Kodi Community Forum

Hi,
despite what is written in the Kodi specs under https://kodi.wiki/view/Features_and_supported_formats, there is no support for the SVCDs and unfortunately I created many of them at the beginning of the 2000 (since the DVD burner was rather expensive at that time).
As a workaround, I "converted" the AVSEQ001.MPG video file into a "TV Series", following the below schema:


I followed the guide written in https://kodi.wiki/view/Bookmarks_and_chapters (which is time consuming) and it was kinda working the first time, but after a while all the bookmarks were set to "Season 0 Episode 0" and all the different chapters would start from the very beginning of the file.
By looking at some old thread posted in this forum, I found out there is a <epbookmark> tag, which was removed from the NFO description in https://kodi.wiki/view/NFO_files/TV_shows, and which instead is doing a perfect job.
Therefore I created I created the NFO file for the multiepisode file:

code:
<episodedetails>

    <title>Vacanza in Portogallo</title>

    <season>1</season>

    <episode>1</episode>

    <displayseason>-1</displayseason>

    <displayepisode>-1</displayepisode>

    <plot>In giro per Lisbona con la mamma ed il papà.</plot>

    <director>Lxxx Mxxx</director>

    <year>1999</year>

    <studio>Pianetaluca</studio>

    <art>

        <poster>Portogallo_SVCD - s01e01-thumb.jpg</poster>

        <fanart>Portogallo_SVCD - s01e01-thumb.jpg</fanart>

    </art>

    <runtime>8</runtime>

</episodedetails>

<episodedetails>

    <title>Il papà</title>

    <season>1</season>

    <episode>2</episode>

    <epbookmark>488</epbookmark>

I added bookmarks and placed posters and fanarts, but I have lots of issues.
First of all, I am always asked if I want to start from the beginning or from a specific bookmark, something that is not correct as I already put the bookmark for that specific chapter. Moreover, the proposed bookmark is wrong (I select episode #2 and the proposed bookmark is for episode #3); however, "starting from the beginning (Ricomincia)" option always takes me to the correct starting point (i.e. it's the beginning of that chapter in reality). You can see and example here, where chapter 2 should start from minute 8 while minute 15 is for chapter 3:



I have played with the DB to see what has been stored and I have noticed that each time I reload the NFO file, the bookmarks are created in the DB table (I should only have three, since idFile=21 refers to my video above)

code:
"idBookmark","idFile","timeInSeconds","totalTimeInSeconds","thumbNailImage","player","playerState","type"

"1","21","488.0","0.0","","","","2"

"2","21","935.0","0.0","","","","2"

"4","21","488.0","0.0","","","","2"

"5","21","935.0","0.0","","","","2"

"6","21","939.149048","1157.773071","","VideoPlayer","","1"

"7","21","488.0","0.0","","","","2"

"8","21","935.0","0.0","","","","2"

"9","21","488.0","0.0","","","","2"

"10","21","935.0","0.0","","","","2"

"11","21","488.0","0.0","","","","2"

"12","21","935.0","0.0","","","","2"

"13","21","488.0","0.0","","","","2"

"14","21","935.0","0.0","","","","2"

The second issue is the duration of the show. As you see, it's always marked as 19 minutes, which is the full duration of the file, while instead I have put <runtime></runtime> tags for every chapter. You will see above that the first chapter has an 8-minute runtime but I can't seem to be able to show it in the window:



If I pay attention to the duration, I see in the DB both values: the total duration (19 minutes, field c19) and the manually input one (field c09), so the value is there, but apparently not used:

code:
idEpisode;2;3;4

idFile;21;21;21

c00;Il papà;Videotributo al papà;Vacanza in Portogallo

c01;Una collezione di video in cui compare il papà quando cucina, quando gioca con la Martina, quando chiacchiera con me.;Un videotributo a mio padre, con musica di Amália Rodrigues.;In giro per Lisbona con la mamma ed il papà.

