Kodi Community Forum

I have an old computer that is running Ubuntu-v13, and I'm having issues upgrading to v14, so I've saved myself the trouble and bought a new PC running Windows 7 and the latest version of Kodi. I want to use my Windows PC with Kodi as my main server and share it's library with the Ubuntu-XBMC Gotham computer. I have enabled all UPnP sharing on both Kodi and XBMC, so when I am in the XBMC "Videos" I can find the Movies and TV Shows folders from the Windows-Kodi library.

My problem is that I can see my Kodi movies and tv shows from XBMC, but it will not create the TV SHOWS and MOVIES libraries on XBMC as if it were local. I have to go to Videos/Files/ and then navigate to what I am looking for. I can do that and play anything I need, but that's not the point. I just want the XBMC movies and tv show libraries to match on both systems. I'm almost certain that because I don't have exact builds of xbmc/Kodi on both computers that I am having this issue. I could do a clean install of Ubuntu v14 on the linux computer to get the latest version of Kodi on that, but I'm not sure if i'll still have an issue with different OS's.

My first thought is to set up my Windows PC with Plex Media Server and then have my Ubuntu-XBMC look at the PMS for the movies and tv shows library.

I'm curious if anyone has done this or if there might be an issue with the XBMC lagging when pulling from PMS. It's sort of a roundabout way of getting the same information from Kodi to XBMC.

Maybe i'm overcomplicating...

Your XBMC won't update the video library from your Kodi's content if you are 'sharing' the Kodi library via UPnP. You can update your XBMC library to be the same as what you have on Kodi by adding the video sources of your movies/shows to your XBMC (as you did for Kodi), but if you add a new video to your video source then you will have to update both your Kodi AND your XBMC to update the libraries separately - there is no other way currently. Also, unlike when sharing your Kodi video library via UPnP, the 'watched' flags will be independent (if you watch a movie on Kodi it will be shown 'watched' on Kodi but not on XBMC if you have separate video libraries).

I have 4 Kodi PCs in my house and I use one as the 'master' video library which I use to scrape the movies/shows info/artwork etc from TMDB, IMDB etc. The other systems have their video source library updates set to 'internal' only. When I add a movie to my NAS I use my 'master' Kodi PC to scrape the movie. I then do a 'backup video library' with the 'multiple files' option so the info/artwork is saved to my NAS with each added video. Then all I need to do is do a 'Update Video Library' on my other 3 Kodi systems to update their library so they are all in sync ... except for the 'watched' flag ... but I update that manually on my master Kodi.

Perhaps one day Kodi comes with a settings option to synchronise multiple Kodi video/music libraries ... that will be awesome!

Plex Server is an amazing piece of software.... it will store your media and stream it to just about any client imaginable. I have it setup with Rokus, Nexus Player, Android Phones, iPhones, Web client.... and the best option: Kodi.

You can use the Plexbmc plugin to acess your Plex Server from any device running Kodi. All of your files and watched statuses will be synced across devices.