I agree with Stephen Cremin regarding having only 8 main genres, but allowing selection of sub-genres. Not too many or it will start to look like the tag system :)

The fewer the main genres the easier it will be on new users and the better analytics Travis will be able to calculate.

I created a sample page to show the genre selection and hosted it on one my domains. I'll keep it up 2 months for Travis to check out. Upon selection of a sub-genre an ajax call should be made to grab the first X matching movies and replacing the content within the #results div with it.

http://consolemod.info/sample_tmdb_genres/

I totally agree adding Music Videos & Concerts. Indeed we have a bunch of videos labeled as just music because we don´t have any specific category.

As Travis Bell suggested I report my current problem here as well: If adult movies do not have unique genres, the category for them will depend on the different APIs and the programmers who implement the different clients. Currently my adult movies are listed in the "other" category, as the majority of them does not have any genres set. My suggestion would be to have a unique "adult" or "erotic" category, and all movies that are marked as having adult content should automatically get this genre as well. (Perhaps automatically disabling the possibility to update or change to other genres for that movie)

Without that all applications using the different APIs should be implemented in a way, that if a movie does not have any genres set and it is marked to be an adult movie at the same time, than put this movie into the adult/erotic genre on that device. This implementation will be different on every device and mean lots of work for all the home cinema applications out there. Consistency might become impossible. And the majority of the devices requires years the have a software update.

I have 2 devices and the only moves correctly listed are having the "erotic" category on TMDB. My movie players are implemented to list movies in the "other" category if they do not have any genres set. As devices use genres to group movies, having a unique genre for adult movies would be the most accurate solution without any more effort. It should be a really easy task to force movies marked as adult into a unique genre. Similarly updating the UI, the genre selector etc should be simple task.

While I understand not wanting to include things like TV Movie, I think Short is fairly important. When selecting to watch a film, if you get all set-up with your popcorn and you want a good thriller, having the film end in 3 minutes isn't going to cut it. Likewise if you only have 10 minutes it is nice to select a Short.

Stephen Cremin, I totally agree that the genres need to consolidated and sub categories sound like a great idea too. Personally I like having a family or kids category because I have kids and use XBMC, but I think it needs to be combined and not include movies that 5 year olds wouldn't understand. As kids get older they tend to watch less G and PG movies, as these are geared towards toddlers these days. I am speaking from the U.S. of course and I understand things can be very different from one place to another. I also don't think it's a good idea to combine Action/Adventure. When I'm looking for a good Adventure film, say something like Raiders Of the Lost Ark or Pirates of the Caribbean films, I don't want to sort through garbage action films with Jean-Claude Van Damme in them, no offense if you or anyone is a fan. The point is these are two totally different types of movies in my opinion. Same goes for Fantasy/Science Fiction. While some may see these as the same, If I am in the mood for Fantasy files like Willow (1988), The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Legend (1985), or Stardust, I don't want to have to wade through titles like Pluto Nash and Mac & Me. Likewise, if I'm looking for something like Logan's Run (1976), the Star Wars films, or Blade Runner (1982), I don't want to have to sort through Dungeons and Dragons (2000), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), both terrible cinema in my opinion, by the way. For me Fantasy equals medieval times, swords, magic, mythical creatures, the distant past of legends, etc..., while Science Fiction implies technology, time travel, space, aliens, Robots, the metaphysical, the future.

I would really like all the pointless and/or redundant categories to go away. Especially, if they can't be added to they shouldn't be on here.

Take away;

Eastern,
Noir,
Neo-Noir,
Foreign,
Sports,
Sports Film,
Holiday,
Disaster,
Erotic,
Kids,
TV Movie,
Road Movie,

and combine;

Music/Musical,
Mystery/Suspense/Thriller,
Crime/Action.

I would really like all the pointless and/or redundant categories to go away. Especially, if they can't be added to they shouldn't be on here. Take away; Eastern, Noir, Neo-Noir, Foreign, Sports, Sports Film, Holiday, Disaster, Erotic, Kids, TV Movie, Road Movie,

Why is sports and erotic a pointless category? What category do you propose adult films, UFC and other sporting events that we support fall under?

and combine; Music/Musical, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Crime/Action.

I do not understand why music and musical should be merged, other than sharing music as a common denominator. Music seems like a catch-all category for musical events, such as concerts and music videos. While musicals are "film[s] [...] in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing."

