Multiple library languages
#1
Question 
Hi there,

my Setup is used by multiple users that speak different home languages (German and English). Also my movies are mostly DVDs and Blurays with at least those two languages and subtitles.

So I would like Kodi to use the language according to the home language of the current user (completely). The GUI, audio and subtitles are not a problem (thanks to Kodis Multi-User possibilities).

But the Libraries are still in another language (based on the nfo files during Import). Here I did them in German but would like to be able to show english Informations aswell.

So when an english user is loged in the library displayes the english Content (like Plot, Age Restriction, Title) but when a german user is loged into Kodi the should library display those informations in german.


Is there a way on howto do that (changing code, addons)?


I thought maybe you can extend the nfo files and add language tags. Also extend the databases that there will be stored the different tags (like lang1:title, lang2:title, lang1:plot, lang2:plot ... lang1=en=default, lang2=de). Then within Kodi while scaning and importing the libraries Kodi will recognize the language tags and according to the selected Kodi-menu language the library language will be used aswell. And if there's no language in the database according to the selected user language then use a default language (maybe the first language within the nfo file / database).

Thanks for your help.
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#2
Doesn't this work when you use profiles ?
It should if I'm not mistaking.
Not when you use .nfo files.
LibreElec Kodi | Aeon MQ ?
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#3
No. it Switches the menu of kodi and the prefered movie language and subtitles. But the movie informations stay the same. I scrapped everything in german and would like Kodi to Display those informations in english when a user logs in with english as prefered language.
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#4
Some ramblings...
The easiest way I can see to do that right now (with your present setup) is to scan your library twice initially, and then scan twice whenever you add content.
You could scan with the German .nfos in your German profile, then hide those .nfo's, change profiles and scan again in English - either using new .nfo's (if you're using a media manager) or just using kodi's default scraper set to English.
In windows I'd use a batch file to rename .nfo's after the initial scan (so they're not seen in the second scan) - so once you got that to work the process would be fairly painless.

Another way would be to edit your .nfo's internally between scans. eg hide anything that's specific to German - plot, tagline, title etc, but keep file info, imdb link, actors and anything else that would carry across. I've done that sort of thing in the (distant) past with notepad++.

Or produce .nfo's that don't have anything language specific in them, so all that comes when you scan (twice) in kodi - just have technical details, dates, actors, tags, imdb id (eg tt123456).

Or not use .nfo's at all (although that just sounds wrong!).

I realise this is feature requests, but there are workarounds - if not all very elegant ones.
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#5
weird that it doesn't work.
i used to use 2 profiles in kodi.
1 for me and my wife and set the scraper in englisch scraping(universal movie scraper) (no .nfo usage or external scraper program).
then created a second profile in kodi for my daughter and setup everything in Dutch for her and also the scraper.
then rescraped the movies with a little filter for only the kids movies.
and when she's looking at her profile all titles are Dutch and the movie info also (with fallback to english when dutch isn't present)
LibreElec Kodi | Aeon MQ ?
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#6
It's not weird at all. If an .nfo is present what's on it gets read. So if the .nfo has a plot in German that's what ends up in the library.
Without .nfo's it would work.
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#7
Thanks trogggy.

Unfortunately I made about 800 nfos and would like to keep them. Is there a possibility to use different nfos for different languages or make a section within the nfo to devide between languages?
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#8
I have an example: We have the movie "The Fifth Element", watched by my wife in Russian, by me in English (original), my older daughter watched it in German.
One MP4, three audio streams.
As the MP4 is centrally stored and the same file, I can download only one language version.
The workaround is an nfo-file with the link without ?language in it: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/18. Problem is, that on library export, KODI renames the file to .info (did do on write protected file) and stores the library-information in the new, language-set nfo-file.
It would be great to be able to download language-dependent files. I have a lot of dual (or triple) language in my archive and am not alone it seems.
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#9
P.S.: A problem is that usually, I can only set KODI to default language. In Multi-language, I cannot tell Kodi what language the movie supports and which language I want to see. So if I set to German, I get German description even for movies that I have only in English. Same if I set it to English, even the German movies I get the English description. Wife, Kids and I have different preferences. As KODI does not identify the audio languages but simply goes by settings. So there is a lot of work saving local files in language and then swallow the preset on the remaining multi-language ones. Simply a lot to work. A very big "lot".
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#10
This sounds more like a support question, rather than feature request.

