Video Library Sort Order

My apologies if this has been requested, couldn't find it in a search. My proposal is a new sort field (and database entry) for sorting movies be a secondary Sort Title. The field is in Ember Media Manager, but is not respected in XBMC, for example, the Rambo Quadrilogy [sic]. Rambo: First Blood comes after the newest one entitled just "Rambo". The same could be said about the Harry Potter movies, and the Bourne trilogy (which luckily went in alphabetical order with it's naming conventions)

Thanks for your time.

OlafBerserker77 Wrote:My apologies if this has been requested, couldn't find it in a search. My proposal is a new sort field (and database entry) for sorting movies be a secondary Sort Title. The field is in Ember Media Manager, but is not respected in XBMC, for example, the Rambo Quadrilogy [sic]. Rambo: First Blood comes after the newest one entitled just "Rambo". The same could be said about the Harry Potter movies, and the Bourne trilogy (which luckily went in alphabetical order with it's naming conventions)

Thanks for your time.

This does exist in XBMC. It was added to Ember after I added the support to XBMC. Try checking your .nfo file to be sure there is a <sorttitle> field. That will be used for sorting in library mode if it exists. Oh, and this feature is in svn, so if you are using a release version, you will have to wait for the next release.
Joel

XBMC indeed has this sort field. It's called sorttitle. It's been in XBMC for a couple months now and does work with Ember as that's what i use for movies.

http://www.xbmc.org/trac/changeset/22048

EDIT: I forgot to mention. Thanks goes to joelmeans for adding this feature!

Hmmm, a;ways using bleeding edge, and doesn't sort for me, I have all Rambo films and I have the sort titles Rambo 1, Rambo 2, etc, and it still shows the newest Rambo first. Strange.

OlafBerserker77 Wrote:Hmmm, a;ways using bleeding edge, and doesn't sort for me, I have all Rambo films and I have the sort titles Rambo 1, Rambo 2, etc, and it still shows the newest Rambo first. Strange.

Shot in the dark but would some skins not support this? I'm imagine not since the way I understand skins they are (as the name suggests) just the skin on the very surface and it's XBMC that has the job of spitting out the titles in the selected sort order.

Also, don't forget... If you scanned them into XBMC's library before you assigned a sorttitle in Ember, then you will need to refresh all affected titles (or delete your db and rescan your entire library) for XBMC to "see" the new title and sort appropriately.

DaveGee Wrote:Shot in the dark but would some skins not support this? I'm imagine not since the way I understand skins they are (as the name suggests) just the skin on the very surface and it's XBMC that has the job of spitting out the titles in the selected sort order.

I've been digging into this since the last time I posted. I've looked at most of the skins around, and not one of them has an option to sort by sort title, so I'm going to look through the docs and hopefully find something.

RockDawg Wrote:Also, don't forget... If you scanned them into XBMC's library before you assigned a sorttitle in Ember, then you will need to refresh all affected titles (or delete your db and rescan your entire library) for XBMC to "see" the new title and sort appropriately.

I've tried everything short of rescanning my whole library....

OlafBerserker77 Wrote:I've been digging into this since the last time I posted. I've looked at most of the skins around, and not one of them has an option to sort by sort title, so I'm going to look through the docs and hopefully find something.



I've tried everything short of rescanning my whole library....

It isn't an option, it does it by default. If you use sort by title and have a sorttitle defined, it uses that. Otherwise, it falls back to the Title field. Have you removed and re-added the movies which have the sorttitle defined? You may have to try rescanning your entire library, but it should work. I just built the latest SVN on Friday, and it works fine there.
Joel

As a test, try creating a dummy movie and create an nfo in Ember and give it a sorttitle of '1' or something and then update the library in XBMC. You should see it at or near the beginning of movies list.

Yea I'm gonna side with the others...

While browsing the movie collection with 'library mode' off (I think) DELETE (from the XBMC LIBRARY-DATABSE ONLY do NOT actually trash the movie itself from the HD) a few of the titles that you've added a sort-field entry to. Then tell XBMC to re-scan the movie folder so it 're-finds the titles you deleted (from the library)' and NOW check to see if they are being sorted according to sort-field data.

I don't think its necessary but just to play it safe this is what I'd do...

1 - Delete 2 or 3 of the titles from the XBMC library/database. Remember you are only deleting the MOVIE ENTRY from the XBMC Library database... the file should be left exactly where it is.

2 - QUIT XBMC

3 - LAUNCH XBMC and if you have 'autoscan' on it should 're-find and re-add the previously deleted titles and now XBMC should recognize the sort-field data.

Dave