VFS Examples?

[Torkild]

Would be nice to see a screenshoy of your VFS examples

[wrems]

I would... But, I wouldn't even know what to show... I’m not sure it would be terribly exciting to see my TV and movie collections. I don’t know that one would discern anything specific from it. Unless you mean a video showing how to create a custom view?

Basically, the VFS incarnations I have put together are just subtle twists on the default views to hone in on what I myself and my family want to see. I’m sure not everyone want’s their media set up the way I have it. I’ve just documented my progress to give others ideas and have some sort of record of my attempts at manipulating VFS.

I’ve just been excited that I can personally and fairly easily manipulate the menus and precisely what they display. I hope others find these examples at least a little bit useful in tinkering with their media. I know they probably aren’t as efficient as they could be and I keep modifying them as I learn more too. My hopes are others will come up with good ideas that they implement that I can leverage too!

A lot can be accomplished with VFS and these examples are probably a fairly insignificant portion of their capability.

[wrems]

Here’s a view that works really well at tracking down all the episodes in all of your series that have gone unwatched. Per the watched status flag, and normally the ones marked as Favorites in Sage.

This particular version is a bit special in the sense it is tailored to my specific situation and that the current Favorites filter doesn’t work for content that was once recorded and then archived in a different location.

For example, I record stuff then remove the commercials transcode it and place them in their individual folders for long-term archival reasons. This process breaks the ability of the favorites filter to track them.

That’s why in this case I had to go through all the shows I have and manually type in the show name so that only those specific ones show. I don’t care about my son’s recordings unwatched shows so they are left off. I would normally just exclude them but this case was a bit different.

<views>
            <view name="wr_unwatched_filter" label="WR UNWATCHED filter" visible="false">
                  <description>WR collect TV from all sources and apply filters</description>
                  <view-source name="recordings">
                        <filter by="watched" value="false"/>
                  </view-source>
                  <view-source name="archivedrecordings">
                        <filter by="watched" value="false"/>
                  </view-source>
                  <view-source name="videos" >
                        <filter by="mediatype" value="tv" />
                        <filter by="watched" value="false"/>
                  </view-source>
            </view>
            <view name="wr_unwatched" label="WR TV - Unwatched " visible="true">
                  <view-source name="wr_unwatched_filter">
                        <filter by="pql">
                              <option name="value">
<![CDATA[
Title = "Bones" or 
Title = "Breaking Bad" or
Title = "Castle (2009)" or
Title = "Dexter" or
Title = "Family Guy" or
Title = "Fringe" or
Title = "Grey's Anatomy"
]]></option>
                              <option name="scope" value="include"/>
                        </filter>
                  </view-source>
                  <presentation level="1">
                        <group by="show"/>
                        <sort by="recentactivity">
                              <option name="sort-order" value="desc"/>
                        </sort>
                  </presentation>
                  <presentation level="2">
                        <sort by="seasonepisode">
                              <option name="sort-order" value="asc"/>
                        </sort>
                  </presentation>
            </view>
      </views>

Obviously not all the shows are listed if you're interested you'll just need to substitute your show names.

The only other consideration about this view is that it assumes that you're using BMT to ensure that the Season/Episodes numbers exist for your recordings. Weird things might happen if you have a bunch of missing metadata... If that's the case you'll probably want to spend some time making sure that you have season episode numbers there. Or sort the last presentation level by MediaFileID if you don't have a bunch of archived stuff.

[dflachbart]

Here's a view that I use to show all recently watched videos (combined TV and other video files) for the last week. It filters out any titles that don't have a corresponding video file any more (e.g. watched LiveTV):

	<view name="all_recently_watched" label="All Recently Watched">
		<description>My Recently Watched</description>
		<tag value="tv" />
		<source name="expression">
			<option name="expression">
				GetRecentlyWatched( 604800000 )
			</option>
		</source>
		<filter by="filepath" value=".*">
			<option name="scope" value="include"/>
			<option name="use-regex-matching" value="true"/>
		</filter>
	</view>

Dirk

[wrems]

Nice to see you back around Dirk! I was taken aback by your recent posts. Where have you been keeping yourself?

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by wrems

Nice to see you back around Dirk! I was taken aback by your recent posts. Where have you been keeping yourself?

Hiding under a rock... ?


