Login at Kodi Home

roycejp · (This post was last modified: 2012-05-14, 15:56 by roycejp.)

I have created a Smart Playlist for 'Recently watched Videos'. Here it is:

Note: I used the GUI to create it. My skin is Aeon Nox :

Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>

<smartplaylist type="movies">

<name>Recently Played Videos</name>

<match>all</match>

<rule field="lastplayed" operator="inthelast">2 weeks</rule>

<limit>50</limit>

<order direction="descending">lastplayed</order>

</smartplaylist>

This is similar to the 'recent songs' example in the 'Smartplaylist' wiki.

When I select the 'Recently played Videos' play list, I get a blank list.

I even played a few short videos to test it, but the list is still blank.

I checked the xbmc.log, & noticed these 2 lines:

17:20:50 T:5136 WARNING: XFILE::CFactoryDirectory::Create - Unsupported protocol(newsmartplaylist) in newsmartplaylist://
17:20:50 T:5136 WARNING: XFILE::CFileFactory::CreateLoader - Unsupported protocol(newsmartplaylist) in newsmartplaylist://movie.tbn/

Do they mean anything ?

Is there any other info I need to add to the code to make it work ?

Thanks !

**kricker** · (This post was last modified: 2012-05-14, 23:51 by kricker.)

Odd. I just created an identical playlist to test with and it works fine.

Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>

<smartplaylist type="movies">

    <name>Recently Played</name>

    <match>all</match>

    <rule field="lastplayed" operator="inthelast">2 weeks</rule>

    <limit>50</limit>

    <order direction="ascending">lastplayed</order>

</smartplaylist>

I went back after making it and played a few random movies. They all showed up in the list in the proper order.

I do see the same errors in my log, but they do not seem to effect the playlist.

roycejp · 2012-05-14, 17:41

(2012-05-14, 17:06)kricker Wrote: Odd. I just created an identical playlist to test with and it works fine.

I have XBMC installed on 1 laptop & 1 PC.

Both have the same problem.

The only common link I can imagine is they both run 11.0 Eden, Aeon Nox Skin.& both run Windows 7.

Could it be due to any one of these ? I am at a loss.

What XBMC version & skin are you running ?

Thanks !

**kricker** · (This post was last modified: 2012-05-14, 18:32 by kricker.)

I did this on a Win7 x64 PC running a nightly of Post Eden (but that should not matter for playlist creation) using the default skin. When in doubt, always go to the default skin to test any issues.

You have it setup for movies, not TV episodes. Are movies what you have been testing with?

**sho** · 2012-05-14, 19:55

Are your "videos" scanned to the XBMC library?

**PatK** · 2012-05-14, 23:14

As a side note, I just clipped the above playlist and put it in the videos playlist folder.. and it worked fine on Win7/64 Eden 11, skin T!.. might be a skin issue.

jmarshall · 2012-05-14, 23:36

It won't have anything at all to do with skin.

A Debug Log will show you the query it is performing and will also show you how many results it returned.

Remember: The Debug Log knows all (most of the time anyway :p)

roycejp · 2012-05-15, 05:31

I have organised my videos like this:

I have not differentiated between movies and TV episodes.

On my HDD, I have one folder called 'Movies'

Within this folder I have created 26 folders named 'A' through 'Z' , where I have all my movies and TV episodes (which are very few) according to the starting alphabet.,

From 'Videos' on the home screen, I have selected this folder (Movies) as my source during the initial setup.

So to select a movie manually, I select Videos -> Files -> Movies. Here I am presented with my folders from A to Z, etc.

So will this work for creating playlists or do all the files have to be in the root source folder ?

And no, I haven't scanned my files to the library. What does this do?

Thanks,

Royce

roycejp · 2012-05-15, 05:58

(2012-05-14, 23:36)jmarshall Wrote: It won't have anything at all to do with skin.

A debug log will show you the query it is performing and will also show you how many results it returned.

Remember: The debug log knows all (most of the time anyway :p)

OK, here is the debug log.

http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=2610

Can someone please take a look at it ?

Thanks !

**kricker** · (This post was last modified: 2012-05-15, 06:03 by kricker.)

Well, there is your problem.

Quote:XBMC supports "Smart" playlists for all types of media, which essentially use a set of rules to limit the results from the databases.

Smart playlists rely on the database nodes to give you all those great things to filter by. By scanning into the libraries you get all the fancy metadata and other nodes.

roycejp · 2012-05-15, 08:53

(2012-05-15, 06:00)kricker Wrote: Well, there is your problem.

Quote:XBMC supports "Smart" playlists for all types of media, which essentially use a set of rules to limit the results from the databases.

Smart playlists rely on the database nodes to give you all those great things to filter by. By scanning into the libraries you get all the fancy metadata and other nodes.

Gosh, I had no idea ! :-)

I do recall reading about the database, but I always thought that XBMC built the database 'on the fly' as and when media was played.
No idea that scanning was imperative for playlist.

Maybe this could be emblazoned on top of the smart-playlist wiki page !

"This won't work if you have *not* scanned your media" or something to that effect.

I am scanning my media right now. It's going to take time as it is 1.5 Tb of media. Will report once done...

As an aside, I believe at least a 'recently played' list should be hard-coded into XBMC.
I believe it is a basic & essential feature, I have seen many requests for this on this forum.

Almost All programs (eg. MS Word/Excel etc) have a 'Recent Files' shortcut ... so why not XBMC ?

It would be a great help to 'simple' users !

Thanks!

jmarshall · 2012-05-15, 09:08

Recently played is normally information that most users don't care about. More useful is "In progress" which is possible using a smartplaylist.

v12 alpha1 (thus Frodo once it's done) allows you to rearrange the video library hierarchy as you see fit, so once we've cleaned it up a bit, it'll be easier for us to provide optional "nodes" such as the above without forcing it on all users.

Cheers,
Jonathan

**sho** · 2012-05-15, 11:39

btw your current setup is not very library friendly. XBMC sort of expects TV shows and movies to be separated.
My suggestion would be a new TV show folder alongside movies, see more here:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...s/TV_shows

roycejp · 2012-05-15, 13:01

(2012-05-15, 11:39)sho Wrote: My suggestion would be a new TV show folder alongside movies, see more here:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...s/TV_shows

Yes I did that.
I moved out my TV shows (there were just 2) outside the " ..\Movies" folder to a new Folder "..\TV Shows", and set the type as TV Shows :-)

BTW, since I started scanning, I noticed a new home screen Item called 'Movies' next to the older 'Videos'.
Why did this appear and what is the difference between Movies and Videos (both have the same sources) ?

Thanks.

**sho** · 2012-05-15, 15:39

Movies is a direct link to the movies node of the video library.
Another similar might appear if you scan your TV shows to the library.
Both can be turned off via settings - skin - home