Overview

Use the Videos feature of MediaPortal to play all your videos and movies.For an overview, see Watch Videos: Home Theatre at its Best.

Introduction

See the Movies Setup Guide to learn how to create a movies database in MediaPortal.

The Videos feature is the central point for playing all kinds of videos and movies. It will stack multi-part movies and you can also create playlists. IMDb support is built-in to automatically get movie information and DVD cover images. 

Pressing  on a selected movie will display the IMDb information or will access IMDb to download the information and automatically add the movie to the MediaPortal database.

You can also choose to have the movie details displayed when you select or click on a movie rather than instantly starting playback. See Videos Configuration.

Menu Options

Access the Videos Menu by pressing (or if you have selected either Filmstrip or Cover flow Layouts).

Layout

Clicking this button displays a dialog/list to select the layout you prefer for videos:

1. List
2. Icons
3. Big Icons
4. Filmstrip
5. Cover flow

Sort by:

Click the up/down arrow to toggle between ascending or descending sort order. Select the Sort by: button to choose the type of sort you require.

The options available to you are different depending on whether you are currently using Shares View or one of the Database Views.

Options when in Share View are as follows;

Options when in any of the Database Views are as follows;

Name-Full will sort all items alphabetically disregarding item type (folders or video files).

See also: Sort Options

View by:

Select the button for a list of supported Views:

Shares

Shares view is like a Windows Explorer view of network shares, folders and files.

Title, Actors, Directors, Genres and Years

Title, Actors, Directors, Genres and Years are Database Views which require that the movie titles have been added to the database.

Index

The Index views are also Database Views. These provide a simple alphabetical search feature for you chosen view. For example if you select Title index the following screen appears:

If you highlight a letter and press (or OK on your remote) you will be presented with a list of all the movies in your database beginning with that letter:

User Groups

The User groups view is similar to Title view but on top of the list are movies grouped in user defined groups. Similar to a folder however one movie can belong to several User groups.

User groups can be defined in MediaPortal Configuration or directly in this view by using the Context menu. Open the Context Menu (it doesn't matter which movie is selected). Then select Add New User group, enter a group name and a new empty User group will be created. To add movies to a User group, select a movie, open the Context Menu and press Add Movie to User group.

Recent and Watched

The final database views are Recently Added, Recently Watched, Watched and Unwatched.

*Note: *If you use IMDb lookup via the context menu, and the video (movie or TV series) is found, the file will be automatically added to the database. The movie or TV series will then appear in these views as well. This is true even if you lookup a movie while using Shares view.

See also: Views

Current Playlist

Displays the current playlist and videos you have added - See Video Playlists

Playlists

Display a list of playlists you have saved in the playlist folder you select in Configuration > Videos.

Scan

Scans for new movies in your movie folders. MediaPortal will scan all folders marked to be scanned in your configuration.

Movie Set-Up

Takes you to the GUI-based Videos Settings .

Jump to

Buttons in the Jump to section only display if you have the corresponding plugin installed.

Trailers

Opens the IMDb Movie Trailers site of Online Videos plugin.

Trakt

Jumps to the Trakt plugin window.

Subtitle

This button is only visible when the SubCentral plugin is installed. Pressing this button takes you to the SubCentral window with a search for subtitles of the currently selected movie. It is recommended to use this function from the Title database view. It is also possible, but makes less sense, to jump to SubCentral when using other database views such as Year or Genre.

Context Menu Options

Right clicking a video in the list, pressing , or the Info/More key on a remote, will display a context menu. The contents of the context menu will vary depending on your current view.

Shares View Context Menu

The Share View context menu changes depending on whether you have selected a single movie folder, file or your movies root folder.

The following image shows the options available when you have selected your root folder:

Let's step through the options.

 
1. Play all videos in selected folder

Plays all videos in the selected folder. You may also press or Play on your remote to play all videos in the selected folder. Depending on your settings in Configuration > Videos, your videos will either start to play immediately or you will be asked how you wish to sort video files before they play.

2. Add to playlist

Adds the selected item to the current playlist.

3. Scan

Scans the selected folder for new videos based on your Scan settings in Configuration > Videos.

4. Scan using nfo files

MediaPortal will search for .nfo files in your folder and add new movies based on their content. Please see nfo file support for further information.

5. File menu

This option opens the standard MediaPortal file menu options. If you have protected access to the File Menu you will be prompted to enter your PIN code before you can access the options.

Note: File Menu must be enabled in MediaPortal Configuration for this option to be available.

6. Flatten

Toggles the Unstack/Stack feature.

7. Refresh current directory

Refreshes the content displayed for the selected folder. 

8. Update Grabber scripts

From time to time there will be changes to the websites that are used to obtain movie information. When this happens the team will update the Grabber Script to ensure it is fully compatible with the new website structure. Clicking this option causes MediaPortal to check online for a newer version of your preferred script and if one exists it will be downloaded.

9. Update internal Grabber scripts

This does the same as option 11 but checks specifically for a new version of the Grabber Script used internally for finding and downloading actor information from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

10. Set default Grabber script

This option allows you to change default Grabber Script that you previously selected in the MediaPortal Configuration Tool or the MediaPortal GUI settings. 11. Create folder thumb from thumbnails   Tip Select your thumbnail quality and style in MediaPortal Configuration - GUI - Thumbnails. As of v 1.8.0 a new option on the context menu will combine video thumbs in the selected folder into a thumbnail and save it as a

folder.jpg

file. Only thumbs in the selected folder will be used (not sub-folders). If there is only one thumbnail in the folder it will be copied without any changes. If more than one thumbnail exists in the folder, it will select 4 to generate a 2 by 2 grid folder thumbnail. 

