[Nightstalker84]

Hey guys,

Absolutely love XBMC ever since the original Xbox and have recently returned to set it up on my HTPC. Aeon Nox 4.0 and its perfect for my TV Shows and Movies and looks amazing.

You probably know what I am going to ask here as it seems like some people have had similar problems but possibly not this exact one.

Smart Playlists seem simple, but they are driving me mad! I'm getting a little confused with them and would appreciate some help before I pull my hair out.

I have a "Fitness" folder and I want this to appear on the main menu screen. Its full of stuff like Insanity and P90x and other workouts.

I dont want them listed under movies or TV shows. The scrapers wont scrape them so I dont see the point. However am I right in thinking I cant have them in a library view? If so why not? Fitness and other specialist DVD's or Movies wont get scraped so I need to avoid using a scraper at all. I just need my video files in a library view that I can edit myself. Why am I not able to simply point a folder to a menu and it be as simple as that and avoid playlists completely. Didnt it work like this a few years ago? Im not complaining, I am just curious to resolve it with the easiest method.

All I want is for them to look in the style of my TV shows folder and then I can customize the art and stuff myself. I dont want them in the file mode view as they dont display correctly.

Is there anything I can do? If I set them as TV Shows, they get scraped with useless incorrect information and some warning message as seen http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12628

I'd love for all my fitness stuff to be neat and tidy and would appreciate if someone could throw together a step by step guide starting from the very beginning if adding a source folder. Ive tried many different ways of getting it all to appear but it doesnt show correctly and file mode or whatever it is isnt really want I want to achieve.

The folder structure is Fitness > Insanity > then the loose video files.

Any help to resolve this would be fantastic and appreciated!

[CaptainKen]

You should watch this video:


Your fitness movies seem similar to what I've done with Home Movies. You want them completely separate from regular movies as well as using custom artwork.

Here are the steps to create a custom menu item that will only display what is in the Fitness folder and also only use the fanart in that folder structure as random background.

- Prepare Movie folders
01) Put all of these types of movies into a folder that is not part of your main movies folder. For instance, my main movies are in \\Server2\Movies, but Home movies are in \\Server2\Home Movies. Then within the home movies folder each movies has its' own folder.

02) You'll need to create a custom movie.nfo for each movie. You can do this manually using Notepad or Notepad++, or Ember Media Manager (EMM). The custom nfo will need Title, Plot/Outline, actors, date, etc.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<movie xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <id />
  <title>Mariah's 19th Birthday Present</title>
  <originaltitle>Mariah's 19th Birthday Present</originaltitle>
  <year>2013</year>
  <mpaa>Rated G</mpaa>
  <director>Ken Olson</director>
  <outline>Mariah's 19th Birthday Present</outline>
  <plot>In April 2012 I gave her a Segway coupon. I mistakenly thought it expired a month later and we hadn't redeemed it, so thought it was expired, But then got a reminder email April 2013 stating it was about to expire.</plot>
  <runtime>1</runtime>
  <actor>
    <name>Mariah Martinez</name>
    <role>Mariah</role>
    <thumb />
  </actor>
  <actor>
    <name>Ken Olson</name>
    <role>Dad</role>
    <thumb />
  </actor>
  <set>Home Movies</set>
  <fileinfo>
    <streamdetails>
      <audio>
        <channels>2</channels>
        <codec>aac</codec>
        <language>eng</language>
        <longlanguage>English</longlanguage>
        <bitrate>192</bitrate>
      </audio>
      <video>
        <aspect>1.778</aspect>
        <codec>avc1</codec>
        <durationinseconds>208</durationinseconds>
        <height>1080</height>
        <language>eng</language>
        <longlanguage>English</longlanguage>
        <scantype>Progressive</scantype>
        <width>1920</width>
        <bitrate>1200</bitrate>
        <multiView_Count />
        <encodedSettings />
      </video>
    </streamdetails>
  </fileinfo>
</movie>

03) Next you'll need your artwork such as fanart.jpg, poster.jpg and possibly thumbx.jpg Once again you can use EMM to scrape each movie. Or you can play the movie and pause at desired location and then press PrintScreen keyboard button from within XBMC.

04) You can also choose to include pics of anyone in the video by creating a ".actor" folder within each movie folder and then added the pics using the naming convention Firstname_Lastname.jpg. Then create an actor section for each as shown above.

- Create Playlist
01) Videos
02) Playlists
03) New Smart Playlist
04) Type = Movies (this should be better choice than TV Shows)
05) Name of Playlist = Fitness Movies (or whatever you want)
06) New Rule...Add
07) Match Items where = path
08) starts with
09) Browse to your Fitness folder
10) Items must match = all of the rules
11) Order by Title ascending
12) Press OK to save

- Assign to desired Main Menu item
01) Settings->Skin->Customizers->Main menu item customizer
02) Highlight unused Custom menu item
03) Up arrow
04) Smart Playlist Manager
05) Select Type = Random Movies
06) Include already watched items? = Yes (choose your preference)
07) Fitness Movies
08) Esc
09) Press Enter on desired unused Custom Main Menu item
10) Disable = false
11) Type = Video Playlist
12) Label = Fitness Movies (the name of the Smart Playlist you created)

- Setting the random background artwork
01) Choose background
02) Fitness Movies (Random Movies)
03) Set InfoLine
04) Fitness Movies (Random Movies)
05) Backspace

Quick video on the above processes:


In order to keep your fitness stuff out of the general movies you'll need to apply the same above principals to creating a Smart Playlist for your regular movies and assign that to the built in Movies main menu item.

