XBMC- Quick start and keys

A media centre lets you manage and play back your media files on your PC (Mac, Linux..) system.  XBMC is XBox Media Centre, and despite the name, really has nothing to do with the X-Box any more.  They describe it as “‘an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media”

I have it on my laptop and main PC.  It’s fantastic.  I have my avi, flv, mkv, mp4 etc movies in C:Movies and use XBMC to watch them back. My quick steps:

1. Grab it and install it from their download page
2. It will get any extra s/w off the Internet if it has to, during the install
3. Run it and then make 2 quick changes
   • Add at least one Folder as a source for your Videos. (select Videos –> Add Source then browse for your C:Movies or whatever folder they are in.)
   • Unlike some other players it can remember where it is up to for multiple movies, making it easy to Resume playing where you left off last time. This is off by default, so (System –> Video –> Playback, then change Resume From Where Last Stopped to yes)   Update: with newer versions of XBMC (10.x) this is now (System –> Video –> File lists, then change Default select action to Resume)
4. Off you go to watch your videos.  If it doesn’t start in Fullscreen mode then jump to that (see below).  Play with the image size/ratio until you get the one you like.

The default keys (at least under Windows) are