Dirk

[White94Cobra]

OK... I've been messing with VFS for a day now and am making some progress. However, in many of the examples I don't know the overall configuration of someone's system so it can make it difficult to apply to my system. I want to create a view that points to a specific folder. My import directories are defined in Sage as:
\\main-pc\movies
\\media-pc\Movies1
\\media-pc\Movies2
\\media-pc\Movies3

Each UNC path represents a share on a different system/hard drive.

Under each of these I have folders as follows:
DVD Rentals
HD Movies
My Movies
TVShows
UFC
Vicki's Movies
Workout Videos

Each video is in it's own folder. Most movies are MKV or M2TS format, but some are still actual DVD rips.

It's been this way forever, I'd love to simplify it but I don't have the energy.

I want to create a view that shows all of the movies in the "Vicki's Movies" folder. I found a few examples that use <option name="bookmark"... and <option name="root"... but I have been unable to get these to work. They just show every video in every folder.

Any assistance would be appreciated. I feel like I'm very close to understanding almost 5% of this

Thanks!

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by White94Cobra

OK... I've been messing with VFS for a day now and am making some progress. However, in many of the examples I don't know the overall configuration of someone's system so it can make it difficult to apply to my system. I want to create a view that points to a specific folder. My import directories are defined in Sage as:
\\main-pc\movies
\\media-pc\Movies1
\\media-pc\Movies2
\\media-pc\Movies3

Each UNC path represents a share on a different system/hard drive.

Under each of these I have folders as follows:
DVD Rentals
HD Movies
My Movies
TVShows
UFC
Vicki's Movies
Workout Videos

Each video is in it's own folder. Most movies are MKV or M2TS format, but some are still actual DVD rips.

It's been this way forever, I'd love to simplify it but I don't have the energy.

I want to create a view that shows all of the movies in the "Vicki's Movies" folder. I found a few examples that use <option name="bookmark"... and <option name="root"... but I have been unable to get these to work. They just show every video in every folder.

Any assistance would be appreciated. I feel like I'm very close to understanding almost 5% of this

Thanks!

Try this out

<vfs>
      <views>
            <view name="vickis_movies" label="Vickis Movies" flat="false">
                  <option name="root" value="/Vicki's Movies/"/>
                  <option name="children-only" value="true"/>
                  <description>Display Vickis Movies</description>
                  <tag value="video"/>
                  <view-source name="sagevideoimportsv7"/>
                  <presentation>
                        <sort by="title">
                              <option name="folders-first" value="false"/>
                        </sort>
                  </presentation>
            </view>
      </views>
</vfs>

*Edit - if that works and you need help with a menu fragment, just post back and ill help if i can.

[White94Cobra]

Here's what I originally tried, but it pulls ALL movies. It seems _similar_ to yours. I'll try copying/pasting yours to see if it works. Thanks!

Figured it out. Was using back slash instead of forward slash for the path and had to specify "sagevideoimportsv7" as the view-source name. Thanks again!!

		
<view name="df.view.vicki.media" label="Vicki's Movies" flat="false">
	<option name="root" value="\Vicki's Movies\" />	
	<option name="children-only" value="true"/>
	<description>Display Vicki's Movies</description>
	<tag value="movie" />
	<tag value="bluray" />
	<tag value="video" />
	<view-source name="phoenix.view.primary.importedmovies" />
		<presentation>
			 <sort by="title">
				<option name="folders-first" value="false"/>
			</sort>
		</presentation>
</view>

[PiX64]

sweet so my example worked then?

[White94Cobra]

It did... I modified two pieces in mine to match yours (<option name="root" ...> and <view-source name="sagevideoimportsv7"...>

The menu fragments seem fairly straight forward. I've alredy added a few simple views.

Thanks again!!

[PiX64]

No prob. earlier in this thread, i have an example of what i did for my media. My wife and I jus thad a baby, and I wanted a new Menu item, not just a sub item...so i setup the following

Baby Media (top level menu item)
Baby DVD's (sub menu items)
Kids Cartoons (sub menu items)
Kids Movies (sub menu items)

Take a look at that guy, it may be useful to ya.

[pmpj218]

What's the difference between the view-source "sagevideoimportsv7" and the view-source "phoenix.view.default.videofolders"?

I was trying to work on a similar vfs in another thread and stuckless had suggested to me to use "phoenix.view.default.videofolders". I tried both, and it yielded the same results (as far as I could tell). But I ended up going with "phoenix.view.default.videofolders".

I'm just curious as to when, if ever, one view-source would be more appropriate than the other?

