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Cinema Experience

Cinema Experience Template:Side Bar - Cinema Experience

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==Cinema Experience==

This script will add the wow factor to your home theater and give you the true cinema experience you deserve (except you still have to supply the popcorn and drinks).

This script allows you to play slides, previews(trailers) and other videos that give the full cinema feel(Intro's and Outro's) Slides can consist in almost any jpg picture(many Movie Q&A, Movie Stills, Movie Fact packs already exist)

It integrates with the script Apple Movie Trailers (an additional Add-on) to stream trailers directly from the web, or play locally stored trailer that are on you system. 

This guide is intended to be used with xbmc v10 or v10.1 and a compatible skin (Transparency!, Night, The Carmichael, Neon, Night Purity, Alaska Revisited, Backrow, Aeon MQ 2).  The Transparency! skin will be used in this guide.  The steps for other skins may vary, slightly.


Step 1<br>
Installing one of the above skins through Confluence, the default skin.<br>
System>Add-ons>Get Add-ons>XBMC.org Add-ons>Skin<br>
Choose and install a skin.  After your skin has been installed and switched, exit out of XBMC.


Step 2<br>
Download the following zip file containing the Cinema Experience add-on script.<br>
[http://xbmc-addons.googlecode.com/svn/packages/repository.googlecode.xbmc-addons.zip googlecode.xbmc-addons.zip]<br>
There is no need to extract the files.  XBMC will process the zip file just the way it is downloaded.


Step 3<br>
Download this zip file to use with the Cinema Experience script.<br>
[http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9L74YR27 HTE_intros_outros_and_triva_pack.zip]<br>
Extract this file, it contains a folder and file structure, so there is no need to place the zip file in a new folder, first.  There are a few read me.txt files within the structure to read for additional information regarding the area in which the read me file is located.  Inside the parent folder are two folders and a read me file.  Move the "Trivia" folder, and read me file into the "Videos" folder.


Step 4<br>
The best place to store any extras you are using with XBMC is in the XBMC's user profiles and settings folder.  The %appdata% is a hidden folder.<br>
username\%appdata%\XBMC<br>
The idea here is the XBMC folder contains all of your user settings and is the only folder that is required to be saved/moved/restored should you need to do a reinstall of XBMC and wish to have the same settings reapplied again, as long as your hard drive (storage) structure has not changed.  The XBMC folder is, also, easy to get at thru XBMC's user interface. 

Step 5<br>
Create a new folder in the XBMC folder, "My Stuff."  Create two more folders inside of "My Stuff" - one called "Add-on Files" and one called "Cinema Experience."  Additional folders can be added later for things like: Weather Plus stuff, Pseudo TV stuff...  


Step 6<br>
Move the repository.googlecode.xbmc-addons.zip file (just as it was downloaded, unextracted) to the "Add-on Files" folder.  Move the all of the folders and the read me file in the "Videos" folder to the "Cinema Experience" folder.


Step 7<br>
Adding the googlecode.xbmc-addons in order to use in XBMC.<br>
Settings>Add-ons>Install from zip file>Home folder (hidden XBMC folder)>My Stuff>Add-on Files>repository.googlecode.xbmc-addons.zip<br>
You should see a confirmation notice at the top of your screen, when it is complete.


Step 8<br>
Install the Cinema Experience Script.<br>
Get Add-ons>googlecode.xbmc-addons Add-ons>Program Add-ons>Cinema Experience>Install<br>
Wait for the confirmation notice on the top of your screen.  When it is complete, back out of the Settings to XBMC's Home Screen (the screen you see when you start xbmc).


Step 9<br>
Go back into:<br>
Settings>Skin Settings>Menu><br>
Select Programs (the radio button should turn blue) and then back out of Settings to XBMC's Home Screen.


Step 10<br>
Go back into:<br>
Settings>Skin Settings>Scripts><br>
Select Integrate Cinema Experience in home movie menu buttons and then back out of Settings to XBMC's Home Screen.<br>
This setting can be change to user preference after the trial run.


The guides I used before are no longer available, so I have pieced together the following information from several different sites in order to get the information back to one location. 

The script will follow this Playback order:
#Trivia Intro Video(s)
#Slides w/ music playlist
#Trivia Outro Video(s)
#Movie Theater Intro Video(s)
#Coming Attractions Intro Video(s)
#Trailer(s)
#Coming Attractions Outro Video(s)
#Feature Presentation Intro Video(s)
#Rating
#Audio (DD/DTS/THX etc)
#Countdown Video
#Movie Starts
#Feature Presentation Outro Video(s)
#Movie Theatre Outro Video(s) 

All of the folders moved into the "Cinema Experience" folder will match the names of each section as seen in the settings of Cinema Experience script.

