If you like the new Jukebox view and XML search on the X2 platform but miss the genre based layout of the videowall on the 500X then here is a tip you might be interested in...
The most common way of setting up the Jukebox view is to add the root of your media library as a shortcut in favourites and then scan the whole folder structure. This creates a jukebox database in the root of the library and gives you a flat jukebox irrespective of the folder structure in your library. In order to filter by genre you then use the XML search functionality. Whilst this works great, if you already have your media organised into genre based folders you may want the ability to access these quickly but still retain the jukebox view and XML search.
To do this you can also add your genre folders to favourites and scan them individually. With this setup you have both a flat jukebox of all of your media, as well as individual genre based jukeboxes. Here is an example:
Let's say you have the following folder structure in your library:
DVDs
---- Action
---- Childrens
---- Comedy
---- Music DVD
First of all add the DVD's folder to favourites and scan as normal. This will give you a single jukebox with a flat view of all of the media in all of the subfolders. Then add each of your genre folders to favourites and scan each of them individually. A jukebox DB will now be created in each of the genre folders. Even though the media has already been scanned from the root of the DVD share, there is no reason why you can't scan each folder as well.
From favourites you can then access either all movies in a single jukebox, or go directly to a jukebox page by genre. Once you are in one of the genre jukeboxes you can still filter using XML search. As most movies have more than one genre in the XML (eg. Childrens, Animation, Christmas) you can go into the Childrens jukebox page then filter on the Christmas genre... this then limits the display to the Children's Christmas movies.
The only thing you might want to consider is changing the names of your genre folders so that the name that appears in favourites makes sense. My music DVD folder was originally called "music", I changed this to "music DVDs" so that I did not get confused between that and my "music" (audio) favourite.
The only downside to this approach is that if you add new media to your structure you need to scan both the root folder and the genre folder after the media has been added, but this only takes a couple of minutes. At a minimum you have to scan from the root anyway, so it's only one more folder.
Regards,
Mark.
