[jmarshall]

Hi All,

I'm planning to look at enhancing and cleaning up the Watched / Unwatched status stuff in the video library.

The idea is basically to remove the "Watched / Unwatched / Show All" button completely, and simply show watched and unwatched via the watched overlay (or via UI conditional).

The watched/unwatched status is only useful (IMO) at the Titles and Episodes levels primarily, so having code in place to try and filter the higher level views (actors/genres etc.) complicates the code and doesn't really make all that much sense.

In the case of Movies and Music videos, you'd only get watched/unwatched status at the title level, and the title level would still display every movie or music video, but ofcourse you'll be able to see which ones you've watched as it'll be indicated via the watched/unwatched condition (overlay/text/however the skinner wishes to demonstrate it)

TV shows is a little more complicated as having the number of episodes that you still have to watch is useful to know at the show and season level (this is currently not available). So the proposal is to allow these levels to show both the episode count and the unwatched episode count.

In addition, it is proposed that instead of just storing a "true/false" field, we instead store a "lastplayed" field, and in addition perhaps a "playcount" as well. This way smartplaylists (suitably extended) could be used to grab all
unwatched episodes or movies, or all movies you haven't watched for 2 years and so on.

This is unlikely to be fully implemented for a while yet, so here is your opportunity to comment on the pros and cons of both the current system, and the proposed improvements. Any and all comments will be taken on board.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[agathorn]

I know you and I talked about this briefly last night, though we hadn't talked about removing the button and filter :p

I do agree though. I think in the end what matters most is the ability to be able to tell, easily, what is what.

The ability for that to link into Smart Playlists makes it even better and I definitely think this change would be for the good overall.

[skunkm0nkee]

I have to say I'm a fan of the watched/unwatched filter and make use of it all the time. I tend to keep stuff in the library after I've watched it but rely on it being hidden by default by having the filter only show unwatched stuff.

I know that it would be ideal to have the watched/unwatched filter available throughout (to hide TV Shows where there are no unwatched episodes for example) but if it's a choice between having no filtering or having filtering at the lowest level only (the current situation) then I'm happy with the current filtering situation. It certainly cuts down the amount of stuff I'd have to wade through looking for an unwatched overlay.

Off the top of my head I think the watched/unwatched flag is a field on the episode table (I'm thinking about this from the perspective of tv shows) in the video database, is this right? When navigating the library, the data that is displayed in the containers is retrieved via sql and at the moment because the watched/unwatched only comes in at the episodes level then it is ignored at the other levels? If this is the case then would it be possible to change the sql that retrieves the tv shows and the seasons so that it references the episode table as well? (If this is possible but you have problems with the sql then I'd be happy to write the sql code)

[agathorn]

I have to say I'm a fan of the watched/unwatched filter and make use of it all the time. I tend to keep stuff in the library after I've watched it but rely on it being hidden by default by having the filter only show unwatched stuff.

I know that it would be ideal to have the watched/unwatched filter available throughout (to hide TV Shows where there are no unwatched episodes for example) but if it's a choice between having no filtering or having filtering at the lowest level only (the current situation) then I'm happy with the current filtering situation. It certainly cuts down the amount of stuff I'd have to wade through looking for an unwatched overlay.

Off the top of my head I think the watched/unwatched flag is a field on the episode table (I'm thinking about this from the perspective of tv shows) in the video database, is this right? When navigating the library, the data that is displayed in the containers is retrieved via sql and at the moment because the watched/unwatched only comes in at the episodes level then it is ignored at the other levels? If this is the case then would it be possible to change the sql that retrieves the tv shows and the seasons so that it references the episode table as well? (If this is possible but you have problems with the sql then I'd be happy to write the sql code)

The change you propose is a possibility and we did discussed it.

With that said however, this latest proposal I think is more robust. First off bear in mind that with the status of an item available to the skin, it would be possible for the skin itself to show or not show the episodes. In a sense you would have the same functionality if you so desired it, with a lot more benefit.

This is what i'm suggesting:

• An InfoBool, perhaps ListItem.Watched() which returns whether or not the item is watched/unwatched OR if a parent item it would return based on its contents. This could be used as a visibility flag by the skin and be much more flexbile than the current ListItem.Overlay Infolabel.
  
• An Infolabel that returns the number of unwtached items under a parent
  
• An Infolabel that returns the number of watched items under a parent

[skunkm0nkee]

Cool, if the functionality will still be there but transferred to the skin level then that sounds good to me

[Jeroen]

I agree too. Possibilities are gained and none are lost if I understand correctly.
So, would the last played and playcount be available in the music library as well? These would be a very welcome addition especially for my music.

Also on a related note, I think it would be a nice addition to have an "unwatched episodes" entry in the library, something like the "recently added episodes" entry we already have now.

[sho]

I agree this needs an overhaul.
I currently only use the checkmark* to indicate what has been watched and could not really care about the toggle options.
One of the reasons being that different members of the family have watched different files and not all remember to toggle the status.

*That is, before I lost my Library .... sniff .