For the same fundamental reason you do not want Action/Adventure and Fantasy/SciFi merged, I don't think Music/Musical, Crime/Action, and Mystery/Thriller should be merged -- "they are different types of movies".

I think short should probably be added to the list. It is a legitimate category of genre that receives its own Academy Award.

Is there any timeframe on when the genre proposal and whatever suggested amendments are chosen will be implemented?

Fair enough with the merging of some of those.

Sports and Sports Films seem like a pointless category to me because I don't have anything sporting events items, yet movies like "Cadyshack", "Real Steel", and "How Do You Know" have been tagged, (not by me) to go into these categories. I guess for people who like sports, the category is relevant, but in my opinion it should be used only for true sporting events and not for movies that happen to have a mild sporting theme. In any case Having both Sport and Sports Films seems redundant to me, keep sport, but watch closely so Happy Gilmore doesn't end up in there.

On XBMC Music Videos are handled differently, I'd rather have them separate. Right now, unfortunately Musicals, concerts, and music documentaries are randomly showing up in both categories. I'd rather musicals just show up in musicals (minus Disney and other animated types) while concerts and music documentaries show up in documentary.

I think erotic should be reserved for Adult films, rated XXX, but not random rated R films that contain love scenes that some have dubbed Erotic. I don't own any Erotic films but I am constantly fixing submissions on TMDB that falsely put regular Rated R films into this category.

With short films, what the cutoff in length? People will put old silent films and any film that seems shorter to them. I like the idea of this category but it needs to be watched closely to discourage people from adding films that seem short to them just because it's 70 minutes instead of 90 minutes or more. XBMC already lets you sort by length of film. This category should be reserved for films like; The Pesky Suitor (1995), The Bells of Waiting, Fresh Guacamole (2012), Vincent (1982), The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983), etc... and not for just any movie one feels like including just because it dips below the average 90 minute mark.

In any case a stricter look at submissions should be made so people will stop putting violent rated R movies in the Family category and other major mistakes like that are caught.

In XBMC, if a movie of a certain genre doesn't exist in the library the whole category doesn't show up. This is why it seems important to me to get things right. I currently have 31 genres showing up and some only have one or two movies in them.

Maybe TMDB should just mirror IMDB's categories (minus the TV stuff) for consistency and then implement a sub-genre solution for those that want to further categorize?

Maybe TMDB should just mirror IMDB's categories (minus the TV stuff) for consistency and then implement a sub-genre solution for those that want to further categorize?

TV shows are being added, therefore we are going to have to consider all the TV specific (or more relevant) genres

It took over 4 months but it seems like now everyone wants to talk about this ;)

I'm in the middle of some pretty big feature work right now (TV) and don't have time to work on this for a bit. Keep on chatting about it, I like to hear from everyone.

Finally! I hate having to rely on the frustrating TVDB for TV metadata.

Finally! I hate having to rely on the frustrating TVDB for TV metadata.

you make it sound as if the frustration comes from the thetvdb project and not from the complexity of series metadata...

back on topic, how do you indicate if a music/musical/drama/dance/sports genre refers to a recording of a live event in front of an audience versus a directed performance shot for later screening.

My requests are based on more obscure films than most, but I would very much like an "avant-garde" or "experimental" genre on the list. Also, it would be useful to have a "poetic nonfiction" or just "nonfiction" genre label for those films that don't really fall under the traditional definition of documentary but which are not fiction films.

I'd also like to mention that I find some label for non-English or non-American movies to be helpful. I agree "Foreign" is a problematic label, but American film is so dominant in terms of popularity and discussion that being able to look exclusively at non-American films would be helpful in finding important films that might get lost in the shuffle otherwise.

I also use the Short genre regularly in my xbmc library, annoying that its not available as a genre tag any more... I know this isnt an xbmc forum, but anyone have any suggestions how to manually add this info for my personal use?

i understand about having to keep things in order and tidying up the genres... but its just annoying

EDIT: bit of lazy of me there... i actually googled and used XWMM to manually add these in for my library

I am pro bringing back the Holiday genre.

I also regret SHORT being gone.

Anyway, when will the genre selection be finalized? Also, when will the existing database get a cleanup? That is, deleting all removed genres from any movie they still are assigned to.