[desperado591]

After my Kodi 20.2 for some reason has crashed and the Backup failed to work properly, I now have to reinstall everything manually
I have managed to get Metropolis 4.1.0 running so far, but the Widget "Recently Added" on the Home screen is giving me a headache, as it is showing every episode respectively movie that was added including the ones that I have already watched and marked as such.

Where do I have to check a box so that my Home screen is acting as it used to do and is showing only non watched media?   Any help is very much appreciated.

[MacGyver]

My guess is to try and open the library entry for Recently Added through Video and then with the left menu see if you can say "Hide Watched" there.
I know it likes to keep the view for different nodes, but I never knew that meant fake library ones too. 
I hope that works as I don't have experience with it.

[desperado591]

Thanks for your answer

Just for clarification: You are talking about Settings -> Interface -> Configure Skin -> Home Options -> Home Furniture -> TV Shows -> Select Widget -> Video Library -> TV Shows -> Recently added and there I should try to open the context menu? Well, I tried to open context menu (or left menu) on every item on my way to that point, but there was no menu opening

[MacGyver]

No, I would think it would be Main Menu -> Video -> Recently Added Movies/TV, then left, then change All Movies to Unwatched.
That's assuming that menu is following the node rules.
You may need to go back in the video menu to find the Recently Added node.

[desperado591]

But when I change all Movies to unwatched how should the widget decide what to show?
I know that I can filter for unwatched movies in the main movie menu, but that is not what I want to achieve and it had not been neccessary before to do so.
In all this years that I have been using Metropolis now I had never to deal with this issue after a new installation, so maybe I just have to do it all over again?

[MacGyver]

So I'm not sure what's changed, but like most things in the world, what you want to do is not impossible.
So, if you can figure it out, you need to create a smart playlist that has a rule of "play count" less than 1 and a second rule of "Date added" of less than 30 days, then sort by date added and sort descending.
Then you modify the Home widget for Movies to point to the video library->playlist, and pick the smart playlist you just made.

This will make a widget that only shows you things in movies you haven't watched. Something must have changed in the library or how skin.shortcuts displays widgets, but what I described will give you what you want, albeit with a bit of work.
If you can't get it, just ask and I'll make you some screen shots.

[desperado591]

Ähm, okay.... sounds like rocket science to me I have absolutely no clue how to create such a playlist and put that in the right place afterwards

[MacGyver]

If the issue is the existing widget showing watched in recent Movies despite what the view mode says to do, I'm not seeing the TV blended in like you say, this widget we are about to make won't have that issue either.
Ok, here it goes. I did say I would do it if you needed help.

After Kodi first launches go to Videos. If you try this after you have been playing with Kodi a while there's no telling where Videos will start at.

Then go to Playlists.

Create a New Smart Playlist.

Create a New Rule. (It will default to the type of Movies, this will fix half of the issue you are having)

Click on Title and change it to Play Count. (this will fix the other half of the issue you are having)

Pick "is" and change it to Less Than.

And type/select "1" in the popup box, select Done.

Create a second new rule with "Date Added" and "in the last" and use "30" for the days or whatever number of days you want,
Change the Order By to "Date added" and change the Order to "descending" it should look like this.

Press up until you see "Ok" again on the left and press Ok, type the name you want, I chose "Unwatched Recent".

You just made a Smart Playlist! The list will only show you Movies that have been added in the last 30 days and only the unwatched ones, sorted by newest to oldest.

[MacGyver]

Now go to Settings then Interface then Configure Skin, scroll down to Home Options and select Home Furniture.

Press left and move up and down until you get to Movies, then press left again (or right 87 times), now move up to Select Widget or "Recently added movies" and select it.

Find Video Library and select it.

Find "Playlist" not "Playlists"

Select the new Smart Playlist you just created by the name you chose, here it's "Unwatched Recent".

Rename it when the box pops up if you want or select Done.
Move down and over to OK and select.

You just setup a Widget!

Your new Widget should be on your Home screen now.


Hopefully you and anyone else that needs it can follow this to create all the Widgets you need.

[desperado591]

Wow, you are truly a Master of Metropolis   Thank you for your effort!
I have now managed - thanks to your instruction - to create 2 smart playlists, one for movies and one for series episodes and as it seems right now, the widgets on the start site are now behaving as I was used to from earlier installations

There is only on minor misbehavior with the Series widget: Instead of showing the series poster it now shows a thumbnail of the episode. I have tried to change the setting under Home Options -> Widget Background Display Order, but none of the 3 options gives me the Series poster back  

Whereas on the Movies witget everything is fine now. It shows the Movie poster on the home screen and when I change to "Filme Neu" by leftclicking it shows me the relevant fanart for the movie.

