Playlists - Smart and Active

I have my collection well organised into folders where music, video and photographs have well structured subflobers. All of the files are readily updated into Mezzmo using the scheduled library maintenance at midnight. I also update the library on the fly when I need to.

All files are held in the Mezzmo database and look good. I know want to make use of the playlists to view my video information in different ways.

Is there any way that I can set up a playlist to view Tv series using a hierarchy of Artist (Showname)/Album (Season) but with only files in a certain folder/sybfolder structure?

At the moment if I set this up i get the Movie artists coming up as shownames as it reads the whole database.

In alreality I find that the way Mezzmo deals with TV series is pretty messy. It seems a quick fix has been applied - Artists as Showname / Album as Season

At the moment there's no way to limit contents of an active playlist based on another folder, but this is a planned feature in a future version.

Album is picked up from the folder name for video files, but you can override that using the Online Video Metadata or by manually editing the files. Artists should be read from metadata files, if you have those, otherwise it'll most likely be empty. Do you have any metadata files in the folder where the video is that has artists as the showname?

Thanks Dennis

There are no metadata files in any TV series for the folder.

When I use the Online Metadata for the Tv series, the Season is placed in the Album which is logical. The Show Name remains in the Title which concerns me as I have all individual episodes (files) renamed by TVRename eg "Flashpoint - S01E09 - Planets Aligned". if I use the Online Metadata I will lose the actual Showname from the Title or put it in to another field

Do you have any suggestions?

Is the show name loaded up correctly from the online metadata search? If it is, then it can replace the title, right? Sorry, I don't think I understand what the problem is - can you please give an example of the before and after, so that I could see what's wrong?

There is nothing wrong - it is just I am working out what is happening so i can make use of the playlist feature.

At the moment I have favoured keeping the folder structure as that suits me better with TVRename.

Ok, great - if you have well-organized folders, then yes, that makes sense.

Kevin A,

have you tried smart playlists? I did myself this way (I think is this what you're trying to do), and you don´t need metadata:

1. Create a playlist like "series" in the root of your library (so when you open the server it'll be easier to find.
2. "Bellow" this pleylist create a "sublist", a smart playlist, for every show you follow. For example, a playlist that filters every video file that contains "boardwalk" in the name, and order by date (newest first). The rule is "filename", "contains" (I don't know exactly because my mezzmo is in portuguese), "boardwalk".
You have to find a unique word, or a group of words. If tou follow The Big Bang Theory and The Big C, you can't use "big". You combine "bang" + "theory" in two rules for the former, and "big" + "c" for the latter. But if you use a renamer, it's easir still.

So, when you open this smart list, all "boardwalk empire" episodes shall be listed, the most recent first.

The annoyance is that you must do it for each show you follow, so you'll have a lot of playlists (I have more than 15 myself). But once you´re done with it, it works smoothly.

I hope it was helpful and I understood what you needed. If you need more info, I'm on vacation till friday ;)

Thanks for your comments Jorgeaabr

Yep that is one way of doing it. Obviously the time to set that up can vary dependant on the number of shows you have. I set up the Movie Alpha rolldex and that took me a day taking into account all of the possible issues uncovered.

However it is compounded by having movies ( both home movies from travel etc and "normal movies"). These are in separate folders so I can use the "filepath starts with" to get over this. I also have a number of .vob files so have to look at the duration and have a "duration is grater than 10mins" condition added.

The concept of the playlists is great. What I am looking for is a combination of Smart and Active playlists - in reviewing the forum a number of improvements to the playlists where highlight as being on the list for implementation last year. IMO there needs to be more development in this area especially considering the subtle difference between music, TV series, movies and pictures

I use Mezzmo for the lot to serve to 3 TV's - direct to Samsung PS58C7000 and through 2 WDTV HD's. Mezzmo works well serving up all of these and i suppose I am lucky that i don't have the issues of some of the others on this forum. I am just not looking into making better use of the current functionality of Mezzmo playlists and will always look forward to future upgrades in this area. Can't go past the feedback from Dennis as well.