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[lundmatt1]

Hi folks, I tried to do some searching on this and I'm sure there's an answer out there...

I'm starting to rip all my DVD's and am storing them on my fileserver.  I've got XBMC playing the DVD's off the fileserver fine but the only thing that bugs me is the menu.

Basically, after going into "My Videos" I currently select "SMB", see a list of movies that are actually folders (this is fine up to this point) but then to play the movie I have to select the appropriate folder and then play the VOB file.

I wish there were a way I could either dynamically or manually (I don't mind the manual work) have the list of movies and when the user selects the movie to be played, boom it plays the VOB file without the user having to get into that folder and have to select the VOB file.

Is there a way I can do this in the XBMC menu structures?  I'm also curious about manually creating my own menu hierchary for the movies out in the Evox dashboard.  I swear I saw someone post one time how to invoke XBMC with a parameter for what to play (a VOB file in my case) and now I can't find any such information.  If I knew this, I could at least create a menu hierarchy in Evox.

Your input is appreciated.  <

[JayDee]

QUOTE

Is there a way I can do this in the XBMC menu structures? I'm also curious about manually creating my own menu hierchary for the movies out in the Evox dashboard. I swear I saw someone post one time how to invoke XBMC with a parameter for what to play (a VOB file in my case) and now I can't find any such information. If I knew this, I could at least create a menu hierarchy in Evox.

This i have never even heard about.

But:

Making a playlist for My Videos is in the works and hopefully not to far of in the future.

As you might see if you read the pinned topic in this forum you would see that dvd playback in xbmp/xbmc is buggy @ its best.  <

[lundmatt1]

Yeah, I've read all about the growing stability for playing DVD's.

I figured that what I'm trying to accomplish was actually agnostic of the specific type of media that's playing.  Meaning, I'd have the same question if I had a bunch of DIVX's.  I'd like to find a way to create a nice menu for them and not have to just directory browse and pick the file to play...  <

[lundmatt1]

Oh, one other clarification...  I don't care an ounce about the DVD menu's themselves (meaning what you would see on your TV when you pop a DVD into your Sony DVD player, etc).

All I'm wripping are the VOB files and in fact I'm having SmartRipper create one big VOB so that I don't have to worry about lists of VOB files to be played.  This has the downside that I can't ever transfer them to be played locally on the XBox hard drive (seeing that they're generally over the 4GB limit) but I'm happy.

When I asked about menus, I'm just refering to menus within Evox or XBMC - I'd like to be able to play a movie from some sort of menu without having to explicitly select into the folder and play the VOB file - I don't want my family members to have to know what a VOB is!  <

[JayDee]

Press My Videos in the homescreen

To the left hand side of the screen you should have a button named Play DVD  <

[SigTom]

This is what Ive done to make it easier for friends/family whatever to use XBMC.  I have under My Videos set up 2 smb shares.  One is called Movies and the other is TV Shows.  I place any videos into their respective folder.  Say once you are in the Movie share, you see all my movies and now Im using the Large Icons, and Ive searched IMDB for all thumbnails for the movies.  Since youve made all your DVDs one VOB instead of 5-10 VOBs per DVD, you can just name the VOB the actual name of the movie (If youve ripped a copy of say Dickie Roberts Former Child Star, instead of VTS_00_1.VOB call it Dickie Roberts Former Child Star.VOB.)  This way when you search IMDB for the info, it should find it easily.  Always name your files the exact name of the movie if your using IMDB Ive noticed, makes it so much easier to find info.  Now when your family/friends want to watch a dvd you have ripped, they navigate in this manner My Videos>Movies where they will see the thumbnails for all the movies youve got ripped.  They highlight the one they want, hit play and the movie should be up and going.  

As far as the naming of the actual smb shares, in your xbmc.xml where the code for the smb asks for a name change  

CODE

SMB

to

CODE

Movies, DVD, TV Shows whatever you want.

 Now when you navigate it , instead of seeing SMB youll see the name you want.  If you already knew this, I apologize, but better safe then sorry.

This post has been edited by SigTom: Feb 23 2004, 05:34 AM <