Custom Orbiter Scenarios by Media Subtype

[tolkeinknoxy]

Im currently trying to create a button on my orbiter to allow me to just show Movies, and Another to just show TV. I know i can select this from options in the video browser itself but I would find two buttons to go to each quicker. From the scenarios ive created one which uses the Media-Wiz File/Disc as the template. And set the scenario commands to Show file list. However the value is PK_mediaType. Which i dont think will alow me to select media by the type of video it is aka TV show, Movie etc. Instead this value will select currently LinuxmceDVD,VideoFile,Game etc. Surely i want it as the Pk_MediaSubType so i can specify Movies or TV. Ive currently looked at the linuxmce DceCommands and added under Orbiter and associated it to orbiters Show media subtype. I then assigned a parmeter to it Description: PK_MediaSubType and type: int. I can then assign this command to my button and select a value aka 1 for tv shows, 2 for movies etc. But this button dosnt work. What am i doing wrong and how can i go about fixing it?
Thanks

[tschak909]

This will take changes to Media_Plugin.cpp ...... why are you doing this? Just turn the filter on/off in the media view.

*shake-head*

-Thom

[tolkeinknoxy]

Im doing it as i have ALOT of tv shows. As media browser defaults upon entry to everything tagged Video file everything gets loaded. It makes the screen look very unelegant and only looks nice once i change the filter over to movies. This is because i have serious problems with my TV shows. Ideally i would like them to default to a tree structure but again this is an option i have to press. Even if i was able to tag all my tv shows they would still appear as a big long list of videos to my system, (this is also causing problems on my mobile phone orbiter as it cant handle a few thousand videos in a list and becomes impossible to navigate). My tagging of tv shows are limited primarily to being unable to search for them on amazon as it just shows up as a box set. Trying to manually set it i dont know what kind of attributes are required which will help the problem and will take a few centuries to do. Last check was 2000 odd tv shows episodes. I wish there was something similar to Media Portals TV sersis plugin for tv shows as this would look incredibly elegant and easy to use. Currently my friends when they come over get put off when they want to watch something click videos and bamm a massive list. A word of guidance and they change the filter over to movies and they are then very confortable.
 I would like any advice to solve this problem generically. My current wish for scenarios was just a way of tacklering this overall problem.

[tolkeinknoxy]

So is there a way to turn all these Episodes of TV shows under one name. Like LOST for example and when i go into video from an orbiter instead of seeing on the left hand screen lots of episode names just the name Lost. Much like when i go into Audio i get my albums, and their songs.

I have added to my tv sersis of HEX these atributes (folowered by an example):
Title - The Story Begins
Program - Hex
Episode - 1
Release Date -
Director - Brian Grant
Composer/Writer - Lucy Watkins

Its set as
Type: LinuxMCE Video File
Media Sub-type: TV shows
File format: Standard def

These files are in turn in a folder called Season 1. And this is in a folder called HEX.

Is there a way for the files in video file viewer to only appear as one, HEX and in turn clicking HEX i get the seasons, and in that get the file. WITHOUT going into filename mode. Much like how audio from the orbiter works. Or is what im asking impossible?

[colinjones]

I have to say, I get the same issue with TV shows and have just bitten the bullet and used Filename sort mode otherwise it is unmanageable. It is entirely possible to assign attributes to folders (not just files) in the database currently, and having a hierarchy behind it as you suggest would be nice, but I think that is going to have to be a feature request in Mantis - could be layered either by attributes (by setting Season and Episode attributes) or by following the folder hierarchy.... hmmm the former would be more appropriate in terms of consistency but the latter would be easier to setup...

[tolkeinknoxy]

Perhaps if under media types as well as the common types such as video file etc. You have container types for directories. Giving a way for Linuxmce to understand what directories are and to be able to differentiate between folders as seasons, folders as Shows etc. Even folders as containing films, and folders containing parts of one films. That way if you have Part A and Part B Mce will play both subquestionally if you defined that folder as a container of parts of films rather than just a selection of films. You could also then set attributes to these folders which pass on traits to files below them. So setting a film container as an attribute of video files will set the files below it as video files. For tv shows this could be useful to automatically pass on director traits, show names etc.

[colinjones]

There would still need to be code to tell the media grid not to display the media files that should be part of the "container" otherwise you would end up with what you are looking for, plus all the TV shows still displaying individually along side the container.

But it is still an interesting concept that would have wider application. One thing that it could help with is music albums - currently to play a whole album you basically have to navigate into the album and display all the tracks then choose Play All. That works well to a point - but having the container would allow you to create playlists of albums rather than their individual constituent tracks, which would be nice.

[Kaelix]

I know it's been over a year since this topic was discussed, but I'm currently looking for the functionality described. Has this been implemented to any extent?

In searching around the net XBMC seems to be able to play RAR files. Is there any chance LinuxMCE could do this? This way I could have one RAR file say "Show XYZ" and it would be the only thing to show up by default in the media browser (with cover art and attributes) then choosing it would show the episode list and you can pick which episode to watch. When a new episode comes out you would just have to add it to the RAR file.

I thought about using a DVD image, as has been mentioned in the forums before, the only problem is encoding every new episode into the image. Not to mention it's much larger than the original AVI.

I'm tagging all my media, my only real issue is that *everything* shows up when i hit 'Video' until I set the filters, which gets annoying to do. Either something like the solution above, or the ability to set the default view of the video browser would be nice. I'm new at this so am i missing something?

[tschak909]

I have planned to take any show with the same title (i.e. a series, and collapse it into a single entry that shows the episodes when expanded.)

the only other refinement i will make will be the addition of an options field to the show file list command to facilitate filtering of tv shows when "recordings" is pressed in the TV view.

I will not do any further refinements to this part of the system. don't ask. You want em? you do the patch.

-Thom

[colinjones]

Thom

Not asking for a "further" or additional refinement, more a possible alternative to the one you mentioned...

Instead of implementing a special case handling of items that happen to have the same Title attribute, wouldn't it be more in keeping with the meta tag system to add a new Sort By option ... something like "Show". This would work on the "program" attribute. The query would only return db entries that have this attribute set, and then group by that attribute in exactly the same way as the other Sort By options do, the datagrid would show a cell per program attribute, and the screen beneath that would have a datagrid of cells representing each media file that has that attribute.

It seems more in keeping with the way the rest of the UI operates, and would not be susceptable to when media file Titles are not identical - particularly important when you want to have an episode name appear in the title itself....

[tschak909]

did you not notice my change to media plugin? episode names appear in the file browser alongside titles, but the episode name must be set. it's precisely the reason I did this!

-Thom