Couple questions.
#1
Alright, I've read the FAQ and it really doesnt answer anything. IRC isnt helping end users, so im hoping i can get some answers here.

Title lookup/scrapers.. etc. How are MKV's and the folders they are contained in supposed to be labeled so that this feature actually works? And do you have to be in the "library" mode for this to work?

Also, Iv'e seen it asked before, and the given answer was "read the FAQ". Well, Iv'e read the FAQ and I didnt help. Where the heck do you get the skins??
Reply
#2
You need to download skins from the skins forum. Each skin usually has its own thread and has links to the download.
Reply
#3
I can't help you with the OSX specifics, but I can help you a little bit.

Yes you must be in Library mode if you want to take advantage of TV/Movie scraping. All that information is stored in the database once its scraped.

On an Xbox, TV shows are set up in a directory structure like this:
Code:
TV Shows
   Show Name 1
      Season 1
         Episodes
      Season 2
         Episodes
   Show Name 2
      Season 1
         Episodes
etc, etc.

Movies are much simpler, just give the filename a good name. In some cases you will have to override the choices made, and you can do this after its been scraped and added to the DB. just go to Movie/Show information, choose Refresh, then either choose the right choice form the selector, or go to MANUAL and type in the correct choice.

As for where to GET skins, well most of us release them in the Skin Development forum.
Reply
#4
Also, keep in mind that "Season" folders (erroneously, to my eyes) don't really exist for the scraper's purpose as folders but as a way to figure out the episode itself.

That is, you can put a thumb to the tv show or a thumb to the season but the scraper won't understand the tv show contains "seasons". This whole arrangement, to me, could be improved. But the amount of changes required to create a "season" entity in file mode (it exists, virtually, in "Library mode") is unmanageable.

Anyway, to answer your question: What you're being redirected to is the XBMC wiki pages, the manuals. No the FAQ for the MacOS version but the document for the whole of XBMC.

You can ask for things here and more often than not you'll get some sort of response but it is expected that the user has actually tried to look for the documentation of XBMC.

A whole different issue is that the XBMC team is still learning what it means to deal with non-technically-savvy end-users, which is obvious in some of the responses that can be seen around here sometimes (less now than before, so I guess the "End User" part of the forum topic has finally permeated).

Now, if I can see your questions correctly:

1.-Scrapers and lookups:
You should separate the folders you have for Movies than those you have for TV Shows. You should also create folders for movies when more than one file is involved (for example, one AVI and one SRT file, or a CD1 and a CD2).

For TV Shows XBMC currently expects season and episode to be in the name in a familiar format (S01E12, 1x12, etc) and containing folders to have the name of the show.

Now. When you have your whole thing ordered you can go to your "TV Shows" (or "TV Shows - Fiction" or "TV Shows - English", whatever) and press "C" (contextual menu, also right button on mouse) and select "Set Content". Here you'll tell it the folder contains items of type "TV" and select one of the scrapers (I use TheTVDB) and there might even be scraper options. This will in turn start a session of scraping that depending on the size of your library (in number of items) and settings (extra data for shows and cast, download of thumbnails, etc.) might take some time.

For Folders that contain movies it's pretty much the same but the scraper would be "IMDB" (for me, at least).

When the scraper has finished you should have a folder full of items with thumbnails (poster thumbnails for movies, wide banners for tv show folders) and if you select any movie or tv show and press "i" (or select "Show Information" from the "C"ontextual Menu) you would see additional information about the item (like the description, cast, etc.).

This is my current directory structure, with comments with //:

-Movies ES // Movies in spanish language, dubbed or native - No automatic thumb
-- Spanish Movie AVI 1 // Spanish movie in Spanish
-- Movie in spanish AVI 2 // Movie dubbed into Spanish
-- MKV with Spanish Track 3 // MKV with a Spanish-Language track, no subs

-Movies SUB // Subtitled Movies - No automatic thumb
-- Subtitled Movie Folder 1 // Folder with .AVI and .SRT files.
-- Subtitled Movie MKV // MKV with Subtitles track
-- Subtitles Movie AVI // AVI with Subtitles track
-- ISO File // ISO of subtitled movie, DVD or VCD
-- DVD Movie Folder // TS_Folder from DVD with VOB, IFO, etc.

