[Tjoe70s]

Pardon my eyes rolling around and around in my head. I'm usually pretty good at ferreting out information from sites and, eventually, getting what I want. The XBMC forum has shattered my ego. It is so immense, and the forum search returns far too many irrelevant results. I don't want to be the guy that posts a bunch of basic questions to the forum and sift through the 80% of responses flaming me for being too stupid to search.

Now, given that the idea of forums is that my asking for help is likely to help someone else get the answer some day when they are searching, but I have about a dozen questions as I begin to finalize my library and run my first real HTPC to my projector & AVR.


So, what I'm looking for is someone with enough knowledge and patience to answer some questions and guide me in the right direction. I don't mind messing around with .NFO files, xml files, etc., but I don't want to head down a path to solve one of my issues when it turns out to be a better (easier) way. Many of the threads I've read are a few years old and some fixes of the past may be built into Frodo, or there may be a cooler/easier new way of doing something. Also, I don't know what features are from the skin and what are in the base program.

Right now I'm trying stuff out on a test PC (Windows 7, xbmc = frodo (12.3) using AEON NOX ) and my NAS has my full library. I will eventually do a fresh install of xbmc on a new PC (Lenovo Q190) arriving soon, and I want to have as many of these configurations figured out by then.

The following are my main questions. Looking for someone willing to walk me through the right way to address them.
1 - Other than eye candy, does FEATURED (on main menu) do anything? I wasn't able to launch (play) anything that was playing in those mini-view boxes.
2 - Is there a way to update the library and include all of the extrathumb, fan art, etc., instead of me going to each movie and manually clicking on the Get extrathumbs, get artwork, get extrafanart?
3 - Is there a way to have XBMC startup right into the MOVIES selection? I want to see my movie library in Showcase mode on startup. I tried the Startup window setting but there is no MOVIES option. VIDEOS doesn't open the showcase listing that I want.
4 - On the Main Menu, I want to be able to have a menu option for things like Kids, Holiday Movies.
5 - I need help with movie collections: Indiana Jones, James Bond, etc., but also with things like Elvis movies.
6 - What is Kiosk mode?
7 - What is Cinema (in Movies)?

Then there are some features that I'd like to see, and maybe someone has already made an add-on for them, but finding things like that is getting quite cumbersome.
8 - Have a screen with 8 boxes running trailers (or parts of actual movie) of random movies that I could click on and play. Sometimes I don't really know what I want to watch, but seeing something playing (like channel hopping) would help.
9 - Have the Movies section remember where I was in the list when I start XBMC back up (on the same machine).

Any takers? Is it bad form to offer money?
Thank you,

[jammyb]

Subscribed!

[Vaikin]

* Other than eye candy, does FEATURED (on main menu) do anything? I wasn't able to launch (play) anything that was playing in those mini-view boxes.
* Is there a way to update the library and include all of the extrathumb, fan art, etc., instead of me going to each movie and manually clicking on the Get extrathumbs, get artwork, get extrafanart?
* Is there a way to have XBMC startup right into the MOVIES selection? I want to see my movie library in Showcase mode on startup. I tried the Startup window setting but there is no MOVIES option. VIDEOS doesn't open the showcase listing that I want.
* On the Main Menu, I want to be able to have a menu option for things like Kids, Holiday Movies.
* I need help with movie collections: Indiana Jones, James Bond, etc., but also with things like Elvis movies.
* What is Kiosk mode?
* What is Cinema (in Movies)?

-Featured should show you latest/random/partially played videos, and they should start playing when you click on them
-Artwork Downloader program addon. It deals exclusively with artwork for movies/tv shows. It will automatically scan/download appropriate artwork to save you from doing just that.
-Dont think so
-Smart Playlists. I don't think the default skin can add more main menu items, but many other skins can. For an example of how to make/configure smart playlists, see the video in my sig.
-What about movie collections? There's an option in Settings -> Videos to group collections, or turn it off.
-It prevents fiddling with many settings(like changing views).
-Probably an addon: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=87563

[zbyna]

Pardon my eyes rolling around and around in my head. I'm usually pretty good at ferreting out information from sites and, eventually, getting what I want. The XBMC forum has shattered my ego. It is so immense, and the forum search returns far too many irrelevant results. I don't want to be the guy that posts a bunch of basic questions to the forum and sift through the 80% of responses flaming me for being too stupid to search.

Now, given that the idea of forums is that my asking for help is likely to help someone else get the answer some day when they are searching, but I have about a dozen questions as I begin to finalize my library and run my first real HTPC to my projector & AVR.


So, what I'm looking for is someone with enough knowledge and patience to answer some questions and guide me in the right direction. I don't mind messing around with .NFO files, xml files, etc., but I don't want to head down a path to solve one of my issues when it turns out to be a better (easier) way. Many of the threads I've read are a few years old and some fixes of the past may be built into Frodo, or there may be a cooler/easier new way of doing something. Also, I don't know what features are from the skin and what are in the base program.

