Hello
I bought a Sony Android TV and tried to setup KODI on it. Though I have played with its TV functionality in the past and I am a software engineer I find it really hard to setup, cluttered and user unfriendly.
There are some design decisions in the app that I really can not understand and would be glad if someone can explain.
Why there are separate Movies, TV Shows and Videos sections? If one wants to have the movies and tv show separate he can just put them in separate folders. This design requires extra effort both from developers (to code) and users(to configure).
It causes even more trouble if you have tv shows and movies in the same folder as you can not set it to be parsed by both artwork plugins.
The Movies section does not list movies that can not be parse from the DB which makes it completely useless for me as I end up using only the Videos section to see all my files.
Please note that most of the times a user can not rename files or he does not want to keep them and waste time organizing file/folder names.
See for example Archos Video Player - they have stolen your idea and have implemented it in a proper way - I mean the parsing and listing of files.
I would be even glad to pay for its PRO version if it played properly and if it supported DTS etc.
I appreciate the effort that you have put in this development, but I believe KODI could be fantastic instead of good if it had movies section as the one of Archos Video Player.
I read many posts regarding this and I see no solution besides renaming folders/files or adding metadata files. If I have missed something please let me know.
Thank you.
Thank you for your prompt reply, but there is nothing to read that is related to my question there.
there is, you can change the skin to your liking and do a pull request.
I do not think the issue is related to skins - it is related to the functional architecture of the application. I have tried other skins - they are just visual representation while what I describe is how things are organized which can not be changed by a skin. Please read carefully my description in the first post.
(2017-04-25, 09:45)mcdr Wrote: [ -> ]Why there are separate Movies, TV Shows and Videos sections?
Because that's how the library is organized. Movie library. TV library. Only Movies scanned to the library show up in 'Movies'. Only TV shows scanned to the library show up in 'TV Shows'.
Quote:It causes even more trouble if you have tv shows and movies in the same folder...
Yep. Because you're not supposed to do that if you want to scan to the library. If you just want to play files it's fine.
Quote:The Movies section does not list movies that can not be parse from the DB which makes it completely useless for me as I end up using only the Videos section to see all my files.
Don't use it then. There are plenty of skins that won't show it by default.
Quote:Please note that most of the times a user can not rename files or he does not want to keep them and waste time organizing file/folder names.
See above. Nobody's making you use the library if you can't be bothered to rename files.
Quote:Thank you.
You're welcome.
Have you looked into "Video Nodes"? Video nodes are defined views that are used to organize your media from the videos menu:
http://kodi.wiki/view/Video_nodes
There are also "Audio Nodes"
http://kodi.wiki/view/Audio_nodes
(2017-04-25, 12:02)mcdr Wrote: [ -> ]I do not think the issue is related to skins - it is related to the functional architecture of the application.
Otherwise I'm pretty sure that you are wrong in general about that, so suggest that you take a adjust the tone to your attitude a little and instead describe what you want to achieve in the supportforum instead.
Stating that you are a software engineer and then basically stating that Kodi is useless as it is today is not exactly a sure way to get help, that only makes you sound ignorant and arrogant, and while people might want to help someone who is ignorant and humble, most people are unwilling to help people what are arrogant.
(2017-04-25, 10:04)mcdr Wrote: [ -> ]Thank you for your prompt reply, but there is nothing to read that is related to my question there.
I posted the link to the source code where you as software engineer are free to start working on resolving these "issues" which have been that way since the start on the XBOX
All developers are taking it too personally when someone suggests something else. My aim is not to annoy you - it is to give you feedback about what could be much better than now and I gave you an implementation example.
I do not understand why you take it so personally and post some nonsense replies instead of thinking about it a bit and trying to understand what I was saying.
In the meanwhile I found that Archos Video Player has a codec pack as a separate installation and works quite well.
You of all should know how it all works. You'll be annoyed as well if we came around telling you you've done it all wrong. All I did was point to the source because that's where you can help change it for the better. To be clear we're not saying you're totally wrong.
