Media libraries

[lordbond 2]

I am trying to setup libraries for various users. I want to make a user called kids and I want it to be able to see the folders I have with childrens programs in them. When I add a folder to the library it never shows up.

 

 

My folder structure

Movies

            Childrens

            Disney

            Family

            Horror

            Recent

            Seasonal

 

I want to have the library point to Childrens, Disney and Family. I create the library and add the folders \\server\movies\childrens etc. Still doesn't show up. My normal library points to \\server\movies            

 

[pmac 143]

Do you have your movies in separate folders that are named by movie the movie title? The ideal folder structure is as follows:

 

..\

  \Movies\

               \Ace Ventura\   

               \Blood Diamond\

                                            ...etc

 

 

Refer to this guide for file and folder structure:

 

Media Files and Folder Structure

[Deathsquirrel 745]

Lordbond, I really recommend against trying to organize that way.  It is a pain in the behind to scale.  I speak from experience.

 

Put them in the folder structure pmac suggested and MB3 can then sort them by MPAA rating, genre, or whatever.  You can then have a kids user that is limited to a set of movies of a particular rating level and lower.  For example, my child user account is limited to movies of PG-13 and below.  For those movies that I think  are inappropriate I just pop into the metadata editor and raise the rating to R and it will no longer show up in their list.  Both accounts point to the exact same libraries but the kids account has a max rating set.

[lordbond 2]

Is there a limit on how many folders you can navigate to when setting up libraries? Maybe this needs to be put in as a feature requst

[Luke 42078]

There is no limit.

[lordbond 2]

They are setup as:

 

\\server

            \movies

                        \Childrens

                                        \movie 1

                                                     \movie.avi

                                         \movie 2

                                                      \movie.avi

                         \disney

                                    \movie 1

                                                 \movie.avi

                                     \movie 2

                                                  \movie.avi

 

...etc

[pmac 143]

Honestly @@lordbond, with the servers ability to organize your media different ways using metadata, and to set up libraries on a per-user basis, there is really no point to having all your titles organized into separate physical folders like that.

 

I have two main folders for all of my movies; "Movies" for SD titles, and "HD Movies" for HD titles, and the only reason I have them separated this way, is so I can tell which titles I need to upgrade to HD copies.

 

Having all your titles separated into genre folders, etc. will be a huge pain as your collection grows, and with MB3's customization abilities, is almost pointless. I especially wouldn't like to have to maintain that "recent" folder of yours.

[lordbond 2]

Well, The way I have it set up is far easier to me for organization then using genres. Especially when some movies are in 20 different categories. If I wanted my movies all in one folder and rely on someone else's idea of what type of movie it is I can see your point. I don't want to have to look through hundreds of movies to find things. And I am talking about through explorer, not media browser. Instead of trying to convert me to your way of thinking is there someone out there that can help me with my issue?

 

@@Luke it seems like if I try to go more then one directory level away from my share point nothing works. I can see the path in the server admin page but when I log in as the user none of the directories show up. I have found a work around by creating another share point on my NAS and in that share I put shortcuts to the folders I want the children account to see. This works although not the way I understand it is supposed to work.

 

I have individual folders for my disney and animated etc. movies so I can quickly get a list of the movies I have. If I have 2 hundred movies in the same folder and I wanted to know which ones were Disney films I would have to look at each folder to count them instead of opening up the Disney folder and seeing I have 22.

 

The "Recent' folder are movies that I have recently put on the system, not recent releases. So, that would be hard to do with a genre list. Besides, the recent folder only has shortcuts the the movie location. 

[Koleckai Silvestri 1154]

I have my library currently setup like this -

 

\\Machine\Media\Movies

 

My share point is Media.

 

Under Movies, I have:

.\Animation - Disney

.\Animation - Dreamworks

.\Movies 0 - 9

.\Movies A - E

.\Movies F - J

.\Movies K - O

.\Movies P - T

.\Movies X - Z

.\Movies - New

 

Each of these are added as a Media Library. Inside these folders are movie folders. A single movie per folder named Movie (YEAR). Inside that the media file matches the folder name. Most are MKV containers.

 

Breaking it up this way was required in order to find anything in older versions of the Roku client. Now it has Jump In on the first letter but too much of a hassle to re-organize.

 

Lordbond, if you have movies added as a Media Folder, you can't add sub-folders as additional Media Folders. Remove that. Then add Disney, Children, etc... For the ones you want in your general Media Folder for Movies, just add multiple paths to a single folder within Media Browser.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Wayne Luke

[ebr 16177]

Wayne Luke has the right answer for your situation.

 

If you want to keep you current physical structure, just change your overall "Movies" Media folder to contain all the individual folders one level down instead of the parent.

 

Then you can create whatever other media folders you want using the items at that same level in the tree.

[foghat 65]

You can then have a kids user that is limited to a set of movies of a particular rating level and lower.  For example, my child user account is limited to movies of PG-13 and below.  For those movies that I think  are inappropriate I just pop into the metadata editor and raise the rating to R and it will no longer show up in their list.  Both accounts point to the exact same libraries but the kids account has a max rating set.

