[MANswers]

Hi all,

I have added music video's that are in DVD format as well as BluRay format in the Concert library and assigned them the Music Videos for the content with the respective scraper.
They show up fine in the concert library.
However i do have music videos in HQ avi, mp4 formats as well, they are stored in seperate individual folders within the music video folder.
now whats happening here is, that these 100's of individual music files show up on the main concert library instead i was wondering if i can the artist folder show up, assign an artist cover manually and these music video files inside each of these artist folders, like we have the TV series as the main menu, and seasons as the second subfolder and individual episode files within each season folders.

Not sure if i was able to explain it well, but i guess most others have encountered this situation, on how u catalogue music videos if they are not in dvd format, but just regular avi or mp4 format.

[scott967]

The problem with music video in Kodi (or maybe I should say my problem), is that for some people music video means a "concert", that is one or possibly more artists performing several "songs" in a setting and recorded as a single file. For other people music video is a single song/artist in a single file. For the first group, music videos are very much like movies, for the second group music videos are very much like music. Kodi treats them as a form of "video", more or less adopting the conventions used for movies, with the significant difference that the concept of "artist" is used instead of "actor", and the concept of "album" is available.

How you actually use that is somewhat determined by the skin, and somewhat by how you prefer to view music videos. MQ 5 is kind of "biased" towards using the first convention (movie-like).

Kodi understands music video "artist" and has a view (also in MQ 5 skin) based on artist. The actual artwork for the artist, though, comes from the music library. So if you don't use the music library, or your music library doesn't include that artist, you get no art. For album, Kodi won't even get the music library album art and there isn't any way to manually set it.

Separately from the artist or album art, Kodi will save a folder or poster art and fanart artwork for each music video file. In addition, Kodi can extract a screenshot (frame grab) from the video that is used as the thumb. From my testing, if the music video is in MP4 format, and the MP4 has a "cover" image embedded, Kodi will use that cover art as the thumb instead of a frame grab.

This probably doesn't answer your question, but might give you more insight into how things work.

scott s.
.

[MANswers]

The problem with music video in Kodi (or maybe I should say my problem), is that for some people music video means a "concert", that is one or possibly more artists performing several "songs" in a setting and recorded as a single file. For other people music video is a single song/artist in a single file. For the first group, music videos are very much like movies, for the second group music videos are very much like music. Kodi treats them as a form of "video", more or less adopting the conventions used for movies, with the significant difference that the concept of "artist" is used instead of "actor", and the concept of "album" is available.

How you actually use that is somewhat determined by the skin, and somewhat by how you prefer to view music videos. MQ 5 is kind of "biased" towards using the first convention (movie-like).

Kodi understands music video "artist" and has a view (also in MQ 5 skin) based on artist. The actual artwork for the artist, though, comes from the music library. So if you don't use the music library, or your music library doesn't include that artist, you get no art. For album, Kodi won't even get the music library album art and there isn't any way to manually set it.

Separately from the artist or album art, Kodi will save a folder or poster art and fanart artwork for each music video file. In addition, Kodi can extract a screenshot (frame grab) from the video that is used as the thumb. From my testing, if the music video is in MP4 format, and the MP4 has a "cover" image embedded, Kodi will use that cover art as the thumb instead of a frame grab.

This probably doesn't answer your question, but might give you more insight into how things work.

scott s.
.

Thanks for your reply scott.
i am based on mq5, and i have been reading some previous posts by various members on this subject.
I have managed to create the nfo files etc.
Let me explain a bit about what i have now.

The music videos are stored in this format.
//server/music videos/michael jackson/thriller <--folder
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin.mkv
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin.nfo
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin.jpg

Baby Be Mine.mkv
Baby Be Mine.jpg
Baby Be Mine.nfo

The Girl Is Mine.mkv
The Girl Is Mine.nfo
The Girl Is Mine.jpg

Thriller.mkv
Thriller.nfo
Thriller.jpg

Beat It.mkv
Beat It.nfo
Beat It.jpg

Billie Jean.mkv
Billie Jean.nfo
Billie Jean.jpg

Human Nature.mkv
Human Nature.nfo
Human Nature.jpg

PYT.mkv
PYT.nfo
PYT.jpg

poster.jpg

These are the files in the album folder Thriller of the artist Michael Jackson.
All the JPG images for each song is a copy paste of the cover thriller album. even the poster.jpg is the same cover of the thriller album.

Now within the artist album i have two more folders for other michael jacksons album, Bad and dangerous, both the albums have their own individual music videos.

I have assigned the Concert menu to the Music Videos and created a smart playlist for this.
i am not using any online scraper service, instead using the add on to pick up the scraper data locally.

When i navigate into the the music folder directory using the file option in xbmc, i can see the cover art for each album individually Bad, Thriller and dangerous, and when i click on these covers i can choose each song individually as well.. its perfect this way, but when i try to navigate it through the main music video menu i see all the songs in each of these albums scattered randomly with the video thumbnail. no albums and covers.

adding a screenshot that shows all the random music videos that dont show up properly. please the dvd and bluray music videos show up fine. though.



Please guide someone.

[Powerhouse]

See my post here...
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=163814

and an example from that post...

So for example, the music group 311 folder looks like this...

311 - All Mixed Up.mpg
311 - All Mixed Up.nfo
311 - All Mixed Up-fanart.jpg (different image than the fanart.jpg, but didn't load)
311 - All Mixed Up-poster.jpg
311 - Amber.avi
311 - Amber.nfo
311 - Amber-poster.jpg
311 - Beautiful Disaster.mp4
311 - Beautiful Disaster.nfo
311 - Beautiful Disaster-poster.jpg
311 - Come Original.mpg
311 - Come Original.nfo
311 - Come Original-fanart.jpg (different image than the fanart.jpg, but didn't load)
311 - Come Original-poster.jpg
311 - Come Original-thumb.png
311 - Down.mpg
311 - Down.nfo
311 - Down-poster.jpg
fanart.jpg
poster.jpg


You need to change the jpg file from this...
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin.jpg
to this...
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin-poster.jpg

This would be the Album cover, and that's how you get it to show up.