Can we make an XBMC tips and tweaks sticky?

120_Minutes · 24-06-2008 11:00pm #1

Just throwing the idea out there for XBMC noobs like myself, i dont want to post in the modding thread as its already so big. it could help people like myself who are having a few probs....

if approved i'll start it off:

I obtained XBMC to stream all my media stored on a desktop in an upstairs office. i have yet to see a concise collection of tips for the more casual user (ie tech savvy but not a developer) i visited the developers forum but they're speaking a different language to me!

heres my list of problems:

1. youtube?? its supposed to work but for the life of me i got nada. i hear its a problem with scripts, but scripts are new to me and i dont yet fully understand them.

2. caching: this started about a week after the mod, all files used to play now they stall after a minute, if they play at all. now i get caching status bars and hangs! i suspect it could be my wireless network, but on other forums wired users are having similar problems.

3. weather. simply. will. not. work.

4. scraping (is that the term) thumbnails...and not getting any, for very obvious titles.

apart from all that i love the concept of XBMC and would like other users tips and advise...what else can it do (apart from emulators..i aint gonna ask for no roms

) what do you use it for? and how do you do it? basically anything you think that makes xbmc that bit cooler (and links we're allowed post)

mods feel free to edit/merge/delete as you wish.

NotMe · 24-06-2008 11:14pm

Make sure you have a recent version of XBMC. I installed it recently from Slayers cd and the weather wasn't working, neither was the youtube script and a bunch of others. Updating to the latest sorted it out.

Online manual is here aswell.

ongarite · 25-06-2008 7:37am

OK I'll bite,

XBMC is a fantastic application but to use it to its full potential you have to use the library functions for music and video.
The XBMC Library indexes all your music and video into a SQL database ideally along with associated id3tags, album art & video thumbnails, plot and character biographies.

This relies on you the user having a certain respect for the layout of your NAS, PC's music & video. If you are a messy user with files scattered everywhere, it'll never work correctly.

Ideally the structure should be as follows:

My Music --Radiohead -- The Bends
-- OK Computer
-- In Rainbows
In each album folder you should have folder.jpg which is the album art for each album and each song tagged correctly.

Then you go to the "Music" section in XBMC and create a shortcut to the "My Music" on your NAS, PC. Then press "white" button on your controller and choose "Scan Item to Database". When the indexing is complete, select "Library" on the left hand pane and then "Album" to view all artists by album.

For videos in XBMC, the naming convention and layout of the films & TV shows is critical to its correct "scraping" and inclusion in the Library.

Ideally you should have 2 higher level folders called "Films" and "TV Shows" and make a shortcut to both in XBMC.

An example of layout would be:
TV Shows -- Dexter -- Dexter.S01.E01.avi
-- Dexter.S01.E02.avi
-- House -- House.S03.E01.avi
-- House.S03.E08.avi
So to scrap the TV Shows correctly, you need to set the content of the higher level "TV Shows" to "TVDB.com". Then browse into the "TV Shows" folder in XBMC and press "info" on DVD Remote to look-up that show and scrap the plot, episode info & thumbnails.

The same convention works for "Films" also. Have consistent file-naming conventions for films as the actual file name is used for "IMDB" lookup.
Press "white" and set content to "IMDB" and then browse into the "Films" folder in XBMC and lookup info for each film.

ongarite · 25-06-2008 10:26am

120_Minutes wrote: »

heres my list of problems:

1. youtube?? its supposed to work but for the life of me i got nada. i hear its a problem with scripts, but scripts are new to me and i dont yet fully understand them.

2. caching: this started about a week after the mod, all files used to play now they stall after a minute, if they play at all. now i get caching status bars and hangs! i suspect it could be my wireless network, but on other forums wired users are having similar problems.

3. weather. simply. will. not. work.

1. Youtube scripts are a problem due to ever changing youtube website. Scrapers work be pretending to be a user logging onto the website and searching for videos. If this is changed, the script will break.