 

In these cases, try setting the Custom Rating to R instead of changing the actual rating.  I haven't filtered child accounts based on ratings for a few years now, but back in the day, the custom rating would take precedence over the rating for account management.  I would imagine this still is the case.

 

The plus to doing it this way, is that your movie still shows the proper rating (PG-13) when viewing it in the client, but the custom rating is used when determining the Max. allowed parental rating - so your pg-13 movie with a custom rating or R, will not show if you have the max rating set to PG-13.

 

At least things used to work this way.

Edited March 22, 2014 by foghat

[lordbond 2]

Thank you @ and @@ebr for answering my question instead of telling me I should change how I have things set up. I am happy with the way I have it set up and it works for my household. My wife and daughter don't like scrolling through a hundred movies or more looking for something they like. If they are in a family mood they can go to the family folder etc. Maybe i'll look to see if there is a place I can submit this as a feature request.

[bluemonkey07 590]

What is your feature request? Hasn't your issue been resolved?

[CBMe 1]

If you ever decide to stop trying to manage that file folder structure, note you could use a field like Genre in a simply way by assigning a custom one for you that is easy to see.  Like .Disney, .Scary, etc so they are on the sort list.    Makes navigation easier to not have to drop back to the menu and go into another folder to try to find a movie or for others to guess whether something is Disney or seasonal or Family as of course you have to make a judgment call as to which category you prioritize.    (I don't entirely understand recent, given you have date added options..)
Lack of bulk editing capabilities in the UI doesn't make this simple yet though.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1154]

Unfortunately some clients like the Roku don't allow sorting or respect all genres on an item. MediaBrowser Theater doesn't even expose Genres on the menus. Many times the metadata is often lacking most of anything other than an overview. Different folders give you more control, make things easier to find that not even sorting can help with and provides an easier interface for wives and children who just want to get into the video as quickly as possible.

[foghat 65]

 MediaBrowser Theater doesn't even expose Genres on the menus.

 

What do you mean?  Genre displays on the main Movie page in MBT.  Not sure if this is new or not as I don't really use genres and don't pay them much attention.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1154]

What do you mean?  Genre displays on the main Movie page in MBT.  Not sure if this is new or not as I don't really use genres and don't pay them much attention.

 

However when people are looking for movies, they use this screen:

 

The entry screen isn't really used a lot in my household. Though I am hoping one day it is easy to reconfigure all these boxes and menus to fit our individual needs. For instance, my family doesn't use the Favorites mechanism so I would ditch that in the interface as well as Family and just have Genres.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Wayne Luke

[foghat 65]

Ya.  It would be good for it to be on that screen as well.  Though I think I remember luke saying that those 'tabs' would be disappearing altogether at some point.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1154]

That would be a step back in user experience in my opinion. I'd probably switch to the web client since I use it on my computer anyway.

[Luke 42078]

interesting that you guys like the tabs. you'd prefer that over having those categories available on the movie home page?

[Koleckai Silvestri 1154]

Never use the Movie Home Page. It is just an obstacle before getting to Television or the Movie view above.

[foghat 65]

interesting that you guys like the tabs. you'd prefer that over having those categories available on the movie home page?

 

I would like to see them on the movie home page in place of some of the content you currently display.  I don't really see the value in displaying all the random movies that are currently there - other than keeping the page fresh, which is of some value, I guess...

 

this is not to say they couldn't also exist on the current Movies page as well.  Ideally you could pick which content is displayed.  I could care less about the Family tab, popular or critically acclaimed tabs.

 

I will tell you that ever sense you removed the tabs on the TV page, it has become a lot more work to get to the next episode (in a given series) to be played. Am really missing the Up Next tab, or whatever it was called.  The Upcoming TV content box just brings me to the same view you get when clicking TV, which is to say just a list of my tv shows.

[foghat 65]

Never use the Movie Home Page. It is just an obstacle before getting to Television or the Movie view above.

 

But if all those categories were on the home page, it would no longer be an obstacle.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1154]

But if all those categories were on the home page, it would no longer be an obstacle.

 

I guess the biggest problem is when you move the mouse, the tabs change if the cursor gets anywhere near them. If you want any kind of control, you need to get into a view as soon as possible otherwise the screen will just seemingly change and you get a frustrating experience. I realize it is designed for a remote but with today's technology that shouldn't be required. You could use a wireless keyboard and trackpad to get around.

 

That is my experience. Just click on a tab as quickly as possible to lower the frustration level. The tiles on the overview are nice but unless we can organize them into an order that makes sense for our household, they won't get used much. A third of the screen is taken up by randomized links that don't mean much. Then you get movies to resume and finally latest movies. If you don't have any movies that need to be resumed, it just shows three random movies. In my opinion, Latest Movies should be first as it presents what I am most likely to want to watch most of the time.

 

Anyway, this is all getting off-topic I am just waiting for it MBT to support themes so I can build my own interface that fits my needs. Tried Media Browser Classic but it is cumbersome with the Windows Media Center requirement and I'd rather not have to spend money on WMC.

[foghat 65]

yes, the mouse experience can be frustrating, but I only use a mouse on my test machine.  My main use case is in a theater environment with a remote control.