12 Essential Tips to Using XBMC as the Perfect Media Hub

Posted 01/29/2010 at 9:00am | by Paul Lilly

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Create Video Preview Thumbnails

The more videos you accumulate, the harder it can be to keep track of them. The solution? Create thumbnail images for each one so you know what you're dealing with at a glance.

As a prerequisite for this to work, you'll need to download FFmpeg from here. Extract all three files to C:\Windows\System32 if you're running a 32-bit version of Windows, or C:\Windows\SysWOW64 if you're rocking a 64-bit version.

Once you've done that, open up a command prompt by clicking the Start menu, type CMD, and press enter. Navigate to the directory where your videos are located. Since ours are located on our D: drive under Videos, we would type:

D:
cd videos

Then type the following:

for /r %i in (*.avi) do ffmpeg -i "%i" -f mjpeg -t 0.001 -ss 5 -y "%~di%~pi%~ni.tbn"

What the above code will do is create thumbnail previews five seconds into each AVI video file. However, you can replace (*.avi) with a different video format, such as MP4 or whatever type of videos you might have. You can also change how long into the video a thumbnail image is pulled.

Restart XBMC and browse your videos, now with preview thumbnails!

Use an Xbox Controller Natively

Starting with the Xbox 360, we no longer have to fiddle with USB adapter cables or buying a separate gamepad for our PC. Because Microsoft integrated a standard USB connector, it's easy enough to just plug and play, which comes in handy when you're playing a PC game ill-suited for the mouse/keyboard combo. It also comes in handy for manipulating XBMC, but getting the controller to work natively takes a bit of legwork.

If you haven't already, install XBCD, which you can grab from here. Next, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\XBMC\system\keymaps. Copy the joystick.Microsoft.Xbox.Controller.S.xml file (right-click, Copy) to C:\Users[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\keymaps (right-click, Paste).

Edit the file you just pasted (right-click, Edit) and click Edit>Replace..., or press CTRL+H. What we want to do is replace all the instances of a controller we're not using, with one that we are. In the top field, type <altname>Mad Catz MicroCON</altname> and in the bottom field type <altname>XBCD Xbox 360 Controller</altname>. When it finishes, be sure to the changes.

The last thing we need to do is load up a special profile in XBCD. Normally we'd have to create our own, but XBMC forum member XIYL did the legwork already. You can download his custom XGI file here (right-click, Save link as...). Open up XBCD and load the XGI file. Once you're finished, restart XBMC and use your Xbox 360 controller with any key emulation.