Kodi Community Forum

In an attempt to improve the wiki's structure, we're trying to come up with a better "guide flow" rather than a "topical flow" to the wiki. A topical approach really only works when you already know what the topic is, rather than "how to do X". To aid in this, this thread is for brainstorming one part of that "guide flow". When people first start XBMC, what are the topics/guides/info they need for that first run?

Pretend you are a brand new user and you've just installed XBMC. What do you want to know? What kind of topics/guides are you looking for? What do you tell a new user of XBMC about?

A good way to do this is to temp move your userdata (wiki) folder or the parent XBMC folder to another location, to give you totally fresh settings. Put yourself in that position and break out an "old school" note pad and pen.

Feel free to give examples of good guides from other users/sites that you have found that help new users.

For myself, just thinking off the top of my head to get this rolling:

• Basic navigation issues, with emphases on two elements that are not obvious from first appearance: the sidebar menu and the contextual menu.
• Walk through just how to add plain jane file sources and just play a video file.
• Walk through the settings (in addition to having full setting description pages) and talk about what settings a new user would probably want to enable. Especially stuff needed to enable smartphone/tablet remotes, airplay, UPnP, etc.
• Walk through setting up the library. Basically Adding videos to the library (wiki), which is already following this "guide" approach.
• Walk through setting up the music library.
• Walk through PVR (hahaha, not so simple. I list this because it comes to mind, but the PVR guide in itself is a big task)
• Walk through downloading and switching to a new skin
• Walk through downloading and adding a basic add-on (probably one for each major type?)
• Walk through methods of breaking up the video library. For example, accessing just "cartoons" or just "documentaries", etc.

Ned
I recently (last few weeks) was working on a newbie guide on a wiki for one of the applications I own at work. we ended up reusing a bunch of existing pages and just added a new line at the end:
"This is part of the Guide 'XYZ' " followed by three links "Previous|Home|Next" with Home navigating to the main page for that guide (basically a TOC) with Previous and Next being links to the pages in the guide in sequence.

The users seem to like it.

I like this approach. I have been toying with the idea of writing an unofficial user's guide like some that have been started then abandoned in the past. (Side note I have emailed through the contact link to get approval from the foundation but haven't heard back yet). I envision something like an intro and the necessary admin tasks, such as file structure for videos music photos etc, followed by installation walk through then beginning steps like adding sources, screen by screen settings for optimum performance based on hardware etc. Some of the settings can be pretty confusing for new users. If you need people to help out I am willing, but am in school till the end of the February and am limited to mostly a few hours on the weekend, and the occasional night here and there. I think some screencast tutorials on perhaps an official xbmc youtube page would be an excellent idea as well. Users can then read and watch how stuff is done.

Flow should be something like

Intro
file prep (discussion on structure and naming scheme, seperating content types, best practices)
installation (pretty simple but probably necessary)
settings (location for weather, best amd settings, best intel settings, by OS)
adding sources ( basic local video, music, pictures)
playing content
changing view types

then more advanced topics

setting up pvr
getting skins
getting addons
setting up streaming sources
setting up mysql

etc

(2013-01-27, 15:03)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]Pretend you are a brand new user and you've just installed XBMC. What do you want to know? What kind of topics/guides are you looking for? What do you tell a new user of XBMC about?

No need to pretend, as you can see from my post count, I am a new user I've been using a HTPC for about 6 years but never ventured far from WMC and Binnerup's My Movies. Have previously tried XBMC (twice as I recall) but gave up after I became frustrated with the promise of the oh-so-beautiful screen shots compared to what I managed to get working (I should add I'm a competent PC user who has been building my own PCs for 10+ years but have never really taken the time to understand XBMC). So to your questions...

I've found the wiki useful but it seems outdated or plain inaccurate in some areas (I can't judge which being new). Compared to some software documentation, the wiki is very useful. However, determining the currency of information is critical - if one page is dated, it's hard to judge whether the next one is also or not. There is the 'last updated' date but I'm talking more about whether the info. is good for the current (Eden and Frodo?) builds or not. I also read stuff and then fail to get it to work with the skins I use (maybe I'm being thick, but the directions choose menu x > then y > then z don't seem consistent between skins - tough to account for I guess but frustrating when it doesn't work (is the wiki info. tested against a 'default' skin?)). For eg, http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Vid...he_library section 6 - that screen doesn't seem to exist for me (or I haven't learned yet how to access it).

