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Dynamic Category Headaches

PostPosted: Fri May 16, 2014 6:10 am
by CrashFF
Would it be possible to add the capability for a user to specify a source folder as a specific dynamic category type? (i.e. movie vs series)

Example:
I have a folder dedicated to Anime and this appears to pose a problem for Serviio. HUGE numbers of Anime series have movies as well as tv series, and multi-part OVA's as well, and Serviio cant seem to tell them apart. I.E. Ah! My goddess, Escaflowne, Trigun, Kino's Journey, El Hazard

I'd like the ability to force Serviio to see my Series folder as only series so it doesnt keep trying to name my dvd rip of Trigun as the movie Trigun: Badland's Rumble. Many of my anime dvds have multiple episodes combined together, so when I converted them to MP4, the result was the same way. 1 video file could have 4 episodes on it, and because of that, I cant name the file according to the predefined patterns and have it work. Serviio thinks all 13 episodes of Kino's Journey is the same movie, even though the episodes are numbered and named according to the tv episodes.

Additionally, many anime series only a given number of episodes, not seasons. Can the sorting by season number be turned into a sub-option for Series? Most people don't separate their video files by seasons into different folders. They just add the numbering into the filename like your predefined pattern requires already.

The other thing I noticed that is a bit of an irritation is that turning on dynamic categories merely adds a redundant folder in the browsing process trying to find things. For the root Video category, [display category] has no effect other than adding an extra folder depth to have to navigate through just to find the video file you want. Additionally, [Display category] and [display contents] do not sort files the same. This is extremely irritating. Display Category ignores articles (a, an, the), while Display Content does not. Every manual of style used for the english language will tell you, if you're going to sort/alphabetize a certain way - do it consistently. Computers may natively sort on a character by character basis, rather than a word/dictionary type sort, but when the Category sort shows The Croods in the C's with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and the Content sort shows The Croods in the T's right behind Tenacious D..... not happy >:(

There was a post from 2012 that said a request was put in for an NFO override. That would be also be nice...

Re: Dynamic Category Headaches

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:01 am
by schmurfy
I realize that's an old post but did anything changed ?
I like serviio and provided it suits my needs am even willing to take the pro version but this issue bothers me, I would ideally want three categories: Movies, Series and Anime not mix everything in a joyful bag of crap.

Are categories like Movies and Series enforced by the DLNA standard ? If not can we force it when adding shared folders ? I have an already sorted library (at least for the categories).

Re: Dynamic Category Headaches

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 1:34 pm
by atc98092
What might work is separating Movies from TV episodes by folder. Plex does this, and I don't know if any other DLNA server product does. Of course, I prefer Serviio over Plex by far. :D

That said, is the issue for you that the TV episodes are also listed under the Movies category? If so, that can be fixed by checking the box on the Presentation tab (going be memory here, I'm not at home) that says to only show titles in their relevant category. Forget the exact wording, but I believe it's the only check box on the Presentation tab of the Serviio console. This keeps TV shows listed only under the Series category.

Re: Dynamic Category Headaches

PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:21 am
by schmurfy
My issue to have in Series a mix of tv and anime series, Ideally I would like something similar to:

  Code:
Movies
  <movie 1>
  <movie 2>

Series
  <some tv serie 1>
  <some tv serie 2>
 
Anime
  <some anime serie 1>
  <some anime serie 2>


I imagine one solution might be to have two serviio servers running but that's stupid.

Re: Dynamic Category Headaches

PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 1:29 pm
by atc98092
I have one more suggestion, more of a work-around. If you built playlists with the videos in the order you desire, with only the content you want, that would at least provide you some of what you want. I've built many playlists to make it simpler to find titles that we play most often. For example, I have all Star Wars movies in one playlist, another for Star Trek, another for all John Wayne flicks, etc. Another nice thing with playlists is that they display the titles in the order you put them in the playlist, not necessarily alphabetical. For my Bogart playlist, I have them in chronological order.

As far as the Pro version of Serviio, the only thing it offers over the free version is the MediaBrowser to view the movies via a web browser. I have my firewall setup to let me watch my movies when I'm traveling. Hotels all seem to have the same lousy channels to choose from :lol: