[DaveBlake]

Calling any experienced music video users!

I want to fully test a small change that I have made to the code but don't have suitable video and music files to do so. I am hoping that someone can either offer some test data (or a free source) or even better test the build out with their data. The change is just a tidy up but I don't want to break anything.

When navigating music library Kodi checks if there are matching videos in the video library for the current artist or album and adds context menu items to "go to artist" or "play other". I have never seen thus myself, but I assume that it works in Isengard. My change effects the way artist name is obtained before the match, not the matching itself, but should be physically tested before merge.

Does anyone use this function? Can you help me with testing or example data?

[DarkHelmet]

I can test that. I have a vast music and music video collection and I know the functions you mention. I'm on windows 7 if that matters. I cannot compile anything though.

[DaveBlake]

I can test that. I have a vast music and music video collection and I know the functions you mention. I'm on windows 7 if that matters. I cannot compile anything though.

Great, that is very helpful. A build (for win32) of Jarvis beta that includes the changes I have made is here http://mirrors.kodi.tv/test-builds/win32...b-HEAD.exe

Download, install (away from your usual Kodi of course) and away you go. Scan in (or update library) for as many music and video as you need. I am just looking to know that the music matching video context items work when they should, and as they do in Isengard. Interested to hear how you get on.

Many thanks.
Dave

[DarkHelmet]

Okay, tested the functions you mentioned and they're working. I get a shortcut from the using the context menu at the artist level, the album level and track level. No biggie, but I don't get that shortcut when I open the context menu on "* all albums" which is on top of the albums in albums view.

The shortcut takes me to the music video section of the video library. Hitting back after using the shortcut to music videos first takes me back to artist level of music videos, then the "genre, title, year, artists..." level (don't know how that is called), then to the beginning of the video library and only after hitting back four times I'm back where I used the shortcut. Having to use back only once would ne nicer (if possible).

The shortcut also works from the music video section of the video library at artist level, album level and track level. It's not working at song level if you've chosen to enter the music video section of the video library and chose to display all songs from a specific year (songs from 2010 for example), genre or just the list of all music videos. I honestly don't know if the shortcut was there before. Just thought I'd mention it.

It is not shown at all however from the music video section of the music library though.

And I must say I'd prefer if the shortcut takes me the music video section of the music section. Using the video library for music video has some negative side effects. http://trac.kodi.tv/ticket/16285 as an example.

Music videos are somehow stuck between music and video library.

[DaveBlake]

Many thanks DarkHelmet, thank you for making the time to do the testing for me, so good to know I have not broken anything.

Music video is not my thing, nor video come to that, so not sure how much I will be able to do about anything you mention, but I will keep it in mind. I kind of owe you a fix somewhere along the line.

The dev team generally has the desire to combine music and video, so that inbetween place should vanish eventually. But personally I think we need to take care that music browsing functionality does not suffer in the process. In my opinion selecting what to listen to is so different to picking a movie or TV series to watch, managing a video collection quite different to a large music library. We need to honour those differences. Viva la difference!

Is it right to see music video as moving pictures that accompany your music to play choice? Can a music video be tagged the same as its music only equivalent? As I said I know very little about it.

Cheers
Dave

[DarkHelmet]

Hi Dave,

thanks for all the work you've out into the music section so far. I try to follow all the changes you're trying to implement with great interest.

To me music videos are indeed music tracks but instead of a visualization (Milkdrop or whatever) the actual video is playing.

While it is technically possible to tag music videos (mp4 for example) with software like MP3tag, kodi does not read or use these tags.

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=192982

In one of your prs at git the difference between scanning to library and scraping to library was specificially mentioned. For music videos only scraping works (like for all videos). Without scraping a music video can not be added to the library. Sadly the only working scraper had to be shut down recently. So adding music videos to the library other that using nfo files for every music video is not possible at all at the moment, since scanning (tag reading) does not work.

[DaveBlake]

Thanks for adding to my knowledge. Sounds like a situation where video really could benefit from being more like music, but I fear I am going to have a hard time selling that to the rest of the dev team.

