Login at Kodi Home

UncleSim · 2016-04-04, 01:24

(2016-04-03, 02:13)thumbinollie Wrote: OK, I've been searching all day, and maybe I'm missing something somewhere, but here is my situation:

My wife wants to be able to play one show, and see random episodes of that one show, automatically.

For example, she wanted to watch random episodes of Looney Tunes this morning. We've used Plex for a long time, and she could just hit the shuffle button there, and get random order episodes of Looney Tunes all day.

Any way this can be done, either with LazyTV or not, or any other suggestions?

You should be able to set up LazyTV (or a clone of LazyTV if you already have one set up for another list of shows) to play Looney Tunes or whatever in random order, by selecting it under random-order shows, right below the normal show selection setting.

leejk · 2016-04-05, 00:24

(2016-04-03, 02:13)thumbinollie Wrote: OK, I've been searching all day, and maybe I'm missing something somewhere, but here is my situation:

My wife wants to be able to play one show, and see random episodes of that one show, automatically.

For example, she wanted to watch random episodes of Looney Tunes this morning. We've used Plex for a long time, and she could just hit the shuffle button there, and get random order episodes of Looney Tunes all day.

Any way this can be done, either with LazyTV or not, or any other suggestions?

A smart playlist should be able to accomplish that.

Benzino · 2016-04-05, 00:44

This is a great add-on, which we use every time we load up Kodi, so nice work and thanks for everything you have done to provide us with this!

One addition that I think would be useful is to add an "exclude TV Show" list. I understand you can set it to only show selected TV shows which is great. The problem with this(not really a problem, more a very minor inconvenience) is that when you add a new show to your library, you have to add it to the selected TV shows list for it to appear. Whereas, if you have an exclude list, it should show up automatically without affecting the shows you wish to exclude (which in my opinion would be what people want when they add a new show).

Anyway, thanks again for the great add-on!

Karnagious · 2016-04-05, 01:46

The "Include TV Show" structure was set up mainly as a parental control feature. We dont want new TV shows to turn up in a Kids LazyTV clone automatically.

You can roll your own exclude list by using a smart playlist as the list for LazyTV.

Benzino · 2016-04-05, 10:49

(2016-04-05, 01:46)Karnagious Wrote: The "Include TV Show" structure was set up mainly as a parental control feature. We dont want new TV shows to turn up in a Kids LazyTV clone automatically.

You can roll your own exclude list by using a smart playlist as the list for LazyTV.

Ah ok, that makes sense! I'll try that out, thanks!

Pedeadstrian · 2016-06-01, 04:54

I'm using this addon, and am rather enjoying it, but I have a question (or a suggestion if what I'm asking for is not possible). Is it possible to give certain shows higher weight based on the amount of unwatched episodes? Most of my tv shows only have a few seasons, but then I have shows like The Simpsons which has over two dozen, and at the rate it's going now I'm gonna end up with nothing but Simpsons episodes. I love The Simpsons, but not enough to watch several full seasons in a row.

Karnagious · 2016-06-01, 06:53

(2016-06-01, 04:54)Pedeadstrian Wrote: I'm using this addon, and am rather enjoying it, but I have a question (or a suggestion if what I'm asking for is not possible). Is it possible to give certain shows higher weight based on the amount of unwatched episodes? Most of my tv shows only have a few seasons, but then I have shows like The Simpsons which has over two dozen, and at the rate it's going now I'm gonna end up with nothing but Simpsons episodes. I love The Simpsons, but not enough to watch several full seasons in a row.

The way the random selection works is that each individual TV Show nominates a single "next episode". The random choice is made only between the nominated episodes. There is no way to nominate more than one episode for each show.

FYI, the list view can be ordered by the number of watched episodes either ascending or descending.

Pedeadstrian · 2016-06-01, 09:24

(2016-06-01, 06:53)Karnagious Wrote:
(2016-06-01, 04:54)Pedeadstrian Wrote: I'm using this addon, and am rather enjoying it, but I have a question (or a suggestion if what I'm asking for is not possible). Is it possible to give certain shows higher weight based on the amount of unwatched episodes? Most of my tv shows only have a few seasons, but then I have shows like The Simpsons which has over two dozen, and at the rate it's going now I'm gonna end up with nothing but Simpsons episodes. I love The Simpsons, but not enough to watch several full seasons in a row.

