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You STILL haven't answered kraqh3d's question. Let me simplify it for you:
When you are using AEON, does the fanart in files mode show for all movies, or only those that you have scanned into your library?
The reason this question is important is that you can achieve showing any image from the current folder being displayed via the skin. This is what I think AEON is doing, and it's certainly not the way things should be done.
Cheers,
Jonathan
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kraqh3d
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i'm not sure if that's a valid test. cleaning the library may not dump cached fanart. then again it may. i'm just not positive. so as a simple final test, can you add a new movie with fanart to your system, do not scan, and verify the backdrop is displayed when you highlight it.
(i'm still in the office so i cant check but i think it will. like i said earlier, there's no reason why fanart has to be limited to the library. its nothing more than a rather simple file matching schema, but the skin needs to be aware of it, and use it.)
and sorry about that. the video files view is in the "myvideos.xml" skin file. there is no "myvideofiles.xml" skin file. music is similar. instead of "mymusicfiles.xml", i believe its "mymusicsongs.xml".
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kraqh3d
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i do not think its possible to display movie information in files view. and this is regardless if the file is in the database or not.
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As kraqh3d points out, you cannot view library information in files view as we do not hit the library. If you want library information, use the library view.
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kraqh3d
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no that will not give you what you want. the movie info button may pull the info from that local nfo xml file and display it, i've never tried. but even if it does, the info still will not be accessible from files mode. the video listitem.* properties are only available when in library mode. when the library mode file lists are generated, that information is pulled from the database and populates a video info tag thats linked to the item.
though, this could be possible in video files mode in the same way its done in music files mode. in music files, if you enable "id3 tag reading" in settings, every time you enter a folder, you'll get a popup dialog while xbmc reads all the metadata tag information from the files. the same approach could be done for videos except that it would look for nfo files, and load the data if its xml based.
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pko66
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Many say that by no using the library mode I am losing some of the greatness of xbmc... I do not think so, in fact I think that, at least for me, library mode is completely broken and cannot even be mended, for a number of reasons:
1) I have very eclectic tastes and also there are more people that watches movies in my house with different tastes; some of my movies are hollywood hits, some are hispanic, some are european, some are dubbed, some are in its original language with subtitles... when you select "comedy", "meet the spartans" can be side by side with a very subtle french movie in french without subtitles, that is just plain wrong, when you're in the mood to watch one of them you are NOT for the other! I simply have them in different disk hierarchies.
2) Since I have movies in english and movies in spanish (dubbed, subtitled or otherwise), I want the plots to be in the same language as the movie, also the spanish titles do not work to scrape IMDB, nor there are many of the non-dubbed movies in spanish-language sites. The consequence is that I scrape my movies from different sites, and some (but not all) the genres' names are also different ("comedy" and "comedia") and the ratings are also completely incoherent one to another, one site rates 1 to 10, another 0 to 5...
3) I have many movies, also I like to know all the actors in a movie, the consequence is that "actors" listing is thousands and thousands long, so it is not useful but in very special cases.
4) Since my collection of movies is very large, I have them distributed over 4 different computers, only one of them is online 24/7, in library mode ALL of them get listed even when there are not available.
5) Since there are so many movies, to speed selection I keep a directory with movies more interesting at the moment, I move some to their "permanent" directory when I watch them or lose interest in them, or simply when the directory content grows too much. All the movies in any library mode listing is overwhelming, more so when some appear more than once as in "genres" listings. The "recently added" listing is also not very meaningful, having watched some of them already (not in xbmc, but in theatres or otherwise) and keeping out some movies still "fresh" but added some time ago.
The point is, library mode is not (and cannot be) for everyone, but is a real pity that you cannot use all that powerful metadata when you are in file mode. I would like, in file mode and dvd view, to be capable of sorting by rating or year or genre, to see some metadata when selecting a movie without having to select "movie information", also to be capable of deleting library information of a movie when in file mode, or to select other movies from the same writer or director or studio from the "movie information" window just as you can look for movies featuring a given actor/actress.
On the other hand, I'm sure library mode is almost perfect when you just watch english-language movies, everything scraped from IMDB, so it is simply great for some people. But NOT everyone!
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kraqh3d
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of course. theoretically, anything is possible, someone just needs to code it to do so. xbmc intentionally doesn't rely on the videodb when in video file mode. this was a design choice. and this is a choice i stand behind. if you're using files mode, then xbmc should be nothing more than a dumb file browser.