Kodi Community Forum

Jason102 Wrote:@Sranshaft: Actually, I don't think I will be able to remove movie sets. The new way of gathering info about a smart playlist makes movie sets transparent...I can't tell what is or is not a part of a set. Having said that, I'm thinking about forcing some sort of randomness on a smart playlist (presuming the order is set to random) to make sure that even movie sets are actually random. Would that help?

That would definitely work. I didn't want to actually get rid of the movies in the set but thought it'd be easier to simply add a setting until something a bit more permanent could be added. Forced randomizing seems to way to go for that.

I love the concept of the script. Exactly what I've been wanting. Unfortunately, I cannot get the playlist to function the way I want. If I use the Smart Playlist GUI to create a new episode playlist. it does not give me any genre to pick from. If I create a tvshow playlist it creates a marathon like show listing.

So I think the script is right on, but the weak link is the current xbmc playlist functionality. Maybe it's just my ignorance on how to create my playlists.

Maybe you will be able to build in some functionality to make the channel setup more intuitive and user friendly than the current playlist setup xbmc has. Just my thoughts.

JT

I have a feature request. I liked all the logos you created for tv channels like Asimov. can you generate smart playlists for these channels with the logos associated with them, using filters that will apply to most people, and include them with the next update? this way the script works "out of the box" and people can then add new personalized playlists as they see fit.

jtucker1972 Wrote:I love the concept of the script. Exactly what I've been wanting. Unfortunately, I cannot get the playlist to function the way I want. If I use the Smart Playlist GUI to create a new episode playlist. it does not give me any genre to pick from. If I create a tvshow playlist it creates a marathon like show listing.

So I think the script is right on, but the weak link is the current xbmc playlist functionality. Maybe it's just my ignorance on how to create my playlists.

Maybe you will be able to build in some functionality to make the channel setup more intuitive and user friendly than the current playlist setup xbmc has. Just my thoughts.

JT

I think you might want to try the first section of my own personal antecedent to this script - the 3 playlists....

jtucker1972 Wrote:I love the concept of the script. Exactly what I've been wanting. Unfortunately, I cannot get the playlist to function the way I want. If I use the Smart Playlist GUI to create a new episode playlist. it does not give me any genre to pick from. If I create a tvshow playlist it creates a marathon like show listing.

So I think the script is right on, but the weak link is the current xbmc playlist functionality. Maybe it's just my ignorance on how to create my playlists.

Maybe you will be able to build in some functionality to make the channel setup more intuitive and user friendly than the current playlist setup xbmc has. Just my thoughts.

JT

try making the type a tv show... setting the genera correctly... then moving the type to "episodes" seems to work for me. albeit alittle strange. i dont think "smart playlist" were really polished off in dharma... !!

also try not to use the genera tags with |brackets| on either side.. i get a double populated genera list for some reason and selecting the "example" vs |example| works best for me.

@jtucker1972: I've thought about how to make channel configuration / creation a bit easier to handle, but have yet to come up with anything brilliant (which is just something I can say in general, as well). It's still an idea that floats around from time to time.

@BigDaddyRal: I do really like the idea of having this work without requiring several steps from the user. I have to sit down and really think about some playlists that would be generic enough to fit any type of library, but specific enough to actually work as a channel.

@steppedup: huh, that guide was my original inspiration for this script...

steppedup Wrote:I think you might want to try the first section of my own personal antecedent to this script - the 3 playlists....

Thanks. Will give it a try.

The stable-pre branch in the repository has some basic fixes and changes. Primarily, it adds support for "mixed" playlists. In this case, I mean that you can create a smart playlist of the "mixed" type that includes both shows and movies. The order field is always ignored, as the lists are always combined and randomized.

Worth noting: the name of the included playlists should be the filename, not the playlist name. It MUST have the .xsp extension (which it will if you pick it from the list). The lists included do not have to be named Channel_x...anything will work. Just pick it from the list and you should be good.

So if anyone wants to try it out, I'd appreciate the feedback and any bug reports before I put it in the mainstream build.

Jason102 Wrote:The stable-pre branch in the repository has some basic fixes and changes. Primarily, it adds support for "mixed" playlists. In this case, I mean that you can create a smart playlist of the "mixed" type that includes both shows and movies. The order field is always ignored, as the lists are always combined and randomized.

