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Author Topic: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?  (Read 4408 times)

tzr916

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Theater View, Server - Client setup...

Sort of like Parental Controls. Say I don't want the (Client) Tv in my 7 year old's room to have access to the "Disturbingly Gory Tv Shows" Menu item in Theater View. Can I hide it or disable it but still have it on the Server (and other Clients)?

I just tried deleting one of the (not used) Items on the client but it looks like it also deleted it on the Server  :(
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glynor

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2016, 11:11:58 am »

Well, the good news is that (assuming the thing you deleted was a View and not a Smartlist) it did NOT delete the item from your Server. It can't. You can only modify Views using the Server itself. Any modifications to Views made from a Client copy of MC are lost when the client restarts.

Of course, it could be that you deleted a file from the client, and yes, that will delete the file (assuming you have authentication enabled on the server). And, as referenced above, you can delete Playlists, including Smartlists, from a client. So, I'm not sure what you deleted, but... If you need to, you can probably restore a Library Backup to get whatever you deleted back.

The answer you're looking for is Users:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Users
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tzr916

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2016, 11:29:16 am »

Cool. Thanks!
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tzr916

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2016, 12:54:15 pm »

So I have set the Media Sub Type all of my "Disturbingly Gory Tv Shows" as Home Video.
I setup a new user with -[Media Sub Type]=Home Video.
I changed the user in the kids rooms to the new user.

It does hide all the items in that folder, which is good. But it also obliterates 99.9% of the Theater View Tv Guide! Meaning, only 10 out of 80 channels even show in the Guide and only ONE show on ONE of those channels is even seen in the Guide.

Why is that? Maybe stuff in the Tv Guide has no Media Sub Type until it gets recorded? But why are items with no Media Sub Type hidden from the new user?

How do I get around this? I need the full Tv Guide to show on the new user (kids rooms).
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glynor

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2016, 02:14:11 pm »

Well, as a start, it is hard to tell what actual rule you used based on your post above. If you need help, always copy paste the search from the Import/Export part of the Search Wizard into the forum, so we can see what you really searched for. Because whether you're doing substring searches or have a mistake in there is hard to tell.

But, more importantly, I wouldn't use [Media Sub Type] Home Video to accomplish this goal. Home Video has special handling in Media Center, I believe, but in any case, there's no reason to use a nonsensical "magic value" that doesn't actually apply. In fact, I probably wouldn't use [Media Sub Type] at all. If you want to use [Media Sub Type], I'd use the Adult value that is available there.

But restricting the Kids view by [Genre] would probably be the better way to go for your use case. The easy way would be to just tag them all with a value you invent for this purpose, like: -[Genre]=[Not For Kids]

Files can have multiple Genres, so this doesn't even interfere with your ability to browse these (when the Kids user is NOT activated) by Genre if you want.

But you could just collect actual Genres (like those that get auto-tagged from TVDB and TMDB) and make your rule something like:
-[Genre]=[Adult],[Crime],[Disaster],[Horror],[Mafia],[Suspense],[Thriller],[War],[Not For Kids]

That way, things that come in pre-tagged with one of those "pretty obviously not for kids" genres will automatically get excluded. And you'll only need to manually apply the special [Not For Kids] Genre to things that get otherwise missed.  Now, keep in mind, those exclusions will apply across the entire Library. So anything that has a matched value in the Genre tag (including, for example, music or audiobooks or TV Guide entries) will get excluded too.

You can prevent this too by making your search more specific. The easiest way to do this would probably be to use a separate smartlist and then exclude your User from seeing the files in the smartlist.

Make a new Smartlist somewhere (I have a Smartlist Group called "View Filters" I use for this kind of purpose) called something like "Kids Exclusion List".  Then, give it this rule:
[Media Type]=[Video] ([Media Sub Type]=[Adult] or [Genre]=[Adult],[Crime],[Disaster],[Horror],[Mafia],[Suspense],[Thriller],[War],[Not For Kids])

You could even get fancier and exclude items based on Ratings too, and throw in the Image Media Type if you have any images in there that might be inappropriate for children (I'm not judging):
[Media Type]=[Video],[Image] ([Media Sub Type]=[Adult] or [Genre]=[Crime],[Disaster],[Horror],[Mafia],[Suspense],[Thriller],[War],[Adult] or [MPAA Rating]=[NR],[R],[Unrated] or [Access Rating]=[TV/-MA])

The good thing is, since the list is limited to only [Media Type]=[Video] (or maybe Images too) won't "accidentally" trigger on any TV Guide entries (which are [Media Type]=[TV]). Using a separate Smartlist is the easiest way to accomplish that because the search filters "down". Plus, that list will now show all of the stuff you want to NOT show up in the kid's View, which will make it easier to manage and tweak the search as needed.

