confused>
And yes you have the right to be confused! : ) This was the option that I was looking for but I did found someone telling me that the only way was to tag every movie to a playlist. So wrong was he!! When you said "playlist that points at the "scifi" folder" I was think..."yeah right..as if I haven't tried to do that". I open xbmc in mq4 and just wanted to prove you wrong...so wrong was I....
Oh yeah.....it works...I m sorry to all of the folks I have been pestering with stupid questions for weeks....I just didn't see the "browse" solution in the smart playlist creator when selecting "path | contains". Now everything is just fantastic!!
Thank you!!!
Great stuff, glad it works.
I've had that 'lightbulb' moment plenty of times, when I realise I'm missing something.
Playlists are great!
Glad you got it sorted Harald.
Just an FYI for anyone who comes across this thread in the future. This
tutorial describes how to achieve what you were looking for. It was written with MQ4 in mind, but the principle can be applied to ACE or any other skin really.
Thanks or the link Samu-rai! It works, but I do have some problems when trying to add two paths to a smart playlist.
As I can only add 5 new menu-items to my main menu (a limitation I hope they will do something about) it is a limit to what I can put there. In a perfect xbmc-world I would like to have "Comedy, Action, Horror, Drama, SciFi, Fantasy, Documentary, Musical, Animations, Movies for kids and so on". I know I can use submenues but I don't like them.
So my option is to connect two genre like SciFi/Fantasy, Action/Horror and so on.
In the "Edit Smart Playlist" I add two rules with "Path | Contains" to two different paths (like scifi and fantasy). I make sure that "Items must match "one of the rules"" and save it. I follow your tutorial and make a new menu-item and call it SciFi/ Fantasy with the new playlist added to it. No problem so far. SciFi/Fantasy and Action/ Horror turned out really nice. The Drama/documentary just gave me an empty list. I did the same thing every time, but no matter what I can't get the Drama/documentary to show any movies. When I added "documentary" as a sub-folder inside "Drama" and updated, then everything went just great!!
Still I m puzzled why I could not make the third combo playlist work.
Anyway, everything is just great now! Thank you!
Br
Harald
Glad it helped.
One thought to give you more genre buttons would be to create some playlists and the add them as favoruites.
That way you could have 10 genres on the main menu. 5 playlists and 5 favourites.