Editing Views

[Julianus]

I am trying to create a view that is organized by directories. For now none of my experiments worked.
I have the following import directories:
f:/MyMovies
f:/TV

What I would like is to have a view organized by directories for all files in f:/TV/Tech

I tried this:

<view name="test.tech.path" label="0: Tech Movies Test" flat="false">
	<option name="root" value="/TV/Tech/" />
	<tag value="video"/>
	<tag value="default"/>
	<source name="sagefilesystem">
		<option name="content" value="VideosByFolder"/>
	</source>
	<filter by="filepath" value=".*Tech.*">
		<option name="scope" value="include" />
		<option name="use-regex-matching" value="true" />
	</filter>
	<presentation>
		<sort by="title">
			<option name="folders-first" value="true"/>
		</sort>
	</presentation>
</view>

Can you guys tell me what I am doing wrong?

Thanks

[OneOfMany]

Wrems helped me with this one.

I have the folder \\homeserver\Videos as an import directory

I wanted a view to display only \\homeserver\Videos\Cartoons . All my cartoons are in sub-directories.

Upon opening, it displays:

Betty Boop
Bosko
...

Filename for VFS is \userdata\vfs\GR_VFS.xml
---------------------

<!DOCTYPE vfs SYSTEM "vfs.dtd">

<vfs>
<views>
		<view name="GR_Cartoons" label="GRCartoons" flat="false">
		<option name="root" value="/Cartoons/"/>
		<option name="children-only" value="true"/>
		<description>Display Cartoons Only</description>
		<tag value="video"/>
		<view-source name="phoenix.view.default.videofolders"/>
		<presentation>
			<sort by="title">
				<option name="folders-first" value="true"/>
                        </sort>
		</presentation>
		</view>
</views>
</vfs>

------------------------
My menu file at this time puts it on the Video menu
Filename for Menu is \userdata\Menus\GR_Menus.xml
------------------------

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE menus SYSTEM "menus.dtd">
<menus>
      
	<fragment parentMenu="phoenix.menu.lz.videos" insertBefore="phoenix.menu.lz.videos.blueraydefaultbrowser">
            <menuItem name="GR_Menus" label="Cartoons" visible="true">
                  <description>Cartoon Shorts</description>
                  <eval>AddGlobalContext("DefaultView","GR_Cartoons")</eval>
                		<screen name="Phoenix Universal Media Browser" />
            </menuItem>
	
      	</fragment>
</menus>

[Julianus]

Thanks, this worked.

[JonTom]

I finally have got my imported video views working, thanks to everyone who has posted code in here (especially Wrems and OneOfMany) for that. They're done purely based on folder structure as all imported videos are well organized that was already.

Now I'm looking at TV views... This means metadata filtering I believe? I'd like to set up the following views:
Son TV
Dad TV
Mom TV
Parent TV (combine Dad and Mom, or alternatively, exclude Son)
(All TV exists already, obviously)

I have a lot of existing TV (recorded and imported) that I need to address metadata on, and a lot of Series/Favourites that are adding to it all the time. How do I edit the existing metadata in the most efficient way, and how do I automate that for new recordings (do I use the Sage "User Categories"?)

I doing all my testing/setup on my client PC, and once I get things working (to maintain WAF) I'll move it all to my HTPC in the living room. Does the client get all the metadata from the server HTPC? I'm not super-clear on how BMT works but I'm playing with it all the time... I don't want to spend a bunch of time editing metadata on the client only to find I have to do it again on the HTPC if I can avoid it.

[JonTom]

Well, I think I got most everything working, except for automatically tagging recordings. The only way I can see to do that is with User Categories, which I don't see any way to enable.

Ratings and Genres do not seem to be correct for me so I cannot use these to filter by without manually setting them first, which I want to avoid.

[OneOfMany]

Originally Posted by JonTom

I doing all my testing/setup on my client PC, and once I get things working (to maintain WAF) I'll move it all to my HTPC in the living room. Does the client get all the metadata from the server HTPC? .

All metadata is server side. All fanart can be as well. All Clients will see and use it correctly. I did find that Phoenix menus and views were set on individual clients.

Grant

[wrems]

JonTom, I have a setup similar to yours and thought I would share what I’ve done. There are probably other/better ways of doing this, but this works for me. I’m open if other’s have a preferred/other method of achieving customized break downs of shows. This is just the only way I’ve thought of how to do this.

I only have 3 separations:

- All Shows - Everything except what’s in the kid’s view. I do it alphabetic by show name because this serves as more of a repository for everything archived, currently recording etc.
- Kid’s Shows - Just kid’s shows
- Unwatched Shows - A set of filters I use to only show the shows that are unwatched from the All Shows view. The all shows view is too cumbersome by itself, because it’s the complete library of all the shows on my server, sorted alphabetically. The unwatched shows view really serves as the bookmarks for all our series and brings the newest to the top and only shows the episodes that haven’t been watched, we use this view mostly to find TV to watch.

For All Shows. I exclude the Kids Shows. That way if I add a series it’s automatically there. I don’t have to do any manual additions.

For Kid’s Shows. I include only the kid’s shows by name. I rarely add new kid’s shows so it’s pretty consistent. If I add a series then I know I have to add the show name to the include list.

While this method works pretty good, there is a small amount of ongoing maintenance for the kids shows if/when we add new series.

Here’s a snippet of my 2 breakdowns:

<view name="wr_all_tv" label="WR TV - Adult Shows Only">
  <description>Display all shows without kids shows</description>
  <view-source name="wr_basic_tv" >
    <filter by="pql">
      <option name="value">
        <![CDATA[
          Title = "The Backyardigans" or
          Title = "Caillou" or
          Title = "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!" or
          Title = "Clifford the Big Red Dog" or
          Title = "Curious George"   
          ]]></option>
        <option name="scope" value="exclude"/>
      </filter>
    </view-source>
    <presentation level="1">
      <group by="show"/>
      <sort by="title">
        <option name="ignore-all" value="true"/>
      </sort>
    </presentation>
    <presentation level="2">
      <sort by="seasonepisode">
        <option name="sort-order" value="asc"/>
      </sort>
    </presentation>
  </view>
  <view name="wr_kids_tv" label="WR TV - Kid's Only">
    <description>Display Kid's Shows Only</description>
    <view-source name="wr_basic_tv" >
      <filter by="pql">
        <option name="value">
          <![CDATA[
            Title = "The Backyardigans" or
            Title = "Caillou" or
            Title = "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!" or
            Title = "Clifford the Big Red Dog" or
            Title = "Curious George"
            ]]></option>
          <option name="scope" value="include"/>
        </filter>
      </view-source>
      <presentation level="1">
        <group by="show"/>
        <sort by="title">
          <option name="ignore-all" value="true"/>
        </sort>
      </presentation>
      <presentation level="2">
        <sort by="seasonepisode">
          <option name="sort-order" value="asc"/>
        </sort>
      </presentation>
    </view>

You could set up each of your splits with an include specific name but that could be a bit of on going maintenance down the line as you add new shows. Currently, I don’t believe there’s a way to automatically set genre/category information to a custom value on import with BMT. Otherwise, that would be a better alternative and eliminate the manual intervention. Hint/Hint Sean. So no matter what, I think if you want to split out shows you’re stuck with some sort of manual futzing. If you only add a show here and there my method by name could work out well. You would just have to remember that the show will be invisible to your breakdown until you manually add it to the include list. That’s why if you go this route you should also have one vfs that collects everything regardless of the naming. So you can at least find the shows somewhere unil you add the name to your custom vfs.

[JonTom]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Judging from that code, it seems it should be possible to set up a way to add a functionality I would like - the ability to add a show title to a Landing Zone menu item called SHORTCUTS. The way I picture it working would be to have a menu item on the advanced options screen for a show that would add/remove the corresponding title (not episode) from a list of shows that I want quick access to - I usually watch entire seasons of shows in order, and it would be great to be able to easily add these shows/seasons to the landing zone.

[JonTom]

Hmm, doesn't seem to work. I changed your code to add to the list, and to change the presentation, but I get nothing populating the view, which I don't think is a result of those changes. I'm using my "recordedTV" view as the source for these filtered views, is that what the issue is?

