[ashlar]

1) Convert Movie Version. I might be missing something but I don't understand the naming of this item. From what I can see, this is actually *creating* a movie version out of the selected movie. What is it supposed to be converting? But see the following points, because I think we could and should do without this entry.

It's converting it from a seperate library item to a version of an exisitng library item.

2) Selecting "Manage Movie Version" on a movie that does not have versions leads to unexpected behavior from the following window, that I see has been already touched upon. The selected movie is represented as Standard Version and you have "Add version" on the right of the dialog window. But if you use that, you go to a file requester, where you can browse through your file structure. If that's considered useful for extras, fine, I sort of get that. But then it should be limited to Extras, not movie versions. Selecting "Add version" and not getting a list of movies in the library is really counterintuitive (at least for me, but I don't think it's just me, otherwise I wouldn't be pointing this out).

The add version button is for adding another movie version, there is a separate add extras button for those.

I agree with you that the addition of movies versions needs to be better handled, this point has annoyed me also. For example I have theatrical version of Justice League 2017 and in addition I have Zack Snyder's Justice League 2021 so the Zack Synder version isn't detected as the same movie as theatrical version, that means I have to navigate through the file browser to the folder containing it to add it as a version. Perhaps there could be some shortcut like there is with artwork where there's an item folder entry, since in my case both versions are in the folder.

However I'm unsure if we should be presenting the full list of movies in the library as that could be quite long.

3) Performance. When using "Convert Movie Version", which actually "creates" a movie version out of the selected movie, I get ten seconds of Kodi "thinking", where everything is stuck. This on a Ryzen 5 3600. I dread how performance could be on an Amlogic or Pi machine (it might border on unusable for big libraries). And I'm talking about a machine that basically never makes me wait for anything, with database sitting on a fast NVME SSD drive. I remain optimistic about optimization being possible here. Kodi lists 3109 items for me in the "Convert into an additional version of movie" if that matters. And those ten seconds of waiting happen for each and every movie I decide to operate on. At a minimum (if possible, I don't know), the query that takes 10 seconds to produce results should be cached. Otherwise...say one has 300 movies to create versions for... it's 50 minutes of waiting. A bit excessive...

It was noticed that perfomance was degraded when you open the movie library views, so there is a PR open looking to address that. Not sure if that could also improve this.

4) Linked to #1 and to the end of #3. The dialog states "Convert into an additional version of a movie", while it is instead creating the first version of a movie. And, as far as I can see, there is no other way to create the first version of a movie.
The problem is that when you select this you are actually not operating on the movie you have selected. Or you are but in a backward way.

My understanding from my testing is as follows:

movie abc version 1.mkv - this gets automatically added to library
movie abc version 2.mkv - scan detects this as a new version so asks if you what to convert it to a new version of movie abc version 1

If you say no to the convert then you end up with duplicate library entries for movie abc one for each of version 1 and version 2.

If you say yes to the convert then you have a single libray entry for movie abc and you access the versions either via the dialog or directly from library if in display as folder mode.

As long as performance is a point under investigation, I am content. I'd say this should be a priority, because, as I mentioned, what I am seeing on a powerful x64 multicore processor makes me afraid the feature could be come nearly unusable on less powerful platforms, in the current state. Xodidox mentioned improvements already in place, so I'm hopeful.

As far as the "Convert..." stuff, my point of view is that of an end user. An end user does not know anything about the inner systems of Kodi (I do know a bit, I'm just trying to put myself in other users' shoes), so I can't help but reiterate: the current "two contextual menu" system does not make a lot of sense. Movie sets work just fine with one. For all intents and purposes, movie versions do not have a requirement of two menu entries, it doesn't make sense.

Also, you mention when a movie is added. But this is coming to Kodi Omega, release #22 if I'm not mistaken. LOTS of users will end up using the feature on big, existing libraries. Proper care and thought should go in making their lives easier.

As things are now, we have two menu entries when one should suffice. We have working on a movie when instead we are working on a different one.
I just retested this. If I am on "A Star Is Born 4K" and I select "Convert movie version", I get asked to which movie I should add the version and what's its name. Then "A Star Is Born 1080p" ends up being the default version and I have to manually set the 4K version as default version. If I start from "A Star Is Born 1080p", I end up with "A Star Is Born 4K" being labeled as Standard Edition and I have to rename it. Multiply this process for hundreds of time and I think it's clear that it should be streamlined.

Please bear in mind: all of this, all of the above, is meant as constructive. I understand these things take time. I am just trying to avoid coming to a point where "it's always been like this". Today we are working on a pretty clean slate and that's why I insist on things starting off on the right foot. :-)

Another thing I wonder if it could be possible. When you go to create a new version (convert in current lingo), you wait the time you wait (performance will improve, crossing fingers) but then you are presented with a very long list. Now, SMS shortcuts help but I wonder if a regular expression of some sort could be used to put on top the movies which have identical or very similar titles.
My use case (which is clearly not everybody's use case, I know) has the grand majority of versions being, simply, a 1080p and a 4K version of the same movie, same exact title.

