2010-12-06, 08:55
New software will always have a learning curve. With SO many features and options, it definitely can be bewildering... HOWEVER....it is very efficient and with a little investigating, you can understand how it functions.
2010-12-07, 19:33
Software has to be as inuitive as possible, so users should be able to use to program without reading any manual. I think xbmc does a pretty good job in that. I didn't have to explain my girlfriend (who's not a techie) anything and I just gave her the remote.
The only things I did in xbmc before that was adding the sources, programming the remote and everything just worked (that was before my coder's instinct pushed me to changing stuff
). Ok, you might want to finetune a bit, like setting the speaker config to 5.1, but everything works fine without changing anything.
things that can be improved for new users (imho):
- like someone suggested in this thread, adding a popup that asks you if you want to scrape a new source and ask what scraper you want to use for it would be a valuable addition and it's easy to implement.
- the ability to program a remote from within xbmc, without touching any lirc config files
I'm not suggesting that nobody should read the manual/wiki/... anymore btw, I'm just saying that you can operate most of xbmc's features without reading anything.
The only things I did in xbmc before that was adding the sources, programming the remote and everything just worked (that was before my coder's instinct pushed me to changing stuff
). Ok, you might want to finetune a bit, like setting the speaker config to 5.1, but everything works fine without changing anything.things that can be improved for new users (imho):
- like someone suggested in this thread, adding a popup that asks you if you want to scrape a new source and ask what scraper you want to use for it would be a valuable addition and it's easy to implement.
- the ability to program a remote from within xbmc, without touching any lirc config files
I'm not suggesting that nobody should read the manual/wiki/... anymore btw, I'm just saying that you can operate most of xbmc's features without reading anything.
2010-12-07, 21:17
dushmaniac Wrote:- the ability to program a remote from within xbmc, without touching any lirc config files
The new Windows MCE pluggin does this nicely. A Linux equivalent that edits LIRC would rock...
2010-12-14, 04:36
... is its own success....
Because XBMC progresses rather rapidly, and because it's on a number of platforms, and also defers much functionality to other components (scrapers, plugins,skins etc) understanding how it all plugs together CAN be daunting.
In 99% of cases, the 'documentation' exists... but finding it can be very difficult when you don't KNOW the architecture. By not knowing it, you don't know where to look for the right answer, so you can easily find yourself in a 3rd party scraper thread and downloading Ember Media Manager thinking its part of XBMC, or walking into a skin thread and saying "hmmm MY setup doesn't look like that".
It's too easy to forget what it's like for genuine 'consumers'. What the hell IS a scaper? what IS a plug in? what IS a skin? etc... and a 'source'? these are geek terms.
"Find your TV shows" means more to a consumer than "select source"
"Download movie wallpapers" is better understood than "scrape fanart"
"Find DVD covers" is better understood than "get thumb"
Now it's all clear to ME, and probably to most XBMC fans, but seriously...'thumbs?'... it's just exacerbating the madness of PC terminology.
Yes, i know it means thumbnails, but even within XBMC, 'thumbs' is a generic term for image content related to media. See, even I'm talking technobable.
It's very difficult to put yourself in a novice's shoes, but it really does pay to TRY to think like them.
Often there IS a logical reason why something doesn't just 'happen'...a reason that will only make sense one you learn more... ie "why do you have to press TWO buttons to launch the bomb?"....seems illogical until you think harder.
But, sometimes, something's "always been that way", and never questioned... then when someone challenges convention by raising a new idea, don't be too quick to discount it, or too eager to defend something just because it's "established"... innovation stems not only from building ideas from scratch, but from knowing when to retreat from the path you're going down, and turn back to take a better path.
Because XBMC progresses rather rapidly, and because it's on a number of platforms, and also defers much functionality to other components (scrapers, plugins,skins etc) understanding how it all plugs together CAN be daunting.
In 99% of cases, the 'documentation' exists... but finding it can be very difficult when you don't KNOW the architecture. By not knowing it, you don't know where to look for the right answer, so you can easily find yourself in a 3rd party scraper thread and downloading Ember Media Manager thinking its part of XBMC, or walking into a skin thread and saying "hmmm MY setup doesn't look like that".
It's too easy to forget what it's like for genuine 'consumers'. What the hell IS a scaper? what IS a plug in? what IS a skin? etc... and a 'source'? these are geek terms.
