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So, you’ve got a terabyte of media on your home PC—movies, music, TV shows, the works. On top of that, you like to watch streaming videos on the web and listen to Internet radio. Isn’t the future great? But how are you getting at all this media? Do you keep all your files in folders on your desktop, or are they just sitting on a NAS box? Maybe you use something like iTunes, and then fire up your browser to get at streaming content.
There’s a better way.
What you need is a media front end, which can help you organize and access all your media, whether it’s files on your system or in the cloud. In this article, we’ll show you everything you need to do to get XBMC—a popular media front end—up, running, and customized.
Before you begin, consider these questions:
Is XBMC right for me?
XBMC (originally designed as the Xbox Media Center for hacked Xboxes, but now mostly for HTPCs) is the most compelling and full-featured media front end currently available (below). However, not everyone needs a media front end. If you’re a music-only sort of person, for instance, you might be better off using iTunes or Foobar. If the only media you need is streamed from Netflix, then you’re better off just sticking to the site.
Is my hardware ready to run XBMC?
Fortunately, XBMC does not come with heavy system requirements. As long as you’ve got a semi-modern computer running Windows, Linux, or OS X (don’t worry Mac-haters, we’re only going to focus on the Windows version in this article), you should be able to run XBMC. Really, the most stringent requirements will end up coming from the media files themselves. If your computer can run HD H.264 video, then it’s more than sufficient for XBMC.
Is my media organized?
Your media doesn’t need to be immaculately organized to use XBMC, but it does need to be somewhat orderly. First, your music needs to be properly tagged. Like most other music organization software, XBMC uses ID3 tags to let you search through your music by its artist, album, or genre. If your music doesn’t have ID3 tags, you’ll lose out on a lot of functionality. If you purchased, downloaded, or ripped an MP3 in the last few years, it’s almost certainly got ID3 tags, but some older files might be missing them. If that’s the case, check out our article on using MediaMonkey to automatically add tags to your library at http://bit.ly/cr84JK.
Your video library doesn’t need any sort of tags, as XBMC uses “scrapers” to retrieve that data automatically from online databases. All the same, it’ll make your life a whole lot easier down the line if your videos aren’t spread out willy-nilly all over your hard drives. The best thing you can do is put all your movies in a single folder, and all your TV shows in another, with sub-folders for individual series/seasons (above).
XBMC takes some work to get set up, but the software installation itself is dead simple. Just download the latest Windows installer at http://xbmc.org/download and run it. You get some options about what components to install, but the defaults will be fine for now—you can change anything you need to later on. You’ll also be asked where you want XBMC to save its data and plugins (below). If you choose to store them in XBMC’s program folder, you’ll have to choose to run XBMC with administrator rights, but it will be easier to copy your XBMC install to a different computer, plugins intact.
When the installation’s done, fire up XBMC.
Your freshly installed XBMC is already looking snazzy, with a high-res skin and a slick user interface (above), but right now it’s sorely lacking in functionality. That’s because, so far, XBMC has no idea where your media files are. You can fix this problem by selecting one of XBMC’s libraries (the possible libraries are Videos, Music, Pictures, and Programs) and then selecting Add Source (below). We chose the Video library in this example.
As you might guess, the Add Source dialogue lets you specify a new source for media files—this can be a drive, a folder, a network location, or a combination of the three. If it’s a drive or a folder, you can either type the full path into the list, or click the Browse button and select the location. To add a network location (a NAS box, for instance) you just click Browse, then select “Add network location…” from the list. An alternative is to mount the network location as a drive on your system, then add the source that way.
A single source can draw from multiple locations, so it’s best to have one source for each “category” of media. For instance, we named our first source “Movies” and it contains (surprise!) all our movies. Once you’ve selected all the drive locations for your source, make sure that you’ve given it a name, and click on the Set Content button at the bottom of the window.
The Set Content menu is exclusive to Video sources, and lets you tell XBMC what kind of videos your video source contains (above). There are three options, with slightly different behaviors:
Movie
A Movie source assumes that each video file is a single movie. If your movies are in folders (with subtitle files, for instance) you’ll need to check the option that says “Use folder names for lookups.” If you’ve got lots of nested folders with movies inside, you’ll need to check the option labeled “Scan recursively.”
