Help with a customized TV section for a skin

[Robertsonland]

I'm restarting back into creating a TV section for a skin (just playing around right now but will eventually mod a current skin as I don't have the graphical prowess nor patience to do a full skin).

What I'm wanting to do is mimic the music flow of clicking on a TV Show (the same as clicking on a CD) and having the overlay pop up with the episodes I currently have recorded. I had copied the movie screen as I was trying to see what TVMan's TV episode skin add on did but it didn't fit what my wife is wanting. But my issue right now is when I click on a TV show it opens the overlay but also in the background it changes the main movie screen to the list the episodes. I want it to stay on the movies screen, pop up the overlay and list the episodes recorded just like the tracks show up on the Music page for the CD. I have copied the event button from the music page but it still does it. I'm flabbergasted as to what makes the page change from say a list of shows with pictures (24, NCIS) etc to the episodes. So If I click on 24 for example I don't want the tv screen to go from listing all shows to listing the episodes, I just want the overlay to pop up showing the episodes.

My DB for the tv looks similar to the music one:
<database>
<sortorder>display</sortorder>
<template>tv</template>
<paths>
<path>C:\Temp\TV Shows</path>
</paths>
<item>
<parameter>C:\Temp\TV Shows\24</parameter>
<display>24</display>
<type>folder</type>
<coverart>C:\Temp\TV Shows\24\cover.jpg</coverart>
<subitems>
<item>
<parameter>C:\Temp\TV Shows\24\Season 1\S01E01.mpg</parameter>
<coverart>C:\Temp\TV Shows\episode_01.jpg</coverart>
<information>
<plot> The Plot for Episode 1</plot>
<airdate>Tuesday November 6, 2001</airdate>
<episode>1</episode>
<title>12:00 A.M.-1:00 A.M.</title>
<season>1</season>
<series>24</series>
</information>
<display>1. 12:00 A.M.-1:00 A.M.</display>
</item>
<item>
<parameter>C:\Temp\TV Shows\24\Season 1\S01E02.mpg</parameter>
<coverart>C:\Temp\TV Shows\episode_02.jpg</coverart>
<information>
<plot>The Plot for Episode 2</plot>
<airdate>Tuesday November 13, 2001</airdate>
<episode>2</episode>
<title>1:00 A.M.-2:00 A.M.</title>
<season>1</season>
<series>24</series>
</information>
<display>2. 1:00 A.M.-2:00 A.M.</display>
</item>
</subitems>
</item>
</database>

I've got the overlay partially working but am stuck on why the movie screen changes from listing all the shows to the episodes. can anyone point me to a doc that explains what I might do to stop this or anything. I'm a coder for a living but this coding by XML just drives me nuts

Thanks in advance

Lance

[Robertsonland]

Well I copied the music page to see what that did and it does the same thing so I looked at the database and it looks like it's the <type>folder</type> value in the database. If I put it as type album it doesn't change the to the next screen. Of course my overlay didn't work either but I'll work on that.

Lance

[Colby]

I dont know of a document that shows how to set up databases. Its common knowlege, but that doesnt help you. I am curious how are your directorys setup in windows? And what template did you try importing with? The good news is without trying myself I think what youre trying to do is totally possible.

[Robertsonland]

My directories in windows are simple:

\\TVShows\24\S05E01.ts

I only keep around shows until I watch them and I have written a program that goes out and gets all the pertinent info for a show based on what I have recorded. That program then creates my database. I'm just not well versed enough in XLobby stuff to know what is available to me for certain fields such as type in the database. Obviously I've come across album and movie and when I use album my overlay doesn't popuate with data but when I use movie it does, however it behaves as folder does and goes to show my episodes. I guess what I really need is a simple tutorial for building a music/movie screen with overlay so I can understand what things go where. I guess I'm going to have to go over the skinning guide again to see if I can wrap my head around it a bit more. Thanks

Lance

[lar282]

Don't know if this info helps u but maybe

IF u use the mediaportal plugin and the tvserver to record, all the info about the show will be transfered to a database in xlobby automatically. Once u have the databse I guess it's simple. Just a matter of having the series in the correct structure of directories. If u have the series like this.
Example of the series 24:
24\S06E11.text\name.avi
24\S06E12.text\name.avi
24\S06E13.text\name.avi
24\S06E14.text\name.avi

(it's the .text that does the trick)

then if I click on 24 I will get into a subdatabase of all the episodes of 24. Is that what u wanted?

Examples of tvscreen exist in the big .Rar file of the mediaportal tvplugin. My whole skin is there to if u want examples.

//Lasse

[Robertsonland]

Yeah I use my MDP-130 to record the high def then edit out the commercials before watching. So My program goes and looks for what files exist then download the data necessary. I think I've got something working and instead of using an overlay I mimicked the movieviewer and have got it working that way. I did have one other question and it's probably a duh thing but if in my database for tv shows that I build outside xlobby, can I do something like this:

<item>
<parameter>C:\Temp\TV Shows\24</parameter>
<display>24</display>
<type>movie</type>
<somedescription>Some Description</somedescription>
<coverart>C:\Temp\TV Shows\24\cover.jpg</coverart>
<subitems>
<item>
...
</item>
</subitems>
</item>

And then can I access somedescription in the screen using the category reference? Basically I want the display to be the title of the series and then description to be a description of the series not an episode. I've tried category>television>somedescription but that doesn't work like category>television>display shows "24". Is it even possible to do this?

Thanks for all your help and last night at the airport working on it for a few hours I made some sense of a few things....

Lance

[Robertsonland]

Well I got by this issue. the problem was that I was had put the tvviewer in the info screen since clicking on the category was taking me to that screen but if I took that out then the data stayed on the screen and my tvviewer screen still retains its data. So i'm off to find my next obstacle

Thanks