[leepenny]

My thoughts would be to be able (once you have all or most of the the correct info for an album) to be able to write an nfo file into the album folder. it would be also useful if you have some missing info you could add your own into the nfo kodi makes (for instance if you make your own reviews OR you want to expand on your genres or have different moods etc. etc.)
To be able to do this as well would also decrease the load on the scraper servers if you have to re-install. (I know people will say can't you add the info to musicbrainz or the audiodb) - well yes you can and is something that many do - but if you rely on the scrapers you only get the info that they want you to have - being able to edit YOUR info the way YOU want it may be a plus for the audiophiles out there.

Maybe i'm a bit old school but I like to rely on my own nfo files but am not sure how many others do - at least if you can create a singular nfo for an album you have a physical ,editable file that can be easily amended/expanded upon in a text editor without having to rescrape.
Any thoughts or negative points would be welcome

[Karellen]

I looked into this a few months ago as well. A bit OCD, so I am always tinkering with music and video information. I found a few posts on creating nfo's. Apart from manually writing each nfo, MediaElch seemed to be the only software that did it. At the time I was looking it was broken- wouldn't scrape music. I checked back a few more times and it was still broken. Don't know where it is now.

[leepenny]

I created blank nfo files a long time ago when the music db was really not as well looked after as the video db (before musicbrainz ids and expanded moods etc) and have painstakingly made one for each album I have (no mean feat) - if the user can easily create one from the context menu or album information menu it may save a huge chunk of time getting things the way you want them.

[Karellen]

Yes, I also like the idea of including my own artwork and adding artwork that is missing from the scraper sites. Also Artist and Album biographies are useful to either modify or add for the lesser known artists. My library has only 2000 songs, but there are lots of blanks with biographies and artwork that I am slowly fixing manually.

[docwra]

Definitely room for a 3rd party music manager. Still nobody has really managed to make one.

I don't think its Kodi's job

[leepenny]

@docwra - maybe no-one has made one because the interest just isn't there - as I said in my first post, i'm not sure how many people actually use local nfo's and actually need the feature. The casual user may not be as OCD as others (which I imagine is the minority)
So some kind of manager like EMM but for albums - hmm theres a thought. It does however throw up the question of not making it as simple as if it was actually in kodi - e.g. context menu/write nfo/job done.
I understand its not Kodi's job but would also alleviate the stress on certain info scrapers but as I said I was open to all comments - negative OR positive to see just what the consensus is.
Many thanks for the input

[Etharr]

I looked into this a few months ago as well. A bit OCD, so I am always tinkering with music and video information. I found a few posts on creating nfo's. Apart from manually writing each nfo, MediaElch seemed to be the only software that did it. At the time I was looking it was broken- wouldn't scrape music. I checked back a few more times and it was still broken. Don't know where it is now.

MediaElch nightiles properly scrape music.

[ironic_monkey]

export library to separate files is available for the music library. this spews nfo's all over your hdd as requested. artist.nfo may be icky, as it has some directory layout assumptions (artist/album type layout), so there you may be disappointed. but albums should work 100 assuming they are stored in separate folders.

[leepenny]

@Etharr - I don't need to scrape from a third party - Kodi scrapes just fine that was the reason for allowing to write to an nfo for a singular album using the info from the built in scrapers

@ironic_monkey - yeah I have used the export/import library function before (a good while ago before the scrapers were using musicbrainz id's) and was a bit 'icky' as you put it(not sure how good it is now but don't want to risk overwriting nfo's) . It seems like a waste of resources to export the whole library when most (in my case) are already done. If done on an album by album basis it just gives IMO a quick,easy way to get the info without worrying about overwriting existing nfo's (also on a side note ratings are not exported)

TBH I don't think that this will be implemented as it seems the majority are happy with the info they receive from scrapers - I will just keep adding my own nfo files

Many thanks to the discussion guys

[scott967]

The multiple file export works fine, allows you to overwrite if desired and also save the assigned thumbnail and fanart image. The main problem is all the generated nfo files are named "album.nfo" and "artist.nfo", so it only really works if all tracks for an album are in a single folder, have a single album artist, and the album folder(s) reside in an album artist folder. A second problem is that the nfos only generate if the musi cdatabase has scraped successfully the album or artist. So you don't get a "pro forma" nfo of the album or artist containing just tag data (and not any scrape data).

Another option is to export to single file. This will solve the problem of needing a specific folder structure, but still has the problem that unscraped albums/artists are not exported. The single file has all the data that nfo files have, but just in a single file and IMHO, is easier to use (just edit the file and then use "library import" to get all your updates added to the library).

Unfortunately there is currently only one dev doing most of the work on the music library, and I don't think this is on his "to do" list.

scott s.
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