How to get movies into chronological order for a series?

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

Okay I am running the mojo theme and I am using thumbgen to make the files.

Single movie files are just fine so this isn’t an issue with thumbgen or the movies. THis is something with how the SMP displays items based on file naming.

This is how I was doing all my file naming -

Movie series date released movie name resolution.mkv

E.G.

James Bond 1962 Dr. No 1080p.jpg - thumbnail

James Bond 1962 Dr. No 1080p.mkv - movie

James Bond 1962 Dr. No 1080p.xml - information

James Bond 1962 Dr. No 1080p_sheet.jpg - background

James Bond 1963 From Russia with Love 1080p.jpg - thumbnail

James Bond 1963 From Russia with Love 1080p.mkv - movie

James Bond 1963 From Russia with Love 1080p.xml - information

James Bond 1963 From Russia with Love 1080p_sheet.jpg - background

The problem is this shows all of the series with the same thumbnail on my SMP device, even though the thumbnail related to it is in the right location.

Now if I take the movies and I remove series and year it all displays just fine but then they are out of chronological order and then go into the alphabetical order.

E.G.

Dr. No 1080p.mkv

From Russia with Love 1080p.mkv

I REALLY want to avoid having to make sub folders if I can avoid it. E.G. I  could make an Action\James Bond\Year and then make a sub folder for each year but MAN thats alot of folders.

FYI this isn’t an issue with just James Bond, its an issue with anything that is a seris I have more than one of and its getting really annoying. Star Wars, The Matrix, Indiana Jones, Diary of a WImpy Kid, Tinkerbell and so on down the line.

2

For Movie collections, to keep them in cronological order you need to change the “Title” to something like:

James Bond 01: Dr. No

James Bond 02: From Russia with Love

etc.

or

01: Dr. No

02: From Russia with Love

etc.

Sorting is done with the Movie title from the metadata.xml, so to keep sorting correct you have make sure that the Title is named to keep it in order.

By the way, after you change the title name in TG, make sure you click the green check mark in the Overview to make it use the changes.

3

Okay so you say sorting is done by the metadata in the XML? Well I did Batman 01 Batman Begins and Batman 02 The Dark Knight and they are not next to each other. Which field in the xml are they sorted by? BTW I have it set to sorting Aphabetical and Filtering folders.

Is it just by TItle?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  The Dark Knight   The Dark Knight   Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.   2008-07-18

So If I did

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  Batman 02 The Dark Knight   The Dark Knight   Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.   2008-07-18

Outside of this doing the other naming did fix the thumbnails viewing being off so I am half way to where i want to be.

4

Has to be:

Batman 01: Batman Begins Batman 02: The Dark Knight Batman 03: The Dark Knight Rises

The way you have them doesn’t put them in order, you can’t just put "01, 02, etc. in the name, it has to be in Alphabetical & Numerical order.

So you would also have something like this:

Pirates of the Caribbean 01: Curse of the Black Pearl Pirates of the Caribbean 02: Dead Man's Chest Pirates of the Caribbean 03: At Worlds End

etc.

or

Die Hard 01 Die Hard 02: Die Harder Die Hard 03: Die Hard with a Vengence

etc.

5

Yep got the understanding now. Just wanted to make sure I was looking at the right spot to modify. Thanks for the help! Much appreciated.

6

There’s another way to do it. I’ll use Pirates of the Caribbean as an example. Movies should be:

Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End

Problem is that “At World’s End” displays first. The XML edit works, but it’s annoying to not have titles displayed correctly, or having to number EVERY movie (IE, The Lorax, or The Jerk all start with “T”). So, I just sort by file name. How do you do that?

Simple. Just name the movies above as PIRATES1, PIRATES2, and PIRATES3 (.mkv or .mp4, whatever). Then, after you have the data you want, turn the media library OFF. Now, they will display in filename order, but still display the moviesheets and/or movie data that you’ve obtained, to include the correct and unaltered title.

This also puts television episodes in order.