-- Movies UNSUB // Movies without subtitles or dub
-- Movie AVI // Single-File Movie
-- Movie Folder // Mutliple-file Movie

-- TV Shows // Currently watching TV Shows
-- TV Show 1 // TV Show Folder ("Smallville", "Psych", "BattleStar Galactica", etc.)
-- TV Show 1x // Season 1 for TV Show
TV Show - Episode Title - 1x01.avi // Single Episode AVI with name
TV Show - Episode Title - 1x01.srt // Subtitle for episode above
-- TV Show 2x // Season 2 for TV Show
...

-- OLDTV // TV Folder with Old TV Shows ("Automan", "Max Headroom", etc.)
...

When the script finishes scraping I end up with no thumbnails in the main folders (OLDTV, UNSUB, etc.), thumbnail in every level below that (single movie folders, single show folders) and possibly thumbnails in the individual tv episodes.

Then, if you're so inclined, you can go into specific items and press "i" to see the information (or "refresh" it if it's wrong, to select from a list the correct option) and also change the thumbnail to another one (it'll download the different available thumbs so you can pick the one you prefer).

When this is all finished you might end up with some items without thumbnail for whatever reason. This is where you can put these thumbnails by hand using jpg files named as the items and put in the same paths. These are picked automatically.


In the end this structure works for me. Feel free to ask for more info. In a civil manner, if at all possible.

2.-There's not a single skin repository nor is there supposed to be. You can download individual skins from their developers, which are not part of the XBMC team nor are they expected to be. Popular skins are xTV, MC360 and Aeon. These all have their pros and cons but the biggest con they all have is that they're never as up-to-date as the official skin: Project Mayhem III (PM3, for short).

This is this way --and you need to keep this always present in your head before you rant about the program, team or documentation--, because XBMC is still a work in progress and hasn't been finished. It costs nothing and is not supposed to be used heavily by non-technical users so the documentation still hasn't been made for this specific public. When its features are frozen and an official release is made I'm sure this information and documentation will appear, but not before then.

You can, nonetheless, help by producing documentation for end-users which, as you might have noticed, is one of the biggest holes in the project.
Reply
#5
I wouldn't mind being able to edit my own posts. I could've used a couple of tags to help with my wall of text there.
Reply
#6
Incidentally, here are some very old screenshots which may help you understand what I meant. This is not the current distribution but the concept itself is clear.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eduo/sets/7...196978310/
Reply
#7
eduo Wrote:I wouldn't mind being able to edit my own posts. I could've used a couple of tags to help with my wall of text there.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=22730
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
Reply
#8
Just to quickly add to this, here are some examples of how I named my files to get tvdb.com to correctly scrape them (I have one folder for each show):

The Office
- The Office (US)_101.avi
- The Office (US)_102.avi
- The Office (US)_201.avi
- The Office (US)_202.avi

Boston Legal
- Boston Legal_101.avi
- Boston Legal_102.avi
- Boston Legal_201.avi

Movies
- The Crow (1994)
Reply
#9
@eduo

I don't think I can thank you enough! Did you actually type all of that out? Wow, you should have that stickied, very informative. Anyway, no matter what settings I use for the "set content" option, I still have to go in to each movie file and tv show folder and use the "set movie/tvshow information" manually for it to show up in the library with a thumb. Not sure why, but Im just happy I can use the library mode now.
Reply
#10
Gamester17 Wrote:http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=22730

It's OK. I wasn't complaining that I don't have it. I was complaining of my own inability to format properly.

