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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.
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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.
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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 Confused)

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") No.

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.
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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
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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.
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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 WAFWink

It doesnot mean a redesign of the database, but on the UI.
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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
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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
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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)
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Can confirm its working for me, running Eden on Vista.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hey Guys, I was actually gonna post this in its own thread but this seems like the right place Smile

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 Tongue ) 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.

Image
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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.
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Video library redesign idea - How can we improve Smart Playlists, aka Filtered Lists?2