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I dont use it.
I change my collection too much all the time.. Cant be botherd to scan every time i move or delete or add something.
If i had a dedicated NAS i would defenatly use it though. It rocks..
- ASRock ION 330 OpenELEC XBMC Frodo.
- 47" LG HDTV1080p, AC3/DTS Receiver.
- 96" Epson LCD 1080p projector
- 2x Raspbery Pi with XBMC
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He, I'm adding a secondary NAS with 3 TB storage just for the library! Done with my DVD collection. They are all going into the library wether they like it or not! hehe
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I have 3TB of NAS servers with a few hundred movies and just shy of 3000 TV show episodes. I really like the library - I love the watched flags (very useful for going through older series!) and the 'Recently Added Episodes'!
The library mode is great!
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aaronb
Senior Member
Posts: 245
I use the library and file mode about equally, because a lot of the stuff I watch most frequently is added to my SMB shares on my XP box right before I want to watch it, and I don't bother scanning, I just switch to file mode. I also watch a lot of shows recorded on my MythTV box, which is accessible in file mode through a SMB share (never could get the xbmcmythtv script working correctly). I love browsing my video content using the library (media info2 is a great view), so the only time I don't use it is if I'm watching something I just added.
The library is also one of the first things I show off to visitors. There's nothing better than being able to browse all 17 seasons of the Simpsons with episode thumbnails and descriptions, so when someone says "Remember that time on the Simpsons?" we can find it quickly and easily.
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5 XBoxes on the network (lots of TBs).
I publish new content to the server as PRIMARYGENRE\MOVIE\VIDEO_TS\.IFOs&.VOBs. As a result, pressing the "white button" tells me that I'm watching VIDEO_TS - meh.
There are enough errors during automatic scans that reviewing the results is necessary. If I could run a report that linked "displayed title" to "file/folder name", it wouldn't be very difficult to manually audit the results and possibly make revisions.
Re-scanning this content when a new build requires it, well, is somewhat of a hassle.
The library function doesn't deal nicely with multiple-episode-per-DVD TV shows.
I haven't found any scraper for documentaries such as "Nova".
If there were an easy tool for entering this content, I'd probably use it, provided I didn't have to re-key it whenever the DB structure changed and requires a re-scan/scrape/load.
Synchronising the libraries on each XBox is enough of a hassle that it doesn't get done.
But the biggest killer is probably the sluggishness of the library for large collections. From the time someone chooses "Actors" from the library view to the time the actor list is displayed, there's nearly a two minute lag. Great if you want to make popcorn, but not so much if you want to start using the system.
For a couple hundred gigs of .AVIs/.MP4s, the library is awesome and an unparalleled way to demonstrate the power of XBMC.
When I deploy XMBC and connect it to smaller collections, the library function is easily the most exciting feature.
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I tried library mode for music, but with many hundreds of CDs it was too hard to scroll by Artist, by Album, etc. I hate having to scroll down to entry number 678 of 800, for example. And with compilations, the artist count increased by another order of magnitude.
Currently I use file mode for music and have a directory structure by genre/[sub-genre/]artist/album, which allows for easy navigation. I can find what I want quite quickly. For example, "jazz/piano/art tatum/...", "jazz/trumpet/freddie hubbard/...", "metal/progressive/tool/...", "rock/pink floyd/...", etc.
Maybe I could do this in library mode too but it would require massive re-tagging.
So I think library mode works for small collections, but does not scale well.
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Joined: Jul 2007
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I would agree with most of Pfarkas earlier post.
I have 4 xboxes with xbmc at the moment. That will become 6 Linux port machines in the future be they PS3, next gen mac mini's, custom built shuttles and assuming the house move and purchase of 5 plasmas goes ahead. (Big family, all paying their own hardware costs thank god!)
Anyway with 4 boxes atm the moment it is hard enough keeping them synced never mind with 6. Can someone remind me again what the difficulties are with a centralised database. Is it just the loss of the ability to mark as 'Watched'? or are there speed issues in reading the database from a central server rather then from an xbox local hard drive?
But my other issues with the library are that the front end is not pretty with all the text. Why is it so hard to implement thumbs/wide icons instead of text. Sure you can't do that with actors as whats listed in that section depends on whats in the database but Years and Genres don't change. Which brings me onto both the fact that my collection of 747 films means that searching by actor hangs my xboxes. Its not even a 2 minute wait, it simply hangs and never displays an actor list.
Searching by Genre isn't that great either and while this is not XBMC's fault but IMDB's, that combined with the lack of actor search for me makes library mode for films pretty useless for me. The reason for this is because IMDB are over zealous in applying genre tags to the films in their DB. Every film is just in too many catagories. For instance, I was trying to demonstrate library mode to my mother. I was going to show her that going into actors in Library mode would list actors. She could find Jennifer Aniston say, click on it and be presented with all the films we had in our collection with Jennifer Aniston. Like I said, this hung my xboxes. Then I figured I would show her how searching be genre would filter our large collection and present her with a more managable list of films to choose from. I clicked on 'Romance'. It filter our 747 films down to 'Only' 120!!! Why? Because IMDB saw fit to list Romance as one of Batman Returns Genre tags! The list went on. Reams and reams of films that you would never class as proper romance films but because there was a romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia, that would be listed when sorting by romance genre.
Basically this means a large portion of the collection would appear in multiple genres meaning that all bar one or two of the genres would filter the collection to a managable size. I know a lot of films cross genres but the imdb tagging with 4 or 5 genres for every film is ridiculous.
I mean I can see the potential there. For instance I only recently realised while using the AMT plugin that cast info was in the info search for trailers and that you could actually click on a trailer cast member thumbnail and be presented with all the tv shows and movies in your collection with that cast member. (I knew about library actor search obviously but thought it was cool that there was some linkage with AMT plugin and your own collection.
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Currently I've got 977 movies about evenly distributed between "older" content that's in .AVI/.MP4 and newer content that's TITLE/VIDEO_TS/.IFO-.VOB.
This gives me a list of ~9300 actors. From library mode, if someone chooses "Actors", it now takes ~ 3 minutes to display the full list of actors. Most people assume that the function "locks up" XBMC.
After the long wait, I do eventually end up with a list of actors.
I suspect that the issue may be that the developers aren't working with a large dataset and aren't running into these issues themselves.
People who have discovered XBMC are certainly in the minority. The number of us who use XBMC and have multi-TB libraries is probably probably very small.
I know that Spiff has invested a lot of time and effort in the library functions.
I also know that the developers tackle things that are of interest to them. I remain hopeful that someone will find this issue interesting enough to pursue and help take the library to the next level.
It is what it is. I'm certainly grateful for XBMC. As rough as the library may be, it already provides tremendous value, and with every t3ch build things get better.
Without XBMC, I'd be chasing DVDs all over the house instead of enjoying the content.
