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#1
So I have been crawling along and learning about XBMC. I have a few questions. Any help/advice would be appreciated.

1) It appears that the XBMC player treats all movie filetypes the same. I have 90% of my movies in IFO/VOB format, 10% in AVI format, and all tv_series in .AVI format. It appears that when you play an IFO and fast forward (or jump) it goes to the next chapter. AVIs jump to the end/beginning of the file. Reencoding of the AVIs is not an option.

Is there a way to somehow specify the "Jump to Next Chapter" button while playing an AVI should really jump forward like 300 seconds, but while playing an IFO/VOB it will jump to next chapter?

2) I would really like on the main menu page "DVD Movies", "AVI Movies", and TV_Series. Is this possible?

3) I would like to have 1 user to be able to see only movies from 1 directory. I would like another user to be able to see only movies from a 2nd directory. Is this possible through profiles? Are separate databases created per profile?

4) I have VB code which nightly scrapes for locally playing (in theater) movies and creates an XML database with movie info, description, actors, covers, theater times, and location of streaming apple preview. (Like the preview plugin with the addition of theater information near your house). Is it possible to create a NEW database in XBMC, and then pull variables from it (through skinning)? Or is it what-you-see-is-what-you-get regarding the underlying databases.... i.e. expansion is not possible.

5) Can enyone recommend a nice graphical sqlite graphical interface?

6) Are there any GUI-driven skin editors? Or is all skinning through raw xml?

7) What is XBMC looking for in ALBUM directories regarding coverart? My songs have covers (probably pulled from mps tag), but no covers for albums. All my albums have cover_f.jpg and cover_b.jpg in the album directories (front and back covers, which I would like to use as they are higher quality than the mp3 tags)

Thanks!
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#2
1. Big skip does this (arrows on the keyboard for instance).
2. Assuming those point to different folders (i.e. not library mode) then yes.
3. Profiles with separate databases is the way to go.
4. Nope. You could concievably do this via a python script or plugin, however.
6. Raw XML, correct.
7. folder.jpg - you can specify this via advancedsettings.xml. If the tags have images they'll be used first, however.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
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#3
Thanks.

So just to clarify...
4) There is no way to expand XBMC by creating new databases for use
7) There is no way to supercede the low-res-in-tags mp3 covers with a folder.jpg in the same directory that contains a very high-res version?
Are these stored in the database, or created "on-the-fly." If they are stored in the database, perhaps they could be modified (outside of XBMC)

Thanks again- these are issues I am looking at trying to decide if I will be scrapping my current front end software.
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#4
4) Correct.
7) The thumb isn't stored, but a reference to the cached thumb is, so you could use that to modify it outside of XBMC. Updating the tags (either removing the lowres or adding the highres) is probably a better long-term solution.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#5
Thanks. Unfortunately updating each of the song tags to highres images would truly be waste of storage (not to mention a monumental effort), and consume too much on portable devices. Personally I believe a more efficient mechanism is to provide a single copy of the highres to be stored in the album directory. My current front end also used the id3 tags by default, but I've written a utility which injects into the database a pointer to the high res version for each of the songs.

In effect, it implements
If !highres_version_exists, use ID3 (ugly when scaled up) tag.

Back to the database.... While new ones cannot be created, can elements be added to the existing? For example, for each CD and Movie I have online, I also have a BACK cover which I would potentially like to display.
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#6
EDIT: More helpful answer:

Basically, no, you can't add new fields unless you update the support code to work with them. I can suggest methods of doing this if you're that way inclined (i.e. speak C/C++)
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#7
I do speak C/C++, but considering the level of effort this may require, it may be pretty low on my priority list.

Modifying code is generally not the time consumer... . its generally getting the entire project of open source code to compile Smile
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#8
Fingers crossed that'll be pretty easy on our side assuming you're on one of the supported platforms (ubuntu, osx, win32) and take note of the associated README's. Smile

If you do want to do it, I suggest:

1. Having a define or two for where the extra columns you add to each table start and end - you'll see what I mean once you see MusicDatabase.h.
2. Loop through and push those fields into fileitem properties. This may be a little more involved for albums than songs - IIRC there's a CAlbum class that's used basically to pass things from the db into the CFileItem, and that may need a map<key,value> as well.

Ideally everything would be using the property map instead of the silly tag structures we have so that this stuff is more easy to extend. Perhaps I may take some time out at some point and work on that.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#9
Thanks, if I get a chance I may delve deeper. I need to get some of the core functionality to meet my needs first Smile

From a feature request, at a high level, here is what would be nice:
Database Tables coud have several pre-defined blank fields (say User1-User5) which could be accessed through the skins. Here are examples of what they could be used for (and are with my current solution), populated externally if need be.

1) Movie Back Covers
2) Movie Trivia
3) Movie Quotes
4) Movie Apple Trailer Location
5) Album back covers (Not needed per-song)


Really great software so far!
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#10
Back covers sort of work today using $INFO[] tags, if you have a nice clean filesystem:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Label_Parsing

You could use something like this to find the image: $INFO[listitem.path,,/back-cover.jpg]
(This assumes you have each movie in their own folder and include a "back-cover.jpg" image that folder.)
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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