[HeresJohnny]

I am a proud owner of a decent 5.1 music setup and would humbly like to request that smartlists be able to filter channel. Sometimes I would just like to listen to multichannel music. Thanks in advance!

[HomerJau]

I’ve made a smart playlist to find all my Quad surround titles by naming the album folders with a suffix - example: “Wish You Were Here (Quad BDA)” and creating a filter where folder contains ‘Quad’.

It would be great to do it for all multichannel by using something like ‘NoOfChannels > 2’, although that wouldn’t work to make a Quad playlist since my Denon won’t play Quad files unless I add a silent centre channel (so these are seen as 5 channel files).

[HomerJau]

Dave has also completed work on Music Sources which will help:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=332718

I haven’t tried this yet but I’m just starting to use Kodi Leia now it’s pretty stable. I assume this is now in version 18.

[DaveBlake]

Both channel and bitrate are on my list of music file properties to add to the database (maybe v19 if I can find the time), that will include adding them as filter properties and info labels (currently that data is available for OSD of playing item, but not when just browsing your library).

Meanwhile naming is one way to give Kodi something to filter by, but putting all your 5.1 music on a specific source and using source filtering is another.  Yes Gary source filtering is in v18 although the GUI support is minimal. Gather your music under folders for whatever kind of catergorisation you want, and away you go. 

Support for source filtering has also been added to Yatse, and at the moment this makes source filtering easier to use than it is via Kodi GUI. I do recommend you try it. 

[HomerJau]

Thanks Dave! This is a really useful feature. Probably flying under the radar at the moment but will be fantastic for music.

A couple of questions:
Is the new Source property available for videos too?
Can you please post a link to the best resource/thread that I can send to Skinners so they can see what’s required to add to a skin? (also useful for anyone doing Kodi Remotes too)

THX
Garry

[DaveBlake]

Thanks Dave! This is a really useful feature. Probably flying under the radar at the moment but will be fantastic for music.

I really am bad at promoting the features I add. For me the fun is in the chase (implememtation), the rest I need help with.

Is the new Source property available for videos too?

Sorry no, but if someone wanted to add it then they can get hints from what I did for music see PR14012. I think I am best specialising than spreading myself too thin and achieving nothing. Also TBH every time I glance the video db with its C01, C02, C03 etc. field names I just glaze over.

Can you please post a link to the best resource/thread that I can send to Skinners so they can see what’s required to add to a skin?

Ah, my GUI support comment may have misled you. There is nothing for Skinners to do, only skin addition is a default icon for the new sources node. There is a sources node that, much like genre, you can drill down from to artists > albums > songs. Source is a filter option in both sideblade menu filter and smart playlist rules for artists and albums.

Why I feel this is "minimal" is because I hope it can be extended and enhanced in later versions. Ironically it doesn't quite do the one thing I wanted most -the facility to pick a source and have it apply as a filter across everything else I browse. I find the smart playlist/custom node approach far too static, I want to tweek the criteria as I browse. The sidebalde filter gets slow and clunky on large libraries so although dynamic it gets tedious to use. It would be a great way to browse just parts of my music collection e.g. separate classical from pop, or my music from my wifes! Anyway to my delight Yatse can already do that kind of filtering, and since I listen with TV off that suits me very well.

The source filtering facility is discussed here https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=332718
It is a powerful tool and I hope that users will use it in imaginative ways, then it can be improved depending on what is wanted most. Have a play with it. Remember v18 does not need all the music by an artist to be under one unique folder in order to handle the local art and NFO files. Also a media source can be defined from multiple descrete folders and does not have to be unque, and thus album can be have more than one source. Confused? Well start simple, just a folder structure to split up your music into different categories, add thoses different folders as music sources.

Gosh a big hijack of the OP, sorry Johnny

[DaveBlake]

Thanks for the clarification Dave. (I know what you mean regarding the video db column naming!)

I’ll have a play with this on my Leia test SSD very soon with a new install as recommend.

Once I understand how it works I’ll want to reorganise my music collection. At the moment I’ve got a single disc volume (NAS) with all my artist / album folders and metadata together. I think I’ll add a tool to my Music Media Helper to help move things to new sources more easily.

Off Topic:
One of the things that drives me nuts when I do a new install is losing the Recently Added history (timestamp). I think I’ll look at solving that too (if it hasn’t yet been done?). I was thinking of updating the Kodi music db with the filesystem’s DateCreated which is probably what I want. Otherwise the initial source scan loads it’s timestamp based on the order it scans the enitire source which is alphabetic by artist and album folders names (my most recently added albums after a new install are always from ZZ Top )

 Going to try and make a new topic for this rather than continue to hijack!
See here https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=336838

[docwra]

One of my todo lists once Kodi Leia is out, is to write up all the new features that have been added to music functionality in a blog article, Kodi really has improved massively since @DaveBlake has started adding new things.