Right now I'm trying stuff out on a test PC (Windows 7, xbmc = frodo (12.3) using AEON NOX ) and my NAS has my full library. I will eventually do a fresh install of xbmc on a new PC (Lenovo Q190) arriving soon, and I want to have as many of these configurations figured out by then.

The following are my main questions. Looking for someone willing to walk me through the right way to address them.
* Other than eye candy, does FEATURED (on main menu) do anything? I wasn't able to launch (play) anything that was playing in those mini-view boxes.
* Is there a way to update the library and include all of the extrathumb, fan art, etc., instead of me going to each movie and manually clicking on the Get extrathumbs, get artwork, get extrafanart?
* Is there a way to have XBMC startup right into the MOVIES selection? I want to see my movie library in Showcase mode on startup. I tried the Startup window setting but there is no MOVIES option. VIDEOS doesn't open the showcase listing that I want.
* On the Main Menu, I want to be able to have a menu option for things like Kids, Holiday Movies.
* I need help with movie collections: Indiana Jones, James Bond, etc., but also with things like Elvis movies.
* What is Kiosk mode?
* What is Cinema (in Movies)?

Then there are some features that I'd like to see, and maybe someone has already made an add-on for them, but finding things like that is getting quite cumbersome.
* Have a screen with 8 boxes running trailers (or parts of actual movie) of random movies that I could click on and play. Sometimes I don't really know what I want to watch, but seeing something playing (like channel hopping) would help.
* Have the Movies section remember where I was in the list when I start XBMC back up (on the same machine).

Any takers? Is it bad form to offer money?
Thank you,

As for customisation of XBMC - the best skin which supports almost all of your needs is:

Aeon MQ 5 http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=68
Video Preview

or its younger brother:
ACE http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=190

Have a good luck

Zbyna

[PatK]

Your first paragraph is regarding the short comings of the forum search. Without down playing the XBMC forums great capabilities, it doesn't eclipse Google's spiders, hence the search term XBMC 'issue' might suffice for localization.

By the numbers

1) Featured should take you to the content if not play it, some skins have a randomization in place of featured, the Skin Transparency! which is my primary choice offers this, makes for easy decision making. Skinners take pride in how they handle the home page and there's a lot of scripting done behind the scenes to make sure you're never bored.

2) A lot of skins have a toggle for using the extra fanart & extra thumbnails, caution here... more artwork means larger loading times. Each video can have a full slide show as backdrop, complete with disk image, logo, and meta-data (flipping through all this can take some memeory and GPU effort) Artwork Downloader program addon is how most people auto-populate if you want more than what XBMC offers on a scrape. I run it on occasion manually, I like to run the hardware as light as possible.

3) The skin T! has a function to start a playlist on start-up, given that perhaps a video playlist showing files or folders would be possible, I personally appreciate the home screen, so others may have ideas here.

4) Custom buttons or menus should take care of your wants for Kids, Holidays and other things... T! is great for this. If you have content that you would like excluded from Kids, have a look at profiles... each member of the family can have their own start-up.

5) There is a number of ways to catalog smaller segments of your library, the first and most vaunted is 'sets' and in Gotham this is made easy pezzy (excellent work was done here, highly recommended ) with full menu control on top of XBMC auto scraping obvious collections. Next we have 'Tags' were you can include whatever into collections of your name. Then the grandest of them all smart playlists with user defined rules, set as favorites and linked to one of the home screen buttons or sub menu's and you'll think about charging # just to cruise your library. Then there is nodes, allowing full control over the button limitings... but I'll stand off that one until you have a bit more practice. T! has a huger amount of sub menu possibility's all more or less hidden from the home page, and from what I've seen Aeon has most of this.

6) Kiosk mode, is kinda of like the bank machine, usually touch enabled but sometimes not.. locks away the settings from changes

7) What is Cinema (in Movies)? I don't think you're looking for the Wikipedia version... So I'll direct you here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=87563 and here http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...Experience nice program.

8) I don't think there is exactly the target here... But have a look at a program add-on by the name PseudoTV http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=90738 and then lately there's LazyTV and I really enjoy Movie Quiz, all guarantee to peak your interest in content.

9) XBMC already remembers locally watched & unwatched... recently viewed, and some skins like T! even remembers the spot you left a movie with resume, but sadly XBMC doesn't know what you want to do next, at least at this point. You might have to read up on synchronization of your lib with other machines in the house. http://lifehacker.com/5634515/how-to-syn...-the-house or http://www.howtogeek.com/75535/how-to-sy...with-xbmc/

The Wiki's are really gold, you need to spend a bit of time looking through them. As for monetary appreciation, donations are all the rage and available at http://xbmc.org/contribute/ This is an open source unpaid project.

[tential]

You should read the wiki as said above. As much as we can answer questions here, you'll get the best answers reading the wiki. Does it take time? Yes. But you'll most likely find out about other features you didn't even know exists that you'll want to use if you read the wiki.