"Find your TV shows" means more to a consumer than "select source"
"Download movie wallpapers" is better understood than "scrape fanart"
"Find DVD covers" is better understood than "get thumb"
Now it's all clear to ME, and probably to most XBMC fans, but seriously...'thumbs?'... it's just exacerbating the madness of PC terminology.
Yes, i know it means thumbnails, but even within XBMC, 'thumbs' is a generic term for image content related to media. See, even I'm talking technobable.
It's very difficult to put yourself in a novice's shoes, but it really does pay to TRY to think like them.
Often there IS a logical reason why something doesn't just 'happen'...a reason that will only make sense one you learn more... ie "why do you have to press TWO buttons to launch the bomb?"....seems illogical until you think harder.
But, sometimes, something's "always been that way", and never questioned... then when someone challenges convention by raising a new idea, don't be too quick to discount it, or too eager to defend something just because it's "established"... innovation stems not only from building ideas from scratch, but from knowing when to retreat from the path you're going down, and turn back to take a better path.
2010-12-14, 04:56
AnalogKid Wrote:... is its own success....
...
Great post, and very true in all regards. The terms are non-intuitive indeed for non-tech users, and just the whole library vs file vs browse modes (and yeah, browse = file mode, but it's variously called each in different places) is not intuitive at all.
And I still am really keen for it to have a page in the setup area that shows you what has/is/will go on in terms of scraping (and yes, that is a term which makes no sense to 'normal' people
).Things like a tv show having some episodes being slightly differently named which causes them to not appear in the library mode can make you go mental as you're sure they should be there. If there was a screen that showed that those files confused the scraper and "would you like to rename them or manually set them?" or the like could reduce the mystery of what the hell is going on in behind the scenes when things don't just 'work'.
Ember has helped a lot here for me, as it makes those things obvious, but then it had the really annoying problem that it then stopped xbmc scraping new episodes that I added for shows as they came down... yeah, that was bloody confusing, how was I supposed to know that I should delete a file because it intentionally stops xbmc scraping any more? (ok, this isn't a core xbmc issue, so not really related here, but it's of the same ilk).
I will say though, that as I have been using it for a little while now I am darn impressed with technically how well it just plays everything. I went through maddening steps to get all my files to render with MediaPortal, and even then not all did. So, to have xbmc 'just work' in that regard is awesome.
But yeah guys, there is some need to just step back a bit and maybe ask people who don't know xbmc and aren't technical what they might think 'scraping' means in this context, or just sit them in front of a fresh install of xbmc and see how they interact with it. I think you might be surprised how unintuitive some parts of it are. If you sit there an watch them I bet a lot of you will start going red in the face and think 'What? Just press the... ahhhh, no, don't do that! Why would you do that, oh come on, just use the context button, come on go up one level then press etc. etc.' You'll not get why they aren't doing what you would do, because they haven't been using it and learnt these things over time.
2010-12-17, 09:06
I am fairly new to XBMC, myself. Before XBMC I had tried them all. For a long time I was using Mediaportal and I liked it alot. Mostly because it ran good on my low end old system I was using for a media center. Also because it played most any video format I could throw at it.
Later, I got a good Win 7 machine with tons of memory and a couple of good video cards and was able to use it for Media. I tried the Windows Media Center program and thought that was going to be the thing to use. It looked AWESOME compared to MP.
But eventually I realized it had many shortcomings. So I went looking for something else. That's when I found XBMC in Dharma state.
This thing installed perfectly and looked amazing. Sure, it was a bit different and I had to change my way of thinking a bit with some things. I had to look some things up on the Wiki and some of it was not as intuitive as I think it could have been. But then, I had preconceived notions.
Now, I can't even remember how MP was and when my TV shows don't show up I know immediately that they were just not named correctly.
I learned how to properly name a "Special" TV show so that it shows up in the proper place. I figured out how to download subtitles "on demand" (an awesome feature!)
Basically, it did not take long for XBMC to become my new way of thinking. Downloading fanart is almost automatic, a thing that I don't think MP even does. Hell, I want to show this program off to my friends!
All of the media programs are a bit different and XBMC is by no means perfect. But as a fairly smart "novice" who is willing to tinker "some" but doesn't want to know how to skin a program so that the font is readable on my screen, XBMC is perfect for me.
I am anxiously awaiting the first full release and I applaud each and every contributor to this fine program.
Later, I got a good Win 7 machine with tons of memory and a couple of good video cards and was able to use it for Media. I tried the Windows Media Center program and thought that was going to be the thing to use. It looked AWESOME compared to MP.
