Any way to make home menu into structured folder?
#1
I'm trying to make the home menu looks like this, with the subfolder below it,

=Movies West
==A-E
==F-J
==K-O
==P-T
==U-Z
==Recently Added
==Genre
=Movies Asia
==A-E
==F-J
==K-O
==P-T
==U-Z
==Recently Added
==Genre
Serial West
==A-E
==F-J
==K-O
==P-T
==U-Z
==Recently Added
==Genre
Serial Asia
==A-E
==F-J
==K-O
==P-T
==U-Z
==Recently Added
==Genre

Each movies is then located in another folder inside the alphabetical folder, i.e :
Movies West > F-J > Iron Man > Ironman.mkv
= is the home menu
and == is the submenu.

Anyway to make it like this?
I've tried various method but none works,
smart playlist won't work, probably because it won't read subfolders.
Adding it manually from xbmc only seems to work for the "Movies" menu..
I tried to assign it with custom menu on transparency and it doesn't work

Favorites is the same, doesn't work because it wont read subfolder
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#2
Some skins support custom home items and sub-menus. Transparency is one of them
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#3
(2012-07-02, 09:48)Ned Scott Wrote: Some skins support custom home items and sub-menus. Transparency is one of them

Thanks for the response,
yes i've been tweaking around with transparency,
i merged cirrus (base) + rapier (videoosd) + transparency (main menu + videonav),
So the settings is based on transparency..

But i can't find the option on the skin menu to add playlist to home menu or submenu, it's all favourites
i found a thread that suggests to mark the playlist folder as favorites,
so i tried it, it shows nothing

I managed to add smart playlist to home menu using cirrus,
but still can't find a way to add it to submenu
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#4
You've got a mix of XML files and I'm not sure the version of T! you're modifying is going to work the way you want. Using the latest SVN version of T! (a recent bug fix corrected an issue linking playlists from the home screen to favourites) I can link to custom playlists. The next iteration of XBMC will allow for much more flexibility setting up custom playlists and genre's that you can label (I believe the nightlies have this already) and would be more suitable for what you're looking for.

You first mark your smart playlist as a favourite, in the skin menu of T! just about every home button has a sub menu link to include favourites... One custom home button could be West Movies, with a link to a West playlist rule to folder... and subs etc..
Two custom home button could be East Movies, then subs etc.

Image

Here's what the listing in my favourites look like

<favourite name="HD Movies">ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;special://profile/playlists\video\HD Movies.xsp&quot;)</favourite>
<favourite name="1080P">ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;special://profile/playlists\video\1080P.xsp&quot;)</favourite>

I'm a little bit confused, when adding sources you could have all these folders laid out in file mode off the video home button.. pretty simple and you could open directly that page on start. It looks and sounds like you're putting enormous efforts at cross purposes to the design of XBMC.

Image

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#5
Oh, and this ability will be coming to the default Confluence in some form in the future XBMC v12, plus it will be really easy for skins to support such structures as well. Check out Custom Video Nodes (wiki) for a little bit of info on the technical details. It should be very cool.
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#6
(2012-07-02, 17:54)PatK Wrote: You've got a mix of XML files and I'm not sure the version of T! you're modifying is going to work the way you want. Using the latest SVN version of T! (a recent bug fix corrected an issue linking playlists from the home screen to favourites) I can link to custom playlists. The next iteration of XBMC will allow for much more flexibility setting up custom playlists and genre's that you can label (I believe the nightlies have this already) and would be more suitable for what you're looking for.

You first mark your smart playlist as a favourite, in the skin menu of T! just about every home button has a sub menu link to include favourites... One custom home button could be West Movies, with a link to a West playlist rule to folder... and subs etc..
Two custom home button could be East Movies, then subs etc.

Image

Here's what the listing in my favourites look like

<favourite name="HD Movies">ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;special://profile/playlists\video\HD Movies.xsp&quotWink</favourite>
<favourite name="1080P">ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;special://profile/playlists\video\1080P.xsp&quotWink</favourite>

I'm a little bit confused, when adding sources you could have all these folders laid out in file mode off the video home button.. pretty simple and you could open directly that page on start. It looks and sounds like you're putting enormous efforts at cross purposes to the design of XBMC.

Image

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Is the one you got from appearance menu the latest version?
I looked up in Googlecode and ver 1285 fixed that issue, on Mar 27
i downloaded it like a week ago on June so it should be fixed already right?

I tested it again, with folder "A-E"
It's already listed in favourites.xml
Code:
favourite name="A-E">ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;K:\\Multimedia\\West Movies\\A-E\\&quot;)</favourite

But it still doesn't show up on custom "A-E" home menu.

I'm designing for public usage, and Alphabetical is the easiest way to look up a movie
I'd suggest (if any of XBMC team reads this)
To add option to sort items alphabetically in library in the next version,
and it could be grouped alphabetical like i mentioned here.
Because when you have like 2000+ movies sometimes looking up with genre can get quite confusing..
Especially if you never watch that movies before..



(2012-07-02, 21:35)Ned Scott Wrote: Oh, and this ability will be coming to the default Confluence in some form in the future XBMC v12, plus it will be really easy for skins to support such structures as well. Check out Custom Video Nodes (wiki) for a little bit of info on the technical details. It should be very cool.

Thanks, i think i'm gonna try this.
Hopefully it's stable & functional already.
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#7
Hmm the latest nightbuild is way too laggy on the home menu..
Node implementation effect?
Anyone know a more stable version that has node implemented already?

Also, the wiki is incorrect about the location of the nodes,
it's not in userdata,
i found it in C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\xbmc\system\library\video

Edit : i still found the nodes after re-installing the stable version,
i tried changing the labels but sadly it doesn't work, Sad
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#8
I tried it with a freshly installed Transparency
I prefer working with the codes btw.. the GUI is just too confusing.
This is the part of the code in includes_home that controls custom home menu:

I modified the <onclick> part

Code:
                <item id="14">
                    <label>Tes</label>
                    <onclick>XBMC.ActivateWindow(10025,special://skin/playlists/A-E.xsp,return)</onclick>
                    <icon>special://skin/backgrounds/settings.jpg</icon>
                    <thumb>$INFO[Skin.String(Home_Custom_Back_Custom1_Folder)]</thumb>
                    <visible>Skin.HasSetting(Menu_Custom1)</visible>
                </item>

And It's already listed in favourites.xml

Code:
<favourites>
<favourite name="A-E">ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;K:\\Multimedia\\West Movies\\A-E\\&quot;)
</favourites>

But clicking on "Tes" menu still returns blank screen on video nav,
any idea why?
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#9
Does your favourite "Tes" execute directly from favourites? (if it doesn't have a close look at my example) I think you've lost most of us with versions and the complexity of modifying skins...Just because you can hack XBMC doesn't mean you should. Grab the latest SVN version of T!, the fix is in on that one..

Get back to the basics, as some have suggested the nightly choice might be easier for you to execute your home page tree menu. Navigating large collections is easy... when I think about a Sci-fi movie... I go to the genre first, I can never remember the full proper name. But XBMC search commands are extensive and handle searches easily and in T! right from the home page. Hit the movie button and they're all lined up alphabetically if that is your desired sort... the fly-out left menu allows listing by quite a few parameters, perhaps you missed it. Playlists are quite powerful, and eventually you'll be able to slice & dice that collection to the boredom of even yourself. People who don't watch movies much.. don't need a massive collection of anything; usually the random feature on the home page will suffice.

Trust me, an alphabetical or numbered set-up in the long run is not what you want. It's easier to think of the mood you're in and pick a genre accordingly, instead of trying to remember a review for a movie you haven't seen. Ratings are a great way of sorting the good from the bad & ugly, and this can be incorporated within playlists...

With genre folders, it's a snap to find files using a file shell, you don't need to incorporate an entire O/S within XBMC for simple maintenance.
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#10
C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\xbmc\system\library\video

that is the default copy. Placing a copy in your userdata will override the default copy.
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#11
Thanks guys, i managed to fix the problem with transparency 4.07 Smile

It works fine now, just one last thing,
I'm using randomlastitemsplaylist script to generate separate recently added movies for each custom menu,
e.g
- recently added for west movies
- recently added for asian movies

From this thread

It doesn't seem to work because it mixed up the recently added list for both categories
here's the debug log
Code:
16:59:54 T:30184   ERROR: JSONRPC: Failed to parse '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Files.GetDirectory", "params": {"directory": "C:\Users\DENY\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\playlists\video\Film_Barat.xsp", "media": "video", "properties": ["year", "runtime", "file", "playcount", "rating", "plot", "fanart", "thumbnail", "trailer", "streamdetails"]}, "id": 1}'
16:59:54 T:30184  NOTICE: [RandomAndLastItems] ## PLAYLIST C:\Users\DENY\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\playlists\video\West_Moviet.xsp COULD NOT BE LOADED ##
16:59:54 T:30184  NOTICE: ('[RandomAndLastItems] JSON RESULT ', {u'jsonrpc': u'2.0', u'id': None, u'error': {u'message': u'Parse error.', u'code': -32700}})
16:59:54 T:30184  NOTICE: Loading PlaylistLastMovieMenu1 started at 2012-07-03 16:59:54 and take 0.301s
17:00:05 T:28948  NOTICE: Storing total System Uptime
17:00:05 T:28948  NOTICE: Saving settings
17:00:05 T:28948  NOTICE: stop all

That West_Movie.xsp works fine on xbmc,
so what could be the problem?

Edit :
I was reading some threads about having separate profiles for separate libraries,
technically, this is a better solution than smart playlist,
but in terms of usability, it's not very practical because xbmc will have to load a new profile all over again..

So i was wondering, is there anyway to tell xbmc to load from different libraries (from other profile) under the same profile?
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Any way to make home menu into structured folder?0