How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page?

How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - Printable Version

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How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - mYnDstrEAm - 2022-01-08

How can one filter out all items of a genre or media source from the Movies page?

Until there's a by-default main menu entry for documentaries (and/or a multi-genre-multi-item view with separated documentaries), I'd like the Movies page to show all Movies except for Documentaries. Here's what I tried so far:

In Movies page when moving the mouse to the left a sidepanel appears where I set the Filter to all genres except for "Documentary".
However, upon opening the Movies pages another time the filter gets reset.
I also tried to change some settings buried deep in the configs (definitely not something to require newcomers to do for common use-cases and I think this requires the "library node editor" addon):
Settings->Skins->Configure skin->Main menu entries->Movies: adjust categories->added a rule to exclude all items with Genre "Documentary"->restarted Kodi (otherwise the rule doesn't show there as saved)
but the documentaries are still shown on the Movies view.

As a tech-savvy user which the majority of people that could find Kodi useful aren't, I expected problems to occur during trying to do so which was the following (beyond no save button for new rules / the saved rule not showing): since trying to do so Kodi doesn't shutdown anymore, meaning I have (had) to kill the process with the process manager and now only opens in windows mode. This is just a side note in case this is a known problem people here know how to solve and to better explain one of the many reasons for why requiring users to do advanced config-changes is often suboptimal.The documentaries have a separate media source and are in a separate directory.

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - jjd-uk - 2022-01-08

Create a Smartplaylist see https://kodi.wiki/view/Smart_playlists where one optiobn would be to use the path of the directory containing the documentaries to exclude anything with that path from the movie listing. For added convenience the Smartplaylist coiuld then be used to create a menu option in many of the skin, but note this can't be done from the GUI with default Estuary skin, see https://kodi.wiki/view/Custom_home_items for skins you can do this with.

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - mYnDstrEAm - 2022-01-08

That's useful but it wouldn't change the Movies view (but add a new view / playlist). I wondered how one could add a custom home item for Documentaries until it's there by default (saved this up for later as it's a separate issue) and just came across the page. However, it's not possible to do so with the default skin.

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - black_eagle - 2022-01-09

(2022-01-08, 19:22)mYnDstrEAm Wrote: However, it's not possible to do so with the default skin.

It is, but you have to get your hands dirty and edit the xml files. For instance, my home screen shows "Movies" and "Kids Films". The kids films are not listed in the Movies section and vice versa.

If you look here -> https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master/addons/skin.estuary/xml/Home.xml#L61-L84 this shows how Estuary uses smartplaylists to populate unwatched movies, random movies etc. By creating your own smartplaylists you can change the content shown by changing what the skin is pointing to. As jjd-uk pointed out, some skins will let you edit them whilst using the skin and tie your playlists to new home entries. If you want to stick with Estuary however, you would need to first create the playlists and then add a "Documentaries" menu item and link to that.

There is an example of how to do that here

What you need to do is create 2 smart playlists, one that excludes documentaries, and one that only includes them. Then you point the movies bit to the first one and the documentaries to the second.

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - the_other_guy - 2022-01-10

you could try smart play list

xml:




<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>

<smartplaylist type="movies">

    <name>Documentary genre</name>

    <match>all</match>

    <rule field="genre" operator="is">

        <value>Documentary</value>

    </rule>

    <group>genres</group>

    <limit>25</limit>

</smartplaylist>

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - the_other_guy - 2022-01-10

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - mYnDstrEAm - 2022-01-10

Thanks! To add the necessary info to the screenshot to implement this:

Go to Videos->Playlists->New smart playlists and configure it like in the screenshot.
You can then access the playlist by going to Videos->The playlist or Favorites->The playlist if you added it to your favorites.