But eventually I realized it had many shortcomings. So I went looking for something else. That's when I found XBMC in Dharma state.
This thing installed perfectly and looked amazing. Sure, it was a bit different and I had to change my way of thinking a bit with some things. I had to look some things up on the Wiki and some of it was not as intuitive as I think it could have been. But then, I had preconceived notions.
Now, I can't even remember how MP was and when my TV shows don't show up I know immediately that they were just not named correctly.
I learned how to properly name a "Special" TV show so that it shows up in the proper place. I figured out how to download subtitles "on demand" (an awesome feature!)
Basically, it did not take long for XBMC to become my new way of thinking. Downloading fanart is almost automatic, a thing that I don't think MP even does. Hell, I want to show this program off to my friends!
All of the media programs are a bit different and XBMC is by no means perfect. But as a fairly smart "novice" who is willing to tinker "some" but doesn't want to know how to skin a program so that the font is readable on my screen, XBMC is perfect for me.
I am anxiously awaiting the first full release and I applaud each and every contributor to this fine program.
2010-12-18, 01:58
Like others noted, a couple of small changes in the GUI would make XBMC super user friendly
Have a separate entry in the menu or in settings called Libraries. From here, the Add Source should be renamed to someting intuitive like "Add you media library" . Scrapper should be renamed to "Movie Information Providers".
The whole file/library mode should dissapear as it causes confusion.
Small things like that would be easy to implement, even before Dharma gets out since they do not require a lot of coding and would make XBMC a lot more user friendly.
Also, when you are browsing the library, the up one level button should be eliminated, we have remotes for navigating with back buttons.
Have a separate entry in the menu or in settings called Libraries. From here, the Add Source should be renamed to someting intuitive like "Add you media library" . Scrapper should be renamed to "Movie Information Providers".
The whole file/library mode should dissapear as it causes confusion.
Small things like that would be easy to implement, even before Dharma gets out since they do not require a lot of coding and would make XBMC a lot more user friendly.
Also, when you are browsing the library, the up one level button should be eliminated, we have remotes for navigating with back buttons.
2010-12-18, 02:21
SpectreX Wrote:Also, when you are browsing the library, the up one level button should be eliminated, we have remotes for navigating with back buttons.
That can be turned off in settings, but should default to off.
But (I know all will disagree) ESC should be eliminated. ESC + remember last used position = confusing navigation & bloated UI - menus pops up all the time trying to provide a way to go everywhere from anywhere..
2010-12-24, 08:52
I figure someone somewhere may be interested to know what it is like coming in as a new user. Using Dharma/10.0 on Ubuntu 10.10.
TLDR: Many parts are great and playing works well. The user interface seems designed by someone who hates me and wants to make things as frustrating as possible when using a remote control. I also tried the official XBMC Android client. It is great, although it likes to have confusing battles with the screen lock.
My main use case is that I have a collection of over 700 DVD boxes, each with one or more discs inside. About 20% are TV shows with the rest movies and documentaries. Up until earlier this year I used a 5 disc DVD player, but it is slow, clunky and still requires shuffling discs around. Since hard drive prices have come down so much I figured I'd start using them.
I have transcoded content in the past so that I would have stuff while travelling on my laptop but it takes a long time and is fiddly (selecting the right title, soundtracks, subtitles, encoding parameters etc). I decided to just rip things as the original ISO (Copy disk context menu in Ubuntu does the trick) and save to hard drive. This keeps all the menus, soundtracks, additional commentary, all the episodes for TV shows at the expense of some increasingly cheap disk space.
I started with a WD TV Live box, but finally gave up as it has many issues like forgetting the resolution of the TV it has been connected to on almost every power on, not remembering what I was playing, and almost always requiring a power cycle when changing from one ISO image to another.
A week ago I figured I'd give XBMC a go on a home made HTPC running Ubuntu with a MCE remote bought at Fry's. The goal was to also run Hulu Desktop. When getting it to play a DVD ISO image, things work well. Same for a folder of all my music.
But other than that the user interface is extremely frustrating. Making the weather show C instead of F was ludicrous. Having three places is great but switching between them should merely require pressing right the relevant number of times.
It took me a week to figure out how to do "now playing" - just press tab on the keyboard. (Right or left clicking with the mouse on random parts of the screen did it some of the time also.) Of course I actually want to do this on the remote but seem out of luck. It would be really nice if the bottommost home screen item was "now playing".
