Kodi Community Forum

Full Version: All the stuff that doesn't fit in TV or Movies
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
CAVEAT LECTOR: I'm a relatively new user but starting to feel ambitious (maybe too ambitious?)

Let me start by saying, yes, I am fully aware that this topic has been discussed repeatedly all over the forums. I'm not asking anyone to change the way XBMC works or even to mod a skin for me. I think I have a solution that will work for my needs but it'll be a fair amount of work and I wanted to bounce it off people to find out if I'm approaching this the right way or if I need to rethink it all before I spend a huge amount of time going this route.

First, a little background...my video collection contains:
* Regular Movies (e.g. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)
* Regular TV Shows (e.g. Fringe)
* Documentaries (both TV and Movie)
* Cartoon Shorts (e.g. Classic Warner Bros)
* Kid’s TV (e.g. Go, Diego, Go!)
* Kid’s Movies (e.g. Madagascar)
* Sports (e.g. Formula 1 Racing)
In each of these "categories" I have anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand videos. Yes, I realize this is nothing even remotely close to what other people have but I'm not other people... and I can be rather OCD when it comes to making things look and work the way I want them to look and work Nerd

With a few exceptions (test cases) only regular Movies and TV Shows are part of my XBMC library, the rest are in folders on my PC but I'd like to get them added to XBMC as well but not at the price of chaos.

I have three basic criteria for any approach that I consider:
  1. It should allow me to have a section on the main screen for Movies, TV Shows, Documentaries, Cartoon Shorts, Kid's, and Sports.
  2. Once I select any of these main categories it should present me with the option to either further narrow my criteria (e.g. by genre, year, etc) or to flip through the full selection of posters. Basically I want them to work just like Movies and TV Shows in the "normal" setup.
  3. And I want to be able to queue items from each category together for an evening of uninterrupted viewing. So I should be able to queue up a couple of Cartoon Shorts followed by a Documentary and then a regular movie.

What (little) I know:
From reading through the wiki and the forums, it seems there are two useful approaches I could take to get close to what I want: Profiles and Smart Playlists.

Profiles would get me something very close to objectives 1 and 2 especially if I set up a hot key to switch between profiles. Unfortunately it doesn't give me objective 3 (unless I'm missing something) and it's really not a particularly elegant solution in the sense that it doesn't feel natural to me.

So that leaves me with Smart Playlists. I've done a little experimenting and determined that if I create the following smart playlists:

  1. Documentary TV (type=tv, genre starts with 'DOC')
  2. Documentary Movie (type=movie, genre starts with 'DOC')
  3. Sports (type=tv, genre="Sports")
  4. Cartoon Shorts (type=movie, genre="Cartoon Short")
  5. Kid's TV (type=tv, genre="Children")
  6. Kid's Movie (type=tv, genre="Children")
  7. Regular TV (type=tv, playlist is not any of 1-6)
  8. Regular Movies (type=movie, playlists is not any of 1-6)
Then I get objectives 1 and 3 but sadly not 2 (again, it's possible I'm doing something wrong here but it seems pretty straightforward so I doubt it – feel free to correct me). Obviously this is less than perfect but I think I can expand it to sort of work.

My plan is to do something like this:
(only looking at documentaries here but the principle applies to the rest)

First, hand-roll nfo files for each documentary
Well, technically I have a spreadsheet that semi-automates it. I'm creating them all as movies even if they were on TV since almost all were one-shots anyway. Those few that are series will be incorporated into sets.

Second, create a Smart Playlist for each sub-genre
For example, my science documentaries will have a genre of 'DOC: Science', history will be under 'DOC: History' and so on. Note that I'm planning to use the prefix 'DOC:' to ensure these genres group together when viewed in "normal" mode. These playlists should be accessible via Video>Playlists although ideally I'd like some sort of "folder" to hold them in on the home screen but I can live with this if I can't find a skin that lets me add a folder with specific playlists in it.

So, finally we reach my questions:
Am I going about this all wrong? Is there a better solution that I'm just not seeing? Is there a particular skin or skin mod or add-on or whatever that would make this any easier or cleaner?

thanks
I have 130 "disney movies" in my Movie library I have in a Disney "set" used Ember Media Manager to tag all disney into "disney movies" set. while browsing my Movie Library I only have one poster for "disney" movies. I click into it and it reviles all my Disney movies.

you might be able to combine sets and smart playlists to get when you want.

just throwing out sets as an option.

also "Night" skin has the ability to create custom home screen items.