Then, to actually exclude these files from the Kids user (without matching anything else that happens to intersect) open up the Kids User search and enter:
-playlist="Kids Exclusion List"

Now, the Kids user will exclude anything in that specific Smartlist, and only the results of that specific smartlist.

By the way, type this value in manually into Import/Export when editing the search for the user. If you use the Playlist Is Not Any selector in the Wizard, it will convert it into a PlaylistID link. These, however, can get broken if you use MC in a Media Network environment (PlaylistIDs can change "behind the scenes"), so don't use it that way.  Instead, use the -playlist Rule which searches based on the playlist's name. That is a bit slower (I think) but much more reliable.
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tzr916

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2016, 06:35:34 pm »

Well, as a start, it is hard to tell what actual rule you used based on your post above. If you need help, always copy paste the search from the Import/Export part of the Search Wizard into the forum, so we can see what you really searched for. Because whether you're doing substring searches or have a mistake in there is hard to tell....

...If you want to use [Media Sub Type], I'd use the Adult value that is available there.

But restricting the Kids view by [Genre] would probably be the better way to go for your use case. The easy way would be to just tag them all with a value you invent for this purpose, like: -[Genre]=[Not For Kids]


I didn't search for anything. All I did was follow the example in the WIKI and use Home Video instead of Adult:



I will try re-tagging all my stuff to Media Sub Type Adult and see if the Guide comes back. If it doesn't, I'll try the Genre Not For Kids approach.

Thanks again.
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glynor

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2016, 06:50:30 pm »

The Files to Show entry is a search. I thought the search showed the regular Search Wizard, but it doesn't apparently (from your screenshot). What you put in there is used as a search verbatim (like in the Import/Export part of the Wizard). Yours isn't working because there's a syntax error in yours.

Since Home Video isn't quoted in any way, it is only excluding:
-[Media Sub Type]=Home
That works because it is a substring search, and so "Home" matches "Home Video". But, then it has a separate (broken) element that is just: "Video".  That's all messed up and will result in unpredictable results.

For what you were trying to do, it would be:
-[Media Sub Type]=[Home Video]

Which means, Media Sub Type is not "Home Video". If you wanted to do Media Sub Type does not contain Home Video, you'd do:
-[Media Sub Type]="Home Video"

The rules are explained here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Search_Language#Quoting_and_Anchoring

But, my explanations above would be better ways to do it.
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tzr916

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #7 on: March 28, 2016, 06:04:44 pm »

Simply adding quote marks around "Home Video" (in my screen shot) worked perfectly fine. Got the Tv Guide back in full and the media sub type "Home Video" is hidden on those users. All good enough for my needs at the moment.

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tzr916

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #8 on: April 17, 2016, 11:53:19 am »

So this is working well, but I noticed that all of the clients always start up in the new non-Admin User. So if I switch to Admin User, then shut down MC, the next time MC runs it will be in the non-Admin User.


I really want some of the clients to start up in the Admin User. Is that possible?
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glynor

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #9 on: April 19, 2016, 08:39:30 pm »

Yes. Using automation commands. Basically, instead of launching MC directly, you use a special shortcut that points to a script instead. This launches MC and then immediately send a command to switch users.

The switch users part of it is documented on the Users Wiki article.

I think I've even written the script before for someone who asked, if you search.
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tzr916

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Re: Theater View Hide/Disable Some Menu Items Only on Certain Clients ?
« Reply #10 on: April 20, 2016, 10:36:09 pm »

I notice on the Clients there are options to Edit Current User and Delete User.

If I never need to use the non-Admin User, can't I just delete it from this Client? Or does that affect other clients?

Are Users only supposed to be setup and/or edited on the Server?
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