		<view name="JW_RecordedTV" label="TV-Recorded" flat="true">
			<tag value="tv" />
			<tag value="default"/>
			<view-source name="phoenix.view.primary.recordedtvarchived"/>			
			<view-source name="phoenix.view.primary.recordedtv"/>
			
			<presentation level="1">
				<group by="show">
					<option name="prune-single-item-groups" value="false"/>
				</group>
    			<sort by="recentactivity">
					<option name="sort-order" value="desc"/>
					<option name="folders-first" value="false"/>
				</sort>
			</presentation>		
			
			<presentation level="2">
				<sort by="originalairdate" />
			</presentation>
		</view>

EDIT: tried "phoenix.view.primary.recordedtv" as the view-source, no change. Any ideas? Complete vfs below.

		<view name="JW_RecordedTVNicholas" label="TV-Recorded (Nicholas)">
		  <description>Display Only Nicholas's Shows</description>
		  <view-source name="phoenix.view.primary.recordedtv" >
		    <filter by="pql">
		      <option name="value">
		        <![CDATA[
		          Title = "The Backyardigans" or
		          Title = "Caillou" or
        		  Title = "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!" or
		          Title = "Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs" or
		          Title = "Ni Hao, Kai-lan" or
		          Title = "Sesame Street" or
		          Title = "Transformers Prime" or
		          Title = "Animal Exploration With Jarod Miller" or
		          Title = "Bob the Builder" or
		          Title = "Thomas & Friends" or
		          Title = "Rolie Polie Olie" or
		          Title = "The Super Hero Squad Show" or
		          Title = "Dinosaur Train" or
		          Title = "Sid the Science Kid" or
		          Title = "Four Square" or
		          Title = "The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!" or
		          Title = "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!" or
		          Title = "Handy Manny" or
		          Title = "Curious George"   
        		  ]]>
		        </option>
        		<option name="scope" value="include"/>
		      </filter>
		    </view-source>
			<presentation level="1">
				<group by="show">
					<option name="prune-single-item-groups" value="false"/>
				</group>
    			<sort by="recentactivity">
					<option name="sort-order" value="desc"/>
					<option name="folders-first" value="false"/>
				</sort>
			</presentation>		
			
			<presentation level="2">
				<sort by="originalairdate" />
			</presentation>
		</view>

[wrems]

Try changing this part of the code:

		          Title = "Curious George"   
        		  ]]>
		        </option>

To

		          Title = "Curious George"   
        		  ]]></option>

[JonTom]

that did it, thanks

[pvr599]

Hey guys,
Is there a thread or post that might help me understand this more? I really want to learn how to create my own views, but really don't know where to begin.
Thanks,
Dana

[bialio]

The first post in this thread is the best explanation there is.
btl.

[HokiePerogi]

The following view is no longer working for me with the latest release of Phoenix:

		<view name="dp_special_interest_imports2" label="DP Special Interest Videos2" flat="false" visible="true">
			<option name="root" value="/Other/" />
			<option name="children-only" value="true" />
			<description>Grab special interest content from the combined import paths</description>
			<tag value="video" />
		    <view-source name="phoenix.view.source.allimportedvideo" />
		</view>

My SageTV video import directory is: M:\Videos representing a mapped network drive on my SageTV server. I'm trying to have this view show all the imported videos from the M:\Videos\Other.

I'm 90% sure this view was working before, but for some reason no longer does. Any suggestions?


As a side note, I can no longer edit vfs and menus from BMT. I get a null error message when trying to save any changes to an existing file. This may be the wrong place to ask about this, but thought I'd throw it in as well.

Thanks for the help.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by HokiePerogi

The following view is no longer working for me with the latest release of Phoenix:

		<view name="dp_special_interest_imports2" label="DP Special Interest Videos2" flat="false" visible="true">
			<option name="root" value="/Other/" />
			<option name="children-only" value="true" />
			<description>Grab special interest content from the combined import paths</description>
			<tag value="video" />
		    <view-source name="phoenix.view.source.allimportedvideo" />
		</view>

My SageTV video import directory is: M:\Videos representing a mapped network drive on my SageTV server. I'm trying to have this view show all the imported videos from the M:\Videos\Other.

I'm 90% sure this view was working before, but for some reason no longer does. Any suggestions?


As a side note, I can no longer edit vfs and menus from BMT. I get a null error message when trying to save any changes to an existing file. This may be the wrong place to ask about this, but thought I'd throw it in as well.

Thanks for the help.

I'll check the bmt issue later (when I'm at home), but did you check to see if the phoenix.view.source.allimportedvideo source exists in the x-vfs.xml file? The latest release got rid of the legacy vfs.xml and not there is only x-vfs.xml.

