Use of FanArt (and NFO files) in file-mode?

rwparris2 Wrote:The real problem with my kid's collection is that the series are often not named well when I get them from torrents, and I'm not going to go through and rename them when I don't especially want them in my main library anyways.

I got around this by just having two profiles. One for me which uses the Library mode for all my movies. The other profile for the kids which uses Files mode and goes straight to their video folder. They could care less about fanart....

Jezz_X Wrote:Ok so I have to ask if you want fanart and media info in file mode why not just use library mode ? because if your going to go through all the effort of making them for every single TV show and movie you have Why not just use library ?

Just a quick note. I have used Media Companion from my PC to download a complete .nfo file as well as all available fanart backdrops for all my movies collection. It also allowed me to correct some of the mismatched imdb info very easily. If there were a way for skin to support this info in File Mode (as I requested), I bet a lots of people would use it.

Also, doing it from the xbox takes forever ! With the PC version, I was able to get all 500+ done in a few hours, unattended. In addition, downloading the fanart is manual.

With my MyVideo.xml modif, the fanart image loads instantly so I am sure loading a little 4k nfo file won't take more. I am ready to bet that it also takes much less memory than the library mode.

joebrady Wrote:I got around this by just having two profiles. One for me which uses the Library mode for all my movies. The other profile for the kids which uses Files mode and goes straight to their video folder. They could care less about fanart....

The most important point against using the library mode is that it does not constitute a good navigation scheme among my 500+ movies, mostly because the imdb genre is too redundant to get a clean organization of the movies like the folder one (because of the overlap of many genres for a single movie). So using profile is just a work around for kids to navigate, but doesn't solve my issue (I am still a big user of my xbox)

I (and my kids too) really love that new fanart backdrop in FILE mode (see screenshot below). Having the movie info along would be icing on the cake.

I am sure it would definitly open up a new round of possibility for skin makers to get access to nfo movie info.

NickyZero Wrote:One use for NFO's outside a library (or at least a use im hoping to place into my currently developing skin) is for things like programs, maybe dependant on how you get on with this, I could establish FanArt into programs too

Now I understand the reply's after my post... By "Programs" I should have used the word "Applications"

Sorry people, didn't realize until just now

Kris_Toff Wrote:The most important point against using the library mode is that it does not constitute a good navigation scheme among my 500+ movies, mostly because the imdb genre is too redundant to get a clean organization of the movies like the folder one (because of the overlap of many genres for a single movie). So using profile is just a work around for kids to navigate, but doesn't solve my issue (I am still a big user of my xbox)

I (and my kids too) really love that new fanart backdrop in FILE mode (see screenshot below). Having the movie info along would be icing on the cake.

Just want to say, yes, the profile thing is a work around, and I just recently (last few months) have started doing this. Also, just recently, I've finally started using the Library mode (for the fanart) as opposed to the Files mode, which I have always prefered. So I am very much in support of this effort.

boy, sure wish I could edit that quote.....

I would just like to point out here you know that big delay you get when entering a really large directory full of music that hasn't been scanned to the library.
Well thats the extra time it takes to read all the id3 tags from the music files before it can display them. if you turn off id3 reading its pretty much instant.

the same thing will happen if you have to read a bunch of NFO files for every movie in the list before you can see it. You say your fanart shows instantly (which I doubt anyway on an xbox) yes because it only loads 1 at a time. If you want to show the meta data int he list you would need to load it for every single file in the directory every time you enter it.

A better idea instead of letting it use the NFO files all the time is to actually use the library database file and fetch the info out of it (after you have scanned them in). But you say "getting info from IMDB takes ages" well since you allready have made all your NFO files anyway it will be no different on first scan than entering a dir full of NFO's but will be 100 times quicker on every other time you access it

I appreciate everyone wanting me to use the library mode and I think I explained why I don't want to.

The alternative I could consider is going into each of the nfo file and reset the genre to my taste.

Now in terms of performance, I can garantee you that I don't have 500+ movies in one folder, the biggest one is probably 40 so I wouldn't worry about this. If it can read 20 songs ID tags (btw from binary files, not well structured xml files) then it should read instantly 50 nfo files.
Even if it takes a few seconds per folder, the benefits of having this option as a nice skin would be tremendous...

BTW, if I use library mode and open the Action genre, it takes more than 10s and then I have to scroll through about 100 movies. In my Action folder, I have only 38 (other could be considered action are in adventure, war, sci-fi, etc...)

I would really love to be able to contribute to the programming xbmc team but it would take me way to long to get in it compared to one of you experts for which it would take probably 30mn...

If it can be a toggle video option in Settings/Video/Files/ then it could be up to the user to choose.

Pleeeaaaaaaaaaassssseeeee?

The way I see the future is this:

1. One view for all videos/movies/files.

2. Options to view by filesystem or by genre/category/whatever.

3. All db info is fetched in each case.

Exactly how this is presented to the user in terms of heirachy I'm not sure. Ideally it'd be customisable, but this might be tricky to do well from a 10 foot UI. I suspect an XML file or similar would be the first point of call as far as customising the heirachy that is shown.

EDIT: And obviously nothing is going to happen until after Atlantis (read: November may be the point where something is started, and I expect it will take quite some time to get right.)

Cheers,
Jonathan

I didn't say (this time) to use library mode I simply said things would be a lot faster using the DB from library mode to get the tags.

As for the other of only having 50 movies in a dir sure that may be fine for you but we have to take into account everybody when adding these sort of things I personally have over 100 movies in a single dir and I'm sure many others would have over 500 or more. And I'm sure they would bitch at us to no end that their XBMC just got twice as slow at reading directories.

P.S telling the programmers its easy and will only take a few seconds hurts your position not helps it. Just check out the <rant> bit in this post from jmarshall http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=174...stcount=11

I would say it only needs to load it if listitem.rating etc was called, so it would freeze a little on lookup like fanart does (but if set to only appear with 2 secs of no keypress like aeon) would be seemless