Movies
Intro
The Movie selection will provide the viewer a listing of the movies that are contained within the viewers library. The listing can provide information about a selected movie on its plot, director(s), actor and actresses, and even file/codec information, provided the appropriate fields are filled in the database.
The movie selection is very visual in nature that shows movie fanart in the background. It also has four distinct views for the user to select, again these are list (default), large icon, small icon, and coverflow views. The user also has the ability to filter the movie listing depending on how recently movies are added, certification, genre and year. More filters, and searches will be added at a future date.
Installation/Setup
The movie selection of xStreamed, like most of the other media selections, is heavily dependent on the use of Ant Movie Catalog (AMC for short), and the xAnt plugin. Since AMC is now used for cataloging media for the other xStreamed sections, setting it up is more universal. A tutorial on setting it up can be found at this link.
The main setup here is making sure that:
1) xAnt plugin is moved to the xlobby/plugins directory
2) an AMC catalog exists
3) following the AMC tutorial, xAnt has been properly configured
Once AMC has been setup, xStreamed can be loaded, and the databases are built during the Xlobby startup.
After this initial start, the user should setup the xTopPicks plugin (required for the Recently Added selection indicated below).
1) Click on F2 to enter Setup
2) Select the Plugins selection
3) Scroll through the list of plugins and select the xTopPicks plugin, then click on the "Configure" button
4) The window below will open
5) Select the movies category from the drop down menu "Select Category to sort", then click on "Add"
6) Next to "Selected Field" select the (i)number selection
7) Next to "Field Type", select Numerical
8) Select Ascending
10) Next to Output Count, select 15 - this can be what ever the user want, but 15 will display the 15 most recently added movies.
11) Click on "Test", if successful, a small window will open if the user wants to create a test top pick database, select "Yes" or "No"
12) If all is fine, click on "Save" that is next to "Test", again a window will open indicating that there are useable data (good thing) and to select "Yes" to use it or "No" to not use it. Select "Yes".
13) This will add to the list under Configured Categories.
14) Click on "Save" at the bottom of the window.
15) Close Setup and restart Xlobby so the newly created database can take effect.
Note: part of the Refresh process will refresh the xTopPicks database as well.
Operation
After xStreamed has started, and sitting at the main menu, rotate the menu down to Movies, and select it. The user will be presented with the screen below.
This screen allows the user to select/filter the movies database.
Movie Module Main Screen
In this screen, the user can select to view:
a) all the movies in the database
b) the most recently added movies (if following the tutorial above, it will display a list of 15 most recently added movies)
c) filter on movie genre
d) filter on movie certification setting
e) filter on year
NOTE: the user/viewer should note, that if fanart exits and setup properly, it should be toggled as the user scrolls through the list. Below images shows this affect
fanart varies from selection to selection
Once the user has made his/her filter selection, the next screen will display the listing of movies. By default, the view is the List view (shown below).
Movie Selection (List View)
Moving the cursor to the right will open an overlay where the user is presented with the option to change the view from List to Small icons, Large icons, or Coverflow views (see next images)
Movie View/Navigation Overlay Menu
Small Icon View
Large Icon View
Coverflow View
The user can also automatically navigate back to the main movie menu scree, main menu, or to settings. The user also has the option to refresh the movie database, if new entrants are made to the AMC catalog. This can be done without reloading Xlobby. To move through this overlay:
Up/Down will scroll through the selected catalog of commands
Left/Right will select the different catalog of commands. Example, if the user is selecting the "Change View" catalog, and proceeds to go right (either via keyboard right arrow or remote), then the user will move to the "Jump To" catalog. Conversely, if the user is selecting the "Change View" catalog and navigates left, then the user will be able to select to "Refresh" the database.
Once the user has selected the movie they want to watch, the will be taken to the Movie Info screen. This screen display an in depth summary of the movie selection prior to actual playback.
Movie Info Screen
Upon movie playback, the appropriate movie playback software will start. By default this is Zoom Player for DVD playback, and MPC-HC for all other playback schemes. This all depends on how the user configures the Filetypes setting in Setup, which directly configures the types.xml file in the xlobby root directory. The movie will automatically go to full screen, and pressing Pause will display the following screen:
Movie Pause Screen
Pressing Play, will un-pause the movie, and go back to fullscreen mode. The user can also navigate at any point back to the main menu. Default mapping for this is done by pressing a button on the remote. For experimentation sake, this function was mapped to a "Menu" button on my Panasonic TV remote control. Doing so, the movie software will resize to fit a window of the screen as shown.
Main Menu w/movie window
Main Movie Menu w/movie window
Navigating from screen to screen will display the movie playback window appropriately. If the user wants to go back to full screen, a button has been mapped to be able to do that function as well (I used the "Guide" button on my Panasonic TV remote to do this).
At this point, the user can continue to watch their movie, or choose to stop/close the movie playback software and continue to the next menu selection, Videos.