Kodi Community Forum

I'm not sure I understand how Kodi is supposed to work.

I got my music videos in the same directory as my plain music files.

So I got:

sunshower.mp3
sunshower.mp4

Are there some restrictions here that I don't understand.

I don't want to put the mp4 files in the Video library.

This arbitrary segmentation doesn't make sense to me. I want to see both versions in my "Music" library.

You might need to just add the same source as video source and set content to music videos. If it's working depends on how your actual music video files are named. Kodi expects 'artist - song.ext'.

What do you mean?

If I go into music and look at artist, you mean the videos from said artist will also show up along with the plain music files?

Ensure your music videos and music are correctly tagged (in particular, artist, album, cover art, album artist tags agree between the two). Add to your advancedsettings (wiki) (or create one if you don't have it) and insert this:


then update the library. I think that's what you are looking for?

scott s.
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There's no way adding music videos without using the video library. Music videos won't show up next to your artist as that's not how the libraries are designed. You have to add them as video source and let Kodi scrape the information.

(2015-09-09, 08:27)mkortstiege Wrote: [ -> ]There's no way adding music videos without using the video library. Music videos won't show up next to your artist as that's not how the libraries are designed. You have to add them as video source and let Kodi scrape the information.

Works for me with mp4 files. Maybe that's a side effect of something else, not intended, but it does work. I do notice that it won't launch the artist scraper but it does launch the album scraper. After the music videos are scanned into the music database you can use the info dialog from the artist to scrape it.

scott s.
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So Scott967, do you tag your MP4 files using MusicBrainz Picard (or some other utility)? Also, have you had better results with MP4 Music Videos that are located under the Music Section (but then scraped as Music Videos)? Currently I have mine separated, Music in one folder, and Music Videos in a separate folder. However, getting Artists view to work for Music Videos is almost laughable at this point (same artist under both Music and Music Videos, yet no Poster, or Fanart displaying under the Music Video (but works fine with Music).

I have a ticket opened regarding Music Video's not reading .NFO files (even though when you scrap them as Music Videos, it says it reads .NFO files), but it doesn't seem to going anywhere at the moment. But If putting the Videos in the same folders at the Music is located, makes it better, I'm all for moving everything to the Music folder.

(2015-09-10, 19:45)Powerhouse Wrote: [ -> ]So Scott967, do you tag your MP4 files using MusicBrainz Picard (or some other utility)? Also, have you had better results with MP4 Music Videos that are located under the Music Section (but then scraped as Music Videos)? Currently I have mine separated, Music in one folder, and Music Videos in a separate folder. However, getting Artists view to work for Music Videos is almost laughable at this point (same artist under both Music and Music Videos, yet no Poster, or Fanart displaying under the Music Video (but works fine with Music).

I have a ticket opened regarding Music Video's not reading .NFO files (even though when you scrap them as Music Videos, it says it reads .NFO files), but it doesn't seem to going anywhere at the moment. But If putting the Videos in the same folders at the Music is located, makes it better, I'm all for moving everything to the Music folder.

I use Media Monkey 4 to tag and manage music and music video, mainly because it has so many ways to sort and view files. I also use mp3tag because it is a little easier to add non-standard tag fields. For Media Monkey, I hacked a script that generates nfo files for me from the tag data and this is what I use in Kodi. all my music videos are in their own folder tree that is identical in physical layout to my music folder tree (that is, if I have artist and album of both music and music video the folder names/relative relations are identical so I can do a folder comparison between both trees.

I found Kodi does not integrate music and music video as well as I would like, but it's OK. I did find that it seems to work differently if you enter the music video library from videos, or first going to music library and then going to music videos from there. I think ideally the video database would be able to retrieve all artist and album data from the music library.

But also keep in mind some people use music video in Kodi for "concerts" which need to be treated more like movies than track/album/artist.

I mixed some mp4 music video files into my test music folder tree and scanned them in as music, just to see what happens. I think it works because the music tag reader handles apple tags that work the same in m4a music as mp4 video. You can also tag mp4 with a cover jpg image and it will be used as the poster for both music and video (that seems to be the only tag data that the video scanner will read, everything else must be in an nfo or scraped online).

