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

I use Actor when I recognized an acor in amovie, but can't remember what other movies he starred in.

I use Genre when I have friends over and we don't know what to watch. I simply ask what genre thay wanna watch and start there.

Hi,

Been reading on the community for a while decided to join to help in this area.

The best product I have seen is this area is the Moving Pictures plugin for Media Portal. It offers lots of different customisations and allows you to categorise your media in a number of different ways.

I have found that we all prefer things to be categorised in our own way(s). Personally I have split my movies in different folders and ideally I would like to be able to categorise my movies by folder.

Currently I click on movies from the home screen and I get sent to the entire collection I would like to go from Movies on the Home Screen to another screen where I select the smart playlist I want and then go in to the a sub section of my movie collection. Being new to XBMC I do not know if this is a setting option somewhere or if it is maybe not possible just yet.

Hallo,

I have 1000+ movies in my library.

Mostly I use the Title thing, however, sometimes my titles get screwed up by the scraper and renamed, so i cannot find a movie. Then a search by actor or the file mode helps. (examples: P.O.C, instead of the long name Pirates of the carribbean, CE3K instead of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Burly Man instead of Matrix reloaded etc. - things that drive me crazy :sniffle

The main issue is, that grouping of movies is not easy and the titles are mixed all over the library.

The WAF is quite low, my wife complains about the UI, that she never comes beyond the letter "F" if she looks after a movie to play, because there are too many movies alphabetically sorted and a lot of "scrap" from my favorites and she always has to start by title and "A" and is tired reading after "F", so she plays always the same few "good" movies she finds after a while.

The Genres are good, but not good enough - too many and automaticaly imported / changed. In my last home library setup before using xbmc I had managed the genres manually to fit my wifes needs and she was happy to find her favorite 100 movies easily. I had added some Cartoons, XMas, Romance and Action Tags, and one for my wife's name as special genre - so she has had her own set, when she wants.

With xbmc this is too complicated and it is screwed up by scrapers - so finally I gave up - especially because I have some xbmc boxes, and each needs to scrape the content (and alters the metadata or needs manual adjustments) - this is a nightmare.

To make it short:

85% by title,
10% by directory / filename not using the library at all
4% by actor,
1% by genre

I also have set up some file groups for die hard, american pie, harry potter, star treck and one for "_xmas" movies for my wife to check this out. But this screws up the concept of the title thing - so it is good for my wife, bad for the library, but in the end good for the peace at home - (it is the first entry before the letter "A") .

If I could make 3 whishes:

- If a title is manually entered/modified - don't change it by further scans (Title, Genre, Ratings...) (lock flag in the database and file system nfo!)
- Supply an easy to use UI to change the metadata in XBMC (no external tools) and populate the changes toall instances.
- Easy grouping interface for movie sets, where one movie can belong to more than one group, so one can build a kind of custom structure. (e.g. home made, vacations, birthday parties, kids, wife's only, man's world, kid's cartoons, teen's favorites, unrated alphabethically.

It would be nice to have separate/split movie library,
So that we can separate the kids movie from the main movies,
Without the workarounds that are suggested here that break other options again.
Media Browser has a nice example how it's done

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.

Maybe it is a liitle OT, but it would be great to have the navigation feature to jump letter-wise back and forward (direct jump by typing a letter on the keyboard or jump by klicking on the skip forward (next) or skip backward (prev) button on the remote to the next / previous first letter.

Because scrolling is a very long task in library mode. This could significantly improve the WAF

It doesnot mean a redesign of the database, but on the UI.

xbmcg Wrote:Maybe it is a liitle OT, but it would be great to have the navigation feature to jump letter-wise back and forward (direct jump by typing a letter on the keyboard

It already does this, you just have to hold ctrl while pecking the letter

Strange, not working for me (XBMC 11.0 Beta 1) I tried with all special keys (Lef / right ctrl, alt, shift...). Maybe the feature was removed in 11.0

xbmcg Wrote:Strange, not working for me (XBMC 11.0 Beta 1) I tried with all special keys (Lef / right ctrl, alt, shift...). Maybe the feature was removed in 11.0

clock2113 Wrote:It already does this, you just have to hold ctrl while pecking the letter

It's:

SHIFT+'letter(s)'
(at least on windows)

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