There is no place that shows what has been recently played, or is in the process of being played. For example if I was watching a film and a TV show, stopped both half way through, and came back two days later it would be nice to see those two items at the top of a list so I could continue. The WD TV Live was like this too so I had to start writing down on a white board which show, season, disc and episode I am currently on.
The video interfaces are a pain. I can never predict what a key will do. Some things appear to be only possible with a mouse. Pressing left may go back or it may provide yet another menu that switches modes on the right. There seems to be numerous modes and views and I can never quite figure out which one I should be in, how to switch back, and how to get out of it all. As evidence, try to work out how many possible different screens there could be from selecting Videos on the home screen. Sometimes it dives straight into content, other times playlists are listed, other times I get to see actors/genres etc and other times I have no idea what I am looking at.
It looks like I am SOL with TV. My content is in folders like "House/Season 1/Disc 1.iso" and from the doc it looks like I need
to tease the episodes out into single files or somehow pretend that each disc is an episode.
Playing ISOs has some maddening inconsistencies. For example you can press the back button on the remote control to get out the disc itself on the journey towards the home screen, but only if something is playing. If you are in the menus then it doesn't work. When pressing every button on my remote control (about the only way to learn the interface) I found the channel up button would skip in the pre-menu previews, but not while playing the main title.
After a week and seeing frequent references to smart playlists in the doc, but never any mention of how to actually find them, I finally stumbled on them. I could create a recent one with last played items trying to solve my earlier problems and it appears to work. For some bizarre reason you can't use the last played date as a criteria in the gui for TV shows and that is where it is most important.
The Executor add-on happily launches Hulu Desktop and that all works well except it doesn't have an option to stop any currently playing items, and then resume them after the executed program exits.
What would make things better?
A user guide that had an explanation of how to use things! I don't mean how to install etc which is all very well covered, but rather some sort of meaningful explanations of where everything is and why it is scattered all over the place. Some idea of how to do things with a remote control. For example it is trivial to right click on a higher level folder with a mouse and request its contents be played, but the remote doesn't have a right click!
Even better would be simplifying the interface so that it becomes strictly hierarchical. Pressing up and down should always scroll through items in a list, going right should select the current item and provide more detail/actions, while going left should go back one level. ie it would be possible to do everything with just the arrow directions and ok/enter/select. (I'm not saying other keys/clicks should not be possible, but rather that they are an optimisation over this baseline.)
TLDR: Many parts are great and playing works well. The user interface seems designed by someone who hates me and wants to make things as frustrating as possible when using a remote control. I also tried the official XBMC Android client. It is great, although it likes to have confusing battles with the screen lock.
My main use case is that I have a collection of over 700 DVD boxes, each with one or more discs inside. About 20% are TV shows with the rest movies and documentaries. Up until earlier this year I used a 5 disc DVD player, but it is slow, clunky and still requires shuffling discs around. Since hard drive prices have come down so much I figured I'd start using them.
I have transcoded content in the past so that I would have stuff while travelling on my laptop but it takes a long time and is fiddly (selecting the right title, soundtracks, subtitles, encoding parameters etc). I decided to just rip things as the original ISO (Copy disk context menu in Ubuntu does the trick) and save to hard drive. This keeps all the menus, soundtracks, additional commentary, all the episodes for TV shows at the expense of some increasingly cheap disk space.
I started with a WD TV Live box, but finally gave up as it has many issues like forgetting the resolution of the TV it has been connected to on almost every power on, not remembering what I was playing, and almost always requiring a power cycle when changing from one ISO image to another.
A week ago I figured I'd give XBMC a go on a home made HTPC running Ubuntu with a MCE remote bought at Fry's. The goal was to also run Hulu Desktop. When getting it to play a DVD ISO image, things work well. Same for a folder of all my music.
But other than that the user interface is extremely frustrating. Making the weather show C instead of F was ludicrous. Having three places is great but switching between them should merely require pressing right the relevant number of times.
It took me a week to figure out how to do "now playing" - just press tab on the keyboard. (Right or left clicking with the mouse on random parts of the screen did it some of the time also.) Of course I actually want to do this on the remote but seem out of luck. It would be really nice if the bottommost home screen item was "now playing".
There is no place that shows what has been recently played, or is in the process of being played. For example if I was watching a film and a TV show, stopped both half way through, and came back two days later it would be nice to see those two items at the top of a list so I could continue. The WD TV Live was like this too so I had to start writing down on a white board which show, season, disc and episode I am currently on.
