Can I add folder icons to my list of videos (1 Viewer)

enchant

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I'm just switching from a very old version of MP to the latest. The skin I was using was Blue2Wide, which I had no problem with, but apparently it's no longer. I've tried the available skins and downloaded a few others, but in every case, when a list of files is shown in the Videos section, it doesn't indicate what are files and what are folders, as it did in B2W. I have to assume that this is something I should be able to configure, but I don't see anywhere how to do it. Also, if I search on things like video folder icons, I get tons of posts having nothing to do with what I want.
 

SpudR

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    Hi Enchant - what's your media folder structure like?
    FYI mine is:
    Media \ Movies \ Moviename
    As long as I get the correct details for the movie name the MovingPictures IMDB+ scraper finds the movie and adds it in - is this what you mean?
     

    enchant

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    I keep the files on a separate machine. So on that machine, it's:
    \TV\drama\show series name\show episode S02E03.mkv
    \TV\comedy\show series name\show episode S04E08.mkv
     

    SpudR

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    Yeah - mine is all on a NAS :)
    So, I would suggest removing the /genre/ bit from the path, and importing them again - that way MP should assign the correct tags to the movies and TV shows. I can't see a good reason for doing this. Also - how do you categorise something with multiple genres?
    Just out of curiosity, why do you want to see the folders? You should be able to create genre filters to view specific ones (MovingPics does this if you enable it)...
     

    enchant

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    I don't completely understand how the word "genre" fits into this. I'm not looking for anything complicated. When i see the list, I just want to know if a text string is the name of a directory (by a folder icon next to it), or an actual video (with some other folder, or even nothing next to it).

    Not sure how it affects anything, but my typical method of watching is to either grab this week's show that has just aired and put it in one of the video folders, or download an entire season of something and have that folder there.
     

    SpudR

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    LOL
    Genre is simply a type of movie/tv show/music etc
    You have:
    \TV\GENRE\showname\episode
    _____|
    This could be Comedy, Horror, Action, Sci-Fi etc

    I still don't see why you would want to see the folders identified as such - though in your case the folders that you are looking at would be the categories of the movies (that's the genre).

    The actual videos are the names of the episodes or movies themselves.
     
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    CyberSimian

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    I still don't see why you would want to see the folders identified as such - though in your case the folders that you are looking at would be the categories of the movies (that's the genre).
    I may have misunderstood this, but I get the impression that @enchant has arranged his files in a way similar to me, namely, he decides the structure of the folder tree in which the files are stored in the "Videos" section of MP. So it would be useful to have an indication of which items in a list are folders, and which are video files.

    I was looking at some Amped files yesterday, and the tags that control the appearance of the small icon on each line in a list are:

    <itemWidth> -- Specifies the width of the icon.
    <itemHeight> -- Specifies the height of the icon.
    <IconXOff> -- Specifies the X offset of the icon from a reference point on the line.
    <IconYOff> -- Specifies the Y offset of the icon from the reference point.

    Note that:
    (1) The tag names are case sensitive.
    (2) The control in which they are used is "listcontrol".
    (3) The defaults for each control are defined in "references.xml" (but the defaults can be overridden when the control is actually used in the xml file for the panel).
    (4) For the list form of the "Videos" panel, I think that the relevant file is "common.facade.video.xml" and/or "common.facade.video.Title.xml".

    I would suggest simply adding these tags to the relevant listcontrol, and looking at the outcome. Almost certainly other values will need adjusting to avoid different parts of the panel overlaying each other.

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    enchant

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    I may have misunderstood this, but I get the impression that @enchant has arranged his files in a way similar to me, namely, he decides the structure of the folder tree in which the files are stored in the "Videos" section of MP. So it would be useful to have an indication of which items in a list are folders, and which are video files.

    That's exactly right. I don't need an indication to tell me what genre a show is. I know completely what a show is about and what type it is before I ever start downloading it and don't need an icon of a spaceship to tell me that Altered Carbon is science fiction.

    More often than not, it's easy to determine if file is a video or a directory.
    Game of Thrones <-- this is a directory
    Game of Thrones S05E03 WEBDL-1080p <-- this is a video file

    In the primary directory where my HTPC looks for videos, I divide them into four directories
    pat
    sue
    drama
    comedy

    Pat and Sue are directories specific to me and my wife for shows that I like and she doesn't, and vice versa.
    drama and comedy could just as easily have been named "hour" and "half hour". For the most part, we're watching dramas. Sometimes we don't have time to watch a full hour, or perhaps we just watched an especially disturbing drama and need something fun, so we go to comedy.

    Within each of those folders are either subfolders of an entire season that I grabbed, OR individual shows that show up as they air weekly. We tend to first look at that list of weekly shows to watch first, so we want to be able to quickly skip down under the list of folders to the individual video files. This is where having folder icons next to the directories would be convenient.

    CyberSimian, thanks for the research you did to get me that information. That gets me closer to what I'm trying to achieve. I find the structure of the skins files a bit daunting. I'm not sure what is there for me to change and what might be hardcoded in the MP program itself. I some skins, I can see that the image file I'm looking at is defaultFolder.png (or something), but although I can see it on the screen, I can't find it listed in any of the xml files. I'll see entries such as this:

    <textcontent1>#selecteditem</textcontent1>

    Regular html experience tells me that #selecteditem should be defined somewhere, like a css file, but I don't see that definition anywhere. That must happen on the fly within the program itself.

    But this gives me someplace to experiment and I thank you for that.
     

    CyberSimian

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    I find the structure of the skins files a bit daunting.
    Yes, it is. :( But it is much easier if you have a working skin to start from. Then you can make small changes and see what effect those changes produce. That is how I started, by making changes to the "DefaultWide" skin to make it more to my liking. :)

    I can see that the image file I'm looking at is defaultFolder.png
    The skin engine provides defaults in certain places. If the situation requires an icon, and the skin author has not specified one, the skin engine uses a default icon with a specific name stored in the "Media" folder. If you want a different default icon, you simply replace that icon in the "Media" folder.

    experience tells me that #selecteditem should be defined somewhere
    The skin engine provides built-in skin variables for various things. The built-in skin variable "#selecteditem" is the name of the list item that has the focus, and so varies as you use the UP and DOWN keys to move the focus up and down the list. Hence you won't find an explicit definition for it in any of the xml files.

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    SpudR

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    It never fails to amaze me the ways that MP is used outside my own setup! :)
    I'll bow out here @CyberSimian seems to have a better grasp of the immediate problem, though it still sounds to me that the filing system is the main issue...

    Good luck! (y)
     

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