[PetiteRelish]

Relevant thread from a few years ago:  https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=356775
Kodi 20.0, Artic Zephyr Reloaded 2.0.4 skin, Windows 11 22H2

I'm trying to set up a smart playlist to access from a submenu/home.  The Directors smart playlist work as intended, where I make a smart playlist to automatically find movies that contain certain directors, then I group by director.  When I select the smart playlist from the home page, I am presented a list of directors.  Selecting a director shows their movies.

For actors, grouping by actor lists every actor who has appeared in any movie that the filtered actor has appeared in.  I'm either presented a long list of actors, or I group by none and have all my actors' movies combined into one list.

Every idea I come up with requires manually creating the list.  I'm looking for an automatic way so it updates as more movies are added, and populates quickly if I want to add another favorite actor.  Closest idea I had was to create a separate smart playlist for each actor, then creating another smart playlist that combines the playlists, but there is no way I could see to group by playlist unless I'm missing something else. 

Worst case I can have a long list of submenu items and smart playlists, one for each actor.  Much more work than just adding another condition to the existing smart playlist, but at least still functions automatically.

[Karellen]

For actors, grouping by actor lists every actor who has appeared in any movie that the filtered actor has appeared in.  I'm either presented a long list of actors, or I group by none and have all my actors' movies combined into one list.

What exactly do you want to see?

[PetiteRelish]

The Directors smart playlist work as intended, where I make a smart playlist to automatically find movies that contain certain directors, then I group by director.  When I select the smart playlist from the home page, I am presented a list of directors.  Selecting a director shows their movies.

This, but for actors.  

To enter the smart playlist grouped by the actors that make up the smart playlist.

For example, let's say I want a list of movies with Actor "is" or "contains" Harrison Ford (same movie results).  Then I group the playlist by Actor.  Star Wars would be one of those movies, so the grouped actor list now consists of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and all other actors in that movie.  So the list of actor groups for the Harrison Ford list now consists of Harrison Ford and 30 other actors, just for the one movie.  Do that over multiple movies, and same for wanting multiple actors in the smart playlist.  Grouping by Actor results in a 100+ actor list very quickly and the intended actor list gets lost.

The actors grouping doesn't seem to work as intended since most movies will result in too long of a list to scroll through, but I'm also struggling to understand what I could be doing wrong.  Maybe the intention is to list out every actor of a movie?

[PetiteRelish]

https://imgur.com/a/kalGHWZ

Please find link to a visual description of what I wrote.  I realize everyone's use case is different and it may be confusing to understand what someone else might want to do.

[Karellen]

Can you post the xsp code you currently have for the playlist. Should be in your Userdata/playlists folder.

[PetiteRelish]

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

<smartplaylist type="movies">

<name>ACTORS</name>

<match>one</match>

<rule field="actor" operator="is">

<value>Harrison Ford</value>

</rule>

<rule field="actor" operator="is">

<value>Arnold Schwarzenegger</value>

</rule>

<rule field="actor" operator="is">

<value>Florence Pugh</value>

</rule>

<group>none</group>

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

</smartplaylist>

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

<smartplaylist type="movies">

<name>DIRECTORS</name>

<match>one</match>

<rule field="director" operator="contains">

<value>Christopher Nolan</value>

</rule>

<rule field="director" operator="contains">

<value>Denis Villeneuve</value>

</rule>

<rule field="director" operator="contains">

<value>Quentin Tarantino</value>

</rule>

<group>directors</group>

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

</smartplaylist>

[Karellen]

Thanks.

When I get access to my tv, I'll drop in those smart playlists and check the results, then try to figure out the fix (if there is one).
It won't be for a few hours, though.

[Karellen]

Ok, I see what you mean. I don't think there is a fix for that.

You are asking... "Give me all the movies by these three actors" (Rules)
Then you want them grouped by Actor.
There is nothing there to exclude all the other actors in those same movies.

