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GhoudiOnPi · (This post was last modified: 2016-11-05, 21:19 by DaveBlake.)

Can you please share your experience, why *.mp3 songs are not imported into the KODI Music Library?

Unfortunately, the logfiles doesn't tell me much (or should I say nothing?) about such skipped songs.

What I have found so far as (possible) skipping reasons

a) Tracks with "unusual" artist names like
.38 SPECIAL
.hiDDen tiMe
久石譲

On the other hand I have found some skipped tracks from the same album in the same directory with identical MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID or MUSICBRAINZ ARTIST ID.
Some (random) tracks of the same album have been imported, others not. Huh

If I look inside such skipped files with Mp3tag, I can't find any obvious difference compared to the working tracks in the same directory.

I'm really lost actually Tongue

**DaveBlake** · 2016-11-04, 17:33

What version of Kodi are you using?

Please provide access to example files that are not scanning into the library. To avoid breach of copyright etc. it is possibly best if you can upload into a cloud area such as Dropbox and them PM me with a link. I will do my best to help you, but I will need details to work with.

You could also provide a debug log of what happens when you scan these items into the library - you will need to turn on debugging to get useful information, but it would be clearer if you start from reboot and just scan music library, not do other things too.

GhoudiOnPi · 2016-11-04, 18:42

Thanks a lot for your help!

(2016-11-04, 17:33)DaveBlake Wrote: What version of Kodi are you using?

As mentioned in the subject prefix: Kodi v16 (.1 "Jarvis")

I will upload such songs and let you know the DL link. Just give me some time (my upload speed is very low Sleepy

)

**DaveBlake** · 2016-11-04, 21:01

Doh, v16.1, sorry for not reading what is infront my eyes.

I have your files, but will not have time to investigate until tomorrow. Meanwhile I hope some of the tagging requirements are a little clearer now.

GhoudiOnPi · (This post was last modified: 2016-11-04, 21:20 by GhoudiOnPi.)

Much clearer, thanks to your highly appreciated, detailed answers.

BTW: It could be that the special character in the directory name is the reason. Even in the newest Kodi v17 Krypton beta 5 it doesn't show the content of such a directory.
This specific charater is a "Modifier Letter Triangular Colon" http://unicode-table.com/en/02D0/

**DaveBlake** · 2016-11-05, 14:30

I was able to repeat the issue - it seems that special characters in folder names seems to be causing the problem.

Or more precisely having unzipped your music files using the folder names, once I renamed the ".38 SPECIAL" and ".hiDDen tiMe." folders to "38 SPECIAL" and "hiDDen tiMe", the music scanned into the library fine. Kodi is seeing the folder names with "." in as hidden files, hence does not scan into them. I need to investigate why that is in more detail, but without actually having your files and the flder names I would never have been able to repeat this issue.

Meanwhile I suggest that you rename your folders using only standard characters, then all will be well.

GhoudiOnPi · 2016-11-05, 14:39

Thank you for your investigation and answer with the workaround!
Maybe you (or other KODI developers) will find a way to handle such characters as normal chars?
If this should not be possible, a specific hint in the log file would be very helpful.
Something like "Folder .38 SPECIAL not imported because the leading special character '.' is not allowed/ignored/hidden".

**black_eagle** · 2016-11-05, 15:07

(2016-11-05, 14:30)DaveBlake Wrote: I was able to repeat the issue - it seems that special characters in folder names seems to be causing the problem.

Or more precisely having unzipped your music files using the folder names, once I renamed the ".38 SPECIAL" and ".hiDDen tiMe." folders to "38 SPECIAL" and "hiDDen tiMe", the music scanned into the library fine. Kodi is seeing the folder names with "." in as hidden files, hence does not scan into them. I need to investigate why that is in more detail, but without actually having your files and the flder names I would never have been able to repeat this issue.

Meanwhile I suggest that you rename your folders using only standard characters, then all will be well.

Possibly it's a linux thing. With a *nix os, any directory name starting with a '.' is hidden.

GhoudiOnPi · 2016-11-05, 15:17

@black_eagle: I see this behaviour on my Win10, Kodi v17 Krypton beta 5. In my case, there is no linux involved, AFAIK

**black_eagle** · 2016-11-05, 15:47

(2016-11-05, 15:17)GhoudiOnPi Wrote: @black_eagle: I see this behaviour on my Win10, Kodi v17 Krypton beta 5. In my case, there is no linux involved, AFAIK

Yeah, I'm aware of that. My post was meant to reflect the fact that whilst it may be easy to fix this for Windows, in doing so it may break support for other OS's and therefore might be more complicated than it first appears. It was really just a 'heads-up' for Dave, in case he wasn't aware of the significance of the '.' in *nix based systems. That's why I quoted his post referring to investigating in more detail.

Smile

**DaveBlake** · (This post was last modified: 2016-11-05, 21:19 by DaveBlake.)

Thanks for the heads-up Black_eagle. I'm in no rush to change anything like this at this point in the release cycle, but I was curious what takes a folder name character and converts it into a hidden attribute.

As for a hint in the log, well at first I thought that too but of course it would mean a log full of any truly hidden folders and files everytime the library was scanned.

Being "old-school" I also believe that using special chars, long names and even spaces in folder and file names is just asking for trouble!

The bottom line is that for consistency across platforms Kodi takes folders that start with a "." as hidden. Do not put music in folders that start with a "." because Kodi will skip scanning them.