Mintaining folder structure possible?

[Psycho Reptile]

Hi fforde, I wonder if you could add the funtionality to maintain folder structures. In MyMovies I've added all my folders full of movies, ie:

Movies/files
More Movies/files
Kids Movies/files
TV Shows/Show Names/files
Kids Collections/Collection Name/files

...so when I get to the main MyMovies screen, I can select a folder name and all the movies are displayed in that folder. Atm every single movie I have is listed in moving pictures so it's a bit of a pain finding my kids movies trawling thru everything. Perhaps we could also specify a backdrop for each folder?

What do ya think?

PS: I have the plugin diabled atm as it's crashing MP after every song or movie played - I know you know about it tho

[fforde]

For 0.6 I am working on customizable filtering, so you could set something up like that (hopefully) pretty easily. I am still kind of in design phase right now though, nothing is set in stone. Actually though I was thinking more of a side menu or a popup menu when you clicked the filter button. Then you could drill down into a hierarchical menu system. I am about to goto dinner, but I will make a mockup later tonight to post what I had in mind.

Long and the short of it though is you will definitely be able to do what your asking, and a whole lot more, it's just a matter of how the interface will work.

I noticed you had TV Shows listed there. I think it's pretty unlikely we will add the ability to index those. I feel like the biggest distinguishing factor between this plug-in and MyVideos is the fact that it's so tightly focused on movies. Maybe some kind of integration between MP-TVSeries and Moving Pictures at some point. I think we could do some cool stuff there, but don't hold your breath.

[Darre]

Yeah I'd like that as well.. Got to many movies on my HD Its kinda hopeless browsing through 350 movies to find one you want to watch, Ive allready arranged my movies into genre folders..

Ive tried having genre sorting in the default videoplugin in MP, but seems the cartoon "cars" is a action movie(among loads of others with weird genres from imdb).

I will use this plugin no matter what because of all the other advantages, but a "shares" mode would be nice =) What would even be better would be a DB structure thats able to read and copy folder structure so that you get the same structure as your folders, but youre actually reading from a DB (waaaay less lag)

edit: we posted at the same time, but my wishes are still valid Have a nice dinner!

[Psycho Reptile]

Originally Posted by fforde

I noticed you had TV Shows listed there.

Don't worry about that, they're just there as amatter of course, the missus still has to persuaded to use MP-TVSeries on a regular basis . Look'n forward to the structure implimentation

[fforde]

Ok, well the idea I had was basically you have a "filter" system. Basically just a way to break down your movies. The user could add a filter like Genre or Year and when added to the active filters list in the config, they would show up on screen, when you clicked the filter button. See the mock-up below. When you click Genre from the filters list, it changes to a list of all your available genres. Action, Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi, etc. You click one and your on screen list filters by your selection.

It woulnd't neccisarily have to be as skin dependent as my mock-up though. You could always have the user click the filter button and then fall back to a regular MediaPortal pop-up menu for the Filter list, then another for the selection. Not as sexy though.

And of course the third option is to do something similar to how MP-TVSeries handles Genres, just a text list. I veered away from this in the past but this might not be so bad if you could attach fanart to each selection. That could get tedious though and is very configuration dependent. One thing I really like about the plug-in now is it works so well strait out of the box.

And finally the filter types. I was describing basic filter types above, but I also want to do advanced filter types that allow you to categorize your movies however the hell you want. If you want to emulate the "Shares" configuration in other plug-ins, you could. If you wanted to group by decade you could, anything in the databse. Basically in the config screen you would create a new Advanced Filter, then create each selection one by one. You would give the selection a name and then fill out a dialog specifying the criteria to match for a movie to land in this category. You could say the filepath must be this. Or the Year must be > this and < that. And so on. Mostly this would be for power users, but there would probably be a few Advanced Configs setup out of the box. Like decade maybe.

It's a really rough idea, so I am looking for feedback. So what do you guys think of the skin based filtering thing. The popup menu? Or the text based list similar to TV-Series with genres?

And what do you think of the filtering system I suggested. I realize it's kind of hard to wrap your head around at first but trust me I would work on it until it was very user friendly...

So any thoughts?

[2BitSculptor]

Originally Posted by Psycho Reptile

...so when I get to the main MyMovies screen, I can select a folder name and all the movies are displayed in that folder. Atm every single movie I have is listed in moving pictures so it's a bit of a pain finding my kids movies trawling thru everything. Perhaps we could also specify a backdrop for each folder?

Fortunately you can add genres to the list in the db... I have a genre listed as my grandsons name, so all his age appropriate videos get shown. It is just tedious with the one-at-a-time dropdown window in the db... too bad it doesn't always remember your last location in the list.

(Wouldn't it be cool if you could edit database fields right from MyMovies, or track tags from MyMusic? ... highlight an item.. select INFO ... edit details ... OSD displays with pertinant fields... add genre.)

(Still dreaming)

Chuck

[SMa]

Would it be possible to add a filter "folders"? To group movies by their physical location, which is specified in the config utility.
And maybe let the user assign an alias to each physical location (to use with the UI).

So if I would specify this in the config util:
D:\Movies [alias: HD Movies]
E:\Movies [alias: SD Movies]
I would see this in the UI (if filtered by folder):
- HD Movies (shows all movies in D:\Movies and its sub directories)
- SD Movies (shows all movies in E:\Movies and its sub directories)

Like shares view in MyVideos, but database powered

[the_ult]

or....

automatic filtering on GENRE with the IMDB genre-info :-)

(... with possibility to manually change the genre ..)

[piranha]

Originally Posted by fforde

When you click Genre from the filters list, it changes to a list of all your available genres. Action, Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi, etc. You click one and your on screen list filters by your selection.

Generally I would go away from something so abstract as filter. First of all I would call it view (you want it user friendly?).
I would also go for remembering which view is currently used (perhaps per user), and always start with that view.
Other than than, the user needs quick way of switching them, probably via Popup menu. List is not that user friendly really but can be there as alternative.
Please do not forget ability to attach a PIN to a particular view/filter, so it could be only viewed after PIN has been entered.

[Darre]

Well if I can add a filter/view/whatever that I can call "action" and set the criteria to be d:\movies\action, then I'm happy