Any way to automatically add Genre?

[Andycabs]

Hi. I was unable to find any reference to this question on the website. I was wondering if there is any way to have a Genre added to a movie when it is imported. I would like to have an "All Movies" Genre which is added automatically for each movie when I import it. When I try to edit multiples movies at once, it replaces the current Genre's for the movies and only adds the new one.
Thanks in advance,
Andycabs

[rick.ca]

I was wondering if there is any way to have a Genre added to a movie when it is imported.

I don't think so. For what purpose?

[Andycabs]

I am using the exported xml file with Roksbox on my Roku player for a menu. It sorts the movies by Genre. I import several movies at a time to the database and I would like for it to automatically add an "All Movies" Genre to every movie so that I dont have to do it manually for each one. the IMDB plugin adds all of the other Genre's for me but none of them list all of the movies. It would also be useful when I create a new movie database file for another user and I have to import 200 to 300 movies at once.

[rick.ca]

It seems odd Roksbox is incapable of displaying all movies. Maybe that's something you should be asking them about. In the context of PVD, adding an additional genre to those downloaded is a rather unusual requirement and therefore unlikely to be accommodated. If adding an 'All' value to Genre for all movies is the only solution, you could do so by exporting Genre to Excel, adding 'All' to the existing values, then re-importing.

Are you sure you shouldn't be using Multilevel Video Subcategories in Roksbox? If those allow you to select items at any level, then an easier solution might be an XML export which creates something like Movies/[Genre]—so you can select 'Movies' to get all movies.

[Andycabs]

Hi and thanks for your response. Perhaps exporting to Excel is the way to go for me.. I am not that familiar with working with XML files and databases but its worth giving a shot. Roxbox will let me display all movies if I use a directory structure rather than an xml file. The problem with that is that each movie will only show up in the folder it is stored in , whereas in the xml file the movie will show up in whichever Genre's it is listed under.  I have manually added an "All Movies" Genre but I have to select it seperately for each movie as IMDB does not have an "All Movies" Genre that it imports with each movie. I do use the Video Subcategories for TV series such as [TV \Series \Season 1] ect.. It works quite well.  All in All I think PVD is an EXCELLENT program and I like working with it.
Thanks again for your advice!
Andycabs

[rick.ca]

I do use the Video Subcategories for TV series such as [TV \Series \Season 1] ect.. It works quite well.

I'm still curious how Video Subcategories work. If you were to select [TV\Some series], would it not display all seasons for that series? If so, you could use [Movies\Genre] and select the root category (i.e., [Movies]) to view all movies.

[Andycabs]

Roksbox seems to only use the "Genre" portion of the xml file and dismisses the Category section. So when the menu is up it lists the movies by Genre. So actually the term "Sub Category" isnt really precise it is more like a "Sub-Genre" So when the xml file loads it will list all the Genre's that have movies associated with them and in each Genre it will list the movies. So for a TV Series I used the Genre TV. To create Sub-Genre's I simply typed in the name you want it to be. So If I wanted  a TV series with 4 seasons I would type in [TV\ Series\ Season 1],[TV \Series\ Series 2]..ect ect.. Then in the TV Genre I would see the Series. When I select it I would then see Season, Season 2 ect.. Then when I select the Season I want I see the individual episodes. I know it seems like a long way yo go but Its what I found that works. Roksbox seems unable to work with the way PVD imports and lists TV series so each episode has to be imported separately.

As for selecting The root "Movies" there is no such thing in roxbox unless you create it as a Genre called "Movies". When using the xml file in Roksbox it does not use a root folder but only lists movies by Genre. You can use the directory structure rather than an xml file and it will list the movies by the folder they are in so you could have a root folder to list all movies but then there would be no Genre's to choose from and it would just be one giant list of movies. With the xml file I am able use movies from different folders and have them show up under multiple genre's

[rick.ca]

It's unfortunate you're required to transfer the data via XML. If he knew how, it would be simple matter for the Roksbox developer to access the PVD database directly and extract the desired data. With such integration, it would monitor the database for changes and update Roksbox automatically. Search for "PvdImport" to see how this has been done for JRiver Media Center.

[Andycabs]

That actually sounds like a great solution and a HUGE time saver. But I do not think Roksbox has any type of online file storage and the Roku players very limited in their memory and storage capacity so I think if Roksbox had to access an online database and load info for over 1000 movies each time it was used..it may make for long startup times. Im just guessing here because I dont know enough about how it all works.. As it stands now, It takes about 25 seconds to load the XML file when I start the Roksbox chanel. This may be due to the fact that im using and older P4 computer as my server.

Thanks again for all of your help

[rick.ca]

OIC. Yes, I doubt an integrated solution is feasible. As for adding an 'All Movies' genre, forget about adding to PVD where it serves no purpose. Just revise the export template to add it...

Change <genre>{%value=genre}</genre>
to <genre>All Movies, {%value=genre}</genre>
or <genre>{%value=genre}, All</genre>.

[Andycabs]

Just got around to trying that out and it was exactly what I needed. Thank you very much!