Quick start guide

Introduction

Welcome to XBMC!

Congratulations new users to your choice in media center software, the XBMC interface is designed with the 'Home Theater' in mind. This means it is best viewed on a large-screen TV with you sitting in your couch 10-feet away from your TV, rather than on a small monitor while you sit at your desk. And, because it is all about the home theater experince, the best way to interact with XBMC is with a remote control, rather than a computer mouse. If it helps, you can think of XBMC as the ultimate DVD-Player or Set-top-box, rather than just another program on your computer, (and NO ONE uses a mouse with a DVD-Player or Set-top-box).

First Steps

XBMC Main Features

XBMC does two things really well. It can play your music and videos, and it can display all of your music and videos in something we call the "library". In fact, if you have ever read anything about XBMC, then you have probably already seen pictures of the Library in action.

Getting ready to play music and videos

To play music, a tv show, or a movie, you first have to show XBMC where that media is.

Showing XBMC where to find your videos and music is very simple. First, open XBMC. Then, click up or down until either Videos or Music is highlighted. For the rest of this explanation, we'll use Videos (and, specifically, Movies) as the example, but it works the same way in Music (and TV shows).

Adding a Video Source

Click Videos on the Home Screen, for this example we are going to use Confluence skin, which is the default skin in XBMC since version 9.11 Camelot.

On the next page, click Add Source.

The "Add Video Source" screen will be displayed.

Click on "Browse" button. The following screen will be displayed.

Now browse to where you keep your videos. If you keep them shared on a network drive, read Configuring PC Shares for more information. Simply put, though, you need only scroll down the list to the option "Windows Network (SMB)," click that option, and then browse through your network shares.

Once you've found the folder you keep your videos in, click OK.

NOTE: When you start to deal with the library, you will find that it's a good idea to keep your Movie folder and your Television folder separate. Keep that in mind.

Now name this Video Source. If it's a movie folder, you could name it Movies. If it's a tv show folder, you could name it TV Shows. The name is up to you. For this example, since we're dealing with movies, just name it Movies.

Next, you have to tell XBMC what kind of content is inside of every folder you just added. Click the button "Set Content".

Setting Content

This section is why keeping your TV Shows and Movies separate is important. When you click set content, you can set your video content as Music Videos, Movies, or TV Shows. Scroll through the options until you get to the correct one. Since in our example we're doing Movies, we'll scroll to Movies and go through the Movie settings.

Setting Movie Content Options

If you keep each of your movies in its own folder with the movie name in it, like:

C:\Movies\Big Buck Bunny\Big Buck Bunny.avi

Then you'll want to check off "Use folder names for lookups."

If you keep all your movies in one big folder, like:

C:\Movies\Big Buck Bunny.avi

C:\Movies\Big Buck Bunny II: Rise of the Lycan.avi

Then leave everything unchecked.

If your movies are ripped DVDs using a Video_TS folder structure, like:

C:\Movies\Big Buck Bunny\Video_TS\

Then you'll probably want to tick "Scan Recursively."

Finally, since this is your first time through, we may as well take care of everything right now, so let's go ahead create that pretty Library.

To do so, tick "Run automated Scan."

Now, click OK. And OK again. XBMC will begin to scan your folders. Depending on how many movies you have, this scan could take a long time. When it is finished, you're library will have been created, but you won't be taken to it immediately.

Turning On the Library

Assuming you are using the default skin Confluence, from the videos screen, to turn on the Library, just click left once to pull up the Side Menu. Then scroll down and click "Library Mode."

Voila, you're done. You now have a beautiful Library full of all your great movies, complete with titles, fanart, and tons of information.

Final Note

You should be able to figure out how to put your TV Shows and Music into the Library following this guide (but, of course, dealing with different choices). As you read the wiki and experiment on your own, you should learn about using the Menu when watching a video and clicking the Info button to pull up info about the video or song you have highlighted.

The one additional thing that's useful to mention here is the context menu. On the keyboard, you pull it up by typing C, while highlighting an item. If you are using a mouse, you can right click while hovering over an item. With remote controls, the option differs based on the remote.

The important point is that the Context Menu is how you really control XBMC. With it you can queue an item, play it, set its content, update the library, scan for new media, etc., etc.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this Quick Start Guide. Below you will find additional suggested reading that may be useful for getting started. We have done our best to answer every question, but if you can't find your answer after extensively searching, feel free to ask.

Additional suggested reading:

- http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Video_Library
- http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Set_Contents_(Video_Library)
- http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=TV_Shows
- http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=IMDb