I give up. Help with different video catagories please

[oakoen]

Ok...I give up, been looking at this for a while now and need help. I have a ton of video files in my library and I would like to sort them. I have seen the skins with "family movies" and "Adult movies" buttons so I know its possible. I just can't seem to find out how. I want to sort them into adult, family and TV. How do I do this??? My hair is already falling out to fast to pulling at it!

Thanks for any help

John

[Marbles_00]

I use Ant Movie Catalog (AMC) and the XAnt plugin. In AMC, I create two catalogs. One is childrenmovies, the other is rratedmovies. I define these two catalogs in the XAnt.ini file, so when Xlobby starts, or if I do a movie database rebuild, it will create/update two seperate databases.

Now to switch between the databases, there's a category command called "show database" (sorry running off memory right now). So I create two events. The one event will have this command and in the argument field I will define the children database. Then a second event using this command with the argument to show the adult movies.

Then to complete all this, I use the events in a toggle effect and tied to one button. So a press of the button will swith the database shown on screen.

If you want, download my AppleTV_modified skin, and look at the movie screen, down in the bottom right corner is a toggle button where you can see how it is all done.

The key is that you have to define the two databases to create (either via AMC or DVDProfiler).

Hope this helps.

[BaddaBing]

Marbles did it one way, I did it another:

Create two directories; one for family freindly movies and one for mature. Place the appropriate movies in each directory. The directories can be on a single drive or multpile drives. I have a 6 TB media server so size is not an issue because XL can point at multiple sources per category database.

Import the family movies - then rename the DB movies family

Import the mature movies - then rename the DB movies adult

Each category then has its own display screens

The advantage to this approach is it allows you to easily password protect the adult movies

[billberet]

i did it the easy way

i only have 1 movie section and 1 video section
my friends don't like having to go thru all the movie types to view different movies, they want it in one section.
then i use Genre to filter (action, anime, cartoon, drama, etc)
So all my dvd movies go under movies, and all my tv shows and episode lists go under video's (all non video_t files)

[Marbles_00]

Yeah, didn't think if you wanted it password protected or not. If you do, then Baddabing's way is the way to go. If it doesn't matter, here is my .xml code for creating a toggle effect:

Code: Select all

  <event>
  <name>toggle_adult</name>
  <commands>
  <command>
  <type>category</type>
  <execute>set database</execute>
  <parameter>movies</parameter>
  <parameter>rratedmovies</parameter>
  <parameter />
  <parameter />
  <parameter />
  </command>
  <command>
  <type>xlobby</type>
  <execute>button set text</execute>
  <parameter>toggle_movie</parameter>
  <parameter>Adult</parameter>
  </command>
  <command>
  <type>xlobby</type>
  <execute>button state set</execute>
  <parameter>toggle_movie</parameter>
  <parameter>children</parameter>
  </command>
  </commands>
  </event>
  <event>
  <name>toggle_children</name>
  <commands>
  <command>
  <type>category</type>
  <execute>set database</execute>
  <parameter>movies</parameter>
  <parameter>childrenmovies</parameter>
  <parameter />
  <parameter />
  <parameter />
  </command>
  <command>
  <type>xlobby</type>
  <execute>button set text</execute>
  <parameter>toggle_movie</parameter>
  <parameter>Children</parameter>
  </command>
  <command>
  <type>xlobby</type>
  <execute>button state set</execute>
  <parameter>toggle_movie</parameter>
  <parameter>recordedtv</parameter>
  </command>
  </commands>
  </event>


Copy and paste this code into your "skins"/eventgroups/movies.xml file (or whatever your movies xml file is called). Place it just before the final </events> variable. Notice it is events, and not just event...otherwise you'd be placing it within another event...and it won't work out too well .

Then follow Rika's instruction on creating a toggle button here:
viewtopic.php?p=32891#32891

Have fun

[WannaTheater]

Perhaps an even easier way to do this:
1) Use SINGLE Ant db for all movies (G, PG, PG-13, R), which can be tagged inside of Ant (Perhaps Mature and Family)
2) Use xAnt.ini to "split" the single Ant db into 2 (or more) xlobby .xml database files based on Ant field
3) in skin, assign appropriate xlobby database to single "movie" category after appropriate "category" has been selected by perhaps a button push

This does not require separate sets of screens for each xLobby category, just 1 set for "movie." The key here is that the movie category will do runtime switching of the underlying xLobby database .xml files.

A second Ant database could be created for any movies that you want password protected!

[scottw]

Perhaps an even easier way to do this:
1) Use SINGLE Ant db for all movies (G, PG, PG-13, R), which can be tagged inside of Ant (Perhaps Mature and Family)
2) Use xAnt.ini to "split" the single Ant db into 2 (or more) xlobby .xml database files based on Ant field
3) in skin, assign appropriate xlobby database to single "movie" category after appropriate "category" has been selected by perhaps a button push

This does not require separate sets of screens for each xLobby category, just 1 set for "movie." The key here is that the movie category will do runtime switching of the underlying xLobby database .xml files.

A second Ant database could be created for any movies that you want password protected!

I have mine setup like billberet now but I am interested in WannaTheater's method though. I posted in my other thread asking you for your INI just a few minutes ago. I can't visualize how to setup the INI based on different fields. Sounds like this will make things run smoother on my end
No trying to crosspost but just wanted to give my input on this thread as well