[flexmcmurphy]

Hello,

I have installed the Kodi 18 plugin on an enigma2 linux based satellite receiver. But I think my question probably relates to Kodi regardless of the platform it is installed on. I have around 250 movies that I want to add to a Kodi library and that number is growing all the time.

The Kodi Wiki states: "The Source is the main folder on your hard drive which contains your collection of Movies or TV Shows or Music Videos or Music." and "There is no limit to the number of Sources that can be added to Kodi for each media class."

But I also read, on these forums I think, based on peoples experiences it might not be a good idea to dump all your thousands of movies into the same source folder but instead to have several source folders for each media class and maybe better to have just a few hundred items in each source folder.. something to do with performance of Kodi.

Is this true? If so, what is the cut off for the max number of items that should be in each source folder?

Cheers,

Flex

[Klojum]

Is this true? If so, what is the cut off for the max number of items that should be in each source folder?

There are two basic situations:
1 - Lots of movie files in a single folder
2 - Lots of moves scraped into the video database

1) Quite impractical if you also want to do export fanart stuff. Each movie can have at least 5-6 accompanying files. So 250 movies quickly become a mess of 3,000 files in 1 single folder. Keeping movies in their own folders is a way to avoid that. Kodi reads all folders and add its own sorting routine(s) after that. Result: not an optimum way of listing movie files. The maximum number of (sub)folders may be restricted by the operating system you are using.

2) Using the video database, there is no backfiring from reading folders. Processing movie data from the database into listings is another matter.

[flexmcmurphy]

Thanks Klojum,

Except I'm a bit confused by your answer!

I'm going to follow the Kodi wiki on naming movie files and create a folder for each movie file with the same name as the movie name so all meta data and other things relating to each movie will be in their own folder. Of course I can't find the thread now but someone was saying that Kodi starts to slow down or something the more movies you have in the same source folder.

They were suggesting that a library structure something like this.....

Movies - TV Shows - Music Videos - Music
|
|
-- moviefolder1 -- moviefolder2 -- moviefolder3 -- moviefolder(n)
        |                               |                     |                                 |
        |                               |                     |                                 |
Movie1                      Movie101          Movie201                   |
Movie2                      Movie102          Movie202                   |
Movie3                      Movie103          Movie203                   |
...                                ...                         ...                            Movie(x)

Is more efficient in Kodi than something like this...

Movies - TV Shows - Music Videos - Music
|
|
-- moviefolder1
|
Movie1
Movie2
Movie3
..
..
Movie(x)

Any truth to that?

In the two examples above, each moviefolder1..n is a movie source folder. And each Movie1..x is a movie that is in its own folder within a parent movie source folder.
The second way is how I'd like to organise my library. It seems less complicated that way?

Cheers,

Flex

[tjay260476]

Either way would work, go with your preference, the key is to stick with the same organisational structure for all movies/tv shows as it will just make things easier such as Kodi misbehaving or a hard drive failing.

[Karellen]

Of course I can't find the thread now but someone was saying that Kodi starts to slow down or something the more movies you have in the same source folder.

Two posts by @PatK explaining the issue
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2599546
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2497825

I certainly wouldn't be placing 1000+ movies in one folder, but there is no hard and fast rule. I have 300 movies in one folder, and it runs ok.

[black_eagle]

I think the OP means 'is it OK to put all my movie directories under just one top level source and if I do, will that slow things down?'.  And the answer is, it is perfectly acceptable to put them all under one top level directory, eg Movies.  As to whether this slows things down if there are a lot I'm not sure.  If we are talking adding and scraping stuff then I can see that just scanning a source with a few hundred movies in it would be quicker than a source with several thousand.  On the other hand, Kodi will skip any stuff that it already knows about and once scanned and scraped, it makes no difference how many files or directories there are.

Initially, it might help a bit if each top level source then contains only a few hundred movies and will certainly be quicker if you only scan the source(s) that have had new content added.  It won't make any difference though when browsing your library and selecting what to play.