[pucknell]

So i've been a Kodi user for about ten years. Many devices, many builds. I've been using Nvidia Shields for the last few years, I have a few in the house, and i have a NAS drive, plugged into my router so all can access. I have about 1700 movies in one folder, and 200 TV shows on another, so a decent sized collection, which is sometimes slow to load from within Kodi library.

I've always added my media server/folders from inside Kodi. Settings/Librairy/Add Videos/Browse/SMB. This has worked well for me over the years. But there are sometimes speed issues. My upstairs Nvidia Shield box won't play most of my movies unless i have a hardline ethernet plugged in, and there is a few seconds (up to 10) when starting a movie or tv show. 

Recently my daughter was painting her room, and she unplugged the upstairs ethernet hub without me knowing. I couldn't figure out why non of my media would play. It was because it won't play my files over wifi. This lead me to a google search which lead me to this thread...
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...=Buffering

I reinstalled Kodi on my upstairs Shield, added network from within Shield (Settings > Device Preferences > Storage > [Storage device] > Set up as device storage. ) instead of from within Kodi, and wow, what a difference. Movies now load instantly, instead of a 5-15 second delay. And viewing my folders from within Kodi is the same. Virtually instant.

One small issue i found was that Kodi could scan/see the folders, but not the content. Found this fix and it is now working 100%.
- Nvidia Shield / settings / Apps / Kodi / Permissions / Files and media / Allow all the time

Anyways, wanted to share as i am not sure it's common knowledge. Maybe it is and i just didn't know LOL.

[Hitcher]

Are you sure the delay wasn't just the drives spinning up? Also NFS is faster for reading files than SMB.

[verhoeven]

Great find, thanks alot. Registered just to give you a thumb up. Also have the same porblem, SMB mounts from within Kodi only works well if I'm connected through ethernet cable. Mounted in the shield and now everything works over wifi again.

[pucknell]

Are you sure the delay wasn't just the drives spinning up? Also NFS is faster for reading files than SMB.

It has nothing to do with the drives spinning up.

When i go to Kodi/Settings/Library/Videos. and click on one of my Media folders, if i mount through kodi it takes 5 to 15 seconds to load that directory. If i mount through Nvidia, it is almost instant.

[b1121]

I specially registered an account to thank you. This is useful to me. In the past, I used SHIELD and WIFI6 to let Kodi mount the NAS. When playing UHD, there would always be a cache.
After using your method, there will be no caching. Thank you very much.