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Video library redesign idea - How can we improve Smart Playlists, aka Filtered Lists?
Plex approach looks great!
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I have been fooling around with the smart playlist feature for a while now and I have come up with a request that I hope could be implemented in the way a smart playlist functions.
As they are now, they operate according to this rule, as written in the Wiki: When playlists are combined, the <limit> and <order> tags of the included playlists are ignored; only the <order> and <limit> of the final playlist are used.
I would like to see this behaviour go away. Why can't the limit and order tags be used on a playlist when included in another playlist? It would give a lot more control over the way we could implement a playlist.
Is this something that could eventually be implemented in the smart playlist features? If I could code, I would take a look at it, but I don't even know where to look to try to change this behaviour.
Thanks guys!
Mark
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Also, another very geeky, unfriendly thing is that when you go to videos then you need to select from movies,playlist, actors and who knows what. I would like user to go to videos and select library he wants to browse (ie. if i have set up playlist, then go to playlists).
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Ok, one suggestion / feature request / idea :-)

Can we pack some more prebuilt smartplaylists in Video section, to accompany Recently Added?

1. Recently Played
2. In Progress (Didn't finish watching)
3. Top 10 aka Most Played
4. All HD (720p and better)
5. Top Rated

Pretty much similar to Music section. I hope it's not hard to implement as I know there's lots of it going on ATM.
My skins:

Amber
Quartz

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pecinko Wrote:Ok, one suggestion / feature request / idea :-)

Can we pack some more prebuilt smartplaylists in Video section, to accompany Recently Added?

1. Recently Played
2. In Progress (Didn't finish watching)
3. Top 10 aka Most Played
4. All HD (720p and better)
5. Top Rated

Pretty much similar to Music section. I hope it's not hard to implement as I know there's lots of it going on ATM.

you should be able to make all these with the smart playlist editor already - maybe someone can share their smart playlist files to make this a little easier?
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robweber Wrote:you should be able to make all these with the smart playlist editor already - maybe someone can share their smart playlist files to make this a little easier?

I know. It's not about I'm unable to do it, I just thought that it would be useful thing for all to have so:

- New users have something to start with
- Library has some sort of pre made filtering (my examples are very common)
- I don't have to make common playlists by hand an worry about them

It looks like somebody thought in similar way and made them for Music section.
My skins:

Amber
Quartz

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Is there a more formalised plan for the changes to the library? I've only quickly skimmed this thread and it seems to have been going on for a long time.

Once i've got more free time when i graduate I'll probably try and implement something or at least make some mock ups of some people's ideas. but I'd hate to start that and end up duplicating the effort.
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The biggest thing I would love to see added to smart playlists is the ability to filter by Date Added so I can recreate the built-in Recently Added Movies / Episodes. We would also need Sort by: Date Added too. That's really the only thing IMO that would make the smart playlists perfect.
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Hi if the video library was to be redesigned, a great feature would be the ability to separate physical folders.
Talking about movies only for now - I have 2 physical folders - "Movies", "Kids".
After a bit of figuring out, I realised I add both folders individually as sources, then create a smart playlist for each, and link each smartplaylist to the home menu.

Ideally - we could just add each folder as a source, and then each of those folders would appear on the home menu. (Media Browser does this quite well - I've moved over from media browser and the folders were the most confusing thing to adjust to).

Previously people have said to just not use the library mode - but that's BS - of course I want library mode.

As said - I've figured it out with smartplaylists, but I think it could be redesigned for new users.
Image
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ezyb123 Wrote:Ideally - we could just add each folder as a source, and then each of those folders would appear on the home menu. (Media Browser does this quite well - I've moved over from media browser and the folders were the most confusing thing to adjust to).
No, no, no. MediaBrowser show on home screen "media collections", not physical folders. Each Media Browser media collection can span across MULTIPLE selected folder locations.
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I would like to see the ability to set unique Menu Items (Anime, Anime-Movies, etc)
A Search function (similar to plex)
Recently Aired Section
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Videos/Library separation has to die. We need a very generic base which can accommodate different views on top of it.

- add multiple sources (from physical drives, http streams, network etc)
- support for tags, like Movies, Tv, Docs. Thus the same content can be part of my movie library, as well as a specialized kids library. Tags can be nested, and are user definable as well as automatically assigned by Xbmc based on rules
- sources (and content within sources) have tags assigned to them
- Metadata scanning is done once. It is linked to content using a mapping scheme, so that the same metadata (e.g. for a movie) can easily be shared, and metadata need not be deleted if content is not present
- All views are simply based on tags

All of this (except for the Views) can be done offline/online and centralized (e.g. Plex media server, but it could be an Xbmc instance). The goal would be to let the user define views (and download standard View types like an addon - e.g. there could be a View which would be Movie box sets, or popular documentaries). When the View is instantiated, any content that is not found would not show up. And the whole system needs to be very granular as well, so an existing Xbmc client simply gets updated as new content gets added to a remote server, without the need to refresh/restart the client.

We don't even need a dedicated server as long as Xbmc can operate in p2p mode. e.g. lets say I have Xbmc running on 3 different pc's. They all have different movies/tv etc on their local drives. The 3 clients can all talk to each other (using a well known Xbmc protocol and discovery mechanism, so the user has to setup nothing) and exchange metadata. Any content which is not local will be linked to the network url. The end result is all 3 Xbmc clients have all the content showing up, whether its on their pc or not. And the whole thing is self-configuring and self-healing. So if one machine shuts down, its content would seamlessly appear as offline.
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MrCrispy Wrote:Videos/Library separation has to die. We need a very generic base which can accommodate different views on top of it.

I disagree. We need to separate "how we catalog it" from "how we view it." Content is generally fairly easily distinguishable by the way it is cataloged. The following content easily translates into a TV scraper:
  • Standard TV Shows
  • Annual Awards Shows
  • Miniseries
  • Collections of Serials (for instance the old Superman serials shown in theaters)

Because they can belong to a group with a common description and can be broken into episodes, we should get the data for these from a TV scraper. All of these should be considered TV shows from a matter of content scraping. The way to separate them is by using genres or paths. I keep serials in a separate directory structure than standard TV shows. My (heavily modified) skin uses a smart playlist as the basis of the generic TV shows collection. A separate smart playlist is used for the other items. This keeps the advantage of using common information (actors across all of them, for example) without having outliers in a particular list.

Content to scraper is one relationship. Content View/Category should be a separate relationship. Several skins already allow a smart playlist to be substituted in place of the generic Movies or TV Shows functionality. I highly encourage this design.

The other area of concern is music videos. These are music, clear and simple. A video is a song from an album by an artist or group. We have never had a reliable source of scraping info for videos separate from the music. It is my opinion that music video content should be scraped identically to music. This would help relate artists across music and video files and clean up the entire process.
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If I’m watching something then I generally sort by title and flick through. On the other hand if it is for the rest of family it is normally by Genre, romantic & comedy for the wife and comedy & animation for the kids.

What would be a nice addition not worked out an easy way to do it yet. I currently edited my library view to show the MPAA rating next to the title instead of the IMDB Rating. Anyhow the ability to list by MPAA rating or multiple MPAA ratings would be a nice option. That way I can get a list quickly and easily that is suitable for the kids.

Slightly off what you asked for but still linked I guess would also be a nice feature to enable some kind of restriction so that if enabled you can have the requirement to enter a code to watch films above a certain age level.

Keeps the kids away from stuff not really suitable for them.Big Grin
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