Worth noting: the name of the included playlists should be the filename, not the playlist name. It MUST have the .xsp extension (which it will if you pick it from the list). The lists included do not have to be named Channel_x...anything will work. Just pick it from the list and you should be good.

So if anyone wants to try it out, I'd appreciate the feedback and any bug reports before I put it in the mainstream build.

ill run it on my #2 and let ya know.. prob 4+hrs day... thanks.

Jason - love this script!!! Very nice work!

I think I found an easy way to establish duration for everything for those of us who have terabytes of shows stored up.

I have 5 or 6 huge usb drives ...with TV Series folders on each. (one folder each).

They are my sources for TV shows.
I created one playlist for each:

Playlist type: episodes
(Path) Starts With F:\TV_Shows
with no limit.

Open up the playlist and just watch the duration grow and grow and grow....

A little bit easier than going folder to folder.

[edit] I found that I had to scroll down to the very bottom of the Playlists in order to get them to start updating duration.

steppedup Wrote:Jason - love this script!!! Very nice work!

I think I found an easy way to establish duration for everything for those of us who have terabytes of shows stored up.

I have 5 or 6 huge usb drives ...with TV Series folders on each. (one folder each).

They are my sources for TV shows.
I created one playlist for each:

Playlist type: episodes
(Path) Starts With F:\TV_Shows
with no limit.

Open up the playlist and just watch the duration grow and grow and grow....

A little bit easier than going folder to folder.

[edit] I found that I had to scroll down to the very bottom of the Playlists in order to get them to start updating duration.

To create an "all episodes" playlist, I selected (Year) (Greater Than) 1900. That pulled in all episodes in my library into a single playlist. All 6820 items. It's still calculating the total duration.

I'm still working out a playlist structure and nomenclature that will do what I want and help me organize the numerous playlists that I will be creating.

episodes - (tvshow - limit - order)
episodes - (category)
movies - (category)
channel - (description)

So my playlist directory would look like:

channel - trekkie tv - limit to 25 - random
channel - 80s - limit to 25 - random
channel - current - limit to 25 - random
episodes - 24 - all - first aired
episodes - action and adventure - limit to 25 - random
episodes - last 2 weeks - all - first aired
episodes - star trek - all - first aired
episodes - star trek - limit to 25 - random
episodes - star trek the next generation - limit to 25 - random
episodes - the x-files - all - first aired
episodes - the x-files - limit to 50 - random
movies - 2010 and newer - all - random
movies - 80s - limit to 25 - random
movies - action - limit to 25 - random

I would use my (all - first aired) whenever I wanted to watch a series in order and use the (limit - random) whenever I wanted to have a broadcast type channel.

Then once I have my channel playlist set the way I want, I copy it to Channel_X filenames based on the channel lineup I want.

I am still working out the randomness of the shows within a channel to find which way works best. I am going to try adding the following two playlists to a channel which limit to 24 and see how many of each show I get in my playlist.

episodes - star trek - limit to 25 - random
episodes - star trek the next generation - limit to 25 - random

It's kind of a trial and error approach at this point. It will be a lot of work to setup but hopefully once setup not too bad to maintain.

steppedup Wrote:Open up the playlist and just watch the duration grow and grow and grow....

What skin are you using because this doesn't seem to work for me at all either alaska or confluence.


Edit: It's weird because when I make a title filter that match only 1 movie in each playlist (Channel_#) it seem to work. If I have more than one the calculation of time expired is all messed up and it gets very random. It's the same for tv-episodes :/

@fillidill I always go back to Confluence when experimenting with new scripts - since it's the standard, devs tends to program towards making it work.

I do have to say that I have not scientifically tested this. The only way for me to do that would be to go through and click on All Seasons of each show, write down the time, add them up, and compare them to the time shown in my overall playlist. Ain't gonna happen .

All I know is that the duration is HUGE - which means that an awful lot of shows are getting picked up. If there are any shows that I really want to watch, I simply go hit play on each Season.

Anyway - if I were you, I'd turn on debugging and test again to see what's going on in the back end.

@jtucker - very nice!

anybody know if there is a way to create a playlist rule for an episode rating? I've tried values tv-pg, TV-PG, etc. but none return any results. mpaa-rating works fine for movies, but haven't found an equivalent for episodes.

How can I reset the script entirely? It seems to be holding onto an erroneous set of data based on the fact that I hadn't done the "all seasons" to get times. how can I start it from scratch?