The video interfaces are a pain. I can never predict what a key will do. Some things appear to be only possible with a mouse. Pressing left may go back or it may provide yet another menu that switches modes on the right. There seems to be numerous modes and views and I can never quite figure out which one I should be in, how to switch back, and how to get out of it all. As evidence, try to work out how many possible different screens there could be from selecting Videos on the home screen. Sometimes it dives straight into content, other times playlists are listed, other times I get to see actors/genres etc and other times I have no idea what I am looking at.
It looks like I am SOL with TV. My content is in folders like "House/Season 1/Disc 1.iso" and from the doc it looks like I need
to tease the episodes out into single files or somehow pretend that each disc is an episode.
Playing ISOs has some maddening inconsistencies. For example you can press the back button on the remote control to get out the disc itself on the journey towards the home screen, but only if something is playing. If you are in the menus then it doesn't work. When pressing every button on my remote control (about the only way to learn the interface) I found the channel up button would skip in the pre-menu previews, but not while playing the main title.
After a week and seeing frequent references to smart playlists in the doc, but never any mention of how to actually find them, I finally stumbled on them. I could create a recent one with last played items trying to solve my earlier problems and it appears to work. For some bizarre reason you can't use the last played date as a criteria in the gui for TV shows and that is where it is most important.
The Executor add-on happily launches Hulu Desktop and that all works well except it doesn't have an option to stop any currently playing items, and then resume them after the executed program exits.
What would make things better?
A user guide that had an explanation of how to use things! I don't mean how to install etc which is all very well covered, but rather some sort of meaningful explanations of where everything is and why it is scattered all over the place. Some idea of how to do things with a remote control. For example it is trivial to right click on a higher level folder with a mouse and request its contents be played, but the remote doesn't have a right click!
Even better would be simplifying the interface so that it becomes strictly hierarchical. Pressing up and down should always scroll through items in a list, going right should select the current item and provide more detail/actions, while going left should go back one level. ie it would be possible to do everything with just the arrow directions and ok/enter/select. (I'm not saying other keys/clicks should not be possible, but rather that they are an optimisation over this baseline.)
2010-12-24, 08:59
Thanks for the feedback! I admit, in the beginning, it was sort of intimidating for me too...but after one day looking at the wiki, you're 90% there. And having your media in the proper format is 90% of the work. I personally would much rather have separate episodes for a series rather than discs so I can pick anyone I want quickly. Maybe some batch transcodes would do the job?
2010-12-24, 09:00
grotgrot Wrote:It looks like I am SOL with TV. My content is in folders like "House/Season 1/Disc 1.iso" and from the doc it looks like I need
to tease the episodes out into single files or somehow pretend that each disc is an episode.
To Help with this you need to name your Disc 1.iso to something like this
S01E01-02.iso (add a dash and episode # for what Episodes on that disc.)
this should solve this problem.
Alternatively, Label your Iso "S01E01.iso" Use Ember Media Manager, <DONE WITHIN EMBER> Change the Episode name to "Season 1, Disc 1".
This will create an .nfo that holds the information, and will be perfectly scanable inside of XBMC
2010-12-24, 18:56
grotgrot Wrote:I figure someone somewhere may be interested to know what it is like coming in as a new user. Using Dharma/10.0 on Ubuntu 10.10.
TLDR: Many parts are great and playing works well. The user interface seems designed by someone who hates me and wants to make things as frustrating as possible when using a remote control. I also tried the official XBMC Android client. It is great, although it likes to have confusing battles with the screen lock.
My main use case is that I have a collection of over 700 DVD boxes, each with one or more discs inside. About 20% are TV shows with the rest movies and documentaries. Up until earlier this year I used a 5 disc DVD player, but it is slow, clunky and still requires shuffling discs around. Since hard drive prices have come down so much I figured I'd start using them.
I have transcoded content in the past so that I would have stuff while travelling on my laptop but it takes a long time and is fiddly (selecting the right title, soundtracks, subtitles, encoding parameters etc). I decided to just rip things as the original ISO (Copy disk context menu in Ubuntu does the trick) and save to hard drive. This keeps all the menus, soundtracks, additional commentary, all the episodes for TV shows at the expense of some increasingly cheap disk space.
I started with a WD TV Live box, but finally gave up as it has many issues like forgetting the resolution of the TV it has been connected to on almost every power on, not remembering what I was playing, and almost always requiring a power cycle when changing from one ISO image to another.
A week ago I figured I'd give XBMC a go on a home made HTPC running Ubuntu with a MCE remote bought at Fry's. The goal was to also run Hulu Desktop. When getting it to play a DVD ISO image, things work well. Same for a folder of all my music.
