[ashlar]

1) Convert Movie Version. I might be missing something but I don't understand the naming of this item. From what I can see, this is actually *creating* a movie version out of the selected movie. What is it supposed to be converting? But see the following points, because I think we could and should do without this entry.

It's converting it from a seperate library item to a version of an exisitng library item.

2) Selecting "Manage Movie Version" on a movie that does not have versions leads to unexpected behavior from the following window, that I see has been already touched upon. The selected movie is represented as Standard Version and you have "Add version" on the right of the dialog window. But if you use that, you go to a file requester, where you can browse through your file structure. If that's considered useful for extras, fine, I sort of get that. But then it should be limited to Extras, not movie versions. Selecting "Add version" and not getting a list of movies in the library is really counterintuitive (at least for me, but I don't think it's just me, otherwise I wouldn't be pointing this out).

The add version button is for adding another movie version, there is a separate add extras button for those.

I agree with you that the addition of movies versions needs to be better handled, this point has annoyed me also. For example I have theatrical version of Justice League 2017 and in addition I have Zack Snyder's Justice League 2021 so the Zack Synder version isn't detected as the same movie as theatrical version, that means I have to navigate through the file browser to the folder containing it to add it as a version. Perhaps there could be some shortcut like there is with artwork where there's an item folder entry, since in my case both versions are in the folder.

However I'm unsure if we should be presenting the full list of movies in the library as that could be quite long.

3) Performance. When using "Convert Movie Version", which actually "creates" a movie version out of the selected movie, I get ten seconds of Kodi "thinking", where everything is stuck. This on a Ryzen 5 3600. I dread how performance could be on an Amlogic or Pi machine (it might border on unusable for big libraries). And I'm talking about a machine that basically never makes me wait for anything, with database sitting on a fast NVME SSD drive. I remain optimistic about optimization being possible here. Kodi lists 3109 items for me in the "Convert into an additional version of movie" if that matters. And those ten seconds of waiting happen for each and every movie I decide to operate on. At a minimum (if possible, I don't know), the query that takes 10 seconds to produce results should be cached. Otherwise...say one has 300 movies to create versions for... it's 50 minutes of waiting. A bit excessive...

It was noticed that perfomance was degraded when you open the movie library views, so there is a PR open looking to address that. Not sure if that could also improve this.

4) Linked to #1 and to the end of #3. The dialog states "Convert into an additional version of a movie", while it is instead creating the first version of a movie. And, as far as I can see, there is no other way to create the first version of a movie.
The problem is that when you select this you are actually not operating on the movie you have selected. Or you are but in a backward way.

My understanding from my testing is as follows:

movie abc version 1.mkv - this gets automatically added to library
movie abc version 2.mkv - scan detects this as a new version so asks if you what to convert it to a new version of movie abc version 1

If you say no to the convert then you end up with duplicate library entries for movie abc one for each of version 1 and version 2.

If you say yes to the convert then you have a single libray entry for movie abc and you access the versions either via the dialog or directly from library if in display as folder mode.

As long as performance is a point under investigation, I am content. I'd say this should be a priority, because, as I mentioned, what I am seeing on a powerful x64 multicore processor makes me afraid the feature could be come nearly unusable on less powerful platforms, in the current state. Xodidox mentioned improvements already in place, so I'm hopeful.

As far as the "Convert..." stuff, my point of view is that of an end user. An end user does not know anything about the inner systems of Kodi (I do know a bit, I'm just trying to put myself in other users' shoes), so I can't help but reiterate: the current "two contextual menu" system does not make a lot of sense. Movie sets work just fine with one. For all intents and purposes, movie versions do not have a requirement of two menu entries, it doesn't make sense.

Also, you mention when a movie is added. But this is coming to Kodi Omega, release #22 if I'm not mistaken. LOTS of users will end up using the feature on big, existing libraries. Proper care and thought should go in making their lives easier.

As things are now, we have two menu entries when one should suffice. We have working on a movie when instead we are working on a different one.
I just retested this. If I am on "A Star Is Born 4K" and I select "Convert movie version", I get asked to which movie I should add the version and what's its name. Then "A Star Is Born 1080p" ends up being the default version and I have to manually set the 4K version as default version. If I start from "A Star Is Born 1080p", I end up with "A Star Is Born 4K" being labeled as Standard Edition and I have to rename it. Multiply this process for hundreds of time and I think it's clear that it should be streamlined.

Please bear in mind: all of this, all of the above, is meant as constructive. I understand these things take time. I am just trying to avoid coming to a point where "it's always been like this". Today we are working on a pretty clean slate and that's why I insist on things starting off on the right foot. :-)

Another thing I wonder if it could be possible. When you go to create a new version (convert in current lingo), you wait the time you wait (performance will improve, crossing fingers) but then you are presented with a very long list. Now, SMS shortcuts help but I wonder if a regular expression of some sort could be used to put on top the movies which have identical or very similar titles.
My use case (which is clearly not everybody's use case, I know) has the grand majority of versions being, simply, a 1080p and a 4K version of the same movie, same exact title.