2009-11-12, 22:08
I've finally settled into a way to organize and use my videos in the library, after trying every suggestion that I could find on the message board and in the manual to get TV Show DVD folders scanned into the TV Show section of the library. I never was able to get any of the suggestions working, but I didn't read anything from anyone else indicating that they had, so I've accepted that it's likely not possible to do. However, the workarounds that I did work fine for me and it doesn't require a whole lot of extra effort.
My video files are organized as follows.
All movies:
V:\Movies\MOVIE_TITLE\DVD_FILES (no VIDEO_TS folder)
Some TV Shows:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Season #\Disc#\DVD_FILES (no VIDEO_TS folder)
Other TV Shows:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Season #\S##E## - EPISODE_TITLE
For some TV shows for which I have random short clips (like individual skits from Saturday Night Live), I have this:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Clips\CLIP_TITLE
I add "V:\Movies" as a source, with the content type set to "Movies". Everything works great for those files. They show up nicely under the "Movies" section of the library. If any problems occur, like the wrong movie is scraped, I just add a "Movie.nfo" file with the URL of the correct movie on imdb.com.
I add "V:\TV Shows" as a source, with the content type set to "TV Shows". After processing, the "TV Shows" section of the library has a list of all the TV shows, but none of the DVD discs or clips are found. Only the "S##E## - EPISODE_TITLE" files are processed. This is normal, as XBMC only shows episodes for TV Shows, and it can't be expected to determine episode info from DVD discs or random clip filenames.
It would be awesome, however, if it was able to include those videos in the library, and just list the discs as say, "SHOW_TITLE - Season #, Disc #", with no extra info (unless an nfo file is provided), and list the clips as simply "FILENAME", with no extra info (unless an nfo file is provided), but I'm able to do that with a little extra work, so no biggie that it isn't automatic.
So now, in file mode, I go into the "V:\TV Shows" source, and browse to all
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Season #
folders that contain DVD discs instead of the individual "S##E## - EPISODE_TITLE" files, and right-click on the "Season #" folders to change the content type from "TV Shows" to "Movies". I also do the same thing for all the
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Clips
folders.
I should add that I include nfo files for each clip, named identically to the clip filename. I also have a "movie.nfo" file in with each set of DVD disc files. In these nfo files all I have is an appropriate title, since that's all I really care about at this point. I could put more info in there, but I don't really want to work that much. Just having artwork and a good title is fine, especially since the DVDs, at least most of the time, have all the info I could want for each episode they contain. So for one of the DVD disc titles, I have "Californication - Season 2, Disc 1" and for one of the clip titles I have "More Cowbell".
Now all these clips and TV Show DVDs show up under the "Movies" section of the library. I go in there and for each one I right-click on it, select "Link to TV Show", and select the appropriate show. That should be all that's needed, but there's one more, semi-annoying step that XBMC requires.
If I go in the "TV Shows" section of the library, to my surprise many of the items that I just manually linked to a TV Show are still missing. Yet some show up as expected.
It took me awhile to figure out what the issue was. It turns out that XBMC won't put a linked item from the Movies section into the TV Show section unless the TV Show that it's linked to contains at least one episode. So now for any of the shows without episodes that I want to contain DVD discs or random clips (which is most of them, as I don't really have many individual episode files), I create an empty file in the root folder for that show called "S00E00.avi", like this:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\S00E00.avi
I also add an nfo file for it with a blank title, which is important because I don't actually want anything to show up in the library for that file. What happens is that a "Specials" object gets added to the TV show in the library, and a blank entry is added, so it appears that there are no specials. Now that TV show has the ability to display Movie items (TV Show DVD discs and random clips) that are linked to it.
The last problem is that now in the "Movies" section of the library I have all this TV Show crap that I definitely don't want to see when I want to browse my movies. So I decided to just use playlists and not use the "root" library area at all. I even set it up so that when XBMC starts, it goes directly to the playlists listing.
I make one playlist that has movie content and only contains any items with "V:\Movies" in the path. I make another playlist that has TV Show content. I don't think I add any filters to this (I can't check right now), although XBMC requires some sort of filter, unfortunately, so I just make it accept anything without something like "zzzzzzzz" in the title. It'd be great if XBMC didn't require a filter and/or allowed the "path" filter for TV Shows and not just Movies (one of the many random things in the program that I don't understand).
Using playlists is good also because I have other videos that will have to be processed as movies that I don't want to have included when I'm browsing movies. I have a bunch of stand up comedy DVDs under "V:\Comedy". So now I can add that folder as a source with movie content, and create a "Stand Up" playlist that accepts all movies with a path that contains "Comedy".