c02;;;

c03;-1;-1;-1

c04;;;

c05;25568;25568;25568

c06;;;

c07;;;

c08;;;

c09;420;240;480

c10;Lxxx Mxxx;Lxxx Mxxx;Lxxx Mxxx

c11;;;

c12;1;1;1

c13;2;3;1

c14;;;

c15;-1;-1;-1

c16;-1;-1;-1

c17;13;14;-1

c18;/Users/luca/Public/images/Portogallo SVCD/Portogallo_SVCD - s01e01e02e03.MPG;/Users/luca/Public/images/Portogallo SVCD/Portogallo_SVCD - s01e01e02e03.MPG;/Users/luca/Public/images/Portogallo SVCD/Portogallo_SVCD - s01e01e02e03.MPG

c19;19;19;19

c20;-1;-1;-1

c21;;;

c22;;;

c23;;;

idShow;1;1;1

userrating;;;

idSeason;3;3;3

Last but not least, the single episodes should have a rectangular thumbnail but I can't absolutely show it: what is shown is the poster for every episode (taken from poster.jpg). I have played with the various tags, with <thumb></thumb> and  <art><poster></poster></art>, <art><fanart></fanart></art> or even <art><thumb></thumb></art> but to no extent. Is there a way to make it work? I have tried to add it from the GUI as well, and in the DB I see the following, with a strange image://video@ something which I didn't add by myself and that is not anyway showing. The last line of the DB shows the image I added from the GUI (which i can't see anyhow - I manually renamed the "thumb" field in the last line because in the GUI I was asked for a name of the added image, and I put "test", but then I found the word "test" in the database....)

 =11ptart_id,"media_id","media_type","type","url"=11pt21,"1","tvshow","fanart","/Users/luca/Public/images/Portogallo SVCD/fanart.jpg"=11pt22,"1","tvshow","poster","/Users/luca/Public/images/Portogallo SVCD/poster.jpg"=11pt24,"2","episode","thumb","image://video@%2fUsers%2fluca%2fPublic%2fimages%2fPortogallo%20SVCD%2fPortogallo_SVCD%20-%20s01e01e02e03.MPG/"=11pt25,"3","episode","thumb","image://video@%2fUsers%2fluca%2fPublic%2fimages%2fPortogallo%20SVCD%2fPortogallo_SVCD%20-%20s01e01e02e03.MPG/"=11pt26,"4","episode","thumb","image://video@%2fUsers%2fluca%2fPublic%2fimages%2fPortogallo%20SVCD%2fPortogallo_SVCD%20-%20s01e01e02e03.MPG/"=11pt27,"2","episode","thumb","/Users/luca/Public/images/Portogallo SVCD/Portogallo_SVCD - s01e01-thumb.jpg"

Any help would be appreciated as I really can't figure it out by myself - I believe I tried all options so far.
Thanks
Luca

The first question about the bookmarks I cannot help with because when I read the wiki I figured it would be less of a hassle to rip each episode individually.

The second question about time, I believe this happens because Kodi uses the time set in the NFO file until the file gets played. Then it uses the actual length of the file which in your case is the total of all three episodes. I do not think there is a way around this.

Thirdly, each episode should have its own thumbnail in the NFO file

xml:
<thumb>http://www.thetvdb.com/banners/episodes/268592/4735398.jpg</thumb>

Place one under each episode pointing to the thumbnail that you want to use.

Hi,
As for time, I understood that what gets overwritten is the <fileinfo></fileinfo> part, where the duration in seconds is written. Actually, I didn't even include that part and I was ecpecting therefore the runtime tag to work properly. Maybe this is a problem of the skin?

As for the thumbnail, I tried to add the <thumb> tag in the NFO file but nothing happens. But that was my mistake, because I had to change the visualization option in the skin, so thanks for pointing it out!
Now the thumbnail is working, but I have found another issue: the date is set to 31.12.1969 despite the <year>1999</year> tag. This date comes from column c05 in the episodes table of the MyVideos107.db and I don't know why...

What version of Kodi and skin are you using? Other people had similar issues with the date when v17 first came out.
Maybe adding the aired date in the NFO file will help? Under each episode add the correct date

xml:
<aired>2014-03-19</aired>

I tried with aired as well, but no luck. I changed the DB manually and it worked.
As for the versions, I am using two environment:

on my Amazon FireTV Stick I have Kodi (17.5 Git:20171024-a82e091). Platform: Android ARM 32-bit while on my Mac I am using Kodi (17.6 Git:20171114-a9a7a20). Platform: OS X x86 64-bit.
The skin is Arctic Zephir, don't know how to check its version (couldn't find anything in the logs), anyway I installed Kodi a couple of months ago for the first time so I guess it's pretty the latest version.

I have decided to stop debugging Kodi and convert my SVCD into DVD... which is much faster and easier

Personally I would split them into their separate episode files. Much easier to deal with.

Not sure what software you are using, but plenty of free programs that will split video files and save them.