I've searched around for this but can't turn up the answer; it's possible I'm not using the right terms.
I'm new to Kodi and HTPCs in general, so this is a very basic question. I have all my saved TV programmes in a directory named "TV Shows" on a PC on my network, and the directory is shared with "Everybody".
TV SHOWS appears in the Transparency! homepage menu but when I select it, no files are found - and I can't work out where and how to set the correct path and add the source location.
My movie files (in a directory called "Movies" on the same computer and with the sharing set up in exactly the same way) do appear when MOVIES is selected. Unfortunately, I don't recall exactly how I set that up.
The PC is running Windows 7 and the HTPC Openelec.
Presumably I must be overlooking something obvious, but what is it please?
Many thanks.
Wgstarks, thanks for that, but I had in fact already read the Wiki entry and carried out the procedure it gives. The result is that now when I select VIDEOS from the homepage menu the resultant sub-menu now includes "TV Shows" along with all the other entries, and selecting it does indeed bring up the file list.
But what I would like is for the TV SHOWS item on the *main* menu to generate the same list - at the moment all I get is a blank directory.
The other main menu items *do* all work correctly, it's just TV SHOWS that doesn't.
Is your media on the same computer your running kodi ? or do you have the media stored on a NAS or another PC else where in the home ?
The files are on a separate PC with a wired Ethernet connection to the HTPC.
sounds like you didn't scan your tv shows to the library yet.
1) select VIDEOS of the home menu
2) right click on your TV Shows folder
3) select 'change content' (or 'set content' if that option is not available) and make sure "this directory contains:" is set to 'TV Shows'
4) hit 'OK'
5a) if it wasn't previously set to 'TV Shows', Kodi will ask you if you want to 'refresh info for all items...', select 'yes'.
5b) if it was already set to 'TV Shows', right click on your TV Shows folder again and select 'scan for new content'
Ronie, thanks. The content was already set to "TV Shows" so I went straight on to select "Scan for new content". The scan found all the files in the directory (for the second time presumably, since, as I said above, selecting VIDEOS/TV Shows already brought up a list of the directory contents).
Unfortunately it made no difference: when I went back to the main menu and selected TV SHOWS I still got nothing.
The thing that I find puzzliing is that other items in the main menu (MOVIES, MUSIC and so on) *do* bring up the relevant file lists but TV SHOWS doesn't.
If the content is on the same PC with Kodi for the first time user is so much easier LOL But if you are on a network you might want to Run Ember Media Manger first over your files to scan in Artwork and nfo files. Do you have all the movies in separate folders ? It much easier if not it will also do that. Then rescan it in.
Thanks for that: I'll try it in the morning, though as far as I can see, the problem doesn't seem to be with the HTPC locating the files on the other computer but with it presenting them under the correct menu heading.
When following the steps Ronie suggested (msg #6) do you get a requester that asks to 'refresh info for all items...' and if so, the scanning procedure should take place and you would get some indication that it's working. Or you get nothing.... ? Enter the folder and manually pick one TV show bring up the context menu (keybaord c) and get the information...... either you'll scrape it at this point if it isn't in the library, or you'll see the information screen. If it did a scrape, that will appear in the main TV button. (also look at the watched/unwatched status on the left slideout).
PatK, thanks for that. I've just turned all the gear off for the night, so I'll investigate and answer your questions in the morning.
Success.
I chose Transparency! because I liked the clean lines and the vertical main menu, but the skin does have one drawback for me: I find it very difficult to see which items are highlighted and which aren't. It turns out that I had "Selected folder contains a single TV show" turned on: that, and some non-standard file and folder names, had apparently combined to cause the problem. I corrected everything and rescanned and titles duly appeared. There are still some shows in the directory which didn't get picked up, but that's a different issue and one I know how to deal with.
I now have the result I was after. Many thanks for all the help and advice which pointed me in the right direction.
I'd like to find a way to make the highlighting more obvious, either while still using Transparency! or by switching to a different skin: I'll investigate that today.
I use 'theRenamer', it's a drag & drop standalone program that sets all these TV shows and movies to correct names. Sounds like you'll have to manually re-scan a few of the shows that didn't get scanned
link will help.this if the TV show doesn't pop up here because of a naming issue, then Kodi will not catch it either.
Thanks: I'll investigate that.
Despite the success I've had so far I'm still running into a particular problem with adding one-off TV shows which do not appear in the TVDB. I've followed (or think I've followed) the various online instructions but obviously I'm doing something wrong somewhere and I'd be grateful for advice.
For example, I want to add a 2014 drama called "Tommy Cooper - Not Like That Like This" to the TV SHOWS library. The file is on my separate PC on the network:
D:\TV-Shows\Tommy Cooper - Not Like That Like This\Tommy Cooper - Not Like That Like This.mkv
and in the same directory is a basic nfo file (Tommy Cooper - Not Like That Like This.nfo) which I wrote from scratch using Notepad++ :
******************************************
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<episodedetails>
<fileinfo>
<streamdetails>
<video />
</streamdetails>
</fileinfo>
<title>Tommy Cooper - Not Like That Like This</title>
<aired>21st April 2014</aired>
<credits>Writer: Simon Nye</credits>
<runtime>100 mins</runtime>
<actor>
<name>David Threlfall</name>
<role>Tommy Cooper</role>
</actor>
</episodedetails>
******************************************
Perhaps I've misunderstood this, but I thought that the presence of the nfo file was sufficient for the show to picked up when I refreshed the TV SHOWS library. Since this is not in fact happening, what am I likely to be doing wrong? Many thanks.