The result is a folder thumnail created from four videos contained in that folder:
 

The following shows the context menu which is displayed if you highlight an individual movie file or DVD folder:

All actions is the same as above except:
  1. Play Plays the selected video file. 3. IMDB Download movie information from IMDb. 4. Set watched status or Reset watched status Mark the movie as watched or unwatched. 6. Update Media info Update media info for the selected video file or DVD/Blu-ray (BD) folders. Media info data will also be updated during video IMDb scan. 12. Refresh video thumb Updates the video thumbnail image in case a new one has been generated. See Configuration Tools > MediaPortal Configuration > GUI > Thumbnails for information about how to configure thumbnail generation.

Database View Context Menu

Title View

The Title View context menu contains the following items:

Most of the items in the list should be fairly self explanatory however, let's briefly run through each option.

 
1. Play

Plays the selected movie.

2. IMDB

Displays the Movie Info page of the selected movie.

3. Create nfo file

Creates a[ nfo file|Using nfo files] for the selected movie.

4. Create nfo files for all movies

Creates a nfo file for all of the movies in your Database.

5. Add to playlist

Adds the selected movie to your current video playlist.

6. Set watched status

This option toggles the watched status of the selected movie.

7. Rename

Clicking this option brings up the on-screen keyboard so that you can rename the movie.

8. Rename SortTitle

Clicking this option brings up the on-screen keyboard so that you can rename the movie's SortTitle. For information relating to the SortTitle feature please see the MediaPortal Configuration > Videos > Video Database page.

9. Delete this movie

Deletes the selected movie from your Database.

10. Search movie

Gives you the ability to search for a specific movie in your Database. Clicking this option brings up the following menu:

Selecting any of the above options opens the on-screen keyboard so that you can type your search string.

11. Update Grabber scripts

From time to time there will be changes to the websites that are used to obtain movie information. When this happens the team will update the Grabber Script to ensure it is fully compatible with the new website structure. Clicking this option causes MediaPortal to check online for a newer version of your preferred script and if one exists it will be downloaded.

12. Update internal Grabber scripts

This does the same as option 11 but checks specifically for a new version of the Grabber Script used internally for finding and downloading actor information from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

13. Set default Grabber script

This option allows you to change default Grabber Script that you previously selected in the MediaPortal Configuration Tool or the MediaPortal GUI settings.

Note: If you have locked some of your folders using the pin code feature the option to unlock these folders will also appear in the context menu. It will appear as option 11. All options after this will have there option number incremented by 1 e.g. Update Grabber Scripts will become option 12 etc.

Actors list

Opening the context menu at the Cast list in a movie details screen will display the following dialog:

  1. Refresh selected actor info This option will download the selected actor's name, role and movie list from your online movie information source again. 2. Update Grabber scripts From time to time there will be changes to the websites that are used to obtain movie information. When this happens the team will update the Grabber Script to ensure it is fully compatible with the new website structure. Clicking this option causes MediaPortal to check online for a newer version of your preferred script and if one exists it will be downloaded. 3. Update internal Grabber scripts This does the same as option 11 but checks specifically for a new version of the Grabber Script used internally for finding and downloading actor information from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). 4. Set default Grabber script This option allows you to change default Grabber Script that you previously selected in the MediaPortal Configuration Tool or the MediaPortal GUI settings. 5. Create nfo file Creates a[ nfo file|Using nfo files] for the selected movie which also contains information about actors if they have been downloaded.

Actors movies list

Opening the context menu at the Movie list in an actor's details screen will display the following dialog:

  1. Refresh all actor movies Updates all movies of the selected actor. 2. Refresh selected movie Updates the information of the selected movie only. 3. Play (only available for movies in your collection) Plays the selected movie. 4. IMDB (only available for movies in your collection) Opens the selected movie's information screen (same as pressing or OK.)

User Group View

The User Group View context menu is similar to the Title View with the exception that is also contains options to create, remove and add movies to User Groups.

Actor and Director View

The Actor and Director Views context menu contains the following items:

The only difference between the two is the wording in option 3 (search). Clicking the search option opens the on-screen keyboard where you can enter your search string (actor or director name). Clicking on the actors' or directors' name will display a list of the movies in your database in which they appear or directed. If the actor or director only features in movies stored in your pin protected folders, you must unlock content before the information will appear.  

The actor and director searches will return only the name with no information until they have been added to the actors or directors database. Once there is an entry in the database the search will display the actors name along with a picture (if available) and a fanart image chosen from a random movie in your database with which the artist is associated. 

Index, Genres and Years Views

The context menu for the remaining database views contains the following options:

Locked content (PIN)

In database views now PIN locked content will not be visible anymore. To unlock content, use context menu command Unlock content and enter a valid PIN.

If more shares are protected with different PIN:s, only content with entered PIN will be unlocked.

Example: You have two shares: SHARE1 and SHARE2 with PIN:s 1234 and 4321. If you enter PIN 1234, only content from SHARE1 will be unlocked. If you want to unlock all protected content with one PIN, use the same PIN for your shares.

Unlock will be valid as long you're in My Videos screens (or in fullscreen video). To lock the content again, use the context menu command Lock content or exit My Videos.

Customization

To set the location for the files displayed in Videos, to define your own Views for Videos, as well as many more advanced options, see Configuration > Videos. 

Codecs

You must have the correct codec installed in Windows to play your videos. In Windows 7 most codecs are automatically installed, however some files may require additional codecs and Windows XP or Vista require you to install codecs for most video playback formats.

You may select which codecs you prefer to use using Configuration > Codecs and Renderer > Video Codecs

See also Preparing Your System > Codecs, for detailed instructions on installing codecs in Windows to play all your video files.

Changelog