Video Source multiple directories

[wstewart]

I see from the wiki doc I can add multiple directory paths to a single source for videos.

Lets says I have \video1 and \video2 and I add these to my source. Does xbmc combine these such that they videos appear all come from one directory or will I see the video1 and video2 when browsing videos?

I think the answer is yes that it will combine them, but I want to double check

If not, I'll have to use something like union-fs to combine my three 1Tb drives.

[jmarshall]

The answer is yes, yes. You may find it's easier to use union-fs or similar though, purely from a file management point of view (outside of xbmc) - up to you!

[queeup]

@jmarshall, what do you think about this modification?

example sources.xml
<sources>
<video>
<source>
<combine name="USB Storage">
<name>Anime</name>
<path pathversion="1">/media/My Book/anime/</path>
<name>Movies</name>
<path pathversion="1">/media/FILM/</path>
</combine>
</source>
<video>
<sources>

[jmarshall]

Um, why, when you can just combine the two sources using two <path> tags anyway?

[queeup]

yes you are right about that, but its combine all folder contents together. i mean mixing animes&films on 1 folder.

[wstewart]

Well having multiple directory paths (ie multiple drives with symbolic links) works great with videos, but doesn`t seem to work so well with TV series.

I have my TV stuff like this
/media/tv_shows/1
/media/tv_shows/1/Family Ties
/media/tv_shows/1/Quantum Leap
....
/media/tv_shows/2
/media/tv_shows/2/Star Trek
....
/media/tv_shows/3

where 1, 2, 3 are symbolic links to physically different harddrives.

The video scraper has no issue with this arrangement, but the tv scraper seems to parse the directory names to lookup the name of the tv series. Thus it will lookup "1" as the tv series name and then all files in subdirs below will be episodes. So in above, Family ties, Quantum leap won`t be identified as TV series but as episodes of "1".

Right now I just configure the source from the XBMC GUI to point to /media/tv_shows. That works for movies. If I put the directories /media/tv_shows/1, /media/tv_shows/2, /media/tv_shows/3 in the sources.xml will it work? Or is there another work around you can suggest or do I have to go with unionfs?

[jmarshall]

Just add all those folders in the multipath source, yes.

[wstewart]

Thanks!! I really wanted to avoid one of the unionfs things since there is a bit effort to set them up, especially if I go with a kernel implementation of it.

[zosky]

yeah this is what im doing ...
TV1, TV2, TV3 are my sim links to each drive's TV dir

<source>
<name>TV</name>
<path pathversion="1">/home/xbmc/links/TV1/</path>
<path pathversion="1">/home/xbmc/links/TV2/</path>
<path pathversion="1">/home/xbmc/links/TV3/</path>
</source>

then movies1, movies2, movies3 ... ... .. you get the picture
its manual raid 0 :cool: