Stacking

When in File Mode, XBMC has the ability to recognize and present 'multi-part' video files based on filename stacking rules. For example a two part VCD can be displayed and played as a single file in the user interface.

Stacking in XBMC

Stacking can be toggled on / off while in File Mode in My Videos. How stacked files are presented to the user can be configured with the Treat Stacked Files as a Single File under Video Setings. The default stacking rules are rather "wide" and can cause files you normally would not want to stack to be stacked (e.g. rolling filenames from digital cameras, TV shows etc.) The regular expressions that control stacking can be changed by the moviestacking tag in AdvancedSettings.xml.

• Stacking is only available for video media.
• Stacking is disabled by default for files that have been designated as TV shows (via Set Contents). So if you do not want to use the Video Library for TV shows, you can prevent your TV episodes to be collapsed via stacking by setting the contents correctly.

Stacking Filename Syntax

As an example, if you only want to have filenames ending with a specific type of string (e.g. "-CD1", "-CD2" disregarding the extension) collapsed into one file. Then you would do the following changes in AdvancedSettings.xml.

<xml>

<advancedsettings>
 <moviestacking append="no">
   <regexp>[ _\.-]+cd[ _\.-]*([0-9a-d]+)</regexp>
   <regexp>[ _\.-]+dvd[ _\.-]*([0-9a-d]+)</regexp>
   <regexp>[ _\.-]+part[ _\.-]*([0-9a-d]+)</regexp>
 </moviestacking>
</advancedsettings>

</xml>

The syntax can be summarized by the following:

[token][cd|part|dvd][num]

Where [token] is one of the following strings:

• "-" (hyphen)
• " " (blank)
• "_" (underscore)
• "." (dot)

Followed by the string "cd", "part" or "dvd" (case insensitive).

[num] can be a number between 1 and 99.

The comparison is case insensitive.

For example, if you have the following two files (which both consist of a part of a movie):

• MyVideo-CD1.avi
• MyVideo-CD2.avi

They will be displayed in the file list as one file MyVideo.avi.