Help with difficult Library
#1
Hi All

I've just yesterday moved from Windows Media Centre/Media Browser to XBMC and I'm stuck at how to handle some of the items in my collection. TV Shows and Movies I'm cool with.

1. Documentaries

When using Media Browser, I simply had a folder structure with minor variations on the following (mostly how the parts where identified (1 of 6, Part 1, 1-6)). Everything was based on folders and navigation was basically drilling down through folders.

x:\Documentaries\All About XBMC\All About XBMC - 1 of 6 - The Downloading.avi
x:\Documentaries\All About XBMC\All About XBMC - 2 of 6 - The Installation.avi
x:\Documentaries\All About XBMC\All About XBMC - 3 of 6 - The Marvelling.avi
x:\Documentaries\The Answer\How to everything.avi
x:\Documentaries\The Answer\Why Bother 1.avi
x:\Documentaries\The Answer\Why Bother 2.avi


I added these into the movies source, created a Smart Playlist for them and they get scraped fine - but I can't stack them and they appear under Movies. Advanced stacking doesn't fit because the 4th token isn't identical. Each part of the documentary appears as a different movie with the same thumbnail.

I'd like these types of item to appear like TV Shows (folder containing episodes), but I don't want them in the TV Shows collection. I want them in a Smart Playlist but appearing like TV Show episodes.

It seems I can't filter TV Shows by path like I can a Smart Playlist, and from what I've read, creating a Smart Playlist for TV Shows and (removing the TV Shows button from the home screen) that AREN'T documentaries will prevent some of the TV Show widgets from working.


2. Instructional Videos

Same as documentaries, but there's no possibility of scraping these- they won't appear on IMDB or TVDB.

x:\Instructional\How to Hammer\How to Hammer - 1 of 2 - Grasping.avi
x:\Instructional\How to Hammer\How to Hammer - 2 of 2 - Wacking.avi

3. Folders of ad-hoc videos

These are even less organised, a folder of small clips like this:

x:\Instructional\Clips\60 Minutes of Car Crash Victims.avi
x:\Instructional\Clips\Adjusting Your Self-O-Stat.avi
x:\Instructional\Clips\Re-Adjusting Your Self-O-Stat.avi
x:\Instructional\Clips\Alice's Adventure through the Windshield Glass.avi
x:\Instructional\Clips\Alice's Adventure through the Windshield Glass 2.avi

Am I missing something? Confused about how XBMC handles the media collections?

Has anyone come up with a solution to handle this type of collection? Any mods or add-ons that would help?

If it makes any difference, I'm using Aeon Nox for my skin.

Many thanks guys!
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#2
Documentaries, instructional videos, documentaries, etc, have various workarounds and there's a ton of threads about it, but the main topics to arm yourself are probably these:

Adding videos to the library (wiki)
Adding videos to the library/Home videos/custom videos (wiki)
Smart playlists (wiki)
Comparison of skin features (wiki) - check for the ones that allow for custom home items.

Basically, find a skin that lets you make custom home items, forget using the default "TV Shows" and "Movies", but instead make smart playlists that exclude the extra types (so you can have a pure "TV Shows" and "Movies"), plus making smart playlists for each of those extra types.

In the future, in XBMC v12 (Frodo) there's some really neat stuff called custom video nodes (wiki) that will make all of this a lot easier, but until then this is one option.

A lot of stuff will show up in the movie scraper for documentaries. Not sure about instructional videos, so you might have to make custom entries for those.

Another option is to just use file view and organize everything by folder. If it is scanned into the library it will show the extra metadata (summaries, art, etc), but will still let you list stuff along side that without having to add custom entries for every video. At the very least, that might be a good option for the clips.
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#3
Thanks Ned - I'll get reading.
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#4
FWIW...

I'm just about to go with a nightly build and use Custom Video Nodes. This will allow me to exclude various folder from the Title nodes for Movies and TV Shows.

I'm also going with the 'justusethefilename' scraper for the instructional videos that can't be scraped from anywhere.
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