[ashlar]

Btw I've asked internally if someone can look at the Artwork PR. Unfortunately it touches on some areas where we don't have a lot of people active at the moment, hence the delay in getting confirmation that it's in a fit state to merge.

I don't know which PR is that but another thing I have noticed is that, going back to the example I just wrote about, the version you start by using "Convert" gets its artwork transferred to the version. But the version you add it to... gets no artwork. Even if, before, it had full artwork in the library. So I start from "A Star is Born 4K", convert that as a version of "A Star Is Born 1080p" and then, in folder view, "A Star Is Born 1080p" has no artwork and I have to add it manually (and it was in the library before).

Does the PR you mention deals with this? Otherwise I think it should be fixed.

[ashlar]

3) Performance. When using "Convert Movie Version", which actually "creates" a movie version out of the selected movie, I get ten seconds of Kodi "thinking", where everything is stuck. This on a Ryzen 5 3600. I dread how performance could be on an Amlogic or Pi machine (it might border on unusable for big libraries). And I'm talking about a machine that basically never makes me wait for anything, with database sitting on a fast NVME SSD drive. I remain optimistic about optimization being possible here. Kodi lists 3109 items for me in the "Convert into an additional version of movie" if that matters. And those ten seconds of waiting happen for each and every movie I decide to operate on. At a minimum (if possible, I don't know), the query that takes 10 seconds to produce results should be cached. Otherwise...say one has 300 movies to create versions for... it's 50 minutes of waiting. A bit excessive...

Are you using latest version? There was perf improvement for this. Also you can test it again after this PR 24226 (PR) merged.

I have tested Omega Beta 2. Since you say there's another PR to be merged for performance, I will wait for that to be in before updating to the relevant nightly.

[jjd-uk]

Btw I've asked internally if someone can look at the Artwork PR. Unfortunately it touches on some areas where we don't have a lot of people active at the moment, hence the delay in getting confirmation that it's in a fit state to merge.

I don't know which PR is that but another thing I have noticed is that, going back to the example I just wrote about, the version you start by using "Convert" gets its artwork transferred to the version. But the version you add it to... gets no artwork. Even if, before, it had full artwork in the library. So I start from "A Star is Born 4K", convert that as a version of "A Star Is Born 1080p" and then, in folder view, "A Star Is Born 1080p" has no artwork and I have to add it manually (and it was in the library before).

Does the PR you mention deals with this? Otherwise I think it should be fixed.

That's one thing I personally haven't really looked at, as when adding a version from exisitng library items I've always gone into the Manage version dialog and done everything in there.

[NeoCortex]

Just installed the current Beta in order to try this feature and I really think it's an excellent addition.  As was stated previously, the performance is a bit slow when bringing up the dialog to add a movie as a version to an existing movie, but I'm sure that will get tweaked as things go along.  

Forgive me if it's been covered already, as I've only skimmed through some of this thread, but how is this feature being handled as far as NFO files?  I don't mind doing the work linking movies in my library once, but I'd really want to make sure I don't have to do it again if I move directories or move to a fresh install in the future.  I see <videoversion> and <videoversionid> tags in the NFOs of the default version of movies, but nothing in the alternate versions.  Is backing up to and restoring from NFO files still a work in progress for this feature?

[ashlar]

Btw I've asked internally if someone can look at the Artwork PR. Unfortunately it touches on some areas where we don't have a lot of people active at the moment, hence the delay in getting confirmation that it's in a fit state to merge.

I don't know which PR is that but another thing I have noticed is that, going back to the example I just wrote about, the version you start by using "Convert" gets its artwork transferred to the version. But the version you add it to... gets no artwork. Even if, before, it had full artwork in the library. So I start from "A Star is Born 4K", convert that as a version of "A Star Is Born 1080p" and then, in folder view, "A Star Is Born 1080p" has no artwork and I have to add it manually (and it was in the library before).

Does the PR you mention deals with this? Otherwise I think it should be fixed.

That's one thing I personally haven't really looked at, as when adding a version from exisitng library items I've always gone into the Manage version dialog and done everything in there.

You can't do that, can you?

To create the first "couple" of versions of the same movie you have to go through the "Convert" thing. Otherwise you have to search for the movies using the file system. Is that what you did? Kinda counterintuitive for something that is library based, if that's the case.