2. Wireless streaming of video is not recommended, I have tried it before and it doesn't work very well, wired CAT5 cable is the best way. Low latency, consistent connection.
With wireless, you have packet loss and inconsistent connection which will kill the video being played.
In 2 years using XBMC, I have never had issue playing video over CAT5 or heard of other with this issue. More than likely its a folder permissions issue with the other forum users.

3. Weather was fixed in the last 2 builds of XBMC from T3CH website.

120_Minutes · 25-06-2008 1:01pm

ongarite wrote: »

1. Youtube scripts are a problem due to ever changing youtube website. Scrapers work be pretending to be a user logging onto the website and searching for videos. If this is changed, the script will break.

2. Wireless streaming of video is not recommended, I have tried it before and it doesn't work very well, wired CAT5 cable is the best way. Low latency, consistent connection.
With wireless, you have packet loss and inconsistent connection which will kill the video being played.
In 2 years using XBMC, I have never had issue playing video over CAT5 or heard of other with this issue. More than likely its a folder permissions issue with the other forum users.

3. Weather was fixed in the last 2 builds of XBMC from T3CH website.

see this is what i'm talking about, simple easily understood advice, thanks a million, will try this!

vasch_ro · 05-07-2008 9:02pm

Think an XBMC sticky is a good idea and even a simple set up guide would be great !!

witnessmenow · 05-12-2008 6:34pm

Could anyone tell me whats the import parts of the naming convention for tv shows?

does the name of the show have to be in the title? Or if its in a House folder will that cover it.

Is it the S02E05 the important part?

craze7 · 05-12-2008 8:03pm

If your really desprate for youtube videos, get the latest version of xdsl 0.7 i think. FTP it to your xbox harddrive run it as a program from xbmc and browse the web with firefox.

XDSL shines in 720p!!!!!

ongarite · 05-12-2008 8:30pm

witnessmenow wrote: »

Could anyone tell me whats the import parts of the naming convention for tv shows?

does the name of the show have to be in the title? Or if its in a House folder will that cover it.

Is it the S02E05 the important part?

The S02E05 is the CRITICAL part of video scraping. The name doesn't have to be in the title aslong as it in a folder with the TV Show name.

Kinetic^ · 05-12-2008 11:05pm

Would you like to me to sticky this or the other Xbmc thread?

ongarite · 05-12-2008 11:29pm

This one would be OK? I'll post more tips and how to use stuff in it then.

witnessmenow · 06-12-2008 12:28am

I'd go with this one too, The signal to noise ratio of the other thread wouldn't be the best

Kinetic^ · 08-12-2008 11:30pm

Stuckified.

Black_Knight · 18-12-2008 3:41pm

ongarite wrote: »

TV Shows -- Dexter -- Dexter.S01.E01.avi
-- Dexter.S01.E02.avi
-- House -- House.S03.E01.avi
-- House.S03.E08.avi

So having:
TV Shows -- Dexter -- Season 1 -- Dexter.S01.E01.avi
-- Dexter.S01.E02.avi
.
.
.
-- Season 2 -- Dexter.S02.E01.avi
.
.
.

Thats not gonna give me any joy is it? ie. There shouldnt be a folder called "Tv Shows\Dexter\Season #"

Also, can episodes be named 101.<episode_name> instead of S01.E01.<episode_name> and have the same results?

The Muppet · 30-12-2008 10:02pm

Black_Knight wrote: »

So having:
TV Shows -- Dexter -- Season 1 -- Dexter.S01.E01.avi
-- Dexter.S01.E02.avi
.
.
.
-- Season 2 -- Dexter.S02.E01.avi
.
.
.

Thats not gonna give me any joy is it? ie. There shouldnt be a folder called "Tv Shows\Dexter\Season #"

Also, can episodes be named 101.<episode_name> instead of S01.E01.<episode_name> and have the same results?

Yes there should be a season 2 folder. In PC terms Tv Shows would be the root folder for all tv shows, dexter would be a sub folder of that and then in the dexter folder there shoud be a folder for each season, season 1 , season 2 etc.