I've taken a step by step approach to setting up XBMC. So far I've imported my movies (300-ish) but not yet music, TV shows or music video. I found the guide on importing videos useful but had some experience of this from other software. On the other hand, I found the information on importing music videos less than useful. (Do I need a folder structure like movies? do i use a movie importer? Are these scraped? Would nfos be useful? I haven't (yet) found answers to my questions.) I have yet to understand how 'nodes' work - I am genuinely mystified by how I sometimes seem to land on a node menu and sometimes not.

I went to the trouble of setting up nfos and posters/fanart ('thumbs' etc) in each movie folder but, as far as I can tell, TMDb overrode these (it certainly did in some cases). This is contrary to what the wiki says about using fanart. I then spent many hours 'correcting' (ie setting the media according to my preferences) fanart display by searching through userdata/thumbnails to overwrite the cached images. I did this because I could find no info. about how else it might be achieved (in the wiki or elsewhere - except the section 6 referred to above).

I have set up Next PVR using the info. from the wiki and the Next PVR website. However, I have 2 burning, unanswered questions (prompted by the inevitable comparison with my WMC use): will the PC wake to record and can I do series recordings? These may be answered somewhere but not up-front in the wiki - as critical features (to me at least) this may be an oversight.

I found the wiki sometimes assumes knowledge of XBMC which I don't have. To be fair, this doesn't seem to happen in the introductory sections, rather, it's when I land on a page from google which is perhaps aimed at someone with more xp.

Finally, I've looked for a breadcrumb trail a few times - when the info isn't quite what I want but another related page might hopefully do the trick.

Leaving aside the last two issues, I think the first thing I'd say is that the 'Quick Start Guide' is a misnomer for getting XBMC up and running well You have to pre-configure several libraries with scraped data/fanart. They then need to be imported and corrections made. Get a PVR installed and working. Then the skin(s) can be chosen, and menus configured. Set up your RSS and weather. And then choose some add-ons. I've been working at it for 10 days and have achieved as described above - no music or TV shows yet.

So, I'd like, please, a much more task oriented approach which would cover a fuller range of topics, with the intended outcome that a new user, who can invest the time, will have a set-up like those fabulous screenies :

1 An overview of functionality - a list, substantially bigger than the one now, with a list of key features for each item. This list might be onward linked to the sections on how to get each feature to work. A simple example would be weather, linking to a page which describes how to set location - a simple task, but a nice place to start. Similarly, RSS and a link to a page showing how to eg add feeds and display multiple feeds. For a movie library, a link to an 'index' page which deals with the tasks needed to effectively set-up and configure the library. Which leads me to 2.

2 Pages (probably multiple), linked from an index page, on topics such as file naming and so on - much as they already are for movies, TV shows and music. I'd add Pictures, Music Video, Home Video to this list. This should cover a wider range of tasks than just importing - like correcting fanart (the current pages include some of this info but not all). Basically, the full range of tasks to get XBMC set up much more fully than the current guide does. This could be split between 'basic' and 'advanced' tasks or perhaps 'necessary' and 'optional'.

3 More info on how the menu and nodes idea works, navigating XBMC, using the settings menu and the purpose, use and integration of add-ons.

4 Info on the various skins, whether they are current and working as intended.

5 Ditto for add-ons.

The last two may be stretching it!

TL;DR - I'd like a fuller, task-oriented guide to getting XBMC set up to a standard which most experienced users would expect from their own XBMC set up.

Hope this is helpful. Will give it some more thought to see if I can be more specific.

Kris

Very awesome feedback, and yes, that's exactly the aim we have now. Task-oriented basically being the same thing as "guide flow" that I was talking about above. Also, I've got a new tag on the wiki that will be applied on a page-per-page basis to say if it is up-to-date for the latest version of XBMC or not. Index pages and breadcrumbs are also going to be added and will be heavily used (I originally wanted to auto generate these, but can't get that to work yet, so they will be manually made).

It's very helpful to get this feedback from new users; especially the ones who did try to use the wiki during the set up. Thank you for taking the time to write all this up.

Ned
Possibley a side-issue, but one that kristle and I'm sure a few others may encounter...
Frodo RC3 fresh install has the artword downloader add-on enabled by default and the "Use local" setting is unchecked. (kristle: this is why it ignored your local files). I'm betting we get a llot of noise on that here and probably something that needs to be mentioned in the wiki, or we need to change the default in the add-on.