Have fun using the inferior Archos player
Why would one want to have a folder containing TV shows and movies? From an organisational point of view alone, is it not more logical to organise media rather than just throw everything into one folder? I could understand wanting to have certain TV shows and movies WITHIN Kodi to be linked into one smart playlist i.e. for anime, or maybe long-running shows that have movie tie-ins, but even so, I would still find it better to organise the files OUTSIDE of Kodi separately (HDD:/Movies/Movie Name/Movie Name.format & HDD:/TV Shows/Show Name/Season Number/Episode Name.format).
I pointed that out - you may not be able to edit file names - I already read a post from someone about that. They may be a temp torrent file that you will watch and delete and so on.
Having a Movies section that does not list all your files and having a TV Shows that does not list most of the files is just useless. I end up using the Videos section as it contains all the files. Why not at least display the files that can not be found in the online movie database with some default artwork and no info?
I see no point in organizing the movies inside Kodi when you can organize them in your movies folder and split them in TV Shows and Movies or just keep them all in one place. I say again that I do not accuse anyone nor I am trying to annoy the developers as I appreciate the fact that hey have put a lot of effort in developing this software. Just the design of the user interface does not make any sense to me.
Archos for example also can display your files in separate sections like Movies and TV Shows, but it does that automatically using the information downloaded about the file - there is no need to put files in separate folder in order to achieve this. You just add the root of the folder where you have all your TV Shows and Movies and it can either display them together or you can view them in separate categories which it creates automatically.
Such implementation makes much more sense.
I hope I have managed to explain. Anyway I think I will stick to Archos for now as it plays better (no stuttering or unrecognized formats) and I like the clean UI and the ease of use much better.
P.S. I am in no way affiliated with that tool - found it while browsing the playstore for a Kodi alternative. Its free version works just fine for now.
If you don't want an organised library then Kodi is simple not for you. Square pegs, rounds holes and all that. Go with VLC or *shudder* Archos.
Temporary torrent files really implies piracy (yes there are legit open licensed torrentable videos out there, but not really what you are referring to I guess).
But if you torrent your files with their odd scene names to a folder OUTSIDE kodi's hierarchy, and then symlink them to Kodi's file hierarchy, you can have the best of both worlds.
It is correct that many people have to rearrange their files to make the most of Kodi, but once you have, we find it is worth the effort. But if you don't want to, or prefer to use something else, your refund is personally guaranteed.
The library feature in Kodi is currently built for people that are willing to create and maintain a long term ibrary of their local content, be it a DVD/Blu-Ray collection (via stub files) or ripped versions of those. In any case, those people will have an organized folder structure as it's just way easier to find stuff even when just browsing on the filesystem, especially when there is additional artwork etc along with the actual video file for each movie and show.
You otoh have a different usecase by simply pointing Kodi to a torrent folder that holds whatever stuff you just download (I don't care if these are pirated files or whatever). Now since you don't have the intention to build and maintain a large library over years and will delete stuff quite fast again, the library features of Kodi are just not for you and also not meant for your usecase. For the "fire and forget" people like you, there is the video node, which simply browses the file structure.
So far, involved devs where happy with this approach, which is why it hasn't been changed in years. There is ofc room for improvement, especially also in the media scraping process of mixed content, but since our devs arrange their content in folders, none could be bothered so far to improve this. And since Kodi is just a hobby project for all of us, devs just work on what they are interested in and what they would like to see changed. Topfs2 started to work on an improved scraping system called Heimdall, but it hasn't been merged so far, because of the final fine tuning and the actual integration into Kodi (it's a standalone python based scraper system atm). Since you are a software engineer and seem to be interested in improvements in this section, please feel welcome to work on this feature. We'll be glad to give a helping hand as far as we can. But every feature in Kodi needed a dev, willing to work on the feature first, and that's something we do not yet have for the current scraper situation.