Help with how media is displayed.

[Woosey]

Hi Guys,

first off i love MCE! Its really tied together my home devices However i do have one problem - how the media is presented.

for example i have all the episodes of futurama, uptil now using my ps3 and my slackeware box via upnp they were displayed in the folder tree, so i could go Futurama > Season 2 > Episode 3, rather than MCE displaying all the episodes individually

Is there anyway i can get mce to use a tree structure?

Thanks

Chris

[tschak909]

*deeeeep-breath*

I've answered this countless times, but here goes again....

LMCE isn't designed to use a tree structure. We ignore it. We consider files and folders to be outmoded, primitive, and extremely rigid and out of touch with today's multi-categorized media...

Now, before you start crying.... Let me explain....

LMCE crawls the directory structures of all the disks it knows about, and grabs the attributes from the media to put into its own database. If the media is properly tagged, it will grab those attributes, otherwise you must use the Media Files Sync page in the web admin to add or correct tags in the file.

With a properly tagged media library, folders are moot, and are not needed.

You may want to watch my screencast on using the media system, here:
http://www.localeconcept.com/pub/Using_Media_in_LinuxMCE_part_1.ogg

In the mean-time, while you are tagging your media, you can set the sort order to Filename, to see the folder structure. Although, it is not well suited for the viewer we have.

-Thom

[Glasswalker]

To follow up to Thom's comments, I have added some updates to the media files sync page in the web admin. It helps in tagging media faster.

(and it has features specifically designed for tagging tv episodes quickly)

Check out my thread here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=6571.0

Hopefully this will help you get the media tagged correctly. And he's right, tagging your media correctly is totally the correct answer to this (I fought it for a while in the beginning too, mostly out of laziness, but in the end it has made my media experience much better).

Plus there is talk amongst the devs about some updates in the near future to help with browsing tv episodes (right now filtering tv episodes is a little cumbersome, but it still works very well if it is tagged properly)

Hope this helps!

[seth]

 
There is a way to whittle it down a bit. I record Stargate Atlantis, I have them by show, all in the root folder /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_<moon #>. Now at first glance this can be quite daunting, especially with the volume of shows I record. So, what I do is add an attribute tag to each episode. For example the show is in season 5, so I add a "Program"  Attribute "SGA-5" to all my new recordings. Now when I go to watch my SGA, the first thing I see is all my video/recorded media, now, I use my remote to go to select the SGA-5 filter.

Now all I see are my SGA episodes from Season 5.

Done.

Regards,

Seth

[fearingsept]

Is there a part 2 of that video I can watch?
I would really like to see the best most effective way to correctly tag and sync my media.

[tschak909]

I haven't made it yet. I will make it once i get things back in order. I destroyed my primary RAID (yes, entirely my fault, did 'dd' to the wrong...damn...device....), so I am recovering my stuff and getting that disk back in order.

-Thom

[Woosey]

Hi Guys,

Sorry for touching a sore nerve

Have just setup my 770, its working sweet For now im using upnp to the ps3, which keeps the tree structure, i am still downloading your file on how to tag my files correctly!

[seth]

 
I can tell you this. Adding the right attribute to a file makes a world of difference. We record shows for my girls at home. They are very young, and are not yet adept at using the system. (3 and 1-1/2), by tagging their shows with the "Children" genre attribute, my wife can easily pull up the menu on an orbiter or the main screen in the house, BTW how cool is it that you can use one MD to control another with the Rooms menu option, she uses the gyration remote, and this is how quickly she has adapted.
Bring up the video menu, roll over to  genre,  select the "Children" option from that menu, click it
Then scroll to the show, click it, then highlight play, and click it. Seamless integration. She can do this in less than 15 seconds.

More evidence that proper tagging and attribute use, makes this system the correct choice.
My wife is not technically proficient, in fact she hates tech, but she can sure navigate like a pro, with the proper tools.

Regards,

Seth

[golgoj4]

Im in a similar boat with seth. I tag all my shows with a series specific tag (sometimes more than 1 depending on how bored i am) so that finding them quickly is easy.

I also use my ps3 heavily and I just use the fuppes folder structure to navigate my way to what im looking for in the videos.