[SportySpice]

Collection TV
Organize your entire Kodi media in a way never possible before!

CollectionTV mimics the now discontinued Collections feature in YouTube, while taking it a few steps further. A collection uses multiple sources in order to create one single feed (or in other words, a combined video list). You can also access each source individually, meaning Collection TV also acts as a favourties creator, amongst the many other things it does. Sources can be YouTube Channels/Playlists, and as of version 2.0, ANY folder inside Kodi. Whether it's a local folder, or a folder inside another add-on, it can be added as a source to your collection. You may use any of the predefined collections or easily create your own.



Links
* Download Collection TV
* How can you help?
* Future Features & Plans
* Collection Creation via XML (completely optional as of version 2.0)

[SportySpice]

Screenshots

[SportySpice]

New Features in Version 2.3
* Custom feed parse handling for folder sources:
First video in each sub-folder
Add source but exclude from feed
More to come...

* Truly add any folder to a collection, even if it doesn't have videos
* Choose which sources to include in feed
* Custom titles for folder sources
* Small GUI improvements
* Prettier Changelog!

New Features in Version 2.2
* Date estimation algorithm for folder sources
* Sort by original order for folder sources

New Features in Version 2.1
* Sort video lists on the fly in 13 different ways: date, views, duration, original position, shuffle, source title, video title, rating, likes, dislikes, comment count, play count, last played.
* Set collection feed sort permanently
* Secondary sort option for collection feed
* Counts can now show all the different sorting values(as opposed to only views in previous versions)
* Count texts are now much shorter and displayed in a more human readable way
* Secondary count
* Counts can now be aligned for a cleaner look
* Queue all videos when playing video inside a source
* Max collection limit increased to a whopping 2000


New Features in Version 2.0

General & Collection related:
* Add-on name changed to CollectionTV
* New icon (thanks PatK)
* Ability to add ANY folder inside Kodi, whether local or in a different add-on, as collection source
* Collections now support any type of media(music, images) and not just videos.
* Fully customize the appearance of each collection (viewstyle, fonts, colors, choose what to show, etc)
* Choose starting point for each collection (feed/sources/play all)
* All strings moved to language PO files as requested by Team Kodi

UI Related:
(everything can now be done with a UI inside the add-on, no more need for manual XML editing!)
* Create collections
* Create new directories
* Add Sources to a collection
* Edit settings globally for all collections
* Edit settings for each individual collection
* Delete collections

Kodi Sources:
* Browse other Kodi Add-Ons within Collection TV and add them as a collections source
* Browse local media within Collection TV and add it as a collection source
* Choose how each source gets browsed. Either using the internal parser with all its benefits, or going straight to the original folder (same functionality as favorties/super favorites)

YouTube Sources:
* Sign in to YouTube
* Search YouTube
* Browse subscriptions
* Browse categories
* Browse channel playlists
* Next page in all views
* Video view count
* Video duration
* Video rating (based on likes and dislikes)
* Region settings
* Subscription sorting settings
* Thumb quality settings
* Fixed issue with "wrong" dates. Dates are now the same as seen on youtube.com

Cache related:
* Individual caching for each source: Everything loads faster, plugin is more stable, and cache uses less space.
* Customize cache settings
* Clear cache via the menu at any time

[tromy]

Nice Work @SportySpice
I just created a multi channel(playlists+channels) and it loaded fine
I have one question.Is it possible to create a channel with more than 50 videos,let's say 200 videos?
I tried with the limits but all I get is 50 videos.





Thanks!

[SportySpice]

First of all, thank you. You are the first user of this addon that I know of (although I'm sure there are a few more out there).

As for your question. I'm not sure if you're talking about the total collection limit or a specific channel limit. The total videos shown in a collection can be set to anything you want using the climit attribute. If you don't define it, it defaults to 50.

PHP Code:

<collection climit=200>My Awesome Collection 


If you want to have more than 50 videos from one single source(channel/playlist), that is currently not possible as that is the max amount of videos the YouTube API provides for a request. It is possible to get more than 50 videos using consecutive API requests but will require some time to implant and will also slow down the time a collection loads, possibly by a lot.

[mody5555]

Thanks SportySpice for this addon any plan to support channel fanart and auto set view

[gotiuser01]

Just gave it a try and it worked beautifully! Brilliant add-on.

A quick question: Can I put multiple collections into one xml file? Or it's strictly one collection per xml?

[SportySpice]

Thanks SportySpice for this addon any plan to support channel fanart and auto set view

Yes these are features will be added in the future.
Can you be more specific and explain what exactly it is you mean/except when you say "channel fanart" ?
There are many options when it comes to handling fanart, I'm still not about the right solution.

[gotiuser01]

Another question:

Is there any chance to implement a "next page" feature when there are more than 50 videos on a channel? I mean, when I choose to "browse sources" and browse into a specific channel, it would be nice if a next page button is available to allow me to see older videos if I want to (like how it is with Bromix's YouTube Add-on).

Access to the playlists created by the channel owner would also be great.

I've already created 6 collections and used some icons/posters to identify them in a more visually pleasing manner. I have to say this is really a fabulous add-on

[SportySpice]

Just gave it a try and it worked beautifully! Brilliant add-on.

A quick question: Can I put multiple collections into one xml file? Or it's strictly one collection per xml?

Thank you for the nice feedback.
Currently you can only put one collection per xml file. In the future though, master/sub collections will be implanted, and you will be able to make collections of collections. Don't count on this feature any time soon though, as there are other more important features I have to add first.