With respect to external databases (and the capturing of the wisdom of crowds) which is a great idea and powerful when it works, there are times when locally held info can't be beaten. I have no idea if Taglib supports mp4, but if it does it seems that scanning (reading the tags) on videos would be really useful.

I will keep it in mind, who knows what I will get into over time.

[jjd-uk]

I think ffmpeg tag handling was recently merged so should be now possible, so at least the barebones for mp4 tag reading should be there in master, plus there was a proof of concept which resides in the fork of an ex-Team member.

[DarkHelmet]

I just tried the build Dave provided me with with a music video in mp4 format tagged with artist, track, title, album, year and an embedded album thumbnail. I then tried to scan the file into the library using "local information only" but that didn't work. Since the audiodb scraper is not working I couldn't add the song to the library. The only way would be an nfo file but that would make the tags embedded in the file useless/redundant.

One thing to consider here though is that since music videos are part of the video library there are different fields than for music tracks. The fields "director" and "studio" are examples. In MP3tag I couldn't find a tag field for that but it's used in the music video library.

[scott967]

You can add MV files as a music source and mp4 tags will be read. You can actually scan to library and it mostly works.

scott s.
.

[DarkHelmet]

Interesting, haven't tested that. But then they'd end up in the music library as songs, right? What happens if you have the same song as an mp3 and an mp4 file for the music video and they're both tagged in the same way? Does Kodi notice the difference?

[DaveBlake]

It would be so useful to have some generally available, copyright free, music video files to test with.

Don't know what will happen DarkHelmet, fancy trying it

[DarkHelmet]

I'll test it in the evening.

Scott, I need to add mp4 to music files in advancedsettings, right?

Dave, music videos rely solely on file names, nothing else. So it is relatively easy to play around using dummy files or in the case of fiddling around with embedded tags, just use any mp4 vide file and tagging software like MP3tag to include tags.

Right now, the only thing to overcome is that (besides using nfo files) you can't add music videos to the video library, because the scraper is down.

[scott967]

I'll test it in the evening.

Scott, I need to add mp4 to music files in advancedsettings, right?

Yes.

Last time I was playing around with it, got everything working except cue sheets just work like bookmarks (starts playback at designated file offset, but plays to end of file). I think they need to work like episode bookmarks instead.

scott s.
.

[DarkHelmet]

Using Jarvis Beta 1 I did some tests. I have music videos by the band "Chvrches". They are in mp4 format and I tagged them with Mp3tag. The tag fields I used were: title, track, artist, year, genre, albumartist. I also embedded cover art in the file. I added the videos to a folder which belongs to my music library. I then scanned that folder to the music library.

Here is the first scan with kodis default settings.

http://pastebin.com/wndDQLV2

Nothing happens with default settings. The files and the tags are not read and not added to the library.

Here is the second scan. I added "mp4" in advancedsettings.xml to music extensions:

http://pastebin.com/HAxnnFFu

In this case the files and the tags were read as if they were music files (like mp3 files with tags for example). The artist was created in the music library and two albums. The videos were associated correctly to the two albums. Playback works kind of. The album that I tried to playback was loaded into the now playing music list and the first video started playing. When I hit skip to next track however playback stopped immediately.

As a last test I added these two full albums in mp3 format to the folder too and scanned the folder to the music library. The tags are filled like the videos were.

http://pastebin.com/cSmW4T6v

The music files and the tags were read by kodi and the music tracks were added to the albums that were previously created when I scanned the music video files to the library. The result was that i had some multiple entries for the songs that I have as an mp3 audio file and as an mp4 video file. Somehow expected behaviour. The same would happen if had multiple versions of a song in mp3 and flac format for example.

Playback behaviour was the same as before. It started playing the first file (a video). Hitting skip to next track resulted in a playback stop.

I'll report back in some hours with what could possibly be done with this. The really good thing is that mp4 tag reading is absolutely possible in kodi. However this only works for files that are claimed to be audio files. Tags are not read if they are marked as video.