Some examples might help illustrate how to build these kinds of things. My TV Shows view works much like this. I want my regular "series" view to show all of my regular "adult" shows. I want it to exclude:
* Kids shows like Dora the Explorer and My Little Pony
* Documentary shows like NOVA, Horizon, and Vice
* News programs like The Daily Show, Face the Nation, and Meet the Press.
So, the search for my
TV Shows view looks like:
[Media Sub Type]=[TV Show] [Offline]="0"
And then the
Shows child view looks like:
-[Genre]=[Documentary],[Instructional],[Game Show],[News],[Kids] ~sort=[Series],[Season],[Episode],[Name],[Genre],[Artist],[Album],[Disc #]
Click to embiggen.Then (as you'll note in the screenshot above) I have other Views for those items that were excluded (Documentaries, Kids, News, etc). The [Offline] field in those searches, by the way, is a custom calculated field I made that excludes content on drives that aren't generally connected to my server (they're in cold storage). It sets itself to 1 if the file is stored on one of these "usually disconnected" disks.
As an example, my
Documentaries view doesn't even limit itself to any [Media Sub Type] so it contains both TV Shows and Movies mixed together, and uses this search:
[Offline]="0" [Genre]=[Documentary] ~sort=[Series],[Season],[Episode],[Name],[Genre],[Artist],[Album],[Disc #]
The Kids one, since it contains only TV Shows, is nested under the parent TV Shows View, but uses this search, and has the Use parent scheme rules for file display option unchecked (which breaks "inheritance" from the parent View):
[Media Type]=[Video] [Media Sub Type]=[TV Show] [Offline]="0" [Genre]=[Kids] ~sort=[Series],[Season],[Episode],[Name],[Genre],[Artist],[Album],[Disc #]
Since all of those Kids shows are tagged as [Genre]=[Kids] (via a Tag on Import Rule), then only those items show up in that particular child view.
Click to embiggen.The easiest way to build these, by far, is using the Search wizard. You can type them out manually in the Import/Export box if you need to do more advanced things like using (this OR this) type rules, of course, but usually you can manage without this.
Remember that:
* Filters on views cascade to their children, unless you uncheck that
Use parent scheme rules box (which eliminates all inheritance, so you have to filter out even [Media Type]).
* You can do the same thing in Theater Views and Media Network Views, but there is no way to block inheritance, so you have to be more careful with your filters (you can't use inheritance so much).
* Any files not specifically excluded by one of your filters will show up in the View. The default is to show
all files.
* Media Views
are Smartlists, except that you can add Categories (which are, essentially, on-the-fly filters) and they inherit the searches of their parents.
Theater Media ViewsI'd also recommend that you build what you want in Standard Media Views first, and then replicate it in Theater and Media Network Views. First of all, you can import from Standard View into these types, so that's easier. And secondly, it is easier to get done because the Inheritance works easier (as mentioned above).
Here's an example from my Theater View setup that might illustrate it. My "top level" (just under Video)
Kids view in Theater View is just a "holder". It uses this search:
[Media Type]=[Video] [Offline]=[0]
Note, it doesn't have the [Genre]=[Kids] in it. That is included in its child view called
Kids Shows:
[Media Sub Type]=[TV Show] [Genre]=[Kids] ~sort=[Series],[Season],[Episode],[Name]
Click to embiggen.Why? Well, because for the accompanying
Kids Movies view, I didn't want to have to manually tag all of the movies that should show up there with [Genre]=[Kids], but wanted it to auto-generate from the metadata I get from the TMDB lookup. It uses this search:
[Media Sub Type]=[Movie] (([Genre]=[Animation],[Kids],[Family] -[MPAA Rating]="13" -[MPAA Rating]="R" -[MPAA Rating]=[]) or [MPAA Rating]=[G])
That fancy thing includes any Movie where:
* Genre is Animation, Kids, or Family AND
* The MPAA rating isn't blank, PG13, or R
as well as:
* All movies, regardless of Genre, that are MPAA Rated G.
Click to embiggen.It works great, and basically all of the movies in there are ones I'm fine with my 4-year old watching (some of them with light supervision, but she probably won't pick those anyway, and just picks
Frozen or
Tangled over and over again).
Those two setups result in: