Cinemavision - waaaaaay too complicated for the common user?!

[Momo03 0]

Ever since I have XBMC / Kodi up and running, playing my Movies and TV-Shows from NAS, I had the wish to get what Cinema-Experience and Cinema-Vision call "The Cinema Experience". 

For me and my 40 years of going-to-the-cinemas, that's seeing an advertisement, a short-film and a trailer before the movie starts. 

I have a vast collection of short films, like the Pixar-DVD ripped to single files and a collection of classical advertisements from the past centuries.

 

Now, all I want is a randomly played file from each of these, and maybe (but not necessarily) a streamed trailer. 

 

I have tried several times over the years to get this SIMPLE task done with both Cinema Experience and CinemaVision.

But despite the guides, the descriptions, the wbsites and what-so-ever I am completely unable to do that. Cinemavision throws completely unknown phrases at me, completely fails to simply ask me "where are your intro-videos, and how many shall I play before your movie?". 

I have NO IDEA what the heck a BUMPER shall be, for example. My car has bumpers. Front and rear. My Movies don't have bumpers, neither have the short-films or advert-videos. 

And what on earth shall I do with audio-bumpers? Why should "audio" have anything to do with the "real cinema experience"? 

 

There are guides that claim to be meant for beginners, but they fail miserably at explaining the basics needed to understand CinemaVision to the common no-brainer-movie-watcher. Instead these "beginners-guides" simply expect me to already know all the things that make CinemaVision so non-intuitive. 

 

So far, as sad as it seems, I will be kept out of the experience that this add-on should bring to the user.

It's obviously meant only for total nerds, who already know it all .

[Matt 120]

57 minutes ago, Momo03 said:

I have tried several times over the years to get this SIMPLE task done with both Cinema Experience and CinemaVision.

But despite the guides, the descriptions, the wbsites and what-so-ever I am completely unable to do that. Cinemavision throws completely unknown phrases at me, completely fails to simply ask me "where are your intro-videos, and how many shall I play before your movie?".

Momo03,
I'm sorry to hear that you are having issues getting things started. 

Are you using a PC or something else to run Kodi/CinemaVision? 

I'll send you a message to discuss more details and will  be happy to do whatever I can to help you get it running.

[OTA 78]

1 hour ago, Momo03 said:

I have NO IDEA what the heck a BUMPER shall be, for example. My car has bumpers. Front and rear. My Movies don't have bumpers, neither have the short-films or advert-videos. 

And what on earth shall I do with audio-bumpers? Why should "audio" have anything to do with the "real cinema experience"? 

Bumper is a broadcasting term.  Think of the movie as your car.  You can have bumpers on the front and the back, meaning before and after your main feature.  The short films and advertisements would be the bumpers in this case.

The audio bumpers are what you see in the theater when it advertises if the theater has Dolby Digital, DTS or Atmos, etc.  My local theater typically uses the bouncing balls with the Dolby 7.1 and the "all around you" bumper before or after their THX bumper.

I also keep my cinema experience short as my children do not have the patience to watch trivia slides and trailers.  All I typically include is a bumper for the audio the movie uses and a DLP bumper as I have a DLP television.

I'm sure Matt will be able to assist you and I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results.

[Ragnarok 198]

2 hours ago, Momo03 said:

Now, all I want is a randomly played file from each of these, and maybe (but not necessarily) a streamed trailer.

That should be relatively easy to do. Here's a step by step:

1. Open the CinemaVision Add-on Settings and browse to the Content menu.
2. Set your Content path to point to the directory where you'll store all of your content.
3. Based on your requirement to play one random video out of all of your content, put all of your videos in one directory under the directory you've chosen as your Content path.
   Note: You're welcome to create your own directories for content, and do not have to use the default directories.
4. Open the Sequence Editor by running the CinemaVision Add-on.
5. Press the C key on your keyboard to bring up the context menu.
6. Select New to create a new Sequence.

Now lets design our Sequence. You mentioned you wanted a randomly played file from all of the videos you have. Set your Sequence up like this:

---

Here's a breakdown of how to set up the Modules in order of appearance:

V	Edit the Module and change Type to Directory, Directory to the directory you put all of your content in.
T	Edit the Module and change the number of trailers played to meet your needs, disable all of the scrapers except iTunes.
F	No action needed for this Module.
C	Edit the Module and change Command to Back, Argument to 3, and Condition to Feature queue is full.

Hopefully that helps point you in the right direction. Don't forget to save your Sequence.

2 hours ago, Momo03 said:

But despite the guides, the descriptions, the wbsites and what-so-ever I am completely unable to do that. Cinemavision throws completely unknown phrases at me, completely fails to simply ask me "where are your intro-videos, and how many shall I play before your movie?".

I have NO IDEA what the heck a BUMPER shall be, for example. My car has bumpers. Front and rear. My Movies don't have bumpers, neither have the short-films or advert-videos. 

And what on earth shall I do with audio-bumpers? Why should "audio" have anything to do with the "real cinema experience"? 

This guide will teach you our terminology and outline what each Module does in the Sequence in detail.

Hopefully that helps clear some things up for you.

2 hours ago, Momo03 said:

There are guides that claim to be meant for beginners, but they fail miserably at explaining the basics needed to understand CinemaVision to the common no-brainer-movie-watcher. Instead these "beginners-guides" simply expect me to already know all the things that make CinemaVision so non-intuitive.

Which guides are you having trouble with? What specific things do you find non-intuitive about CinemaVision? It makes it difficult to improve the add-on with no actionable information from our users. As far as I'm aware, nobody has come to any of us with issues regarding the user interface, or user experience.

2 hours ago, Momo03 said:

So far, as sad as it seems, I will be kept out of the experience that this add-on should bring to the user.

It's obviously meant only for total nerds, who already know it all .

There are certainly more effective ways to ask for help. I'm going to move this thread to the Add-on Support forum so others can easily find it if they need help.

[Ragnarok 198]

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