I know why it's not done and don't think it's a bad idea. I just sometimes get hit by it and make a post to make it clear I know about the problem, so others don't Smile
Reply
#11
rickeo Wrote:@eduo

I don't think I can thank you enough! Did you actually type all of that out? Wow, you should have that stickied, very informative. Anyway, no matter what settings I use for the "set content" option, I still have to go in to each movie file and tv show folder and use the "set movie/tvshow information" manually for it to show up in the library with a thumb. Not sure why, but Im just happy I can use the library mode now.

I did type it all there, but I had just fought in the office and needed release anyway Smile

I personally don't use the "Library Mode". It's completely incompatible to the way I use XBMC (I appreciate why others might have a use for it, it's actually useful for music and it's exactly like iTunes, which I love. It just doesn't fit for videos for me).

It took me a lot of trial an error to finally realize "Seasons" don't actually serve a purpose in XBMC (something I hate but can't change on my own).

I'm glad it was useful. Do let me know if you need more help.
Reply
#12
phunkysai Wrote:Just to quickly add to this, here are some examples of how I named my files to get tvdb.com to correctly scrape them (I have one folder for each show):

The Office
- The Office (US)_101.avi
- The Office (US)_102.avi
- The Office (US)_201.avi
- The Office (US)_202.avi

Boston Legal
- Boston Legal_101.avi
- Boston Legal_102.avi
- Boston Legal_201.avi

Movies
- The Crow (1994)

Phunkysai: I actually did changes to the file AdvancedSettings.xml (created it in the first place in UserData, actually) for it to support my format.

This are the contents (as documented in the wiki):

Code:
<tvshowmatching>
  <regexp>\[[Ss]([0-9]+)\]_\[[Ee]([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>                %  foo_[s01]_[e01]
  <regexp>[\._ \-]([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>                      % foo.1x09*
  <regexp>[\._ \-][Ss]([0-9]+)[\.\-]?[Ee]([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>        % foo.s01.e01, foo.s01_e01
  <regexp>[\._ \-]([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9])[\._ \-][^\\/]*</regexp>           % foo.103*
  <regexp>([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>                              % foo 1x09 - bar
  <twopart>
      <regexp>\[[Ss]([0-9]+)\]_\[[Ee][0-9][0-9]\-([0-9]+)\][^\\/]*</regexp>           % foo_[s01]_[e01-02]
      <regexp>[\._ \-][Ss]([0-9]+)[^0-9]*[Ee][0-9][0-9]\-([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>     % foo.s01.e01-02
      <regexp>[\._ \-][0-9]+x[0-9]+[\._ \-]*([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>         % foo.1x09 1x10
      <regexp>([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>                              % foo 1x09-10 - bar
  </twopart>
</tvshowmatching>

The files are perfectly picked and recognized. It's just "Season" folders that are ignored (as it's supposed to do).

I don't really like having all episodes and seasons together. I also use a perl script from Rob Meerman that renames all the files from their orginally crappy names to the actual names.

Then I use a program I created that duplicates the functionality of SubDownloader from Opensubtitles.org to download the subtitles on those.

In the end I have a pretty streamlined process which expects the season folders to exist. I expected them to exist too so the process is based on that.
Reply
#13
One extra thing to note about obtaining skins:

Many, but certainly not all of them, are obtainable from the official skinning svn:

https://xboxmediacenter.svn.sourceforge....ediacenter

Note that some of them in the official skinning svn have not been updated in a while so may not work correctly.

Aeon is available at http://www.aeonismine.com

And the others that are about are available from their authors. We try and encourage skinners to post their skins to the official SVN if and when they are ready to do so.

As with many opensource projects, and is hinted above, one thing that has always been lacking with XBMC is quality up to date documentation for those that are completely new to the project. Unfortunately, those that are oldhats aren't too good at writing docs suitable for newer folk, as they inevitably skip things that are obvious to them yet are not obvious to newcomers. Also, it's for some reason seen as an unglamorous task.

It is my personal hope that with the injection of OSX folks coming on board that a few may have the inclination to help out with the documentation side of things Smile

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


Image
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
Couple questions.0