With these exceptions:<br>
*Movie Ratings folder is named "Ratings" folder".
*There is no "Coming Attractions Outro" folder. (This is because I just select the "Advertisements" folder for that selection).

Trivia section - in the Q&A folder there is a fully functioning slides.xml file that is set to rated "G". All of the Q&A files have been renamed to fit the parameters of that xml file's requirements for naming conventions. I believe the regex will work for other naming conventions -but can't confirm since I quite cheerfully borrowed it from some other more intelligent person's post (my apologies unknown Man/ Woman of Genius!).

I have not tested the slides.xml with the Screenshots Quiz or Movie Quotes sections, but will update this post when I've had a chance to. 

Please note: I am not the I indicated in the above writings.  I am unaware of any updates to this post I found [http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=69270 here] posting #3 by steppedup, Senior Member.

The following image shows the required folder structure (the downloaded zip file had this structure already with the exceptions listed above). 

[[File:Cinema.exper.folder.struc.png|500px]]


Step 11<br>
Go into the new Button:<br>
Programs>Program Add-ons>Cinema Experience><br>
This is where you will set amongst other things, the folder locations for the intros, outros, and trivia pack.

The settings shown here are used for a quick viewing of what can be done with the Cinema Experience script and the downloaded zip file containing the intros, outros, and trivia pack.  You should wait and change the settings to suit your wishes after a trial run.


Step 12<br>
Trivia Slideshow<br>
*Trivia Mode>Slide Show<br>
*Duration(in Minutes)>2 minutes or so<br>
*Slides Folder>Home folder>My Stuff>Cinema Experience>Trivia>OK<br>
*Show each Slide for(in Seconds)>10 second or so<br>
*Intro Video>1 Random Video<br>
*Video Folder>Home folder>My Stuff>Cinema Experience>Trivia Intros>OK<br>


Step 13<br>
Special Videos<br>
*Movie Theatre Intro Clips>1 Random Video<br>
*- Folder>Home folder>My Stuff>Cinema Experience>Movie Theater Intros>OK<br>
*Movie Theatre Outro Clips>1 Random Video<br>
*- Folder>Home folder>My Stuff>Cinema Experience>Movie Theater Outros>OK<br>
*Feature Presentation Intro>1 Random Video<br>
*- Folder>Home folder>My Stuff>Cinema Experience>Feature Presentation Intros>OK<br>
*Movie Ratings Folder>Home folder>My Stuff>Cinema Experience>Ratings>OK<br>
*Audio Format Folder>Home folder>My Stuff>Cinema Experience>Audio>OK<br>


Step 14<br>
Feature Presentation<br>
*Enable Queue Instructions - Leave this enabled (blue) for trial run.  While enabled this will provide on screen instruction for Cinema Experience on the Movie Screen.  The setting in Step 10 has an effect with this setting.<br>
*Number Of Features - This is the Number of Movies that will be queued in the playlist for playback during the Cinema Experience.<br>
Intermission Video(s) - There is no intermission videos in the intros, outros, trivia pack download.  These can be downloaded and placed into the folder structure as listed above in the image.  I will provide a couple of links for these files and other videos, at the end of this guide.<br>
Insert Audio Format Video and Insert Rating Video - These must be enabled to use the settings in Step 13 dealing with the Ratings and Audio<br>


Step 15<br>
Select OK to save setting and back out of Programs to the XBMC Home page.

The above settings should be good for a basic understanding of how the Cinema Experience works.  Now let's start it.


Step 16<br>
Select Movies
Move down to a movie where it is highlighted, do not select it (do not hit enter, ok, left click on it).  Just get a movie highlighted.  There should be instruction at the top of the screen for Cinema Experience, enabled from Step 14.  For this trial run there is only one (1) movie allowed in the queue, because of the setting for the number of Feature Presentations set in Step 14.  I have never been able to get "0" to work.  "Q" does work.  Once "Q" is pressed on the keyboard the Cinema Experience Script will start and the highlighted movie will be the feature presentation.

There was talk about adding cartoons to the script back when I first started messing with this.  I don't know if it ever got done, and I did not see any thing while I was writing this guide.  I just created a folder named "Cartoons, added short cartoon videos to it, and point a setting and location to the folder in the script where I wanted the cartoon/s to play.  Remember the playback list for the different videos is listed above.

The videos in the download are not all good quality.  You may want to go through them and delete the bad ones and add more.

The follow links are what I used to acquire the above information.  They also provide several links to additional videos to add to your Cinema Experience Collection.

http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-addons/wiki/CinemaExperienceIntro

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=87563

http://forum.xbmc.org/archive/index.php/t-69270.html

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=69270

All You Need, Now, Is The Popcorn.  It Works Great For Out Door Movies.  A laptop, a projector, and a garage door, or the outside wall of a house works will get the neighbors out of their house to see what is going on.  You'll have plenty of drive bys wanting to stop and join in.

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