If you don't use a single xml file, Roksbox will display the folders in your directory structure as the categories on the video screen. By carefully organizing your videos within your directory structure, you can create a well organized video screen in Roksbox. However, depending on your desired complexity, your category organization can be limited by using the directory structure method. For example, if you want to display a video under different categories, such as Action, Adventure, and Comedy, the only way to do that with the directory structure is to physically have your video in three different folders (an Action folder, an Adventure folder, and a Comedy folder). Obviously this will take up additional disk space as opposed to having it in just one folder.

You can resolve this problem by using individual nfo or xml files for each video. If you use ThumbGen movie sheets, then you are probably generating nfo files automatically. If not, you can create individual xml files for each video. Roksbox can use the genre information within these files to organize your categories. For example, if your genre is Action, Adventure, Comedy, then Roksbox will create each of these categories, and place your video in each one. An example xml file would look like this.

<video>

<title>O Brother, Where Art Thou?</title>

<year>2000</year>

<genre>Action, Adventure, Comedy</genre>

<mpaa>PG-13</mpaa>

<director>Joel Coen</director>

<actors>George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson</actors>

<description>They have a plan...but not a clue.</description>

<length>103</length>

</video>

You can also use multilevel categories. For example, if you use TV show episodes for different seasons, you might want your episodes to appear as TV/show name/season/episode, such as TV/Seinfeld/Season 8/The Bizarro Jerry. Multilevel categories need to be separated by slashes, and be inside square brackets ([]) in the genre.

<video>

<title>The Bizarro Jerry</title>

<year>1989</year>

<genre>[TV/Seinfeld/Season 8]</genre>

<mpaa>TV-PG</mpaa>

<director>Andy Ackerman</director>

<actors>Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Jason Alexander>

<description>Elaine meets Kevin and some of his friends; they are the exact opposite of Jerry, George and Kramer.</description>

<length>25</length>

</video>

For more information on using multilevel categories, see Creating Multilevel Video Subcategories.

In these cases the video is located in one place, but it will appear under different categories on the Roksbox video screen.

By default, Roksbox will not use nfo and xml files for category organization. There are two ways to have Roksbox use the genre information within nfo and xml files for category organization.

Method 1

From the Roksbox main menu, go to Options -> My Options -> Video Preferences -> Directory Structure Category Organization. From here select the option to use nfo or xml files for video category organization.

When using this method, since Roksbox will read the genre information from your nfo or xml files when you enter the video screen, it will take longer for the video screen to appear. Roksbox needs to read the information from each file, then organize it.

If you have PHP running on your media server, you can significantly reduce this amount of time by using a PHP script to read the nfo and xml file information. This is explained in Method 2.

Method 2

This method requires PHP to be running on your web server, but is much faster than method 1.

Download the file videoxml.php and place it in your video root folder. From the Roksbox main menu, go to Options -> My Options -> Video Preferences -> Directory Structure Category Organization. From here select the option to use nfo or xml using PHP for video category organization. Select Exit, exit back to the main menu, and go to the video screen. Your videos should be organized according to the genre in each of your nfo and xml files.

In both methods, if a video doesn't have a nfo or xml file associated with it, Roksbox will use the directory structure and folder it is in as the category. Also, if there is a nfo or xml file, but no genre specification, Roksbox will use the directory structure and folder as the category.