Anyway, because of the way my video import sources were setup the default "All Movies" view was including a bunch of other videos that aren't really movies. Since I have all my movies in specific folders, namely "Bluray" and "DVD", I made a a similar view to combine these into my own "All Movies" view.

<view name="tam.view.bluray" label="TAM - Bluray Rips" flat="false">
	<option name="root" value="/Bluray/"/>
	<option name="children-only" value="true"/>
	<description>Blu-ray Movie Rips</description>
	<tag value="video"/>
	<tag value="movie"/>
	<view-source name="phoenix.view.default.videofolders"/>
	
	<presentation>
		<sort by="title">
			<option name="ignore-all" value="true"/>
		</sort>
	</presentation>			
</view>
		
<view name="tam.view.dvd" label="TAM - DVD Rips" flat="false">
	<option name="root" value="/DVD/"/>
	<option name="children-only" value="true"/>
	<description>DVD Movie Rips</description>
	<tag value="video"/>
	<tag value="movie"/>
	<view-source name="phoenix.view.default.videofolders"/>
	
	<presentation>
		<sort by="title">
			<option name="ignore-all" value="true"/>
		</sort>
	</presentation>			
</view>
	
<view name="tam.view.allMovies" label="TAM - All Movie Rips" flat="true">
	<description>All Movie Rips</description>
	<tag value="video"/>
	<tag value="movie"/>
	<view-source name="tam.view.bluray"/>
	<view-source name="tam.view.dvd"/>
	
	<presentation>
		<sort by="title">
			<option name="ignore-all" value="true"/>
		</sort>
	</presentation>			
</view>

[stuckless]

the sagevideoimportsv7 is a legacy viewname so you went with the right choice. We'll be removing core view sources that don't start with phoenix at some point.

[pmpj218]

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

[White94Cobra]

So I decided to rename most of my video file folders and filenames with the date to aid in matching for lookups. I removed my import folders from sage, scanned, added them back, then scanned again. About 90% of my media now has the proper fan art and description. Unfortunately the MediaTitle value did not populate on any of the titles. This makes filtering on MediaTitle difficult

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[crusing]

I struggled for a while getting simple movie views built based on the file path of the media to replicate my existing setup. I am posting my examples in the hope that someone will find it useful even though I am just learning myself. Apparently the VFS expects you to have sub folders in your import paths instead of media files. It took me quite a while to figure out why my views wouldn't work when using "bookmark" or "root". I didn't want to rebuild my folder structure as I am quite happy with the way it is working. I found a reference to "filepath" in the documentation and gave it a go and seem to have figured out a solution that will work good for me.

Here are the facts:
path to VFS file: "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\userdata\Phoenix\vfs\MC Movie Archive.xml"

path to Menu file: "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\userdata\Phoenix\Menus\MC_Movie_Archive_Menu.xml"

Import Directory Path: "F:\Movie Archive\"

Here is "MC Movie Archive.xml"

<!DOCTYPE vfs SYSTEM "vfs.dtd">

<vfs>
	<views>
		<view name="MC_Movie_Archive" label="MC Move Archive">
			<description>Archived Movies</description>
			<tag value="video"/>
			<view-source name="phoenix.view.primary.importedmovies" >
			<filter by="filepath" value="Movie Archive"/>
			</view-source>
			<presentation>
				 <sort by="title"/>
			</presentation>
		</view>
	</views>
</vfs>

Here is "MC_Movie_Archive_Menu."

<?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="MC_Movie_Archive_Menu" label="Archived Movies" visible="true">
                  <description>Archived Movies</description>
                  <eval>AddGlobalContext("DefaultView","MC_Movie_Archive")</eval>
                  <screen name="Phoenix Universal Media Browser" />
            </menuItem>
      </fragment>
</menus>

Its been easy to add new menus now that I have a working starting point.

[wrems]

I'm just learning too. So the more we figure out and document the better. I didn't know about the filepath. That's a good one.

If you check the bmt webgui view for combined import folders that's where you would see the eligible root/bookmark folders. Assuming that your import paths are designed like that. In the long run it really does help for having a consolidated method to drill down into your media from those folders.

[crusing]

Wrems, I see from another post that you have issues with the default home movie view that are similar to mine. Have you come up with a solution?

Thanks

[wrems]

Yeah, I created a vfs that points directly at my home video collection. I haven't integrated it into or in replace of the default menu icon. All I did so far was to add a menu to my videos area for it. Although I will replace the default action sometime soon.