You have to think through fanart for music videos, because it is treated like movie fanart (tied to folder or filename), while for music fanart relates to the album artist.

Another consideration is that when you scan music videos as video, the scanner will grab a screenshot from the video that is used as a thumb. This might be useful if you have for example different live performances of the same song. If scanned as music I think you only get the album cover as thumb.

So I would use the video scanner for music video, though there could be some advantage to scanning as music in certain situations (seeing combined music/music video for an artist or album).

scott s.
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I would love to see concert videos in the music library using the same artist-track scheme as the music library does. For TV shows it is possible to use episode bookmarks. This feature could be used to tag the individual songs of a concert video into the artist-track scheme.

In the end for me personally music videos and concert videos are "music" just like mp3s are. So my ideal library would sort beginning with an artist and then showing all albums. Albums can contain music files and video files. If I have music tracks and music videos from the same album, the music videos could be shown at the end after the music tracks.

(2015-09-10, 23:31)DarkHelmet Wrote: [ -> ]I would love to see concert videos in the music library using the same artist-track scheme as the music library does. For TV shows it is possible to use episode bookmarks. This feature could be used to tag the individual songs of a concert video into the artist-track scheme.

In the end for me personally music videos and concert videos are "music" just like mp3s are. So my ideal library would sort beginning with an artist and then showing all albums. Albums can contain music files and video files. If I have music tracks and music videos from the same album, the music videos could be shown at the end after the music tracks.

Haven't tried, but it might be possible to use a cue sheet to handle an mp4 video file with multiple songs in music library/music scanner.

scott s.
.

(2015-09-11, 00:33)scott967 Wrote: [ -> ]

(2015-09-10, 23:31)DarkHelmet Wrote: [ -> ]I would love to see concert videos in the music library using the same artist-track scheme as the music library does. For TV shows it is possible to use episode bookmarks. This feature could be used to tag the individual songs of a concert video into the artist-track scheme.

In the end for me personally music videos and concert videos are "music" just like mp3s are. So my ideal library would sort beginning with an artist and then showing all albums. Albums can contain music files and video files. If I have music tracks and music videos from the same album, the music videos could be shown at the end after the music tracks.

Haven't tried, but it might be possible to use a cue sheet to handle an mp4 video file with multiple songs in music library/music scanner.

scott s.
.

OK so I gave it a try, scanning a concert into the music library using a CUE sheet file. Every worked as expected but I found a bug in Kodi. When I attempt to play one of the songs from the concert mp4 file, it works if I do it from the music files view (MyMusicSongs) Note: setting "usetags" is set true. But when I try to play a song from music library view (MyMusic) it hangs (busy dialog pops up and doesn't play and Kodi won't accept keyboard input for navigation). So it's very close to being there. I'm going to create a ticket in trac after retrying and getting a debug log in latest Jarvis nightly. Devs might say this is an "undocumented feature" but I think it is actually a good capability that enhances Kodi.

scott s.
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Last update on this: I did open a ticket but it's rejected as "unsupported". So using this method what you get is what you get, unless someone wants to fork the project and implement a full "music video as music" feature. Also I did some more testing, and while the CUE sheet info does get added to the library (start offset and end offset in the file) only the start offset is used by the video player, so it plays until EOF. It sounds like the needed functionality would have to be added to the video player.

As I originally said, I use the video library for music video and it works, but I agree it would be nice if it was possible to get a view that fully integrates music with music video. Also an expansion of the "episode bookmark" concept that currently exists for tvshow video to music video "concerts" (multi-song with per-song meta-data).

scott s.
.

(2015-09-10, 23:31)DarkHelmet Wrote: [ -> ]In the end for me personally music videos and concert videos are "music" just like mp3s are. So my ideal library would sort beginning with an artist and then showing all albums. Albums can contain music files and video files.

I totally agree and after a couple of years of living with the kodi limitations, I'm now buckling down to try and find a solution. Like you, I have music videos (mainly mp4's) co-mingled in my music/artist/album folders. I also have advancedsettings.xml exception.

But despite that, it doesn't include the mp4's in my music library. Does it even work? Of course I can browse and play them in file mode, but that's not how it should work. Do your mp4's show in music library mode?

EDIT: It now appears the music videos DO show in my music library. I must have had something screwy set.