Views - Genre limitation? (1 Viewer)

[ScoopD]

Hi all, I looked around and couldn't find anyone with this issue, but I can't imagine it is unique to me.

I'll start by saying how much I love this plugin. I was just using the default MP Videos feature, which got me there but with no prettiness. Now I am in love.

I am running the 0.2.3.0 stable release of MP and the stable 1.2.9.34660 version of MP-TVSeries. Using the Xface Skin.

In the Genre view there is no "Science-Fiction" genre listed. Any series that has "Science-Fiction" as the only listed genre does not appear in any of the genre listings. I have to fall back to the All view which is too cumbersome with the number of series I have (about 120). I have mucked around with the SQLite Database Browser to try and build my own views, but I don't know how to correctly reference the values so I end up just screwing up the plugin and I get an error when I try to launch the configuration through the MP Config Plugin page or use the plugin in MP.

So I am hoping someone out there can help me to build the expression correctly? I have a couple of thoughts.

1) I have my media arranged into folders of my own Genre on NAS devices and these folders are the "ImportPaths" This should be able to be referenced through a view expression using something like <ImportPaths.Path> but I don't know how to build the whole expression.

2) a simple All view broken down into A-E, F-J, K-O, P-T, U-Z to be able to jump quicker to the desired section. There will be a lot beginning with "The" so it would be great to build a "If Title begins with The, then look at next word" type of logic.

3) Copy and fiddle with the existing Genre view and create a view for each of my own preferred Genres. I am thinking that I should be able to insert a qualifier after the <Series.Genre> reference, but I don't know how to do a "Value contains" rather than an "=" as that would only pick up those series that only have exactly whatever I put after the equals.

Any thoughts.

Thanks in advance

***** UPDATE ******

Hmmmm Kind of figured out the problem and found a silly arbitrary limitation in the Genre view.

The standard expression is -

group:<Series.Genre><;><;><;>15<nextStep>series<;><;><Series.Pretty_Name>;asc<;><nextStep>season<;><;><Season.seasonIndex>;asc<;><nextStep>episode<;><;><Episode.EpisodeIndex>;asc<;>

I wondered what the 15 was for so I changed it to 30 just to see and voile - I could see another 7 or 8 genres. I just had too many genres in my series. Annoying that some genres have only one series and that series has about 5 genres

Why bother putting a limit on this expression at all?

I'd still like a bit more info to build my own views.

 

[Inker]

1) I have my media arranged into folders of my own Genre on NAS devices and these folders are the "ImportPaths" This should be able to be referenced through a view expression using something like <ImportPaths.Path> but I don't know how to build the whole expression.

Yeah, that won't work. You can only use Series/Season/Episode fields for views.

2) a simple All view broken down into A-E, F-J, K-O, P-T, U-Z to be able to jump quicker to the desired section. There will be a lot beginning with "The" so it would be great to build a "If Title begins with The, then look at next word" type of logic.

Breaking by letter won't work. "The" series can be rearanged (but only if you import in english) by changing the sorting of the views to reference sortname instead of prettyname in the db.

3) Copy and fiddle with the existing Genre view and create a view for each of my own preferred Genres. I am thinking that I should be able to insert a qualifier after the <Series.Genre> reference, but I don't know how to do a "Value contains" rather than an "=" as that would only pick up those series that only have exactly whatever I put after the equals.

What you are looking for is the SQL like operator, which indeed is not supported for views at the moment. It would be rather trivial to implement, but I don't really understand what you aim to do. Why not make use of the Favourites feature instead and all your series there (or create a view that groups your fav. series by genre)?

I wondered what the 15 was for so I changed it to 30 just to see and voile - I could see another 7 or 8 genres. I just had too many genres in my series. Annoying that some genres have only one series and that series has about 5 genres

Why bother putting a limit on this expression at all?

Your right, there should be no limit there. Probably very few people get to have more than 15 unique genres, thats why nobody noticed this before, but it should be changed.

Hope this helps.
Inker

 

[ScoopD]

Thanks for the help Inker.

What I was trying to do with the Path operator was use the "Genres" I had already personally defined in my folder structure, rather than the ones on the TVDB. Each series would only appear once rather than in multiple places and series that I wanted to keep together for unusual reasons could be kept together. e.g. I have a folder called "British TV" which has a collection of different shows in it that are only related by the fact that they are all British, but a Program like Doctor Who definitely goes in the Sci-Fi folder. It makes sense to me, but I would not force that on others by adding genres onto the TVDB as it is a little silly.

I did note a strange thing though. Anything that is listed in genre "Science-Fiction" is also listed in "Science" even though only a couple of shows have the actual genre of "Science." It seems the logic for separating multiple genres needs a little tweek?