Oh and playcount for music would be very nice

[timdog82001]

So, would the last played and playcount be available in the music library as well? These would be a very welcome addition especially for my music.

That would be awesome if so. I personally think it would be most beneficial for those with large TV collections, especially if you could reference them on a per show basis. I also had an idea a while back about having a sort of "calendar" section of all your most commonly watched shows, and clicking on any particular show would automatically launch either the most recent partially viewed episode, or if it was finished, then the next episode in the series. It would be great if this were able to help out in this regard, though I think it would still need other cbmc changes which probably won't come for some time. I'm probably dreaming anyway.

Anyway, to be honest, I may be one of the few, but I never really use the watched/unwatched filter so it makes no real difference to me in the end, but the proposed idea sounds good to me.

[jmarshall]

Just to clear some things up:

1. Playcount and lastplayed are ofcourse already available to music (probably not to the skin, but you can ofcourse use smartplaylists etc. with them).

2. The skin will NOT have control over what is visible and what isn't in the library views. ListItem.Watched (or whatever it is) can be used to change the state (colour/text/imagery etc), but cannot be used to hide the item completely, as all lists will be present in their entirety.

3. With that said, as smartplaylists can use it, then you can easily list episodes and movies that you haven't watched by setting up a smartplaylist to do it. Ideally the smartplaylist could return either at the show level or the episode level (season level IMO makes little sense).

4. The main reason I dislike the watched/unwatched stuff is the following user comment:

"I just played a movie in XBMC and then it deleted it!!!!"

(User had "show only unwatched" on but didn't know about it - this is quite hard to offer support on.)

Cheers,
Jonathan

[bripeace]

Just to clear some things up:

1. Playcount and lastplayed are ofcourse already available to music (probably not to the skin, but you can ofcourse use smartplaylists etc. with them).

2. The skin will NOT have control over what is visible and what isn't in the library views. ListItem.Watched (or whatever it is) can be used to change the state (colour/text/imagery etc), but cannot be used to hide the item completely, as all lists will be present in their entirety.

3. With that said, as smartplaylists can use it, then you can easily list episodes and movies that you haven't watched by setting up a smartplaylist to do it. Ideally the smartplaylist could return either at the show level or the episode level (season level IMO makes little sense).

4. The main reason I dislike the watched/unwatched stuff is the following user comment:

"I just played a movie in XBMC and then it deleted it!!!!"

(User had "show only unwatched" on but didn't know about it - this is quite hard to offer support on.)

Cheers,
Jonathan

Are you saying that all hidden stuff would no longer be hidden. And in addition to that we would have to specifically create playlists (and i sasume many of them if we don't want one global list) just to see whats Unwatched?

I personally always have unwatched on as it saves the trouble of going through episode by episode looking for where the checkmarks stop just to see what episode I'm on.

[jmarshall]

Correct, the hidden/unhidden will no longer be available. Simple reason is that this is a bad UI design, the result of which causes nasty stuff to be done code-wise.

Ofcourse, the functionality of that will be available with a single smartplaylist for TVshows and a single smartplaylist for movies. (eg "Titles, hide all unwatched" will be doable) so you won't be missing out on that particular feature.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[bripeace]

Correct, the hidden/unhidden will no longer be available. Simple reason is that this is a bad UI design, the result of which causes nasty stuff to be done code-wise.

Ofcourse, the functionality of that will be available with a single smartplaylist for TVshows and a single smartplaylist for movies. (eg "Titles, hide all unwatched" will be doable) so you won't be missing out on that particular feature.

Cheers,
Jonathan

So a single 'smartplaylist' which I dont' even know what that is will allow me to say browse to a show and hide all watched shows - displaying all the unwatched ones.

What i definitely do not want is just a global list of all unwatched shows or movies - considering I may have entires shows and season of unwatched junk and don't really need to scroll through all that just to get to the next episode of Deadwood I haven't seen for instance.

[jmarshall]

That's what I said, yes. A single smartplaylist could be used to return exactly what the "Titles" node of the tvshow library does as the moment, with the added bonus that it'll only return shows for which you have unwatched episodes.

Useful smartplaylists (such as this one) will be published, or possibly even included by default. They're very easy to setup, however - check out the music library for instance.

You can have a global list as well if you like, but as you say, it'd be fairly useless in most circumstances.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[bripeace]

That's what I said, yes. A single smartplaylist could be used to return exactly what the "Titles" node of the tvshow library does as the moment, with the added bonus that it'll only return shows for which you have unwatched episodes.

Useful smartplaylists (such as this one) will be published, or possibly even included by default. They're very easy to setup, however - check out the music library for instance.

You can have a global list as well if you like, but as you say, it'd be fairly useless in most circumstances.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Sounds awesome, sorry about my confusion!

[SandmanCL]

Reading through this thread has rougly covered some of the thoughts I had for a feature request. Since my idea isn't all that original I'll piggyback on the ideas here.

If xbmc provided a library toggle value for hiding watched items, the skinner could implement the feature with a button or menu through the UI and/or mapped to a key. This would allow the user to browse through TV shows and quickly hide or show any watched show/season/episode.