The way the random selection works is that each individual TV Show nominates a single "next episode". The random choice is made only between the nominated episodes. There is no way to nominate more than one episode for each show.

FYI, the list view can be ordered by the number of watched episodes either ascending or descending.

There's an setting under Player Options to "Allow multiple episodes of the same TV show," which (I'd imagine) would mean that either there is a way to nominate more than one episode for each show or that the random choice happens multiple times. If that is the case you could treat each item that has already been randomly picked as "watched" and just add a weight based on the amount of unwatched episodes to allow for a higher likelihood of your shows lasting throughout your entire "playlist."

Back before I got LazyTV, what I did was (because VLC doesn't have a proper shuffle for playlists) use a batch renaming utility to randomly give each episode a prefix from 0001 to xxxx (whatever my file count was). While this worked well in that I didn't end up with just one show for seasons at the end of my playlist, it was random, so I had no control over the order in which my shows were played. Unless, of course, I made an Excel sheet with a column of each show's episode count added on top of each other, generated a number from 1 to the amount of episodes I had yet to randomly pick, continue until I've randomly generated a number for each episode, and then added the randomly generated numbers to each episode's filename. That would be a massive undertaking, however... my wrists are aching at the thought of all the file renaming...

NaDs · 2016-06-19, 04:42

Thanks for making the time to make this plugin!

Just having some issues with shows being marked as watched when stoping shows.

For example:

I play friends s1e1 and then press stop 10 or so seconds in

This sometimes marks friends s1e1 as watched when I have only watched 10 seconds or so...

Any ideas?

Thanks

Karnagious · 2016-06-20, 02:03

Turn on debugging (in the Addon Settings for LazyTV) , replicate the issue, and provide the kodi.log file.

That should contain the information to determine if it is LazyTV that is setting the episode as watched, or some external factor.

CrankyCraig · 2016-07-13, 21:58

I've been playing about with this add-on on the only device I use with stored content, and it's one of the very few incredibly worthwhile add-ons that I've found that truly enhances Kodi, preventing my daughter from binging on a marathon of a particular cartoon and creating more dynamic viewing much like live TV. A big thank you to Karnagious then, for developing this.

I use PleXBMC almost exclusively, and have done for the past few years. It serves up content for all 9 of our devices whether at home or while travelling, and it works flawlessly. Unfortunately, I've been unable to get this add-on to work with PleXBMC, and so assuming it isn't meant to, is there any future possibility it will?

Karnagious · 2016-07-14, 01:28

Thank you for you kind words. This addon was created to replicate the OnDeck feature of Plex, with the random player added after that. Perhaps PleXBMC already has something like this? I don't know, I've never actually used Plex.

CrankyCraig · (This post was last modified: 2016-07-16, 14:46 by CrankyCraig.)

While a shuffle button does exist outside of Kodi (in the Plex app) it doesn't offer any of the customization LazyTV does. It simply plays a random episode from anything in that library. As far as I can tell though, this hasn't made it's way into PleXBMC.

Sadly, it seems that LazyTV can't see the list of shows in the same way that PleXBMC can, and therefore the watched status' won't sync between devices. I didn't realise how heavily we've come to rely on those, and I haven't found a satisfactory solution to this thus far.

The impending reality, I fear, is that within Emby resides the solution, but with over a dozen devices to update and configure, undertaking it is a daunting prospect.

Karnagious · 2016-07-17, 09:22

Does Plex use the Kodi library? Maybe there is an addon that can import it?

CrankyCraig · 2016-07-17, 13:45

PleXBMC bypasses the native Kodi library, instead pulling everything from the Plex server. There is an add-on called PlexKodiConnect which does the opposite, much like the Emby alternative it's based on, but according to the Wiki it'd not recommended to be used in conjunction with PleXBMC.

However, that's exactly what I'm doing, and... it's working! Which means LazyTV is working too! So, I'm going to relish a few moments of blissful ignorance towards any potential compatibility problems, and enjoy your wonderful work.