[CrystalP]

3) Performance. When using "Convert Movie Version", which actually "creates" a movie version out of the selected movie, I get ten seconds of Kodi "thinking", where everything is stuck. This on a Ryzen 5 3600. I dread how performance could be on an Amlogic or Pi machine (it might border on unusable for big libraries). And I'm talking about a machine that basically never makes me wait for anything, with database sitting on a fast NVME SSD drive. I remain optimistic about optimization being possible here. Kodi lists 3109 items for me in the "Convert into an additional version of movie" if that matters. And those ten seconds of waiting happen for each and every movie I decide to operate on. At a minimum (if possible, I don't know), the query that takes 10 seconds to produce results should be cached. Otherwise...say one has 300 movies to create versions for... it's 50 minutes of waiting. A bit excessive...

Are you using latest version? There was perf improvement for this. Also you can test it again after this PR 24226 (PR) merged.

I have tested Omega Beta 2. Since you say there's another PR to be merged for performance, I will wait for that to be in before updating to the relevant nightly.

It's unlikely that that PR will help, it's helpful when the scraping new movies to find a match with an existing library entry.
Do you have an external mysql/mariadb or use the builtin sqlite? When does it freeze, in the preparation of the list for browsing?

[jjd-uk]

Yes you can do that.

Go to any movie in library and open Manage versions on context, select Add versions then navigate to file system location of any version you have, no need to use convert at all.

[scott967]

It seems like the flow I would want is to select a movie title, open the movie info dialog and click version, to get the video version dialog and in there I can rename to add my version but I don't see any way in the dialog to add the movie version to the default?  I have to back out of the dialogs and then open the context menu and drill down through the "manage" to get to "convert" but seems to have forgotten that I renamed it already as it asks for a name.  Then I get a title list to select from.  Is there some reason I can't do that from the video version dialog?  In that dialog there is a "add version" button that opens the file browser -- not sure why I want that?

After you added the version to a movie, you can use the "Set default" button to set a version as default. The "Convert movie version" context menu is at the same location of "Manage movie set", so it's much easier to use. You can also remove the version from library and do a rescan, a prompt will ask for converting it to an additional version.

In the video version dialog, the "Add version" (and "Add extras") button removes the restriction for a version that must be an existing library item, you can just choose the video file directly as an additional version. In this way, you can manage your additional movies versions/extras freely, instead of putting them in a location that need to be scanned to library. If the "Add version" button in video version dialog also uses movie titles, it will just duplicate the functionality for the context menu and miss the functionality from file.

I'm open for this design though, just want to make sure the required functionality is there, and we don't miss any functionality.

OK, thanks.  It just seemed like when I add the "4K" modifier to a movie version in video version dialog I would next want to "convert" it to a version of the parent while in the dialog (my first step was to set the "parent"/default on one item, then go to the 2d, third, etc and add the modifiers).  This of course for existing library items, I suppose during a scan/update user might have a different flow.

scott s.
.

[ashlar]

It's unlikely that that PR will help, it's helpful when the scraping new movies to find a match with an existing library entry.
Do you have an external mysql/mariadb or use the builtin sqlite? When does it freeze, in the preparation of the list for browsing?

Built in sqlite. It freezes in preparation of the list for browsing.

[ashlar]

Yes you can do that.

Go to any movie in library and open Manage versions on context, select Add versions then navigate to file system location of any version you have, no need to use convert at all.

Yes, I know you can. This is why I added that it's counterintuitive to consider the way you chose, while handling a library based system.
If I already have movies in the library, no way it makes sense to navigate in folders to search for a different version. I mean, Kodi has spent years educating users to the library approach. I'm not saying you did wrong in doing what you did. Just that it's... "wrong". :-)

[jjd-uk]

In the case of versions you'd need to create a duplicate library entry. Personally I don't see the point, if you have the Theatrical in the Library and a Directors cut comes out, simply drop new version into existing folder and use Add version. I guess that's why there's both methods to cater for the 2 types of workflow.

[ashlar]

In the case of versions you'd need to create a duplicate library entry. Personally I don't see the point, if you have the Theatrical in the Library and a Directors cut comes out, simply drop new version into existing folder and use Add version. I guess that's why there's both methods to cater for the 2 types of workflow.

Sure. Never stated that the "file approach" had no place to be. I'm mainly focusing on existing library handling, as that is going to be the main use case at launch. For new files, by the way, the scan detection works fine even if you add stuff to the library. Same movies get detected and you're asked what you wanna do with them. It's fast and easy. Probably perfect already, tbh.

[NeoCortex]

For the file browser approach to adding a version, it would be nice if there was an *Item Folder location to immediately jump to the folder location of the base version.  If I keep all the versions of each movie in a folder together, it would save a lot of browsing steps adding them.

[XODIDOX]

Btw I've asked internally if someone can look at the Artwork PR. Unfortunately it touches on some areas where we don't have a lot of people active at the moment, hence the delay in getting confirmation that it's in a fit state to merge.

Understood. I have several fixes depend on that PR, so my work just got blocked. BTW, I've found the way to add the item folder in the folder list when adding version/extras. @NeoCortex