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I've been ripping my wife's cd collection for the past few months to create flac files. I am using EAC and mp3tag to tag all of the files. Of more than a hundred I have ripped and tagged so far, I haven't had any issues with the albums displaying in the music library. That is until now. For whatever reason, whenever an album name begins with ellipses, Kodi cannot see the folder when it is named with the album name. I have tried retagging with MusicBrainz Picard, but the behavior remains the same. I can browse as files in Kodi, and the albums with ellipses (...) do not appear. Oddly enough, if a song name begins with ellipses, it will appear. (As long as the album name does not begin with ellipses)
Is anyone else encountering this issue? How was it overcome? I did a search and did not find anything relevant. Thanks!
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Hi Prez808,
Can you tell us which album ? If you happen to have the link to the MusicBrainz page handy, that will be helpful.
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Sorry I do not have links at this time. Albums are:
Britney Spears/...Baby One More Time
Boyzone/...By Request
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2018-03-17, 01:52
(This post was last modified: 2018-03-17, 04:49 by Karellen.)
If you remove the "..." from the folder name so it is named Baby One More Time, there is no issue and it will scan correctly.
Inside Kodi, the listing will still be ...Baby One More Time as this is read from the embedded tags. Kodi does not process folder names for music
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Explanation is simple: Kodi takes any folder with a name starting "." as hidden (on some platforms they are system folders) and does not scan it.
As Karellen suggests just rename the folder, Kodi uses tags not folder names to construct the library so it does not have to be the album name.
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An alternative is to use Unicode U+2026 horizontal ellipses instead of 002E 002E 002E
In general also look at the half-width and full-width blocks in unicode, used in Japanese print for punctuation but you can use to fool illegal character checking.
scott s.
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docwra
Posting Freak
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You learn a new thing everyday!
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I should caution that using some of these unicodes works OK in windows as the font system will usually find a font to display the glyph, but in Kodi you will need a Kodi font that has the glyph (Arial in Estuary might work).
scott s.
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Interesting, thank you everyone for your answers. As expected, when removing the ellipses, the albums appeared in Kodi. Just wondering, why should Kodi ignore anything that begins with a "."? Since Kodi is a media player, how likely is it that someone would store their media with system folders?
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True, but can we really protect every user from every potential misstep? I do appreciate the thoughtfulness, and I love Kodi and appreciate all of the hard work. I just find it odd that a piece of software is telling me how to name my own folders. Windows itself should prohibit the characters if there could be an issue. Either way, the quick fix of deleting the ellipses is the best/easiest.
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The point is Kodi is not designed just for Windows, it runs a on a long list of hardware and operating systems all with different limits and special needs. It also provides a quick and easy way to name folders so that Kodi skips them.
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I understand where you are coming from entirely. Windows prohibits the use of certain characters in file names. Kodi of course needs properly tagged files to work correctly. My other software that I use is Synology's DS Audio. It doesn't have any issue with finding the album with ellipses in the start of the title. Interestingly, my Samsung phone will not see it.
I've never encountered this situation before, as EAC will name the folder the files it generates the same name as the album. I just have to be mindful of these rare circumstances. Thank you for enlightening me!
