Video Library

The Video Library, one of the XBMC databases allows the organization of your video content by information associated with the video files themselves. This information can be obtained in various different ways, like through Scrapers (ie. IMDb, TV Shows) and nfo files. The Library Mode view allows you to browse your video content by things like; Genre, Title, Year, Actors and Directors.



Navigating your Library
The library organizes your videos into three basic categories, Movies, TV Shows and Music Videos. Further these categories are divided into sub-categories, allowing you to find a specific video through criteria like genre, actors, directors, year etc. You can select the default startup screen in Video Library Mode via the Make Default option of The Context Menu, (Selecting Movies, TV Shows, Title in each etc.)

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Party Mode
The Party Mode option allows you to randomly play Music Videos from your entire music videos collection based on criteria specified in partymode-video.xsp. Simply build a Smart Playlist and save it as partymode-video.xsp in The UserData Folder.

Selecting 'Party Mode' from the sidebar will play ALL valid media scanned into your libraries in a random order that meet the conditions specified in the Smart Playlist.
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The Media Information Screen
You display information on you video files by selecting the Movie / TV Show Information option from The Context Menu or by pressing info on the remote. From here you can refresh the information on your media, i.e. in the case of a wrong match during scanning. Here you can also change fanart and media thumbs, where the number of images being offered may depend on your scraper settings.

Video Context Menu in Library Mode
You perform actions on your video files using the Context Menu. In Library Mode, selecting a movie that has been designated as a movie folder, the following options are available:


 * Other possible menu items
 * Play
 * Plays the selected file, resumes a video from the last stopped position.


 * Play using
 * Allows you to select which player to use for video playback (DVDPlayer or Mplayer).


 * Link to TV show
 * Links the selected movie to a TV show, The Movie will show up with TV show seasons/episodes.

Remote browsing
To be able to browse the Video Library outside the GUI, like through The Web Interface, you'll currently have to add a special videodb:// source, which will show up as 'Library' under Videos in the web interface.

Video Library Settings and Maintenance
The main Video Library settings can be accessed from the Library tab in Videos Settings. Those can be accessed either from the Settings menu from the home screen, or via the context menu as seen above.

Keeping your Library up to date
The 'Update library on startup' and 'Always update library in background' library settings can in conjunction be used to scan your sources for new files for inclusion in the library in the background at each XBMC start.

NOTE! If you want missing media (deleted or otherwise unavailable) to be removed form the database on update, use the advancedsettings tag (see below).

advancedsettings.xml
Some settings can only be altered through the advancedsettings.xml file, such as settings affecting the "All" and "Recently Added" database nodes.

Removing Entire Folders from the Library
You can remove the contents of entire folders from the library by setting content to  as described in the How To use Scrapers section.

Clean Video Library
Cleaning up the Video Library (removing invalid entries and compressing) can be done via the User Interface Settings, in the Videos Settings with the 'Clean Library' option.