[HenryFord]

Nice, thanks for the addition. Will implement as soon as possible.

[Chris!]

Henry,

I had an opportunity (hang-over) to read through your guide more critically (pretending to be a first time user). It is a good guide, some of my friends are getting into XBMC so I will be recommending this guide.
I think some parts could be phrased slightly different to avoid confusion, these are my own personal views - not meant to offend your hard work.




Page 4

Click the Windows-Logo to get the newest stable Windows-Build for your machine. You could download the Nightly-Builds as well, but those are not approved to be working and may not work as thought. So – if you’re not familiar with the XBMC and you are new to all of this, just take the stable version. Download the Setup-File and install it. It will also install the needed libraries (DirectX, C++), so it will take a little bit to complete.

Surely you don’t need stuff about the nightly builds if this guide is for people just starting out. Perhaps a better way of phrasing it:

Click the Windows-Logo to download the newest stable Windows-Build for your machine. Download the Setup-File and install it. It will also install the needed libraries (DirectX, C++).

Then having the nightly section separate as it applies to all platforms:

Nightly-builds are also available, however these are only recommended for experienced users as they maybe incomplete and/or contain bugs.

Page 5

Hit the “Browse”-Button and locate your movie-location. This is ideally one folder which contains your movies – this can be in subfolders as well as in single files or you just can mix them.

To:

Hit the “Browse”-Button to navigate to your movie file(s) location. This is usually one folder that contains your movies as individual files or as subfolders within this folder (or a combination of this arrangement).

The only really important thing is that every movie in the movie-folder is named properly. You should name your movies like “Film Name” and you may add additional information like “Year Quality” which will help the XBMC to scan those files properly, although “Film Name” might just be enough.

I think it is important to have the year on the end as it minimizes incorrect scanning results which are a frustration to users.

The most important factor for every movie in the specified movie-folder is that it is named properly (for XBMC). For best results you should use the film title followed by the year of it’s release in brackets e.g. The Dark Knight (2008).mkv
Film name may suffice but having two identifiers in the title helps reduce incorrect results.

As a side note:
You may want to point out that an internet connection is required to scrape media from themoviedb (just incase people forget)






Get to know the library

Various Skins may provide you with additional library- views, but they all deal with those libraries and may filter them accordingly (for example for “HD- Movies”. In the step before we tied our sources to the libraries: By choosing “Movies” for the content XBMC will now know that the files it is going to find are supposed to be movies and will be added to the specified library. This is done by XBMC with the help of so called scrapers. As you could see while choosing the content for the movies, the default scraper for movies is the “The MovieDB” which is working very well.

Perhaps phrasing this way is a bit clearer:

Various Skins may provide you with additional views, these also use XBMC central library. In the step before we tied our sources to the libraries: By choosing “Movies” for the content XBMC will now know what group of content that files is and added to the correct library view (i.e. Movies, TV Shows etc).
XBMC gathers additional information about using what is referred to as scrapers. As you could see while choosing the content for the movies, the default scraper for movies is the “The MovieDB” (http://www.themoviedb.org), which works very well for most users. The scraper will go through your source and compare the title of every movie found with the database.

You also have the ability to merge multiple video- files into one movie.

Possibly write it this way otherwise it gives the impression XBMC merges the files, which it doesn’t. (I know you point this out later but I think it is best to clarify it initially)

You also have the ability to merge multiple video- files so they display as one movie in the library.

I haven't read through other sections, although I don't use couch potato, sickbeard etc so couldn't comment.

I also think it is worth adding themoviedb.org and thetvdb.org to the donation page as they are community run etc and XBMC relies on it so much.

I'll PM you once you have sorted your job stuff and have started writing again so I can collaborate with you (I have a busy period coming up at the moment too!)

Keep up the good work and good luck with your job stuff at the moment!

[HenryFord]

I think some parts could be phrased slightly different to avoid confusion, these are my own personal views - not meant to offend your hard work.

English is not my first language, this of course means that at times it isn't that well written and there may be mistakes througout the guide. So you are more then welcome to give me some advices

Keep up the good work and good luck with your job stuff at the moment!

I will look at your intake, the job-stuff seems to get sorted out this week (today, to be precise ), so it is very likely that I will update this week.

Thank you

[Chris!]

English is not my first language

Props to you then!
I'm ridiculously impressed, not something I could do.

I took another look at the other guide (not your one) and have decided what XBMC really needs is a simple guide start get people started then they can start digging for other things.
I think your guide represents this.
I'll be more than happy to proof read etc (i've PM'd you)

[HenryFord]

With the release of Version 0.8 I will change a little bit...

1. I will give up on DOC-Collaboration as it is neither open-source nor very good to handle. Thinkfree is so slow and has a lot of hiccups (this may be in relation to the file-size, but I am not even considering compressing the pictures ).
If you still know any other collaboration-platform I would be happy to hear from it. I suppose I could go ahead and use Github for this (so you also would have a checkout-system), but I will have a look into that one first.

2. I will continue to work on the word-document, and will upload it as a html-webpage. The 0.7 version is currently online as such. You can access it here:
http://www.henryford.tk

I think this way it is more accessible and you do not have to get around the long wait-times at keepandshare or thinkfree. I will also provide a PDF-File hosted on my webspace - link will come with version 0.8.


If you have any input or want to add something to the guide, feel free to contact me via PM - I will exchange my mail-address with you then.

[HenryFord]

In case you did not notice: Version 0.8 is up - look at the first post

[HenryFord]

I am currently working on the implementation of everything around Advanced Launcher. I will then just jump ahead and release version 1.0 - probably today. With the release of 1.0 I will move to a new thread with a proper title for the work. I also want to see this thread in the How-To-Section and will contact a moderator on this one.

I think that the guide is getting ready for usage - with the release of 1.0 I have everything included I wanted to. Do you miss anything? Just post or PM me about it.

More information when it's done.

[HenryFord]

Version 1.0 is out - see the new thread:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=7...post780100