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+--- Thread: Video library redesign idea - How can we improve Smart Playlists, aka Filtered Lists? (/showthread.php?tid=51605)
- fidoboy - 2009-07-23
Hi jmarshall,
First all, imust say that i've not readed completely this thread, so i'm sorry if my request or suggestion has been posted before. Also, i'm not sure if this fits into your current plans when redesigning the video library but it could be really great and very useful to have an offline movies library.
I think that the most useful way to acomplish this is having two separated libraries, one for online movies (movies that are currently stored in your harddisks) and another one for offline movies (movies that you have in DVD or BlueRay). The working method should be the same, but when you try to play a offline movie, the system should ask for the media code (may be a number, a text label, etc). And when the media is inserted then it plays.
For the offline library you will need an option to import the titles from a file (may be XML or separated by commas CSV). In that file there must be all the movies info (original title, translated title, path for the cover art, cast,plot, genre, etc).
If you can, and have the necessary time it could be wonderful if also you add a method to manually add new movies to offline library (rather than importing the list) and then use the XBMC scrappers to get the movie info automatically after adding the media label (or code) for that movie.
I hope that you can take this suggestion into consideration when making your new library for XBMC videos.
- MrIcka - 2009-07-23
I like the feature to mark a movie (with a icon in the skin) in the library that is started but don't finished, and then to browse this movies/tv shows just like the recently added.
I am terrible to remember from one day to the other what movie a have started when i feel a sleep in the couch
Cool idea. - tripslipfall - 2009-07-23
I like the idea suggested above about the offline movies.
I haven't read through this whole thread either, but, I think it would be awesome to link sequels together, like say, all the Terminator movies will show up under a sub-folder called 'Terminator Series' or something like that, and you select The Terminator as the first one, and link the other Terminator movies to it as sequels and they get sorted by year, I'm not good at explaining things, but when you select Terminator Series, it shows you all the Terminator movies in order, and when you finish the first Terminator movie, it automatically goes to the next, and that feature could be turned off in a menu for people who only want to watch one of the movies and not all of them all the time.
Example:
8 Mile
American History X
Click
Employee Of The Month
Terminator Series
---The Terminator
---Terminator 2: Judgement Day
---Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines
---Terminator Salvation
Waist Deep
War
Another idea, would be to just have an option to view sequels for that movie, or prequels, by pressing a certain button or selecting an icon or something, so say you select 28 Days Later, and click 'View Sequels / Prequels', and be able to select certain movies and link them to that movie as a sequel / prequel by check marks or something, check mark 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later and then select 'Link movies' or something.
I don't know, throw those ideas around and maybe come up with something much better than what I'm explaining, I'm tired, and don't know how to explain things well right now.
- pko66 - 2009-07-23
jmarshall Wrote:I guess if one has thousands of movies then a breakdown is necessary just to manage the listing - if so, I'd be interested in how people group their movies and shows under this scenario from a browsing point of view.
Hello, Jonathan.
I have a few thousand movies and a few hundred tvshows and never use library mode, this is why:
1) If it actually could classify my movies:
- A flat listing of movies is just unmanageable
- Lists by actor/director is just the same (too many of them)
- year is not practical
- Genre is not useful because:
a) the genres in IMDB are not what I'd choose (and if you use different, multinational scrapers the results are just too heterogeneous. Even when the scraper actually FINDS the correct movie data)
b) each movie gets usually classified in several genres, so it is like if I had MANY thousand movies, not just "a few thousand", and most genres become unmanageable, again
So, How I manage the movies, the breakdown you mention? by file system hierarchy. The classification is, of course, my own, but it makes sense to me. A main classification is: kids/dubbed/subtitled/in spanish (I am spanish). The "dubbed" movies then get divided in "mainstream" (mostly USA), "european" and "other. The same classification in "subtitled". Then, and only then, do I apply the "traditional" genre classification (on my own - I use far less genres than IMDB, like ten or so).
I think the file hierarchy should be incorporated into the classification somehow (maybe optional, maybe instead of genres, maybe in addition to genres, being an "upper" node...). For people with large movie collections it is a must.
2) But actually, library does not work for me for these reasons:
- Many of the movies I watch are not easily incorporated into the library: do not have IMDB entry, or the title is translated and so is almost impossible to detect the correct movie without some manual intervention
- I have 3 servers and only one of them is always online (the other came online using wake on lan when needed and turn off themselves a few hours later)
- I move files to the offline servers periodically
- even using nfo files, even limiting to the online server, from the xbox the refresh library process takes forever to run and usually crashes the machine (or it seems to be crashed)
- due to all the manual work involved, I have nfo files for only a part of my movies, it usually takes several months since I get a movie and have the time to "nfo" it with an external utility.
A workaround to most of that could be a "fast" refresh: it would delete/add from the library the (un)available files (should explore just the "online" entries, of course) and do not access the web but use just the available data (title, thumbnail files, "genre" from the file system hierarchy, maybe info from the nfo files). That could perhaps be fast enough to execute always on start without taking too many time nor crashing the xbox.
For all that reasons, the library and what/where is really available would be just too different things. And multiply that for 4 different XBOX (and some computers) for different people (we all share the servers and network)
So I always use file mode, but I miss all that functionality of the library, IMHO it is one of the greatest things in XBMC.
If you have read till here... thank you very much!!!! and if not... well, thank you all the same, you make a great work for a great project.
