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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Add Your Video Library (and Tap Into an External Drive)

Whether you've gone with a full-blown installation on your nettop or have chosen to run XBMC on top of Windows, either for watching on your PC or hooking to your TV via that groovy HDMI port, the first thing you're going to want to do is add your video collection. XBMC's menu is pretty logically laid out, so trust your hunch and begin by navigating to the Video menu.

Most nettops don't come with a very big hard drive, some as little as 160GB. If you opted for an SSD instead of a traditional hard drive, you might even have less space to play with. And even though hard drives are dirt cheap these days, adding another drive to your system may not be an option. If that's the case, connecting an external unit is probably your best bet, and luckily, XBMC has no trouble detecting and reading from external drives connected via a USB port.

If you have an external drive hooked up, this is where you'll find it. Just like on the removable drive, you can browse its contents and play videos. Note that this also works with USB thumb drives, so it's a piece of cake to tote your flicks around and fire them up with little fuss.

To configure XBMC to recognize your video library, we need to back up a step and click on Add Source. You can add several different sources, but for now, we just want to configure one. Click on Browse to see a list of sources XBMC recognizes. Any hard drives you have attached should be recognized, as well as the ability to add UPnP devices, sift through your home network, and other odds and ends.

Navigate just as you would on Windows, clicking through your hard drive and folders. When you get to where your videos are stored, press OK and name the source when prompted.

You should now see your new source in the main menu. If you ever need to change the name, just right-click and choose Edit Source. You can also add a thumbnail image by right-clicking, among a few other self- explanatory options.

Organize Movies into Separate Folders (without Manually Creating New Folders)

Do you have a Videos folder on your hard drive with dozens, maybe even hundreds of videos nestled inside? It seemed like a good idea at the time -- after all, what's the use in creating separate folders for each individual movie? That just means more clicking.

When it comes to organizing everything through XMBC, however, you may realize that you want all your movies in their own folder, even though you didn't before. The problem, though, is that the more movies you have, the longer it's going to take to do this. That is, unless you enlist the help of FoldMonkey.

FoldMonkey will do the grunt work for you and create new folders so you don't have to. Grab FoldMonkey from here, install it, and then fire up the application. In the Monitor Folder field, select the folders with all of videos. Next, scroll down and check Archive File. This will bring up a few more options. Check Create Folder. In the second pull-down menu, select 'Move File To The Above Created Folder.' Finally, click 'Scan Once Only' and sit back while FoldMonkey does its thing!