Path substitution
Path substitutions are settings in advancedsettings.xml to force XBMC to use different file paths. These are processed in order, and are useful for substituting an absolute path on a PC with a path suitable for XBMC to handle. Starting in XBMC v11 (Eden) path subs works for most file paths. Path subs work across local and network paths, across different network protocols, and can even be used with the special protocol (see note below).
Examples
<advancedsettings>
<pathsubstitution>
<substitute>
<from>SMB://192.168.1.19/Music/</from>
<to>G:\Music\</to>
</substitute>
</pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>
<advancedsettings>
<pathsubstitution>
<substitute>
<from>special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/</from>
<to>PROTOCOL://YOUR_NETWORK_SHARE/xbmc/userdata/Thumbnails/</to>
</substitute>
</pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>
NOTE: Not all special paths can be substituted. In particular, special://musicplaylists/ and special://videoplaylists/ should not be substituted, as internally these are multipaths that cannot be written to (thus saving of playlists will go elsewhere). Instead, one should use the advanced setting <system><playlistpath> to change this.
Windows does not support smb:// paths, use UNC paths instead. UNC paths in Windows (\\server\share) will not allow the use of a specific XBMC username and password like smb://username:password@server/share would.