- NotShorty - 2009-07-23
I read the 1st page thoroughly, but searched for "adult" on the following 3
Could we pleeeease have a separate Library for Adult content? Currently xbmc sticks all "movies" together (BangBus and Bambi don't mix), and toggling between adult and non-adult profiles is not very elegant. I'd love to have an Adult tab in Aeon, which is independent of my non-adult content.
As a single male without kids, simply disabling the adult tab and enabling Kiosk mode in Aeon would be sufficiently stealthy for the few times that parents drop by...
Apologies if this problem already has a solution, but it is still true AFAIK.
Thank you for your thoughts.
NS
edit:
I do use Year from time to time, but to find actors I click "info" on a movie, then select the actor from the "cast" item. BTW, if the Cast and Plot items were somehow split rather than toggling between the two, that would be great... I use Flatten, and the other categories aren't used. Looking forward to proper media flagging with a Resolution filter.
- jmarshall - 2009-07-24
Doesn't anyone read the bloody thread they reply to anymore?
Just read all my replies BEFORE posting please.
- fidoboy - 2009-07-24
jmarshall Wrote:Doesn't anyone read the bloody thread they reply to anymore?
Just read all my replies BEFORE posting please.
I'm sorry jmarshall but i don't understand you well, what do you want to mean with that? Are you referring to my post? Is this feature being suggested before?
thanks in advance, regards,
- jmarshall - 2009-07-24
My reply was to anyone that hasn't read the thread. Your suggestion I believe is one of the few that has not been addressed by me in this thread, though has been addressed in other threads. My basic premise regarding DVD media is that it's an extremely low priority for me. With that said, the "metadata" of files is planned to be loosely connected with the actual file in the database, thus allowing the movement of files without metadata loss, which may help someone else to target dvd media in a more useful manner than we have currently. I will not be addressing it directly.
Cheers,
Jonathan
- fidoboy - 2009-07-24
jmarshall Wrote:My reply was to anyone that hasn't read the thread. Your suggestion I believe is one of the few that has not been addressed by me in this thread, though has been addressed in other threads. My basic premise regarding DVD media is that it's an extremely low priority for me. With that said, the "metadata" of files is planned to be loosely connected with the actual file in the database, thus allowing the movement of files without metadata loss, which may help someone else to target dvd media in a more useful manner than we have currently. I will not be addressing it directly.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Ok, i understand now, thanks. I'm very sorry because offline library is in your 'very low priority level' list... In my modest opinion the video library browsing method and other questions being discussed here, are very well like they are right now, for me at least is really comfortable and useful to browse my library (around 100 movies) with the current system. I do not want to offend you, but i can't understand how it's possible to have that features (that there are very well right now) with more priority than making a very necessary feature like the offline library (there are tons of potential users that could benefit with this)
The annoying library limitations are not browsing related but features related (like for example the offline library or the adult library mode...)
Just my two cents... Other than this, i only can say you: keep up the good work, XBMC rules!
regards,
Played-on dates - mattohara - 2009-07-24
I tried to make a smart playlist for "watched in the last week" or some such but since I found out on IRC that play-date is not something that's stored it's impossible. So here's another vote for that!
I also made a playlist for "movies where the writer = ian fleming" to get all my Bond flicks together. I made another where "actor = harrison ford" to get all his stuff together. But now to get to those playlists I have to go into Videos->Plugins->Playlists->Bond Films or something like that. Ideally any user-created playlists related to Movies would be added to the Movies contextual menu, TV Shows to the TV Shows menu (uh, just realized this is maybe a MediaStream request here, sorry).
Agreed that browsing by Year/Actor/Studio is rarely used, but I don't think they should be gotten rid of. Someday I may want to do a "show me everything by Studio Ghibli" or something.
- jmarshall - 2009-07-25
Another person who doesn't read the thread :p
I've stated before: Filters (aka smartplaylists) will be available to place in your hierarchy wherever you like (other than within a title view).
lastplayed is already in the database - perhaps it's just not available in the smarplaylist UI? Make sure you're using latest SVN.
Cheers,
Jonathan
- KidKiwi - 2009-07-25
jmarshall Wrote:I've stated before: Filters (aka smartplaylists) will be available to place in your hierarchy wherever you like "(other than within a title view)."
I think I'll start crying here.
jmarshall Wrote:lastplayed is already in the database - perhaps it's just not available in the smarplaylist UI? Make sure you're using latest SVN.
Was the "Last Played" label ever finished? (So you can have a label showing the date you last watched it in the OSD). It was part of the original trac thingee - but not sure if it got implemented.
- jmarshall - 2009-07-26
I suspect not - I'm not even sure if it's available in the infotag/fileitem structures at this point.
Cheers,
Jonathan
- KidKiwi - 2009-07-26
jmarshall Wrote:I suspect not - I'm not even sure if it's available in the infotag/fileitem structures at this point.
Cheers,
Jonathan
I'll have to chase up the trac ticket for this and then add another one for the infolabel.
- lunerceli - 2009-08-03
Honestly, I don't use the upper levels like the actors, genres, etc, etc. What I normally do when I don't know what I want to watch is just hold down the arrow key and lift it up after a few seconds. What I think an ultimate goal should be is put a random within the library, and have it start playing as soon as you click on random from the context menu. Doing away with the upper level content is really a waste of time seeing how you can do all of that from within the library already, which has already been mentioned.