[HokiePerogi]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'll check the bmt issue later (when I'm at home), but did you check to see if the phoenix.view.source.allimportedvideo source exists in the x-vfs.xml file? The latest release got rid of the legacy vfs.xml and not there is only x-vfs.xml.

I did a quick double check and yes, it is in the x-vfs.xml file.

When I look at the view using BMT or via the Phoenix UI, it appears to be ignoring the:

<option name="root" value="/Other/" />

Instead, it displays all the videos in M:/Videos/ and its subdirectories.

[stuckless]

It may be that the vfs engine is a little picky on the root option. Try removing the trailing slash on the "/Other/" value.

[HokiePerogi]

Originally Posted by stuckless

It may be that the vfs engine is a little picky on the root option. Try removing the trailing slash on the "/Other/" value.

I tried to make this change via BMT. But the changes won't save. The exact error message I receive when clicking the save button is:

"Failed to save file. Message was Failed to save: null"

So I went into the userdata/Phoenix/vfs folder on my server and made the change by hand. I then went into BMT and selected "Refresh Configurations". Next I checked the view, but it was still showing all the video imports instead of the onces in the "/Other" root. Just to double check the change took affect, I opened up my custom vfs file using BMT. Low and behold, the the trailing slash was still there.

I think I need to restart the SageTV service to test this change due to the BMT xml editor issue I'm currently having at the same time. Unfortunately the wife is watching TV right now. I'll report back once I get a chance to restart and test the change to my custom vfs which now has the trailing slash removed.



****UPDATED*****
I was able to restart the SageTV process. However, removing the trailing slash had no effect. I still saw all of the import videos, including those outside of the "/Other" root. While the process was stopped, I also deleted the tmp folder from the userdata folder. The tmp folder seemed to have some vfs files in it from when I was trying to do the editing using BMT. I was hoping that by deleting this tmp folder, editing within BMT would work once again. Alas, it does not though. I'm still stuck with both issues.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by HokiePerogi

I tried to make this change via BMT. But the changes won't save. The exact error message I receive when clicking the save button is:

"Failed to save file. Message was Failed to save: null"

So I went into the userdata/Phoenix/vfs folder on my server and made the change by hand. I then went into BMT and selected "Refresh Configurations". Next I checked the view, but it was still showing all the video imports instead of the onces in the "/Other" root. Just to double check the change took affect, I opened up my custom vfs file using BMT. Low and behold, the the trailing slash was still there.

I think I need to restart the SageTV service to test this change due to the BMT xml editor issue I'm currently having at the same time. Unfortunately the wife is watching TV right now. I'll report back once I get a chance to restart and test the change to my custom vfs which now has the trailing slash removed.



****UPDATED*****
I was able to restart the SageTV process. However, removing the trailing slash had no effect. I still saw all of the import videos, including those outside of the "/Other" root. While the process was stopped, I also deleted the tmp folder from the userdata folder. The tmp folder seemed to have some vfs files in it from when I was trying to do the editing using BMT. I was hoping that by deleting this tmp folder, editing within BMT would work once again. Alas, it does not though. I'm still stuck with both issues.

So to confirm... your view has an "Other" sub folder in the view? but when you load the view, you see all the "Other" folder plus a bunch of other files/folders?

[HokiePerogi]

Originally Posted by stuckless

So to confirm... your view has an "Other" sub folder in the view? but when you load the view, you see all the "Other" folder plus a bunch of other files/folders?

Yes, I think we are on the same page. But just in case:


My SageTV import directories are: P:\Videos and \\PEROGINAS\media\Videos

Both of these paths have the file structure of:

...\Videos\
   Home Videos
   Movies
      3D Movies
         ...
         ...
      Adult Movies
         ...
         ...
      Bluray Movies
         ...
         ...
      DVD
         ...
         ...
   Other
      Exercise
         ...
         ...
      Photography
         ...
   TV
         ...
         ...

I am basing my view off of the "phoenix.view.source.allimportedvideo" which includes the entire folder structure above. However, I want this view only to show titles within the "Other" sub-folder and its children.

The current behavior from the code snippet I provided is that ALL titles are being shown from the entire hierarchy. It seems that the "root" vfs option is being ignored or not being specified properly.

To put it more simply, when I click on my new view in BMT, it displays the same titles as if I click on the "phoenix.view.source.allimportedvideo" view.