2012-12-05, 16:01
@jmarshall ---"if they [documentaries] 're not tvshows, why are they on thetvdb.com?"
Ned Scott provides a perfect answer: When XBMC says TvShows, it means videos with episodic content. Since most documentaries come in multi-part form, a tvshow.nfo is the best XBMC offers to accomodate them.
@jmarshall, Ned Scott:
Still, it is not good enough.
The problem lies, firstly, in a misconceived, from the point of view of the theory (science) of literature, implementation within XBMC (and other media managers, no doubt) of the notion of "genre". Documentaries are not genres in the sense that drama, comedy, thriller etc are genres of fictional works (movies, tvshows), but an altogether different type of work: non-fiction. Even if xsps can be used to successfully isolate documentaries from TV shows proper, the question remains why should they be mixed in the first place.
Secondly and more importantly, they cannot fix the problem that documentaries require different metadata information than movies or tvshows. In contrast to fictional works documentaries are subdivided by have fields and subject-matters not genres. Even if tags can be used to express subject-matter, the problem remains that they have been conceived as a super-set of sets to to collect together the same theme (say, infidelity) alongside different genres (drama, comedy, thriller), whereas each specific field of documentaries has its own exclusive subject-matters, and the relationship of subject-matter to filed is almost exclusively hierarchical.
To illustrate, consider a structure Documentaries/Economics/Economics of Regulation and Documentaries/Economics/Finance. You may use the tag "Problem of Agency" to collect together items alongside both folders, but how are you supposed to express the Documentaries/Economics/Economics of Regulation and Documentaries/Economics/Finance using tags? Clearly, you need an info file to define Economics as a category of Documentaries, and Theory of Regulation and Finance as fields of economics. Notice that these are no arbitrary divisions created by me. Once you recognize documentaries as a distinct video files type you are forced to implement a hierarchical categorization sub-structure. Incidentally, this would benefit movies too. There are by now too many sub-genres and genre hybrids crying for recognition within XBMC's schema, and as noted above tags are good only for collecting, not for subdividing.
Consider, furhter, historical documentaries. They often relate to a specific time period. (Even if is is 1,000 years long, such as the duration of the Roman Empire.) At present, the only time reference we get is their age of publication. How much sense does it make to switch to year view and find, bundled under "2012", a history of the Crusades together with a history of the Napoleonic Wars, only because they happen to have been published in 2012? What is clearly needed is a tag defining time periods, and a database infrastructure which understands notations as 1492-1648, 1688-1904, 1914-1945, and 1917-1989, and can collapse the shorter time period within the longer.
Perversely, file mode works best for documentaries, as it allows for hierarchical categorization using subfolders. Surely we all agree that library mode is there to do better than this.
Based on this reasoning, I submit that at present documentaries are treated by XBMC as library orphans. That neither tags nor smart playlists nor custom nodes can remedy this. And that if movie.nfo has been developed to provide proper metadate information for movies and tvshow.nfo for TV shows but neither suffices for documentaries, what is needed is the definition of documentaries as a new video files type with an appropriate for this type schema (tags).
I should perhaps add that I have given similar thought to the issue of handling of ballet, opera and theater performances, where I have come to the conclusion that the established movie.nfo suffices, provided for the addition of only two or three more (new) tags.
@artrafael:
I sincerely apologize for using expressions such as "perverse logic", "must be fixed", "why it is not used is a mystery to me". They are staple in my trade (law), and I got carried away. Again apologies.
Yet clothed in these impermissible expressions are some factual opinions which, I think, must be answered.
Ned Scott provides a perfect answer: When XBMC says TvShows, it means videos with episodic content. Since most documentaries come in multi-part form, a tvshow.nfo is the best XBMC offers to accomodate them.
@jmarshall, Ned Scott:
Still, it is not good enough.
The problem lies, firstly, in a misconceived, from the point of view of the theory (science) of literature, implementation within XBMC (and other media managers, no doubt) of the notion of "genre". Documentaries are not genres in the sense that drama, comedy, thriller etc are genres of fictional works (movies, tvshows), but an altogether different type of work: non-fiction. Even if xsps can be used to successfully isolate documentaries from TV shows proper, the question remains why should they be mixed in the first place.
Secondly and more importantly, they cannot fix the problem that documentaries require different metadata information than movies or tvshows. In contrast to fictional works documentaries are subdivided by have fields and subject-matters not genres. Even if tags can be used to express subject-matter, the problem remains that they have been conceived as a super-set of sets to to collect together the same theme (say, infidelity) alongside different genres (drama, comedy, thriller), whereas each specific field of documentaries has its own exclusive subject-matters, and the relationship of subject-matter to filed is almost exclusively hierarchical.
To illustrate, consider a structure Documentaries/Economics/Economics of Regulation and Documentaries/Economics/Finance. You may use the tag "Problem of Agency" to collect together items alongside both folders, but how are you supposed to express the Documentaries/Economics/Economics of Regulation and Documentaries/Economics/Finance using tags? Clearly, you need an info file to define Economics as a category of Documentaries, and Theory of Regulation and Finance as fields of economics. Notice that these are no arbitrary divisions created by me. Once you recognize documentaries as a distinct video files type you are forced to implement a hierarchical categorization sub-structure. Incidentally, this would benefit movies too. There are by now too many sub-genres and genre hybrids crying for recognition within XBMC's schema, and as noted above tags are good only for collecting, not for subdividing.
Consider, furhter, historical documentaries. They often relate to a specific time period. (Even if is is 1,000 years long, such as the duration of the Roman Empire.) At present, the only time reference we get is their age of publication. How much sense does it make to switch to year view and find, bundled under "2012", a history of the Crusades together with a history of the Napoleonic Wars, only because they happen to have been published in 2012? What is clearly needed is a tag defining time periods, and a database infrastructure which understands notations as 1492-1648, 1688-1904, 1914-1945, and 1917-1989, and can collapse the shorter time period within the longer.
Perversely, file mode works best for documentaries, as it allows for hierarchical categorization using subfolders. Surely we all agree that library mode is there to do better than this.
Based on this reasoning, I submit that at present documentaries are treated by XBMC as library orphans. That neither tags nor smart playlists nor custom nodes can remedy this. And that if movie.nfo has been developed to provide proper metadate information for movies and tvshow.nfo for TV shows but neither suffices for documentaries, what is needed is the definition of documentaries as a new video files type with an appropriate for this type schema (tags).
I should perhaps add that I have given similar thought to the issue of handling of ballet, opera and theater performances, where I have come to the conclusion that the established movie.nfo suffices, provided for the addition of only two or three more (new) tags.
@artrafael:
I sincerely apologize for using expressions such as "perverse logic", "must be fixed", "why it is not used is a mystery to me". They are staple in my trade (law), and I got carried away. Again apologies.
Yet clothed in these impermissible expressions are some factual opinions which, I think, must be answered.