Video library redesign idea - How can we improve Smart Playlists, aka Filtered Lists?

Deano316 Wrote:Can confirm its working for me, running Eden on Vista.

Even better is using the remote. I'm using a Logitech harmony 550 remote that sends mce button presses. Each of the numbers 2-9 have letters assigned like a phone keypad. Pressing the number 2 twice will take you to movies starting with the letter B. I use this all the time.

Deano316 Wrote:I think like a few others here, the change should be made to the way media is scanned in. By this I mean not just scanned into tv shows or movies but in a user defined category. From there if there is no relevant scraper available, the .nfos could be edited by the user. I think this would allow greater flexibility and less need for smart playlists to keep everything seperate IMO.

I wholeheartedly support this.
I wrote some days ago on the forum (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=119458) that I'd like to find a way to keep documentaries, stand-up comedies, and so on separated from the movies or tvshows items. I created on Home screen a shortcut to a playlist with Documentaries based on the folder, and that's fine, but the docs end up anyway also under Movies. Apparently there's no solution to this.

Deano316's proposal of user defined categories would definitely solve my issue and guarantee long-term flexibility. I could have a certain folder scanned as "stand-up comedy" but anyway assign freely the scraper I see more fit for the job (e.g. imdb, tvdb). I think it would be a very good thing to go beyond the three basic categories of movies, tvshows and music videos to create something that cater to niche audiences. One could define Operas, Theatre, Porn, whatever category, and thus keeping all video files nicely separated and well organized.

Thanks, the shift + letter works on the keyboard. My remote does not work with the number keypad (harmony), maybe I have to check the programming of it. I also tried the original iMon remote from the SilverStone case - same result, numbers have no function in xbmc.

Hey Guys, I was actually gonna post this in its own thread but this seems like the right place

Anyways I came up with an idea, For instance when you go to a movie rental shop (Civic, Blockbuster etc.) how are the movies arranged?? - Genre and on different walls.

Currently in XBMC you selecting a genre from a long list and select one that appeals to you. I use it if i'm in the mood for a type of genre at the time but I think that it can be better implemented as a library based layout.

Now this is concept and I haven't gone into great details (i.e. the covers don't actually match the genre ) but it gives you an good idea of what i'm picturing. Keep in mind that each skin would look vary in style and how it looks.

I think you might want to split the interface into two categories: Browse and Search.

Browse works through established lists like genre, title and year. Search is user-defined through items like actor, country and keyword. I know you could put the search categories into the Browse but as some point you need to draw the line otherwise everything becomes either a long drawn out browse (ie click lists -> genre -> year -> country -> actor) or needlessly tagged (user spends time thinking up every way to tag a new movie/TV show).

When I create nested lists I always refer back to my documentation days where the Index stopped at three levels (heading and only two locators), and from what I'm experiencing in Eden with a bunch of add-ons is clicking Video -> Addon lists -> Addon -> Addon sublists -> Item. Yes, you can skip Video and go straight to addon but it is still too long. I think XBMC should never be longer than four clicks for anything. It takes me four key presses to get a TV channel on the TV. 1-7-0-2 changes the TV channel to my local NBC affiliate's second HD station. Again, if we want to bring home theatre closer to TV than computer use, then we have to think in fewer steps than more.

I need to play with the engines of XBMC more than what I do now which is just integration testing. I'd like to see if it would be possible to have a UI that splits browsing and searching into two sections. The top level, let's choose Browse, would have word selections Genre, Year, Title. Selecting one of those brings either another row of selections (the first two would bring up types of genres or decades) or the full list (Titles) -- which can be scrolled through quicker by selecting shows by alphabet (which is either displayed at the top of the list or by assumed key press on the remote control).

Key presses (so far): 1) Video (2) Genre/Year (3) Genre type/Decade (4) Item selected.

The second half of the UI is Search. This part searches the metadata associated with the searchable items. What would make this stronger would be to add Boolean (and, or, not). Limit the searchable parameters to just three or four.

Key presses are more since you'd be typing in the search parameters but at least you're not slogging through sublists. Select: (1)Video, enter search term one, select boolean 'or' or 'not' if using another search term, like actor's name [but] not another actors name. This would give me say all George Clooney films but not the ones that have Mark Wahlberg in them, too. This should give me a list of films of George Clooney excluding Three Kings. (I just did a rough search of IMDB, there may be more.) The interface assumes that additional search terms that are not using 'or' or 'not' must be an 'and.' It means that search results must have everything you are searching for.

I just realized this means that the first layer or addons wouldn't be the developers' addon title, it would just be their addons. Also, this browse and search for something specific as a title of a movie/show does not now include live streaming but I think it would be great to have now and important to have after Eden.

Smartplaylists are similar to search, but are basically saved-searches. The struggle here UI-wise is defining a useful way to incorporate multiple conditions with split boolean operators (i.e. AND and OR in the same search) beyond things like Actor IN (foo,bar) AND Genre IN (foo,bar), and even then it's not necessarily trivial to do.

It all comes down to tagging (meta data) doesn't it? I mean, I could create a UI that allows you to pick a stored file (video or music file or even a playlist) and input the tags classifying the item selected. The UI would then build an XML file that is compatible with XBMC. But it doesn't spring forth already made unless vendors or 3rd party developers created them. Because if there is no meta data, it basically becomes a straightforward list or word search of the file name or derived from storing the files in categorized folders on the hard drive.

I know working on XBMC is great because almost anything is possible; you can develop so much in every area of the system. However, in the future would it help or hinder development to establish some rules about meta data?

I would like to be able to have both movies and tv shows in the same playlist.

Numerous series contain both (Star Trek is probably the most most popular that comes to my mind) and Anime series often releases both (or the scrapers 'mislabel' it).

(2012-03-13 16:05)TheMonkeyKing Wrote:  It all comes down to tagging (meta data) doesn't it? I mean, I could create a UI that allows you to pick a stored file (video or music file or even a playlist) and input the tags classifying the item selected. The UI would then build an XML file that is compatible with XBMC. But it doesn't spring forth already made unless vendors or 3rd party developers created them. Because if there is no meta data, it basically becomes a straightforward list or word search of the file name or derived from storing the files in categorized folders on the hard drive.

I know working on XBMC is great because almost anything is possible; you can develop so much in every area of the system. However, in the future would it help or hinder development to establish some rules about meta data?

I would like to be able to add/utilize search tags in the library (like certain websites use). Including custom search tags to TV SHOWS at the EPISODE LEVEL would help for sorting documentary content.

You have National Geographic, Natural World, Nature, etc. Lets say you wanted to watch something about 'Lions.' You would have to sort through all of the documentary channels individually to find the desired subject matter.
This would of course require me to could edit my .nfo files to add:
<tag>Animals&Wildlife</tag>
<tag>Lions</tag>
(not all episode titles neccesarily contain the tag word ('lions' in this eg.) desired.
Then I could create smart playlists based on the search tags. If there is a way to do this with Smart Playlists that I am not seeing please let me know.

recently got introduced to Smart Playlists and they are awesome, But when leveraged with Voice Control they really become dynamic and really helpful. I think being able to direct find specific things through filtered lists is huge.
Years, studio, genres, actors and combinations thereof is nice.

I know XBMC has never been dev'd with Home Videos in mind, but I loaded mine and every family vacation my family enjoys reviewing vids and the kids love it. I had to manually create NFOs and used mine as TV Shows, but being able to search (videos w/ this nephew and that grandparent or this vacation or 'birthdays' as genres is great)
(If i could get the genres all cleaned up...