[Malmanian]

Oh, so it's a file view you want. Now I see. Possibly a stupid question, but why not use the library?

Greetings! All my music files are scanned in the library but only for the search functionality. The library mode is great as long as all the music files are tagged correctly with the Album or Track# listed as well as having embedded ID3 cover images.

The only id3 tags that I use are: Genre,Artist,Track and I use foder.jpg as the Artist cover image instead of individual embedded images for each mp3 file. Library mode just adds a few more unnecessary steps in my case (please see the example images below as compared the ones I posted earlier, it is taken from the same section but in library mode instead)

XBMC still has problems with the handling of folder.jpg’s if you don’t follow the structure that it expects and it always uses the folder.jpg from the previous folder instead of the current one. If I for example enter “Artists” in the library it shows the folder.jpg from the previous genre folder for all Artists instead of displaying their own folder.jpg individually.

Library mode also looks worst in my case as compared to the file view especially with my folder structure and info/albumless tracks. I also find no use for the additional rating system as well track# “Albums/Singles/Years/Top100/Recently added albums etc. XBMC sees all my songs as singles and therefore adds tracknr “0” to all of them. In the past I used to modify each individual skin to fit my needs within the library mode and to also display the folder.jpg’s correctly. Kodi library and also most skins expects you to have Album names & tracknrs etc. as well as embedded cover jpg for each individual mp3 to function correctly out of the box.

In my case and for my usage the file-view fits my needs much better along with reducing additional steps both for me and for my guest-HTPC users and I still benefit from the search functionality in Kodi.

My current folder structure:

Genres (folders with its own folder.jpg) -> Artists (folders with its own individual folder.jpg) -> Tracks.mp3 + folder.jpg.

Img: (taken from the same section as posted previously but in library mode instead of file mode without any modifications):

Level2:

Level3:

Level4:

Level5:

[Malmanian]

Also, which mods have you included with your release? If they provide function then they could be merged into the main skin.

Sorry for the double post, I answer this quote separately here in order to avoid one single long post since those are usually very hard to read.

I’ve always preferred minimalism, cleanliness and functionality over bloat. Less is always more. This is the only skin that needs least amount of additional mods in my opinion since it is very well balanced and functional out of the box and therefore it really fits as a default built-in Kodi skin in my opinion.

Since I don’t have any album tags the “Featured Albums/Newly Added Albums/Most Played Albums” widget is just useless/blank in my case so I use it to show random Artists or tracks instead. I’m guessing that at least 98% of the users have all their music files tagged correctly with the albums listed and won’t find a usage for this, its not a clean method either and can be done much better with a script instead.

The only useful boolean conditions that others might benefit from is that when a user for example disables the “TV Shows” section in the home categories all the other TV show related information will be hidden as well, for example the (TVShows.Count) next to the profile image as well as in the settings-panel instead of just showing “0”. Also a long system date as one of the User ProfileInfo labels is useful without cluttering the skin.

Most of the other mods that I use are minor and limits some parts of the skin when kiosk mode is enabled to make it safer for children usage or unknown guest users so that no harm can be done. The rest of the mods are only cosmetics without adding any additional functionality.

I wouldn’t have upgraded to Helix if it wasn’t for this excellent skin, so thanks again for all the hard work. Best regards.

[Piers]

I can see what you're saying and mostly agree - nearly all my music files need serious work with correct tagging but I can't be bothered to search through 10k+ file and sort them out. Last time I did that I used mp3tag and it destroyed my collection.

I'll take a look at adding the view you're requesting, or something similar, to the next update. Once I've decided if it has a place in the skin then I'll send you over the xml to test out. There is no ETA on this.

[Malmanian]

Thanks for the reply, I would gladly test the views and report back with screenshots and inputs whenever it’s ready in the future. I’m currently trying the method that Neuronetix posted and will report back with pics, the debugging=”true” line has been very useful and now I can finally see what .xml or view is used, previously I just guessed or assumed .

I also have around 12k of mp3’s in my collection and the album-info for more than half of them is not available in any database and cannot be scraped. Some users also rarely add albums to their collections, perhaps only for their favourite artists, and instead collect “greatest hits” or singles for most other artists. I also have bad experience with automatic tagging programs in the past but Tag&Rename has been and still is my favourite app in this category

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PS. I have a quick question regarding the “Featured/Most Played/New Albums” widget. Currently I manually add some of the artists/tracks that i want to display to “Includes_HomeWidgets.xml” since it wasn’t possible to modify the “Widget 5 (Music)” to use “RandomArtist.%d” label instead of “”RandomAlbum.%d”, none of the properties listed in the url below works beside Albums. Smart playlist share the same problem and can only display music files with album tags and if I manually force the visible tag it cannot display the folder.jpg and looks for embedded thumb in the mp3’s.

Unfortunately is seems that the only property in the addon that can be used to play the entire folder is the “RandomAlbum.%d.Play”, the “RandomArtist” label doesn’t have a ".play the entire folder property". I guess this would be more suited as a question in the Add-ons Help and Support forum, but I wonder if it is possible to display a random “Featured/Most Played/New Artists” instead of Albums for "Widget 5"? It seems possible to show random artists but not play them.

http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Skin_Widget...ems#Artist

Best regards.

[Malmanian]

I’m super happy, I finally managed to get it to work .

“| Window.IsVisible(musicfiles)” was definitely the icing on the cake that I was missing, now I know why only the list-view worked for musicfiles, everything else was correct. Many thanks to Mr. “Neuronetix” for your time, support and for the push to the right direction. I’m really looking forward to your excellent mod when it's ready.

Mr. Piers: Many thanks for your time and also help and support regarding this issue, I hope that this someday becomes part of the standard 1080XF skin, since this is the main area that most skins beside the two official ones are lacking. I would gladly beta test the new views if you wish in the future when it is ready. Best regards and keep up the good work.

/Edit: Img added: A simple Viewtype-Thumbnail 500 would be better than 501 for files without album info.