You can use any naming convention you want by editing the advancesettings but for the beginner it may be best to use one of the default conventions as illustrated by ongarite above.

Dexter seaon 1 episode one could be named Dexter.s01e01.avi
Dexter season 1 episode two could be called Dexter.s01e02.avi

All dexter season one files would be in the folder tvshows\dexter\season 1

Dexter season 2 episode 4 would be named dexter.s02e04 and would be in the folder

tvshows\dexter\season 4

bazwaldo · 28-01-2009 9:36am

Anyone use it windows media center dvr-ms files? The filenames are something like showname-channel-date-time.dvr-ms. I used xbmc for the first time last night (and am well impressed) and scrapping my recorded tv folder didn't give me anything. Is there a way to get this to work?

120_Minutes · 28-01-2009 2:18pm

i dont know if it'll work for everyone, but i use an handy little program called epnamer. it scans your selected directory, checks an online database, and renames all your files. theres a little setting up involved but its worked great for me.

what hasnt worked great is xbmc library mode. sometimes it just wont play a file, forcing me to go to the files menu to play it and sometimes the library disappears altogether. i'm gonna update to the latest build, but was wondering if anyone else has the same problem?

tdow · 06-02-2009 3:19pm

Anybody know how to make dvdplayer the default player? Even better, is it possible to file associate the players? I have a few mp4 files that mplayer won't play but dvdplayer has no problem with.

Thanks

ongarite · 06-02-2009 4:51pm

tdow wrote: »

Anybody know how to make dvdplayer the default player? Even better, is it possible to file associate the players? I have a few mp4 files that mplayer won't play but dvdplayer has no problem with.

Thanks

You need to create a file called advancedsettings.xml in your UserData folder and in this file you put the following to make DVDPlayer the default video player.

<advancedsettings>
<video>
<defaultplayer>dvdplayer</defaultplayer>
</video>
</advancedsettings>

Black_Knight · 18-03-2009 12:45am

Is anyone else having problems with Apple movie trailers? I went to have a look at some today and it downloads the info for 30 new trailers into the "newest" section, though only 2 show up. Ive not any filtering done to limit the movies displayed or anything. It even says 2/30 movies. Im on the latest dash, and ive tried what I consider, everything.

Also, whats the story with xbmcscripts.com Its been down for yonks! Is there a replacement site, or somewhere else I can get scripts?

Cheers

Sneakee · 18-11-2009 4:36pm

I'm really getting into the swing of the XBOX version of XBMC, it really is a genuis piece of work.
I had so much trouble with it at the start. I was trying to stream the internet wirelessly to my xbox. Wouldn't work,it was connected and just would not recieve anything...but I figured it out, it was simply that I entered the WEP key wrong into the original XBOX dashboard ....so simple yet easily forgotten...months of fustration and bang...gone.
I've updated it and figured that the plugins and scripts go into the Q Drive...the area where the active copy of XBMC is running on the Xbox instead of the backup in the C drive..Another week or 2 of this fustration and simply copying the scripts and plugins to the wrong area and was easily solved.

Now, I have it scraping and working away on TV shows and movies, 750gb in the Xbox. Streaming Video, music. Using Navi-X 3.0 (YOUTUBE works in this script) and XBMCzone installer and now trying to fix the subtitles option Opensubtitles_OSD script 1.41 for my movies for my foriegn girlfriend. The subtitles would be a great benefit.
The Apple movies trailers stopped working for me as well...just won't play..."too many consecative playlists" type error comes up.
Just wondering am I better to stick to Project Mayhem 3 or use the PM3.HD for my Xbox,I have the AV pack and connected to my HD TV.
Tried PM3.HD on my Xbox and works fine, just the weather icons disappear when I enter the 3 day weather screen. The icon appears in the home page. Can you still work the programmes by adding sources to them in what screen?
I can't get my head around Mediastream, the screens look gorgeous but the set up is fustrating!!
Is PM3.HD and Mediastream just for the PC brigades??

Can we make an XBMC tips and tweaks sticky?

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