Hi,
After getting everything organised via tvdb, I'm left with one bunch of shows that I'm not happy with. I have all the old Dr Who stuff, but they will only list it as seasons with episode (eg) 1-42. Each season contains a few stories of say 4-8 episodes, and ideally the way I want to display my Dr Who's is so that each story (set of 4-8 vids) will be its own thing with a dvd artwork.
So, I'm thinking to rename all my episodes as per tvdb for now, just so I can scrape them, then change the numbering and nfo files to suite my tastes.
Only trouble is... I can't quite get my head around how things need to be. I think the trouble is that I need Season/Story/episode (ie 01x01x01) and I presume that's not supported by xbmc or any media centre type software. Am I correct in thinking the best I'll be able to do is call each "story" a season, so end up with something like 150-200 seasons instead of around 20 seasons each with a bunch of stories and their episodes? I just really want the dvd artworks to show up and for there to be a clear distinction between stories
.
Already checked the tvdb article on custom NFo files, should be able to manage adapting or creating as necessary.
What do others do with stuff like this (ie series/story/episode). Maybe someones already done Dr Who like this?
Xbmc doesn't go deeper than 2 levels ie series/season. But for example on series 6 each 'story' is well defined. Eg the domninators (1), the dominators (2) etc
Use sub folders for each story arc, scan it in like normal, then use files view. It will display summaries and artwork, and give you the sub groupings,
I'd be wary of Ned Scott;s suggestion to use subfolders. I've found whenever I have subfolders, xbmc's scraper makes a mess of identifying the tv shows, though I've never tried this specific use case. Even if it works, it's a lot of work for a limited benefit, and having to switch in and out of files and library view for doctor who and other shows would irritate me unless there's some easy way.
I do have classic doctor who as well. I just left it as the tvdb naming scheme. So, one season will have several different stories. If you're using a skin with decent art support, when you navigate through the episode listing, the art will change to reflect the story you are on. And the episode titles for all but the earliest seasons tell you which story it is, so I find you don't need to group by that extra story level.
You're right that no scraper or media centre will support the season -> story -> episode structure you'd need to get it to work properly. For the extra work needed
Another way to do it might be using tags. Create a tag for each story (named something like "story number - Story title"). There's already a tag node in the TVshow library. Use the wiki to find out how to create custom video nodes, and add a rule to the tags node, "show only those with title doctor who") and in that tags view you'll see all the stories listed.
Going through and tagging every episode would be very tedious indeed, though. I wonder if there's an automated way to assign them.
If XBMC ID's the TV show folder correctly, then anything within the sub folders won't matter or cause "false positives".
I have all episodes of Dr. who original and keep them in the season format (thats the way they were aired after all)
If you wanted to have the stories filed as 'seasons' you could create custom nfo's but would be a hell of a lot of work (but not impossible although time consuming) - IMO 24 seasons is enough to browse through for me as opposed to , as you say 200+ stories.
If I were to do it I would add each story one by one with a coverart using a media manager.
(or create some sort of nfo template) then refresh the show to make sure no mistakes are made.
Although after all this you would have lost the actual season level and would just have a lot of stories.
I can see why you want it like this as there are great covers out there that arent used for the stories.
If youre up for a challenge go for it and let us know how it goes
I had an idea. How about if I set each season as a tv show - so that when on the main tv show screen instead of getting one dvd cover for Dr Who, I would get 26. That way, it would effectively give the extra heirachy level needed in order to display series/story/episode. As entering the folder could present you with a list of stories rather than seasons - each with a dvd cover and overall synopsis. Then entering that would give you the relevant episodes.
Of course, quite a bit of custom NFO files needed, but I renumbered all my Dr Who and scraped it so I could export all that to the actual file folders then modify from there.
I see a thing about "flatten series" or something like that on xbmc but I never tried it - I'm guessing it would flatten the top layer ie at dvd/show level? So if you didn't want 26 Dr Who dvd covers showing all the time it would give you just one until you explored it?
Just really feel I'm missing out with those nice dvd covers... has anyone ever noticed how many variants there are for each story, btw?
Like I said, this will work:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1457832
MeMeMe's warning doesn't apply. XBMC does not look at the subfolder names of a TV show (which is why files still need season numbers). You can even apply artwork to such folders. Using the File view as a library view alternative gives tons of flexibility options in how everything is displayed.
"Flatten series" will not combined shows. It just makes it so that TV shows don't have season-level navigation.
Yeh, I tried file view, does show the folder arts. Thing is, I dislike having so many categories and options, and would ideally like to de clutter the videos file paths (if that's even possible). Or failing that maybe hide the movie and tv show categories... just like to keep things clear and at the moment the files are a bit of a nightmare - I love all the extra artwork and info but hate all the different routes for getting to the same thing, and all the extra folders that just seem to appear when you add the movies and tv shows options... so I try not to go the files route too often, maybe time or a seperate post on that one.