[jpennell]

I have a question about the directory structure design for holding TV shows.

I have looked in the Wiki - and experimented with some of the advancedsettings.xml entries - with no progress.

I am using Windows Server 2008 with ABE installed - I share my media library with my immediate neighbour and a friend who lives a short distance away via a microwave link. Using permissions and ABE just seemed to make my life easier for deciding what content appeared on which XBMC using central policy.

So, for my movies...

movies
------- PG
----- movie1.mkv
----- movie2.mkv
----- HD
------ Compressed
------ Original
------- U
------ movie1.mkv
------ HD
------ Compressed
------ Original

All XBMC installs have a single-entry-point into movies... \\media\movies. The directory structure the XBMC "sees" is based on AD groups it's account has membership of. So - I can restrict the microwave-based XBMC from accessing the full-sized HD content by making it's user account a member of FG_Media_NoUncompressedHD. ABE means that the XBMC doesn't see folder to which it doesn't have permissions.

OK for movies. But for TV shows...

TV
------- PG
------- 24
------- Season 1
-------- 24.S01E01.avi
------- U
------- movie2.mkv

With a single share to \\media\tv, the tvdb scraper finds a show "James Gunn's PG Porn (en). After scraping is complete, the TV show library contains one show (James Gunn's PG Porn) with season 1 under it, and Day 1 1:00am - 2:00am (the correct episode of 24).

Is there something intrinsically wrong with having the PG and U folders? The wiki shows a path of "videos\mytv-comedy\Scrubs\season 1\s01e01 - Pilot (hdtv.xvid).avi" which, assuming the root of the share was "videos" would seem to suggest this should be OK (mytv-comedy being much the same as PG in this case).

I can get around this by putting two paths into the video source (one for PG, one for U) - but this will only work for installs which have access to both "libraries" on my server.

I know, I know, I'm "anal".

[jpennell]

D'uh - all the spaces have been removed from my directory structures in the post.

movies\PG\HD\Compressed
movies\PG\HD\Original

tv\PG
tv\U

Clear as mud?

[jmarshall]

Add both PG and U folders as you suggest. For TV Shows, XBMC needs the folder that contains a folder for each show.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[jpennell]

Sorry, I haven't been clear...

I do have a folder per show:-

\\media\tv\PG\Weeds\Season 1\Weeds.S01E01.avi
\\media\tv\PG\Weeds\Season 1\Weeds.S01E02.avi
\\media\tv\U\Futurama\Season 1\Futurama.S01E01.avi
...
...
\\media\tv\U\Futurama\Season 1\Futurama.S01E24.avi

If left like this, with a single media source pointing to \\media\tv - the library contains the aforementioned show (James Gunn's PG Porn) with every episode of Weeds, Futurama etc added as episodes of this show.

I am working around the issue at the moment by "flattening" the structure - removing the PG and U levels and setting permissions on each show folder (disabling inheritance) but it's an administrative nightmare and one which will kick me in the arse eventually.

[jpennell]

Wait, I've just reread what you said.

So - the parent folder (the one specified in the source) can ONLY contain folders which have TV shows as their name... So the show name always comes from the top-level folder, right?

[jmarshall]

Correct.

[jpennell]

Thanks.

Then I'll continue with my setting of non-inherited permissions for each TV show folder.