Media stubs

As of v11 (Eden), XBMC has support for offline media stub files. These are files that represent a media outside of the online digital infrastructure and allow XBMC's library to catalogue your "offline" media collection, as well as ask for the media when selected for playback.

Outline
The intended way for this to work is e.g. Two DVD's you want to add to your XBMC library, Finding Nemo, and Bug's Life. You would create two empty text files where ever you store the rest of your digital media files called:
 * Finding Nemo (2003).disc
 * Bug's Life (1998).disc

Supported stub file extensions and media source flags
By default these files have a .disc extension. You can modify the file extensions that are recognized as media stub files via the tag in advancedsettings.xml.

Messages
When you try to play a media stub file, XBMC will present a dialog box with the static message, "Please insert the following disc:", on the first line and the item's library title on the second line. An Eject/Load button is available to open the optical drive tray or, for a slot-loading drive, eject any currently inserted media. When a disc is inserted in the drive, the Play button is enabled and selecting it will begin playback of the disc.

You can also replace the title and/or add a custom message to be displayed when attempting to play a media stub file. This is accomplished by treating the media stub file as an .xml file with the following layout:

This message will be displayed on the third line of the dialog box. You may use this message to provide additional information, such as the disc number/side to be inserted or, if you use a special numbering scheme for organizing your DVD/Bluray collection, the location number of the expected disc.

Media flags
You can also add media source flags to the filename (if the skin you are using supports them) to indicate the type of media (DVD, BLURAY, VHS, etc) in the GUI.

For more info on this, see Media flags/Media source. In cooperation with Confluence Skin's (and possibly others) feature to search for words like DVD, Bluray, and HDDVD in the file name it is possible to create a disc stub file that will show correct media flags in the skin.

For example, if you have Finding Nemo on DVD, you could create an empty file called: "Finding Nemo (2003).dvd.disc" and add it to your library. In the XBMC library this file will show up with the DVD media flag in the Confluence Skin and when selected you will be prompted to insert the Finding Nemo DVD.