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Full Version: Ready to switch to Kodi from WMC??
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New to Kodi - played with XBMC before but never considered it as there was no real TV solution or "extenders". Now with Kodi, Raspberry Pi2 and the WMC based backend as PVR I'm close.

Bit of background - run a WMC with 6 tuners and ICETV EPG. WMC hooked up to a 50", 2xbox360 extenders and a DMA2100 (all hard wired) and a 2012 server containing all media. Plan is to relegate the WMC to the backend role - too many issues with decoders on the extenders. Ideally I would want to reuse the XBOXes but looks like they will be replaced with Raspberries running OpenElec.

Got the Kodi setup working quite nicely - but three issues would ruin the WAF (And KAF, Kids are demanding!!). First one is the "recorded TV" list. I say list on purpose as that is what it is - a listing of filenames. Of course WMC is quite slick in that department - grouping - and stacking - of recordings and actually reading the metadata rather than just the filename. I know that within Kodi that really has little to do with the PVR - but is there a better way of doing this?? Even a different view than just "list" would make a difference.

second is also recorded TV related - we use the "resume" function extensively on recorded TV - resume cross device> I did put the MySQL shared database in but am unsure if that actually works for recorded TV??

Third issue is the "Timer" - especially recording of series. It kind of works but requires quite a few clicks. Maybe I'm doing it the wrong way - but I really like the WMC click once for single, click twice for series recording. Any recommendations there??

Very close now - great work devs!!

Thnx

Dennis
Make sure you have 'group recordings in folders' selected in the serverWMC options. There's also a Kodi option for using folders as well I believe.

The 'resume' function works for me with just the basic Kodi install, I didn't install MySQL or even change any settings, it just works for me, even across different clients.

I agree setting up a series recording can be a little clunky in Kodi, I actually still use WMC to set up a lot of the recordings.
Series recordiong will be improved in the next version of kod, at least that's the plan,, whether there will be quick way to do a series recording (like pressing record twice for example), is worth bringing up as a feature request to the kodi team. Resume should be working now, across all clients.

If you are seeing an actual list of those ugly file names wmc uses for recordings you are doing something wrong. Our addon uses the same metadata that wmc uses so its display should be listed by program name not file name, and grouped according to the series (and some other options we enable, like moves, recording now, etc). If you are really seeing the raw file name, did you add the recoridngs folder as a video source in kodi? If so, that's not the way to do it, access the recordings list through the addon. Actually that would also explain why 'resume' isn't working for you too.

We also designed serverwmc so that you can continue to run wmc if you want,, our code runs along side it. So you can handle the transition slowly (for example only my kids and I use kodi, my wife still uses wmc).
OK - played around a bit more and now get the titles rather than filenames. I see the series grouped but not stacked - so if I have 30 episodes of a series (don't ask me why - kids you know) I see 30 entries in the list...

Also - when highlighting an entry I do get metadata displayed on the right - unfortunately only a bit, and no way of scrolling down. Result is that I cannot see the episode title, just a couple of the synopsys. I can get all details via "right click" - but then cannot scroll through series.

Is there a way around these constraints??

thnx
I'm not clear what you are talking about, maybe post a couple of scrrenshots?
see below - the list shows the episodes of "Borgen" - with the metadata of the selected episode to the right. The metadata also lists "borgen" - rather than the episode title and cannot scroll that metadata so other than the synopsis there is no way to find out what the episode title is. When going to the detail (I use right click) you can see that the full metadata is available - but in that dialog box I cannot step through the list.

Ideal behaviour would be what MCE does - in the list view show one entry for "Borgen" and when selected through a click show the list of episodes that exist within that folder...

thnx

Image

Image
I think a lot depends on the skin you are using. This what my recorded show section looks like. I use the Mimic skin.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nzr4bg1uj677ocb/Capture.JPG
tried the mimic skin - same problem - list of recorded TV shows the series name - detail on right also shows series name. Episode title is not on there at all...
I'm in the same boat as you. I've been happily using WMC for years now, but one of my extenders just died and the codec issues on extenders have been fairly aggravating with content largely going to h264, so I'm investigating alternatives. I realize this will not be a popular opinion in this forum at all, and please understand I don't mean to criticize, but I'm really surprised to see how far behind xbmc still is especially considering WMC hasn't had any significant development done on it since 2007. I'm still learning, and I'm sure I must be missing something because reading on the forums everyone says xbmc is heads and tales better than wmc. I personally would like to move to xbmc as from a systems perspective it's much simpler (just my content server and light-weight clients), and it doesn't run windows so it should be more stable...but I honestly don't know if I can sell this to my wife/kids, coming from a WMC / MyMovies / MediaBrowser setup this seems like a significant step down.
In terms of the list display, it should show 1 entry in the list for each show with an episode count in brackets then once you click on that episode the list view will show you all the episodes for that show
eg

Borgen (27)
Breaking Bad (58)
etc

This is controlled by an option on ServerWMC "Recordings" tab called "Group recordings in folders". Perhaps you have this disabled if you are seeing 1 flat list of all episodes of all shows?

There is another ServerWMC option on "Recordings" tab "Append episode title to series title" which you might also consider if you want to see the episode titles in the list

Mostly though, ServerWMC and the pvr.wmc PVR addon are responsible for sending the data to Kodi, and what you see on the screen is controlled by the skin. Skins have access to all the data we send, so the proper way to get the episode title instead of/as well as show title, or to have more data shown on the side panel etc, is to look for another skin that has this, or even customise your own. Our option to append the title is a bit of a "hack" where really we are sending over "Showname - Episode Title" all in the Showname field, to "trick" the default skin into showing you this information. So it may get you one step closer to what you want but really it sounds like you want a skin that displays your preferred data in your preferred places
You would have to add the recordings to the Video section and tell it to scan using the series scanner. Then you get the series views you like, along with fanart, covers and the like.
(2015-03-05, 15:35)mbuzina Wrote: [ -> ]You would have to add the recordings to the Video section and tell it to scan using the series scanner. Then you get the series views you like, along with fanart, covers and the like.

By default though, the file names wmc uses for recordings are not scrape-able. You have to use a renamer program, but there ones out there.