Is there an easy fix for this issue also?

[MacGyver]

If you use a TV Show based playlist instead of an Episode one it will display the series poster (but just the series in the list), if you use an Episode based one it does the thumbnail. It can be changed, but you would have to hack at the source of Metropolis to do it.
The order for the widget art is poster->icon->default-icon and Kodi sends back the poster as empty when the media type is an episode list, it sends Icon as the thumbnail. 

If you wanted to still use Episode instead of Tv Shows for the playlist type and wanted to try your hand at hacking it the way you wanted it, the variable is GlobalWidgetIcon, but you may find it hard to get a series poster if Kodi doesn't want to play nice in what's available to the skin for choices while in that list. Container(8000).ListItem.Art(poster) just isn't there. That's not to say that another internal ListItem doesn't have the current series poster, I just don't know what it would be while in an episode list. A Kodi dev would.

You can try it out Tv Shows as the smart playlist type by bringing up the context menu of the smart playlist in question and editing it, change the type from Episode to Tv Shows and save it, you may need to restart Kodi for it to take effect.
It won't show each episode but it will show the series and its poster.

[desperado591]

I had accidentally tried out TV Shows instead of Episodes while creating my smart playlists and yes, it then showed the (wanted) series poster, but it only showed the entire show instead of the new episode.

Here is a photo I have just shot from my mother´s Metropolis where it is working as it should do:



And here is what it looks like on mine with the new smart playlist (yes I know, I could rename it):



Maybe that is giving you an better hint off what I am talking about.

[MacGyver]

Basically the poster art isn't being presented by Kodi anymore, the current code is:

Code:

    <variable name="GlobalWidgetIcon">
        <value condition="!String.IsEmpty(Container(8000).ListItem.Art(poster))">$INFO[Container(8000).ListItem.Art(poster)]</value>
        <value condition="![String.IsEmpty(Container(8000).ListItem.Icon) | String.StartsWith(Container(8000).ListItem.Icon, default)]">$INFO[Container(8000).ListItem.Icon]</value>
        <value>DefaultThumb.png</value>
        </variable>

And because of some change in the way Kodi deals with lists in widgets now "poster" is empty.
It can be made to work the same way again by adding a new line after the one for poster, one that sees the series poster in the new way.

Code:

    <variable name="GlobalWidgetIcon">
        <value condition="!String.IsEmpty(Container(8000).ListItem.Art(poster))">$INFO[Container(8000).ListItem.Art(poster)]</value>
        <value condition="!String.IsEmpty(Container(8000).ListItem.Art(tvshow.poster))">$INFO[Container(8000).ListItem.Art(tvshow.poster)]</value>
        <value condition="![String.IsEmpty(Container(8000).ListItem.Icon) | String.StartsWith(Container(8000).ListItem.Icon, default)]">$INFO[Container(8000).ListItem.Icon]</value>
        <value>DefaultThumb.png</value>
        </variable>

I could push it as a fix, but anyone that got used to it the new way (I think since Leia), would want it the other way.
It could be a setting (like the widget background setting), but that needs to be discussed with Jingai.

You can modify it yourself in the meantime manually.
Look for the file named "Includes_Variables.xml" in the Metropolis skin folder, and search for

Code:

<variable name="GlobalWidgetIcon">

add the new line like I did above:

Code:

<value condition="!String.IsEmpty(Container(8000).ListItem.Art(tvshow.poster))">$INFO[Container(8000).ListItem.Art(tvshow.poster)]</value>

[desperado591]

Oh, that looks like a brain surgery   My Kodi is running on a Zidoo TV Box, so editing code will be quite challenging.
I guess if I manage to  find the "Includes_Variables.xml" I should try to copy it somehow so that I can edit it externally and put the modified version back afterwards.

But thank you very much so far for your great help! I really appreciate it

[desperado591]

Just one more thing for my understanding.
You are saying "Basically the poster art isn't being presented by Kodi anymore" "And because of some change in the way Kodi deals with lists in widgets now "poster" is empty."

As I told you in my previous post, our Kodi is running on Zidoo TV boxes and honestly it is a special Zidoo version called ZDMC. In my Mom´s case it is running on Kodi 18 I think and in my case Kodi 20.2 so one could think "this explains, why the posters are not shown anymore!". BUT it still worked 2 weeks ago before my crash. So maybe that change in Kodi was in an even later version?