TV Show
A TV source assumes that video files will be arranged in folders by series. Unlike a Movie source, TV sources are recursive by default.
Music Video
A Music Video source assumes each file is a single music video. The primary difference with Music Videos is that you can enable Party mode, which tells XBMC to play files from Music Video sources at random.
Whichever type of source you select will also determine which scraper will be used to identify your videos. You can select from a large list of possible scrapers, but for most purposes the default is the best choice. Once you’ve added a video source, select that source and press the context key (C on the keyboard, by default) and select Scan for New Content. If everything is set up correctly, XBMC will find and download data for your files.
Adding music is a bit easier, since there’s no Set Content or scraper to deal with. Once you’ve added all the sources that you need, you can start using XBMC. Select the library you want to view with the up and down arrow keys, then press the right-arrow key, and select Library. You can now navigate through your entire video library—movies, TV shows, and music videos. If you want to change the view mode, just press the left-arrow key to access a small menu of view options (above).
Keep reading for how to expand XBMC with extra features--like a retro emulator/ROM manager!
Comments are closed on this article
razorpetti37
February 12, 2011 at 3:54pm
I've been using the MyMovies plugin for Windows Media Center and I love it. I have quite a large library of DVD's on my harddrive, ripped into VIDEO_TS folders, the MyMovies software constantly monitors my drives, adds movies, and downloads their descriptions and cover art based on my folder names. It is a great program for organizing a large library and also has the ability to integrate a media server.
razorpetti37
March 18, 2011 at 11:31am
Yes, I left them as VOB files. I compress them a bit with DVD Shrink, then save them as VOB files. My reasoning for this is that if I want to burn any of these movies to a DVD and bring it on a trip or let someone borrow it, the only time consumed is actually burning the disk. I guess I could save them as ISO images, but it really doesn't matter to me considering MyMovies recognizes both. It also has a great online catalog of title covers, descriptions, and actor listings. Overall it creates a slick looking interface that blends very well with WMC.
CloudRider
February 06, 2011 at 11:03am
Good to know a NAS box can be used for media storing. Can XBMC run on a netbook or nettop?
Brian Dowding
February 19, 2011 at 5:56pm
Yes, it can. The only caveat is that the CPU/GPU acceleration may be weak on these machines (because of the hardware within them being so cutting edge in terms of performance - if it were 2004).
To make a story short, as far as movies go, you may be limited to old-school 700MB to 1.4GB sized DIVX and XVID rips. There is a possibility that these machines are just to weak to render higher quality x264 HD and Blu-Ray rips.
I've seen Pentium 4 machines (without a dedicated video card to assist) suffer the same scenario. Blu-Ray rips looked like a slow slide show.
From what I've read so far on AMD's fusion - I'm guessing that these platforms will not have this limitation.
highsidednb
January 24, 2011 at 9:16am
I had high hopes for XBMC but maybe I'm missing something. The interface for video playback is virtually useless without a slider to allow you to jump from different parts of a video. The fast-forward interface feels like it's 1985 again and I'm fast forwarding VHS tape. Not being able to skip to certain part of movie or a song is a pain.
Brian Dowding
February 19, 2011 at 5:47pm
Agreed. While I like the timeline being able to interact with mouse-clicks (as is the case with virtually every other program but XBMC), XBMC is definitely lacking here.
You don't have to use the fast forward buttons, though. It is substantially better using the mouse-wheel for navigating the timeline. Then again, I have a Logitech Revolution mouse - so maybe the weighted free-spinning wheel is uniquely suited to lessening the burden here. A regular mouse wheel may still be a bit of a pain.
Regardless, I'd still say it is better than using the buttons a la VCR.
Sediket
January 13, 2011 at 5:46pm
I was excited when I saw this how-to, having tried out previous maximum pc how-tos, but was kinda disappointed with this one. For example one major MAJOR functionality that was skipped was how to set-up a remote, controller, or gamepad. Talks about setting up emulators but doesn't cover how difficult it is to setup a gamepad with XBMC, or just controlling the menus with a controller, I'm sure not everyone plans on using a keyboard to control their T.V.