Two problems with that:

Most people won't do this (or know/learn that this feature is there at all) just to get some basic functionality
- As it's only a workaround until by-default support for Documentaries is added let's ignore that one here
The playlist can only be accessed roundabout by going to Videos->The playlist, it can't be added to the left panel or get accessed with a keyboard shortcut.
You can turn on a TV for example by a simple button press. If you have a keyboard shortcut for Kodi you then still require lots of confusing (lots of rapid page switching etc), time-consuming browsing to access the playlist in a way that goes against the main way to browse Kodi (the main menu on the left).
- This is especially relevant if you're not only using Kodi for watching things on your own
  but it's also very inconvenient, not user-friendly and doesn't consider that not everyone is or wants to be a "nerd"/tech-savvy computer user/... basically and the ease of use is a key strength when it comes to TV, otherwise we could just have plain files for example instead of Kodi anyway.

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - the_other_guy - 2022-01-11

WHAT are you a kid or what?

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - Karellen - 2022-01-11

(2022-01-10, 13:32)mYnDstrEAm Wrote:
As it's only a workaround until by-default support for Documentaries is added let's ignore that one here

That will never happen.
You can't expect to have everything you want to work immediately out of the box. Kodi is for tinkerers. You need to fiddle to get your own exact setup. That is the beauty of Kodi because it has been designed with immense flexibility, as long as you are prepared to fiddle.
So you have been given two ways to achieve what you want.
I suggest you stop worrying on the elusive "most people" and follow the helpful advice you have been given.
If you switch to another skin, you can add Documentary as a main menu item, as you have been told already.

(2022-01-10, 13:32)mYnDstrEAm Wrote: otherwise we could just have plain files for example instead of Kodi anyway.

That is probably the best setup for your needs?

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - mYnDstrEAm - 2022-01-11

Quote:WHAT are you a kid or what?

Edited the post above to clarify.

(2022-01-11, 01:41)Karellen Wrote: You can't expect to have everything you want to work immediately out of the box.

Certainly not everything, just the things most people would find very useful and are used to and are looking for.

(2022-01-11, 01:41)Karellen Wrote: Kodi is for tinkerers.

People who say that also think GNU/Linux should remain to be for tinkerers indefinitely. That's precisely what's keeping these things and open source in general (free software) niche. Why not go by "Simple by Default, Powerful when Needed"...people can still customize a lot and tinker with it, which really is great, but it shouldn't all be that way.

Next up would be expecting people to build and modify their own kernels, customize their personal distro and spend time becoming an expert in IT security just to be able to e.g. read a bit of online news every once in a while.

(2022-01-11, 01:41)Karellen Wrote:
(2022-01-10, 13:32)mYnDstrEAm Wrote: otherwise we could just have plain files for example instead of Kodi anyway.
That is probably the best setup for your needs?

No, only for short films and documentaries. Here I described how. But it's missing all of the Kodi functionality such as scrapers, adding covers and so on. The main problem is that it's not integrated in the media center which I conveniently use to browse and watch everything else (even added Gaming support to it as since a while ago the Lutris-Kodi addon works on Debian.)

---

Anyway, another way this could be solved that I didn't think of and wasn't mentioned so far is changing the left panel on the Movies page.

In the left panel of the Movies page one could add something like "bookmarked filters". These could be presets of the Filter above (in that left panel) or smart playlists.

They could also be applied (toggled on or off) via keyboard shortcuts. They could not only be preconfigured filters but also for example order. There could be many ways one could add such a filter to the sidepanel which wouldn't require lots of changes to Kodi and the skin. For example, one could configure it simply by changing the filters and so on of the view and then click on a small "Save filtered view" button. Next to the filters there could be minus signs to remove the bookmarked filter from the panel.

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - lrusak - 2022-01-12

Contributions are welcome 😊 otherwise I believe there is a forum section to make feature requests.

RE: How to filter out one genre or media source from the Movies page? - jjd-uk - 2022-01-12

As I've said elsewhere a relatively minor adjustment of Estuary Mod V2 Double Lists View by addition of Container.Content(genres) can give you:

If you don't want to wish explore doing it yourself then request it at https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=366400