To get your artwork to show up you'll need to run the Artwork Download add-on.

Home Movies Smart Playlist

Regular Movies Smart Playlist

Hope this helps! Enjoy!

EDIT: I added a "Prepare Movies" section to top of this post.

[Nightstalker84]

Fantastic, this seems to have worked well with getting the look that I want however some of the workouts are not showing up. Is there any reason for this? When I update the library it only seems to find just under half of the workouts even though it does search for all of them and they obviously get scraped poorly due to them not being in a database. How can I get it to add all of folders inside the fitness folder.

In file mode they all display correctly in each individual folder if I go through the Videos menu. I'm guessing the scraper is half the problem. Surely there is a work around?

Also, all the files are appearing in a big list, lose if you will. Would I be right in thinking I'd need to create movie sets to group each workout together considering one workout folder has about 10 video files each. That way they wouldn't all show up in a long list together?

Thanks for your help so far CaptainKen, I am slowly resolving my issues!

[Nightstalker84]

Anyone else have an idea what I can do?

[braz]

Here's what I did with my workout videos...

1. Arrange them logically in folders.
2. Manually add fanart.jpg and folder.jpg (poster) images to each folder.
3. Add the parent folder to my Video submenu.
4. Select the desired viewtype.

I don't see any benefit to trying to scrape these types of videos. No playlists are used with this method and the end result looks very much like the rest of my library. Hope this helps.

[CaptainKen]

Oops, sorry I meant to respond earlier but forgot.

With my home movies I created custom nfo's. Ember Media Manager works great for that other wise you can just manually modify this movie.nfo file. EMM has the advantage of scraping metada however.

Movie.nfo

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<movie xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <id><id />
  <title>Mackenzie's First Car</title>
  <originaltitle>05-08-11_MacFirstCar</originaltitle>
  <sorttitle>05-08-11_Macfirstcar</sorttitle>
  <year>2011</year>
  <releasedate>05/08/2011</releasedate>
  <rating>0</rating>
  <mpaa>Rated G</mpaa>
  <genre>Home Movie</genre>
  <director>Ken Olson</director>
  <plot>Mackenzies looks for clues to his first car!</plot>
  <outline>Mackenzies looks for clues to his first car!</outline>
  <runtime>7:04min</runtime>
  <actor>
    <name>Mackenzie Olson</name>
    <role>Mac</role>
    <thumb />
  </actor>
  <set>Home Movies</set>
  <fileinfo>
    <streamdetails>
      <audio>
        <channels>2</channels>
        <codec>pcm</codec>
      </audio>
      <video>
        <aspect>1.333</aspect>
        <codec>dv</codec>
        <durationinseconds>424</durationinseconds>
        <height>480</height>
        <scantype>Interlaced</scantype>
        <width>720</width>
      </video>
    </streamdetails>
  </fileinfo>
</movie>

[dpar]

Not sure about Insanity, but P90X scrapes perfectly fine as a tv show.

[shess757]

Not sure about Insanity, but P90X scrapes perfectly fine as a tv show.

What scraper are you using?

[braz]

Not sure about Insanity, but P90X scrapes perfectly fine as a tv show.

What scraper are you using?

TVDB has P90X, I wouldn't think most people would want this mixed in with their TV Shows though.

[dpar]

I have P90X set up as its own menu item. Sure it shows up in my tv show list as well but that doesn't matter to me.

[Nightstalker84]

Thanks for the input guys.

I don't see any benefit to trying to scrape these types of videos. No playlists are used with this method and the end result looks very much like the rest of my library. Hope this helps.

I dont want the scrapers to scrape them at all, well not the official scrapers xbmc uses anyway. thats whats causing most of the problems. I just want the options to have the information and view types so I can add my own information to them all. I want the section to look like it is part of xbmc rather than just a folder added with no info. I'll try and add my own custom art to the folders though as that may help me with the art displaying correctly.

I guess I'll give Ember a go too and then have it scrape the custom nfo files to see if the other files appear correctly.

Thanks guys! Forever fiddling and never watching the content I have!

EDIT: Still not sure how to group the files together considering theres more than one video in each folder and they show up in one long list? Will custom/manual sets do the trick?

[yakub26]

I used a smart playlist to put my Insanity workouts on my main menu, I scraped moviedb and worked fine. I tried making them tv shows first but it ended up scraping off the wall information. Changed the playlist to movies and updated the playlist one by one and it looks great.

I am sure that if you just create a folder for all your fitness videos and seperate it from your movies and tv shows then refresh the library that your fitness videos wont show up in either of them, along with the artwork.

[Zmajur]

Hi! This is my first time using this nice peace of software but I have a problem to separate movies from cartoons. I already made a few testing smart playlist from path and tags, but I cant see a Smart Playlist Manager in Home Menu Editor. Im missing something or? Sorry for bad English!

[mikebzh44]

Go to Settings > Skin > Help aned check if script.playlist is marked OK.

Same thing with script.randomandlastitems.

Post a screenshot.

[Zmajur]

OK, I'm missing both scripts. I downloaded and installed them, but in help setting script.playlist is still missing?