XBMC categories Documentaries, kid's shows etc ?
#1
Hello,

I've been trying to find out whether I can set up XBMC to make additional categories, such as "Documentaries", "Kid's shows" etc next to the MOVIES & TV SHOWS categories ?

Alternatively, if this isn't possible ... can I group some TV shows such as Life, Frozen Planet, Pacific Islands into one TV show group called "Documentaries" ?

Thanks for any suggestions!
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#2
Sure, you can do that, however you may need to spend some time sorting all of your media to accomplish it. Many skins have options to add custom entries on the home menu now, you just have to set them up in the skin settings. First, you will need to organize your desired shows/movies/documentaries into some sort of collection. You could, for instance, group your documentaries in a single directory and then add that directory as a new source. Once added, browse to the source and add it as a favorite. From that point, it is usually pretty easy to add that favorite as a direct link on the home menu within the skin settings-- as long as your skin supports this feature. This method is best for things like documentaries or any other media that is not scraped to your library due to lack of information or whatever.

As an alternative method, you can create custom genres for those items (so you can add ONLY the shows you want) and then view by genre. From the genre page, you can select your custom genre and add it to your favorites, then add that favorite to your home menu as mentioned above. This method is better for adding a custom home menu entry to media that IS in your library already.

For movies, you can use the movie sets feature to group them all together under one umbrella, so to speak. Movie sets are covered in the wiki if you want/need to learn about them, but I recommend installing the XWMM addon from the repo and using it to configure sets simply because it provides a dead simple way of sorting a lot of movies. Some skins have an option to add movie sets to the home menu, such as cirrus V2. Also, using XWMM, you can create and manage your genre's that I mentioned earlier.

For help adding these things, your best bet is to seek help in your particular skins forum here, as they skin designer and other users will be familiar with the best way to implement these ideas, and may have better options/ideas than I am offering.
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#3
@jj114
Don't make it so complicated.


Just use smartplaylists. You can use differenet 'rules' to match these different catagories together. Most skins let you set a new menu item that points to that smartplaylist.

No need in creating sets, custom genres or whatever.
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#4
Ahh yeah, that's a good point too. Hadn't thought of that actually. I did a custom genre for a bunch of work related videos I was watching a while back which is the only reason I had that answer so readily available. Wish I had thought of the smartplaylists though, as that is a better idea Blush
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#5
Hello

Thanks for the great suggestions!
Smart list are pretty cool Smile

Now for adding it to the HOME menu in the Skin Confluence, I can't seem to select this playlist. I've been searching the forum, but I think Confluence doesn't support it (unless you start modding it ...)

Are you guys using Confluence (Dharma release) ?

thx!
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#6
Unfortunately, the old confluence does not support that. I haven't used Dharma in so long, I'm not even really sure if they have a confluence version available that will support that feature on Dharma. You may have to either switch to a different skin that does support it (again, not sure which ones support it on Dharma, sorry) or bite the bullet and upgrade to the awesomeness that is Beta 1.
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#7
Hmmm I though it was the latest (official) version available !

Maybe I should upgrade to bèta of eden, hopfully it isn't too buggy.
I won't loose settings/libraries I hope?
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#8
You shouldn't lose any settings or anything, but to be safe copy (not move) your entire %AppData%\XBMC\userdata\ directory to another location. If things don't go well or you don't like Eden, you can uninstall it and delete the appdata directory, then reinstall Dharma and replace the new userdata directory with the one you copied before. That will put you right back where you are now, so nothing to lose.
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#9
I updated to Eden beta and the smart playlist links are gone from the home menu. I used to have kids shows etc in the home menu but now with Eden I can't find a way to get them back.

Any ideas how to get the smart playlist in the home menu?
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#10
I've just upgraded to Eden, but I can't seem to find a way to add smart playlists to the home menu ?
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#11
Hmm. It's possible that I either relayed bad information, or I was thinking of something else I read when I said that the new confluence supported this. Maybe it was one of the modded confluence versions, I'm really not sure.

Whatever the case, I do not use confluence, but I switched to it and tried to work this out.I didn't find any obvious options to add anything to the home menu other than addons to the submenu's of existing items. I could swear the I read somewhere that this feature was added in the latest versions, but I am clearly thinking of some other skin or it is a well hidden feature. Sorry for the bad information on that.

Many, if not most, other current skins offer this feature. I use it for all kinds of things on different machines around the house, mostly using the cirrus extended V2 skin.
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#12
No worries, apparently the default Confluence skin (Eden as well) doesn't support this ... in fact, it's the only skin which doesn't support custom home items :

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Com...n_features

I'm trying a few other skins which suits my needs. So far they are great for adding smart playlists to the home menu.
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XBMC categories Documentaries, kid's shows etc ?0