Unlike Directors which only has a Single director per movie, there are dozens of actors per movie, not a single actor.

I tried some workarounds, but nothing really worked.
The closest I came was to create a Tag for each actor you wanted listed. Then add that tag to each of their movies.
Then in the Smart Playlist, Group by Tags instead of Actors.
The only issue with that is that if you have other tags, they will be in the list also.

[PetiteRelish]

I was hoping I was missing something because it seems like grouping by actors is something rarely used if it collects every listed actor in each of the movies.  It takes forever scrolling past hundreds of names to get to the one you want pulled up.

Bad news about the tags.  That was going to be my next move since I can easily set that up with TinyMediaManager.  I didn't think about it grabbing other tags as well.

Also  I went ahead and tried creating individual playlists for each actor, then created a new playlist with "Playlist is..." option.  This didn't group the playlists, it combined the movies so the end result is the same, with the same issue.

I appreciate you taking the time to look into this too, plus the assist with the code block edit.

[PatK]

It takes forever scrolling past hundreds of names to get to the one you want pulled up.

Generally speaking, when I want to get information about an actor within Kodi, I hit up a movie with the actor or using a search, present the actor (usually an image, skin dependant) and select it, and I get a listing of all the movie in my collection, if that's not enough, the skin I'm using allows for more info from the TMdb about that actor and his movies.

[PetiteRelish]

I use global search and it works.  Those are excellent options in case someone else stumbles on this topic.

I was hoping more for a "Favorites" quick launch option.  I would rather fall back to creating a separate submenu for each actor (manual grouping) rather than using search, but if I could somehow group all actors under a single submenu item that would be ideal.

[PatK]

somehow group all actors under a single submenu item that would be ideal.

Investigate Video nodes (wiki) and it's obvious Add-on:Library Node Editor (wiki) you could set-up an Actor node with each actor having a sub node within, I have my Oscars set-up this way and linked to favourites.

[Karellen]

There are a couple of other solutions...

I was hoping more for a "Favorites" quick launch option.

You can go to your actors node, find your actor, right click for the Context Menu, then select "Add to favourites"
Then that actor is available directly from the Farvourites screen.

Investigate Video nodes (wiki) and it's obvious

And a great suggestion from @PatK.
You can set up a "Favourites Actors" node and access the actors directly from there. See screenshots...
Do you know how to setup new nodes?

[PetiteRelish]

I am reading up on nodes now, honestly had no idea those can be customized.  Looks very promising and seems like you already got it working for my use-case!

[Karellen]

Its pretty simple. As I have already quickly created the node, I'll give you the code and you just save it on your system.

FIRST
Go to your Kodi Program folder... c:\ProgramFiles\Kodi\System\Library\
Copy the 3 folders (music, video, video_flat) into your Userdata\Library\ folder.

Go to \Userdata\library\video\movies
Create a new folder named actors or favourite_actors. Whatever you prefer
Create a file named index.xml and add the following code. Change the label to whatever you prefer

xml:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>

<node order="6" type="folder" visible="Library.HasContent(Video)">

	<label>Favourite Actors</label>

</node>

For each actor you want listed, create another xml file. In this case it is harrison_ford.xml and add the following code...

xml:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>

<node order="1" type="filter">

	<label>Harrison Ford</label>

	<content>movies</content>

	<icon>C:\Users\HTPC\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\library\video\movies\mpaaratings\harrison_ford.png</icon>

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

	<group>none</group>

    <rule field="actor" operator="is">

        <value>Harrison Ford</value>

    </rule>

</node>

The <icon> tag points to an image that will be displayed. Change the path to your local image.
For each new actor you want listed, create a new file with the above code, and just simply change the <label>, <icon> and <value> tags.
Restart Kodi.

The <node order="1" controls how the list is sorted, so Harrison Ford will be listed first in this case.
Same with the index.xml file, if you want to change the location of where the node is listed within all the other default nodes.