Any thoughts or ideas for how to more easily achieve the same results?
My video files are organized as follows.
All movies:
V:\Movies\MOVIE_TITLE\DVD_FILES (no VIDEO_TS folder)
Some TV Shows:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Season #\Disc#\DVD_FILES (no VIDEO_TS folder)
Other TV Shows:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Season #\S##E## - EPISODE_TITLE
For some TV shows for which I have random short clips (like individual skits from Saturday Night Live), I have this:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Clips\CLIP_TITLE
I add "V:\Movies" as a source, with the content type set to "Movies". Everything works great for those files. They show up nicely under the "Movies" section of the library. If any problems occur, like the wrong movie is scraped, I just add a "Movie.nfo" file with the URL of the correct movie on imdb.com.
I add "V:\TV Shows" as a source, with the content type set to "TV Shows". After processing, the "TV Shows" section of the library has a list of all the TV shows, but none of the DVD discs or clips are found. Only the "S##E## - EPISODE_TITLE" files are processed. This is normal, as XBMC only shows episodes for TV Shows, and it can't be expected to determine episode info from DVD discs or random clip filenames.
It would be awesome, however, if it was able to include those videos in the library, and just list the discs as say, "SHOW_TITLE - Season #, Disc #", with no extra info (unless an nfo file is provided), and list the clips as simply "FILENAME", with no extra info (unless an nfo file is provided), but I'm able to do that with a little extra work, so no biggie that it isn't automatic.
So now, in file mode, I go into the "V:\TV Shows" source, and browse to all
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Season #
folders that contain DVD discs instead of the individual "S##E## - EPISODE_TITLE" files, and right-click on the "Season #" folders to change the content type from "TV Shows" to "Movies". I also do the same thing for all the
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\Clips
folders.
I should add that I include nfo files for each clip, named identically to the clip filename. I also have a "movie.nfo" file in with each set of DVD disc files. In these nfo files all I have is an appropriate title, since that's all I really care about at this point. I could put more info in there, but I don't really want to work that much. Just having artwork and a good title is fine, especially since the DVDs, at least most of the time, have all the info I could want for each episode they contain. So for one of the DVD disc titles, I have "Californication - Season 2, Disc 1" and for one of the clip titles I have "More Cowbell".
Now all these clips and TV Show DVDs show up under the "Movies" section of the library. I go in there and for each one I right-click on it, select "Link to TV Show", and select the appropriate show. That should be all that's needed, but there's one more, semi-annoying step that XBMC requires.
If I go in the "TV Shows" section of the library, to my surprise many of the items that I just manually linked to a TV Show are still missing. Yet some show up as expected.
It took me awhile to figure out what the issue was. It turns out that XBMC won't put a linked item from the Movies section into the TV Show section unless the TV Show that it's linked to contains at least one episode. So now for any of the shows without episodes that I want to contain DVD discs or random clips (which is most of them, as I don't really have many individual episode files), I create an empty file in the root folder for that show called "S00E00.avi", like this:
V:\TV Shows\SHOW_TITLE\S00E00.avi
I also add an nfo file for it with a blank title, which is important because I don't actually want anything to show up in the library for that file. What happens is that a "Specials" object gets added to the TV show in the library, and a blank entry is added, so it appears that there are no specials. Now that TV show has the ability to display Movie items (TV Show DVD discs and random clips) that are linked to it.
The last problem is that now in the "Movies" section of the library I have all this TV Show crap that I definitely don't want to see when I want to browse my movies. So I decided to just use playlists and not use the "root" library area at all. I even set it up so that when XBMC starts, it goes directly to the playlists listing.
I make one playlist that has movie content and only contains any items with "V:\Movies" in the path. I make another playlist that has TV Show content. I don't think I add any filters to this (I can't check right now), although XBMC requires some sort of filter, unfortunately, so I just make it accept anything without something like "zzzzzzzz" in the title. It'd be great if XBMC didn't require a filter and/or allowed the "path" filter for TV Shows and not just Movies (one of the many random things in the program that I don't understand).
Using playlists is good also because I have other videos that will have to be processed as movies that I don't want to have included when I'm browsing movies. I have a bunch of stand up comedy DVDs under "V:\Comedy". So now I can add that folder as a source with movie content, and create a "Stand Up" playlist that accepts all movies with a path that contains "Comedy".
Any thoughts or ideas for how to more easily achieve the same results?