Kodi does support multiple audio tracks in a file as well as separate audio files, and does identify the language to the user.  Same thing for subtitles.

Kodi provides a UI language and preferences for audio language on a per-profile basis.

As far as storing metadata like plot, title etc in multiple languages, again that could be done via profile with separate libraries.

scott s.
.
maintainer of skin  Aeon MQ5 mods for post-Gotham Kodi releases:
Matrix see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Matrix release thread
Nexus see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Nexus release thread
Aeon MQ 5 skin and addon repo 11.1.0
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#11
Scott, your response confirms the feature request, not being a support issue.
As mentioned, the "support" is by profile, not per file. Once there are no scraping files available or identified for movies (not for series!) you can link to the file in an nfo-file, i.e. https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/[movienumber]?language=de-DE. Then you can safe (export) the information. If there is no information in the language of choice, you can create the nfo-file for it. But you cannot direct KODI to use the local nfo-file-information in the language of choice (at least I did not find that documented).
Especially on German TV shows, the support by thetvdb.com is substandard, as mentioned elsewhere, they repeatedly deleted German series descriptions as seemingly German TV channels claimed copyright-infringement on the texts that are commonly used in other websites. So there is a "must" to do series-nfos by hand. And they can only support one language. So a multi-language will deliver the nfo-file to Kodi, Kodi will read the content but there is no way to deliver the content in preference to the profile as there is only one nfo-file. Or did I oversee anything in the nfo-files manual?
A similar problem here or here. I am sure there are more issues that refer to the lack of KODI to support multi-language content.

The mentioned option here to maintain multiple local nfo-files with suffix (en) or (de) might be a good one. Though then the JPG on episodes would need to be [filename]-thumb(en).jpg? Sounds a good idea since nfo does not support multi-language plot/title.
The main issue in my humble opinion being title, plot, poster and fanart (if fanart includes title). But the added language on local nfo-files would be a relatively simple solution. Feature Request...

From response on other posts, I am sure I am not the only one struggling with the nfo-files, to overcome shortcomings of the scraping sites.
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#12
I think I see now what you want, but I don't see any easy solution for it.

scott s.
.
maintainer of skin  Aeon MQ5 mods for post-Gotham Kodi releases:
Matrix see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Matrix release thread
Nexus see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Nexus release thread
Aeon MQ 5 skin and addon repo 11.1.0
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#13
(2020-07-12, 03:36)scott967 Wrote: I think I see now what you want, but I don't see any easy solution for it.

Okay. I usually try to simplify things. While there is a lot of complexity possible in this, in my humble opinion it's three spots to look into.

1. Name parsing: KODI parses the name. It might be manageable to have KODI look for (xx) for language content in the preferred language on the filenames.
Two possibilities here.
1.a. Setting to require language version (not recommended, but faster to develop)
The quick&easy solution would likely be a KODI settings flag (see 2.) to require the language-tag as part of the nfo-file and artwork naming. Then KODI would ignore NFO-files without language-tag.
1.b. Optional language version
More user-friendly, that would require an if/else on language parsing. See if file with language exists, else use the non-language-named file. As mentioned, on movies it is quite convenient to have the movie linked to TMDB without ?language=xx-XX, having KODI select the proper content according to the settings. The issue is that this doesn't work on series episodes. This would also improve the artwork management, as many series episodes fanarts come without text, such are language independent.
2. Settings "language-tag". As mentioned in 1.a., it would be likely advisable to have an settings-option to switch-on/off file name language tagging. Which can be used in name parsing, but is also very important on library export:
3. Export: If the settings-language-flag is on, KODI should also export to the "new" language version.

Question is if that flag would be default on or off Cool

I'm no developer I'm afraid, so I can't (offer to) do it myself, my experience is a bit LAMP, that's it.
I think it will be reasonable to have the language-tag, as many users won't have the issue, being single-language. Though I'd actually expect many users with "fallback" to English. Or maybe other languages. ...

Whereas it bugs me constantly that on installation everything is set to English and there's a lot of places where I must switch everything back to German for my kids when they get new "toys". So far two mobile phones, two school laptops and a "Raspberry Pi" on the TV-screen in their room. I slowly get the hang of that, but still keep missing out occasionally on the one or other setting... But that just an off-topic-comment, not relevant to the problem addressed here.
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