Feel free to delete this post if its too much of a sidebar.

(2013-01-29, 00:53)DecK Wrote: [ -> ]Ned
Possibley a side-issue, but one that kristle and I'm sure a few others may encounter...
Frodo RC3 fresh install has the artword downloader add-on enabled by default and the "Use local" setting is unchecked. (kristle: this is why it ignored your local files). I'm betting we get a llot of noise on that here and probably something that needs to be mentioned in the wiki, or we need to change the default in the add-on.

Feel free to delete this post if its too much of a sidebar.

This has nothing to do with default xbmc install and only if you install some other skin. AD is not installed by default. So that does not belong in the general xbmc setup wiki and is way to specific. Also you are wrong asuming this is the problem.

OK, so I was wrong about the cause, my bad. The fact does remain that a default install of Frodo RC3 will, in some cases, ignore locally stored posters and fanart in favor of those scaped from the internet. I've seen this on my Lord of the Rings files, where I have consciously chosen the 'leather' posters and it has scraped the other, character centric, posters.
Anyways, this is off topic, so I will stop now.

Then it's a bug of some kind.

(2013-01-29, 00:43)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]It's very helpful to get this feedback from new users; especially the ones who did try to use the wiki during the set up. Thank you for taking the time to write all this up.

You're welcome.

As an update, I imported my TV shows without even the slightest hiccup after reading through the wiki. I also found the (context) screen to update my art in movies so solved that from the wiki. This perhaps gives an example of the detail that might be helpful to new users.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...ing_videos
Section 4
In addition to various display layouts, a media information screen can be shown from contextual menu or by pressing info on the remote...Here you can also change fanart and media thumbs...

Adding 'press 'C' for the context menu' would have saved me a chunk of time. Also, the fanart and media thumbs are not linked which would have been helpful.

You should deserve a medal for actually using the wiki (unlike most)

I'm a new user too, having just built my first dedicated HTPC (though a veteran PC builder) and installed XBMC Eden, RC3, now Frodo. I'm still in the process of copying and encoding my video library into MKVs.

I found most of the information that I needed in the current Wiki, though it took some time and some digging to get to it, and the forums have been fairly helpful in making up for what I couldn't get there. Anyway, here are my thoughts for tutorial or HOWTO type pages that would be (or have been) really useful:

... in no particular order ...

- Download and Install for various OSs, of course
- Setting up and using the (default) web interface
- How to structure folders and name files and folders to play nicely with the scrapers
- How to decide on a format for video library (for those starting from scratch) (pros and cons of mkv/mp4/iso/video_ts)
- How to best set up audio for various basic configurations of hardware (necessarily broad categories)
- How to set up as an appliance (so XBMC runs automagically on boot and sleeps and wakes gracefully) - I'm still struggling with this one myself
- How to enable DVD and Blu-ray playback from an optical drive
- How to install add-ons both from the official repository and from 3rd party repositories
- How to integrate external players (and when that's needed - Netflix etc.)

I'm sure there's more, but that's what comes to mind at the moment.

I'm a new user as well.

I built my HTPCs back in mid 2011 and have been running with WMC + My Movies until December of 2012 when I moved over to XBMC Frodo RC1.

I used the wiki and forums extensively to get the information I was after. It was a chore BUT the info does seem to be on the wiki for the most part. This is contrary to what you'll find with other HTPC topics, programs that you tinker with. So the beginner content seems to be there, but it could use a little better organization.

My number one item on a wiki wish list would be an extensive list that explains what each setting does in the settings menu, with a cross reference to explain which settings are not compatible with other settings. Examples:
1) There are some settings that refer to "XBMC-centric" terminology that are probably quite intuitive after spending weeks or months with XBMC but are completely foreign to newbs. The example that comes to mind is the setting to "show parent items in file structure" or something like that. Had no clue that unchecking this hid the parent folder icon in my library view until someone mentioned it in a random forum post.

2) There are some settings that refer to "videophile/audiophile technical jargon". A quick google search can reveal what that term means, but it isn't always intuitive how that setting might relate back to XBMC or how it affects OTHER settings in XBMC. I've hard talk on the forums that there is some combination of like v-sync + window view + match refresh to display or some sort of combination that are incompatible with each other. This might be obvious to those who have a backend understanding of the technology involved in these settings but for those of us who have a laymen's understanding we'd never figure that out.

Just my thoughts.

Idea for main page: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBM..._structure