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


-=Jason=-
Flomaster Wrote:you might be able to combine sets and smart playlists to get when you want.

just throwing out sets as an option.

also "Night" skin has the ability to create custom home screen items.

I thought about sets but I have some sets within my documentaries collection and as far as I can tell you can't have sets that include other sets or have a movie part of more than one set.

But I wonder if sort titles will work inside a set if I don't assign sort titles to every movie in a set? That would allow me to "fake" sets (sub-genres) within an overall Documentary or Cartoon Shorts set. I'll have to experiment and find out...once I'm back in front of the system with some free time (probably not until after the rally to restore sanity tomorrow).

will also try to figure out the custom home screen options in Night...thanks
I'll agree with FloMaster, a combination of Smart Playlists and Set's will get you close. Sets can be included within playlists of course, but multiple nested sets are another issue. I have a set-up that allows me access to all my files one way or another...I have a few HD's with 30 generalized sub folders. Using the skin Transparency! I have access to multiple TV and movie buttons with sub buttons that take me straight to playlists, sets or favorites. I haven't counted but it looks more than plenty enough and it also has the legacy 'Video' home button which sees all the folders/files as they sit on the drive, so even if I don't have the video scanned into the library I can get to it fast. In video mode I see 30 customize icons for each type, genre, playlists, video add-ons, offline, DVD's, trailers ( I normally do keep trailers with the full feature, but dump Apple-lite downloads into this) clips etc. When I have time to custom make .nfo's for the one off TV shows etc... I treat them as movies with an associate poster and place them in a select folder.

Sounds like you're on the right track....
ok, finally had a chance today to work on this and found the suggestion of using Transparency!'s custom menu function worked nicely except for one oddity.

Logically (to me anyway) if I have a custom menu containing 3 custom items:
  • A
  • B
  • C
Where each of these links to either a set, genre or smart playlist, when I select an item it should open of the list of titles in that set, genre, or playlist. That would allow me to make XBMC work pretty much exactly the way I want.

Unfortunately it doesn't work. Or rather it doesn't work in all cases. If A, B or C links to a set or genre it works fine. If however they link to a smart playlist (presumably a regular playlist as well but I didn't test that) instead of opening the list so I can scroll through the titles it just starts playing the list.

Not sure it makes a difference but I'm running dharma b3 and Transparency! 3.10.
legio1 Wrote:ok, finally had a chance today to work on this and found the suggestion of using Transparency!'s custom menu function worked nicely except for one oddity.

Logically (to me anyway) if I have a custom menu containing 3 custom items:
  • A
  • B
  • C
Where each of these links to either a set, genre or smart playlist, when I select an item it should open of the list of titles in that set, genre, or playlist. That would allow me to make XBMC work pretty much exactly the way I want.

Unfortunately it doesn't work. Or rather it doesn't work in all cases. If A, B or C links to a set or genre it works fine. If however they link to a smart playlist (presumably a regular playlist as well but I didn't test that) instead of opening the list so I can scroll through the titles it just starts playing the list.

Not sure it makes a difference but I'm running dharma b3 and Transparency! 3.10.

Ronie added an option in the SVN of Transparency so you can change the behavior of the playlists in your custom menus to open them instead of playing them. But you need to update to a more current SVN release or wait for the next release in the repository.

It is under skin settings... Home window... and unselect 'Play playlists in submenus'

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=83802
gabbott Wrote:Ronie added an option in the SVN of Transparency...

ok, so how do I get the SVN version of Transparency loaded? I understand the concept of SVN but I have no idea how to use it to update my skin. And I can't seem to locate any instructions in the the forums or the wiki.
legio1 Wrote:ok, so how do I get the SVN version of Transparency loaded? I understand the concept of SVN but I have no idea how to use it to update my skin. And I can't seem to locate any instructions in the the forums or the wiki.

What OS you running xbmc on? I can help if you are running linux/xbmc live.
Running windows XP but that's ok. I gave up too soon a minute ago. Found an explanation (on a thread called "T! svn users" so now I can feel completely stupid). Anyway, I haven't tested it yet but just in case it's helpful to anyone else:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=634...stcount=19