[SportySpice]

Another question:

Is there any chance to implement a "next page" feature when there are more than 50 videos on a channel? I mean, when I choose to "browse sources" and browse into a specific channel, it would be nice if a next page button is available to allow me to see older videos if I want to (like how it is with Bromix's YouTube Add-on).

Access to the playlists created by the channel owner would also be great.

I've already created 6 collections and used some icons/posters to identify them in a more visually pleasing manner. I have to say this is really a fabulous add-on

These features will definitely be added in the near future, possibly already in the next update.
Also, an access to all your subscriptions will be added eventually

[gotiuser01]

Another question:

Is there any chance to implement a "next page" feature when there are more than 50 videos on a channel? I mean, when I choose to "browse sources" and browse into a specific channel, it would be nice if a next page button is available to allow me to see older videos if I want to (like how it is with Bromix's YouTube Add-on).

Access to the playlists created by the channel owner would also be great.

I've already created 6 collections and used some icons/posters to identify them in a more visually pleasing manner. I have to say this is really a fabulous add-on

These features will definitely be added in the near future, possibly already in the next update.
Also, an access to all your subscriptions will be added eventually

Great! I'm so excited about this add-on and have been using it like all day long. Definitely better, much more customizable and flexible than the original YouTube collections, which they just took away without providing any alternatives

Some more feedback:
1) It seems Kodi has to load something before it actually loads and starts playing the selected video. (I can see "working" appear twice at the bottom right corner). It's not a big deal. Just want to know if it's normal behavior because when playing several very short clips continuously, this loading overhead becomes more obvious.

2) External player doesn't seem to work correctly on my machine. I can choose my external player from the context menu (play using) but the native player (Kodi's DVDplayer) will take over no matter what and there's no indication of any error. The external player feature works fine for me in other video add-ons, and it would be great if I can use it in YouTube Collections as well. (mainly for sharpen and frame interpolation)

[SportySpice]

Great! I'm so excited about this add-on and have been using it like all day long. Definitely better, much more customizable and flexible than the original YouTube collections, which they just took away without providing any alternatives

1) It seems Kodi has to load something before it actually loads and starts playing the selected video. (I can see "working" appear twice at the bottom right corner). It's not a big deal. Just want to know if it's normal behavior because when playing several very short clips continuously, this loading overhead becomes more obvious.

The little loading delay is caused by youtube-dl. Videos need to be resolved before you can play them, as google doesn't provide direct video links in the YouTube API. The add-on calls youtube-dl everytime you play a video, and while it resolves the video it shows a little "working"/"loading" screen. In the future I might code my own better resolver, or see if the resolving can somehow be done already before you click a video. However, I consider this a performance tweak and these are currently pretty much last priority as I am focusing on adding core features. So don't count on this any time soon

2) External player doesn't seem to work correctly on my machine. I can choose my external player from the context menu (play using) but the native player (Kodi's DVDplayer) will take over no matter what and there's no indication of any error. The external player feature works fine for me in other video add-ons, and it would be great if I can use it in YouTube Collections as well. (mainly for sharpen and frame interpolation)

If you want a normal video playing behavior, like on any other video add-on. Go to Settings->When Clicking Video->Show Video Only. I'm assuming your external player will work after doing that. Try it out and please report back, as I am curious myself.

[gotiuser01]

Thanks for the nice tip. I toggled "play video only", and this time DVDPlayer didn't take over. Kodi launched my external player (MPC-HC) but it still failed to play any video I threw at it...(MPC gave me a "failed to render the file" message in its status bar) Looks to me that it wasn't able to get the resolved video urls from the resolver. I'll keep trying and messing around...

Another thing I noticed is that I'm missing some new videos from certain channels when browsing my collections. After some investigation, I found that the published/aired dates reported by the add-on (as in the video info shown when you select a video and press "I") are not always correct. Some of the new videos are labled with incorrect old dates so they are treated as old videos by the add-on.

Some examples

Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFymXY...AchSpxwyrg
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l30_qeRGZM
Actual published date: 2015/5/22. Aired date reported by the add-on: 2015/5/14

Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/cubex55
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjK1NeWOhMc
Actual published date: 2015/5/30. Aired date reported by the add-on: 2015/2/1

I've also checked the same videos in Bromix's YouTube Add-on and the reported dates were consistent with what I saw on YouTube site. I'm on a Win 7 machine and using a nightly build, if this matters or helps.

Again thanks for bringing us this fantastic add-on.

[SportySpice]

Another thing I noticed is that I'm missing some new videos from certain channels when browsing my collections. After some investigation, I found that the published/aired dates reported by the add-on (as in the video info shown when you select a video and press "I") are not always correct. Some of the new videos are labled with incorrect old dates so they are treated as old videos by the add-on.

I will have to look deeper into this. At the time of writing this I don't know exactly what's causing this problem. I think there are 2 types of dates when it comes to youtube videos. A published date, and a date the video went public or something like that. The API only reports the published date which is what I'm using. Again though, this is a quick assumption, I will have to look deeper into this to know for sure. Perhaps something is just messed up with my date parsing method, though I doubt it.

You'll have to be patient and wait a few days though as I'm currently working on much big features that will take this plugin 5 steps forward. The next update is a major one. You will be able to browse youtube and create collectioins from within the addon. And more importantly, you will be able to create collections from ANY Kodi folder. Whether it's a local folder, or a folder inside a different addon, it can become a source to your collection, giving you literally unlimited options of sources.