[Jeroen]

Thanks Bryan!

Merry Christmas everyone

[ZwartePiet]

Surely setting the shelf to display a smart playlist using the random setting would do what you ask I think?

I gave that method a try, but ran into two problems:

1) I can get a smart playlist to return a selection of random movies, but only in alphabetical order. If my library were the alphabet, the shelf shows B, D, E, L, Q, T, X, Z. I'm trying to get the shelf to show Q, Z, D, B, L, X, E, T.

2) I can't get the shelf to show a random selection of TV episodes. The shelf only seems to recognize the playlist type "tvshows," not "episodes." Using "tvshows" in a playlist returns a random selection of tv series, not a random selection of episodes from all tv series. Also, the alphabetical ordering problem from above still applies.

These aren't big issues, it's just that the shelf just seems like a really cool feature and I'd like to figure out how to use it.

EDIT: Oh, and happy holidays everyone. The boss told me he's tuckered out and headed to Bermuda for a little R&R.

[Jeroen]

Surely setting the shelf to display a smart playlist using the random setting would do what you ask I think?

I gave that method a try, but ran into two problems:

1) I can get a smart playlist to return a selection of random movies, but only in alphabetical order. If my library were the alphabet, the shelf shows B, D, E, L, Q, T, X, Z. I'm trying to get the shelf to show Q, Z, D, B, L, X, E, T.

2) I can't get the shelf to show a random selection of TV episodes. The shelf only seems to recognize the playlist type "tvshows," not "episodes." Using "tvshows" in a playlist returns a random selection of tv series, not a random selection of episodes from all tv series. Also, the alphabetical ordering problem from above still applies.

These aren't big issues, it's just that the shelf just seems like a really cool feature and I'd like to figure out how to use it.

EDIT: Oh, and happy holidays everyone. The boss told me he's tuckered out and headed to Bermuda for a little R&R.

Nah, it's definitely possible to create a smart playlist of movies, have it randomized and set the shelf to display that. Simply set "order by" to randomize. Just tested it out and it works for me. And you can also use "episodes" in a smart playlist.

[ZwartePiet]

I got TV episodes to shuffle randomly on the shelf (woohoo!), but movies still show up as a random selection in alphabetical order. Would you mind taking a look at my smart playlist and/or posting yours?

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="movies">
    <name>ShuffleMovies</name>
    <match>all</match>
    <rule field="path" operator="startswith">
        <value>smb://timecapsule/data/movies</value>
    </rule>
    <group>none</group>
    <limit>25</limit>
    <order direction="ascending">random</order>
</smartplaylist>

Removing direction="ascending" from the <order> tag changes nothing.

[Jeroen]

I got TV episodes to shuffle randomly on the shelf (woohoo!), but movies still show up as a random selection in alphabetical order. Would you mind taking a look at my smart playlist and/or posting yours?

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="movies">
    <name>ShuffleMovies</name>
    <match>all</match>
    <rule field="path" operator="startswith">
        <value>smb://timecapsule/data/movies</value>
    </rule>
    <group>none</group>
    <limit>25</limit>
    <order direction="ascending">random</order>
</smartplaylist>

Removing direction="ascending" from the <order> tag changes nothing.

This is the one I tested earlier:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="movies">
    <name>randommovies</name>
    <match>all</match>
    <rule field="playcount" operator="is">
        <value>0</value>
    </rule>
    <limit>25</limit>
    <order direction="ascending">random</order>
</smartplaylist>

In my case it's using a different rule, but I don't understand how that would make a difference regarding sorting though

[ZwartePiet]

It works... the problem was my fault.

I accidentally saved an edit on the smart playlist with TextEdit before switching to Nano. The fact that the formatting looked fine in nano (and it half-worked) threw me. I created a new file by copy/pasting your example into nano and editing it to use my rule. It works great.

[Jeroen]

Glad you got it working

[kaiseruk]

On the tv "all channels" view, the channel icons show up fine. However when watching a channel and pressing the info button to see the information about what is on, the channel icons are cropped. The icons are 220x132 resolution. Is it possible for refocus to resize icons in this view?

[knewknow]

Hi Jeroen. Nice to see you back. Any plans on a 1080 version of the skin for Helix? Thanks as always...

[Jeroen]

On the tv "all channels" view, the channel icons show up fine. However when watching a channel and pressing the info button to see the information about what is on, the channel icons are cropped. The icons are 220x132 resolution. Is it possible for refocus to resize icons in this view?

I can't check at the moment as the PVR Demo add-on isn't working completely for me, but looking at the code it should rescale the icons. The skin expects square icons here, and if they're not square they are rescaled to keep the right aspect ratio. Resizing them to a non-square format isn't going to happen as it would affect the text too.

Hi Jeroen. Nice to see you back. Any plans on a 1080 version of the skin for Helix? Thanks as always...

Thanks, an 1080p version isn't something I see happening very soon, certainly not Helix.

[Ds17]

You'll have to pardon my ignorance on this but, where has the play trailer option gone?
I've looked around, and have seen it mentioned that it moved to the context menu, I have it set to show info when I press enter, yet there's only 3 options (Play, Cast & Manage).
I have the appropriate plugins installed too, as it did previously work, admittedly I've only just noticed this as I just watched my first movie on my machine in a while.

[Jeroen]

You'll have to pardon my ignorance on this but, where has the play trailer option gone?
I've looked around, and have seen it mentioned that it moved to the context menu, I have it set to show info when I press enter, yet there's only 3 options (Play, Cast & Manage).
I have the appropriate plugins installed too, as it did previously work, admittedly I've only just noticed this as I just watched my first movie on my machine in a while.

There should be an option for it in the context menu. Although it's possible this was added after the official release that is currently available in the Kodi repository, I'm actually not quite sure.

[Ds17]

You'll have to pardon my ignorance on this but, where has the play trailer option gone?
I've looked around, and have seen it mentioned that it moved to the context menu, I have it set to show info when I press enter, yet there's only 3 options (Play, Cast & Manage).
I have the appropriate plugins installed too, as it did previously work, admittedly I've only just noticed this as I just watched my first movie on my machine in a while.

There should be an option for it in the context menu. Although it's possible this was added after the official release that is currently available in the Kodi repository, I'm actually not quite sure.

Thanks for the reply.
It's not in the context menu. I believe I'm running version 1.4.0 of refocus, haven't had an auto update in a while, using OpenElec on XBMC 13.2.

[Jeroen]

Allright, in that case it was added after that stable release and it's currently only available in development builds. As soon as I've finished work on the Helix version that will find it's way to the auto update.

[Ds17]

Allright, in that case it was added after that stable release and it's currently only available in development builds. As soon as I've finished work on the Helix version that will find it's way to the auto update.

Sweet, look forward to it.
Thanks for the quick replies and happy new year