[Tjoe70s]

You should read the wiki as said above. As much as we can answer questions here, you'll get the best answers reading the wiki. Does it take time? Yes. But you'll most likely find out about other features you didn't even know exists that you'll want to use if you read the wiki.

I'm using the wikis as much as I can. The problem is that some of the solutions are pretty old and I don't want to head down the wrong road, only to find out I could have done it much easier some other way. As well laid out as the wiki is, it can really lead you in many directions. My poor browser has so many tabs open when I'm researching the wiki and the forums, that it makes my cpu fan kick into high

[natethomas]

The answers provided by vaikan and Pat are pretty accurate as far as I can see. I'd just like to add a vote for google searching the forums. A search of Topic plus 2014 or 2013 usually does a pretty good job getting you close to a more recent answer.

[Tjoe70s]

The answers provided by vaikan and Pat are pretty accurate as far as I can see. I'd just like to add a vote for google searching the forums. A search of Topic plus 2014 or 2013 usually does a pretty good job getting you close to a more recent answer.

Oh! I didn't know the google search could index the posting year - good tip! Thanks!

[Tjoe70s]

1 - Featured should show you latest/random/partially played videos, and they should start playing when you click on them
2 - Artwork Downloader program addon. It deals exclusively with artwork for movies/tv shows. It will automatically scan/download appropriate artwork to save you from doing just that.
3 - Dont think so
4 - Smart Playlists. I don't think the default skin can add more main menu items, but many other skins can. For an example of how to make/configure smart playlists, see the video in my sig.
5 - What about movie collections? There's an option in Settings -> Videos to group collections, or turn it off.
6 - It prevents fiddling with many settings(like changing views).
7 - Probably an addon: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=87563

Thanks for taking the time to help, Vaikin!
1 - This must be a skin thing then, as mine (AEON NOX) isn't letting me start the show from clicking on the item that is being displayed. I tried keyboard shortcuts too.
2 - Oh! I already had Artwork Downloader, but I thought that was being run automatically during the Library Update. I just ran it separately now to see if there were any options, and it is now doing exactly what I wanted - fetching extra fan art and thumbs for all of my movies! Cool!
I'm also looking for a way to pick which thumbs go in each box (I'm using 4-thumbs for my InfoPanel).
5 - Yes, I have it set for Grouping Movies together, and that helps a little bit, but there are some movies that I'd like to group differently. Such as James Bond movies, or Elvis movies. It may be that I just have to create a number of lists (sets) and manually put the movies where they belong and not go into the main MOVIES menu, but go into my sets instead. See? I need some guidance here so that I do it the best way

Thanks again for taking the time to help!

---

2) A lot of skins have a toggle for using the extra fanart & extra thumbnails, caution here... more artwork means larger loading times. Each video can have a full slide show as backdrop, complete with disk image, logo, and meta-data (flipping through all this can take some memeory and GPU effort) Artwork Downloader program addon is how most people auto-populate if you want more than what XBMC offers on a scrape. I run it on occasion manually, I like to run the hardware as light as possible.

Oh! I thought Artwork Downloader was being run as part of the initial Library Update. I just ran it now to see if it had any extra settings and it went out and began doing exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Now, I have to wait until it is finished fetching, but I don't recall seeing anywhere that I could manually arrange what images go into each thumb. I'm using 4-Thumbs in AEON NOX.

Thanks again!

[Tjoe70s]

Impressive! The scraper put most of my Elvis titles into a collection for me. Very cool!
But, it left 3 out: they are concerts. Not too bad since 2 of them are called Elvis.... but the 3rd is This Is Elvis, so it sorts differently. And I'm not happy with how Music Videos works with my other Concerts so I am leaving them in with my Movies.

Any suggestions for getting the 3 concerts into the Elvis collection?

[tential]

It has to scrape the data from SOMEWHERE. So if you can't find a place online that has the metadata info for those concerts, there is no possible way you can get that data into XBMC.

So you need to go to find the scraper used for concerts and figure out if your Elvis concerts are there.

[Tjoe70s]

Oh, the elvis concerts are in the Movies part of the Library, just not collected with Elvis movies. They are separate titles. Two are near the movies because of their name, but the third is far away in the list because of its name.

[pr0xZen]

Right-click the movie -> Manage... -> Manage movie set. Select a movie collection on the list if the collection already exist - "Add movie to a new set" if not. Repeat with other movies as needed. Next:
Settings -> Videos -> Library -> Group movies in sets, (Unless, this is already set. Stays for future forum reference)

[Tjoe70s]

Right-click the movie -> Manage... -> Manage movie set. Select a movie collection on the list if the collection already exist - "Add movie to a new set" if not. Repeat with other movies as needed. Next:
Settings -> Videos -> Library -> Group movies in sets, (Unless, this is already set. Stays for future forum reference)

Is this a Gotham feature? I don't get this menu option on my Frodo (w/AEON NOX).