Hi All
I've now got a reasonable amount of videos (Movies), and I've just upgraded my server to include more storage. I've previously organised my Movies into 2 folders, Films and Kids Films. What I found when i was looking for a film to watch I'd end up scrolling for ages through each movie individually which was tedious. I was using Playlists, to create 2 menu entries, 1 for Films and 1 for kids films.
Then about 6 months I had the idea of creating a number of sub folders within my Films folder, and I created multiple sub folders (Action, Adventure, Comedy, etc...) and reorganised the movies into those.
I already know that XBMC scrapes the data, and as part of that adds the genre categories. How are you all browsing throught these categories - are you all creating playlists based on Genres? Ultimately what works best for people? Also, I want a really simple interface. Everything I do within XBMC is controlled via my Harmony remote, so i have no intention of starting to use a keyboard.
So, any ideas, suggestions or feedback how i might reorganise my movie collection, or reorganise XBMC to provide a simple and rich movie browsing experience?
If you are using the library, there is no point in creating a fancy directory structure in an attempt to organise things.
Smart playlists can help a lot, particularly as 'genre' is a bit loose. I mean "300 Spartans" under "History"
But most of the time I look in most recently added.
Then again sometimes I am happy to find a gem I had forgotten I added to the system a couple of years back.
Sorry I just re-read that and it's probably not that helpful LOL.
As nickr said it wasn't overly necesary to store movies in folders by genre, this is accessable from nfo info and accessed in the MOVIE submenu 'genres' which exists by default. Other than that, use smart playlists as you had done, create new submenu entries according to whatever you create. The only thing I do the same as you is have kids movies in a seperate folder as well as 3d movies.
Not sure what else to tell you, the MOVIE submenu is your friend here!
I use 4 folders for most of my films:
-kids (I don't want to watch them)
-kids shared (I'll watch these)
-adult shared (safe for kids)
-adult (not for kids)
Then I use 3 playlists:
Kids (points at folders 1 and 2)
Family (points at 2 and 3)
Adult (points at 3 and 4)
The playlists go on the home screen, click the one that applies for a suitable film choice.
I have 2 main menu movie items on the home page. One is the default movies one and the other is "Unwatched" - which is a smart playlist of all the films that are marked as unwatched. It's dead useful.
I've also changed the default movie submenu to display "Favourites", "Family Movies" and "Foreign Language Movies". But those last 2 are selected by genre - and that is really Ropey. I mean just because a film was made in Ireland it doesn't mean it's foreign language! This is a bit annoying.
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Question - as I've got a heavily customised theme (Aeon Nox with almost every menu entry renamed or tweaked) how does the genre sub menu work? Can you see all the genres, or do you need to type? I normally disable the Movie menu entry straight away, as it's just movie overload.
Ideally I'd like the following genres, but i didn't think you could get this many sub menus (action, adventure, comedy, crime, drama, fantasy, horror, kids, musicals, romance, sci-fi, thriller, war, western, live music, stand-up, documentary, mystery).
Want to be sure before i start reorganising 4TB of movies!
One more thing - can i remove certain genre types? I really don't want to see a Sports or Road Trip genres.
Genres work from scraping. Scraping works from either online services such as themoviedb (default) OR from your own nfo files.
So can i hide or remove genre folders? Also, do any of the skins support anything other than a genre list or genre folders - thinking about something a little more interesting to look at.
(2013-10-13, 22:20)Monkey Butler Wrote: [ -> ]I created multiple sub folders (Action, Adventure, Comedy, etc...) and reorganised the movies into those.
Like stated, everything can be done with smart playlists, but, if you are like me, I like to have the source also organised, this is especially helpful when someone uses my computer and not the media center, especially if someone wants to come and copy a file or two. Having 100's if not 1000's of movies in the movies folder, can make this very hard to read and find specific things.
I also tried going the whole "genre" subfolder route, but this can also be hard sometimes, as most movies are not just in one genre. So I ended up doing it as follows:
Created a shared folder movies, and inside that I have a folder for the current month, i.e 2013.01 , 2013.02 , 2013.03 , etc. Each and every movie acquired during that month, goes it in that months folder, and when the next month starts, i just make a new folder. This helps with keeping folders nice and small, and its easy to say, this is the movies I got in the last month, 2months, 3 months, etc.
Then I also have other shared folders for Animation (kids) movies and one for documentary movies.
Hope this helps a bit.
(2013-10-15, 14:10)endlesslyonline Wrote: [ -> ] (2013-10-13, 22:20)Monkey Butler Wrote: [ -> ]I created multiple sub folders (Action, Adventure, Comedy, etc...) and reorganised the movies into those.
Like stated, everything can be done with smart playlists, but, if you are like me, I like to have the source also organised, this is especially helpful when someone uses my computer and not the media center, especially if someone wants to come and copy a file or two. Having 100's if not 1000's of movies in the movies folder, can make this very hard to read and find specific things.
I also tried going the whole "genre" subfolder route, but this can also be hard sometimes, as most movies are not just in one genre. So I ended up doing it as follows:
Created a shared folder movies, and inside that I have a folder for the current month, i.e 2013.01 , 2013.02 , 2013.03 , etc. Each and every movie acquired during that month, goes it in that months folder, and when the next month starts, i just make a new folder. This helps with keeping folders nice and small, and its easy to say, this is the movies I got in the last month, 2months, 3 months, etc.
Then I also have other shared folders for Animation (kids) movies and one for documentary movies.
Hope this helps a bit.
Actually you've made a good point there. I'm also using 2 WDTV Live boxes, and if I dump all of my movies into one or 2 folders, it becomes a nightmare to navigate through them all individually.
I've taken a look at the genre functionality within XBMC, and although I'd like to use it I have 3 issues with it:
I'm not as keen as they genres that it scrapes as much as like my own set up. Sometimes films are assigned multiple genres - I'd prefer it if it limited it to it's "primary" genre.
The second issue is that there are too many genre types being returned. I don't want to see Short, Road Movie, Sport or Sport Movie. Not sure if there's any way i can suppress any genre types.
Finally, I just don't like the look of genres. Very dull, very windows explorer. I'm already a fan of Big FanArt in Aeon. I've got a customised main menu entry for each of my personally set genre types, with background art to match the genre type from
here.
I suggest you set about setting up personalised nfo files for each of your movies and/or writing a skin
(2013-10-15, 22:43)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]I suggest you set about setting up personalised nfo files for each of your movies and/or writing a skin
Way beyond my technical ability!
I think for now the set-up I've currently got is as close to what i want as I can get. Not a complaint, just a sense check to see how other people organise and view their movies via genre functions.
One final question (hopefully!) - can I re-use the Year sub menu option in Movies in other customised sub menus?