[cactus99]

Hello

I have a series of related video clips which I would like to enter into the XBMC database. I regarded each clip to be an episode in a custom made TV Show using custom made .NFO files.
So far so good. All the clips show up properly in XBMC as expected.

But when it came to searching for actors in XBMC, the actor list showed up totally blank. I then did some further investigations and came to the following conclusions:

All my clips have different actors/presenters, meaning I would only like to register these on episode level, i.e. I only enter these in the episodes .NFO files.
However, these actors do not turn up in the main actors list when you search for actors for TV Shows, for instance from the TV Show main menu in Confluence.

I then tried to enter the actors in the TV Show .NFO file and this time all actors were listed properly in the Actors list. But when displaying the episode detail information on the screen, all actors defined on TV Show level also showed up in the actors list for every episode, although they should not.


So my question is how to enter actors which are present only in single episodes in a TV Show, and how to make these listed in the TV Shows Actors list as well?

Actually I would suggest a change to the SQL script used to produce the TV Shows Actors list, since this query obviously only include the actors defined on TV Show level.

Please advice. The version of XBMC used is the official release of Eden.

Regards
Cactus

[HenryFord]

Mhm, I don't know - but I think this is an undesirable change, since most people wouldn't want to get guest-stars listed in the tv-shows actor list (I for one wouldn't like that...). It would also fill the actor-list with waaaaay to much actors besides the main actors. So I'd say - keep it as it is, it works as designed.
I think you just have to live with it (afterall - it is not that big of an issue, is it?)

[cactus99]

Well I would agree with you for actual TV shows, but these days there is so much other related material available on the Internet, not forgetting all home videos, which XBMC can't handle properly.
In my case the best solution was to regard the clips to be episodes in a TV Show, although they are not.

Perhaps a new media category (besides movies, tv shows, music clips etc) should be introduced into XBMC, which then also should be able to handle home videos?

[HenryFord]

A category "Home Videos" would probably be a good idea - don't know how other people see this, since I don't use home videos...
Another idea would be to group the files as a movie-box-set via the NFO-file, it would be listed as a single "movie" in the movie-listings and would list every actor who plays in the series (I do think so, but I'm not sure at the moment) in the box-set-information screen while you still can have different actors on a per-movie basis.

However - if you want the "Home Videos" category, I'd would advise to post in the feature suggestion-section of the forums

[cactus99]

A category "Home Videos" would probably be a good idea - don't know how other people see this, since I don't use home videos...
Another idea would be to group the files as a movie-box-set via the NFO-file, it would be listed as a single "movie" in the movie-listings and would list every actor who plays in the series (I do think so, but I'm not sure at the moment) in the box-set-information screen while you still can have different actors on a per-movie basis.

Thanks for your suggestion. I have already been thinking of using movie sets but rejected the idea since it would mess up the structure I already use for other movies.
Besides, these clips are really more "TV Show" like in structure.

I'll see if I can change the SQL query myself to fulfill my needs.

Oh yes, and I will probably go ahead and suggest a new media category, suitable for home videos etc.