But other than that the user interface is extremely frustrating. Making the weather show C instead of F was ludicrous. Having three places is great but switching between them should merely require pressing right the relevant number of times.
It took me a week to figure out how to do "now playing" - just press tab on the keyboard. (Right or left clicking with the mouse on random parts of the screen did it some of the time also.) Of course I actually want to do this on the remote but seem out of luck. It would be really nice if the bottommost home screen item was "now playing".
There is no place that shows what has been recently played, or is in the process of being played. For example if I was watching a film and a TV show, stopped both half way through, and came back two days later it would be nice to see those two items at the top of a list so I could continue. The WD TV Live was like this too so I had to start writing down on a white board which show, season, disc and episode I am currently on.
The video interfaces are a pain. I can never predict what a key will do. Some things appear to be only possible with a mouse. Pressing left may go back or it may provide yet another menu that switches modes on the right. There seems to be numerous modes and views and I can never quite figure out which one I should be in, how to switch back, and how to get out of it all. As evidence, try to work out how many possible different screens there could be from selecting Videos on the home screen. Sometimes it dives straight into content, other times playlists are listed, other times I get to see actors/genres etc and other times I have no idea what I am looking at.
It looks like I am SOL with TV. My content is in folders like "House/Season 1/Disc 1.iso" and from the doc it looks like I need
to tease the episodes out into single files or somehow pretend that each disc is an episode.
Playing ISOs has some maddening inconsistencies. For example you can press the back button on the remote control to get out the disc itself on the journey towards the home screen, but only if something is playing. If you are in the menus then it doesn't work. When pressing every button on my remote control (about the only way to learn the interface) I found the channel up button would skip in the pre-menu previews, but not while playing the main title.
After a week and seeing frequent references to smart playlists in the doc, but never any mention of how to actually find them, I finally stumbled on them. I could create a recent one with last played items trying to solve my earlier problems and it appears to work. For some bizarre reason you can't use the last played date as a criteria in the gui for TV shows and that is where it is most important.
The Executor add-on happily launches Hulu Desktop and that all works well except it doesn't have an option to stop any currently playing items, and then resume them after the executed program exits.
What would make things better?
A user guide that had an explanation of how to use things! I don't mean how to install etc which is all very well covered, but rather some sort of meaningful explanations of where everything is and why it is scattered all over the place. Some idea of how to do things with a remote control. For example it is trivial to right click on a higher level folder with a mouse and request its contents be played, but the remote doesn't have a right click!
Even better would be simplifying the interface so that it becomes strictly hierarchical. Pressing up and down should always scroll through items in a list, going right should select the current item and provide more detail/actions, while going left should go back one level. ie it would be possible to do everything with just the arrow directions and ok/enter/select. (I'm not saying other keys/clicks should not be possible, but rather that they are an optimisation over this baseline.)
There was a thread started a while back where the OP suggested a help key of some sort that told you what remote/keyboard keys were active at the time and what they did. It didn't get a good reception.
2010-12-24, 19:23
spartan711 Wrote:Maybe some batch transcodes would do the job?
Do you realise just how much effort it would be to work out which episodes are on which iso, which titles they correspond to etc? Plus I'd lose all the menus, special features etc. And since there doesn't seem to be any way of tracking where I am this is all moot. I don't see any alternative to a whiteboard.
Note that it is not one of my goals to have each episode as a separate file. I watch a season sequentially so all it would have to remember is which iso I am on and my position within the iso.
isamu.dragon Wrote:To Help with this you need to name your Disc 1.iso to something like this ... Use Ember Media Manager ...
Ember doesn't work on Linux even with Wine. I'm not renaming my isos since there is no benefit. I don't want to select individual episodes. All I want is my position within a series remembered which it appears XBMC is unable to do no matter how I name things. A whiteboard works.
And this is significantly less of an issue than basic usability. Other than having to plugin a keyboard in order to press tab I still can't figure out how to do now playing.
2010-12-26, 01:28
I cannot figure how to get my movies into the library so I can get the cover and info from the internet. I have entered my movie directory and have all the generic thumbnails come up but no descriptions or covers. The startup guide says press "Run 'Automated Scan" but I cannot find any place to do this.
In Boxee it is so simple and automatic.
In Boxee it is so simple and automatic.
2010-12-26, 01:45
Assuming your Music/Movies/TV folder structure and filenames are correct, then just make sure that your view is in library mode.