Also controlling multiple monitors, this is suppose to be for a T.V. not just your computer, and I would suggest doing the article for linux, an OS that doesn't require purchase, like Mint 10.
Also after setting this up some movies were unwatchable because they were so jittery and slow, the same videos would play fine in VLC or media player on the same machine.
I know some of these questions I might be able to troubleshoot through the XBMC community but I enjoy doing maximum pc how-tos because usually they have worked out all the issues into a finished project, and anything extra I can research myself. But just getting things up and running took me hours scouring the community of XBMC, and I could have done that anyways what’s the point of following the how-to at this point?
Brian Dowding
February 19, 2011 at 5:42pm
I have an old Logitech Wireless Rumblepad (original, not 2) and was able to map mouse and keyboard functions to it at will using a program called XPADDER:
http://www.xpadder.com/
It works automatically on startup and I can unplug the Rumblepad's sensor and plug it back in at anytime and it automatically resumes working once again within seconds.
I basically have the Rumblepad set so that it functioned almost exactly as XBMC had on the original XBOX using their gamepads.
Brian Dowding
January 13, 2011 at 1:10am
Any chance this article could be re-worked, or get a second edition?? There is a new version of XBMC out now and basically much of what was covered in this article regarding programs and scripts no longer applies.
Version 10 is out (priviously the Dharma BETA) and it has some significant changes in trhe under-pinnings, though the media handling is essentially the same from a users standpoint.
Thanks
Baer
January 12, 2011 at 8:49pm
On a PC I have had nore issues on P.C.'s using iTunes than I can tell you. They all seem to be connected with the Apple Bonjour Service which Apple requires to sync to an ipod or pad. Bounjour seems to not like P C's, (sounds like the MAc vs PC ads does it not?)The issues stem from lock ups to slow net page loading. In every single case when I removed Boujour service the problem was fixed. If you need iTunes because you are locked to an ipad then you can remove Bonjour but you will have to load it back to sync your ipod. Also, if you remove Bounjour be sure to also remove the Apple updater or it will add bounjour back again.
md123
January 14, 2011 at 12:20pm
I stopped using itunes because of the bonjour service. Actually, the last straw was when my itunes account was hacked and the paypal account tied to it had thousands charged to it. I was not held responsible for the charges, and didn't even remember opening the itunes account in the first place otherwise I would have deleted it long ago. Anyhow, I digress, I now use media monkey (free version) to sync my ipod to my library. It provides bit-perfect audio playback, a boatload of useful tools, and does everything i need itunes to do except allow you to purchase from the itunes store.
Brian Dowding
January 13, 2011 at 1:04am
A collegue of mine once worked Apple Support and had been trained to expect about 15% of iTunes installs on PC's to inexplicably erase the local music collection it is pointed at in settings. I may have the context of that percentage off - like was it 15% of all installs, or 15% of all PC installs calling for Apple Support - I'm not sure - it has been about 3 years. I've stayed away from it for other reasons, however.
md123
January 12, 2011 at 7:54pm
Boxee (the free software for your pc, mac, whatever os - not just the boxee box) is based on xbmc (literally uses xbmc code I believe), provides an interface for accessing your media, but has many more apps built in such as hulu, netflix, vudu, pandora, the list is exhaustive. Some of the apps are buggy, but this seems to get better as versions are released. For my money (they're both free) Boxee has a lot more features, and has a lot more potential for future features. Plus images are automatically applied to your music, video, and tv show files. Much more polished and feature rich. I also tried some iriver software that came with my remote, and it was nice, but in the same category as xbmc: good for basic media browsing.
Brian Dowding
January 13, 2011 at 1:06am
Can it be put on XBOX, Linux, Apple, and PC?? I guess XBMC version 9.11 is the end of the line for original XBOX compatibility, though.
md123
January 14, 2011 at 12:16pm
Apparently boxee can be installed on an xbox, but dont think it is officially supported. Apple TV, Ubuntu, Mac, and Win are officially supported though.
