[wuss]

Hi - I think this is a feature request, but if there's actually a way to do this (perhaps a skin I haven't tried) that would be cool. I'm currently using the default Estuary skin.

I would like to be able to add top level menu items which are a direct link to sources.

Background is this. I'm migrating from Windows 7 + Media Center + Media browser (Windows 7 support ends this year and Windows 10 doesn't include Media Center).  EWith my current system everything works fine, my meta data is mostly created by meta browser (support already ceased). Media center + media browser is super friendly in that, in the absence of full meta data it shows the folder.xxx as a thumbnail (if present, a generic folder icon if not), displays folder/file contents when you enter a folder, and if it's something that can be played (video file, ripped dvd folder contents, iso etc) then it plays it when selected. So you can either get serious about your metadata, or be relaxed about it and still have a good experience. I've looked at the alternatives and Kodi seems to come closest to being a replacement but...

I've got my movies displaying properly in Kodi after a lot of cleansing, but I've given up on ever getting my TV library to appear properly in Kodi. I've spent tens of hours trying to fix the meta data (tiny media manager etc) but either using local data, or scraping the network sources I get at  most about 30% of the material to display - and  tbh, I really don't care that much about the meta data - the folder/file title and a thumbnail is good enough for me - life is too short to spend hours on this). So the nearest thing to my current approach is the video view where I select video, then the TV content source and tada, there are the thumbnails etc.  (although I wish Kodi played video_ts contents automatically)

But it would be much slicker if I could put the "TV stuff" sources folder (and others perhaps) directly in the top menu and jump into my TV content in one click, same as for Movies.

[Karellen]

But it would be much slicker if I could put the "TV stuff" sources folder (and others perhaps) directly in the top menu

Certainly possible, but not with the default skin Estuary.

If you don't mind two clicks, then use Favourites (wiki) otherwise change skins and create Custom home items (wiki)

Alternatively, provide a Debug Log which captures you scraping your tv shows and I can probably figure out what the problem is.

[wuss]

Hi Karellen - thanks for the quick reply.

Using favourites would, as you say, require two clicks, which is more or less what I have at the moment (video, then TV source)

Thanks for the offer of trying to diagnose my indexing problem - I've spent enough time on this and don't want to take any of yours. I expect the solution would requires a lot of systematic renaming of folders and tbh it's not worth it - I have hundreds of TV shows (I'm an old guy and I've been curating for almost 20 years) so there's a wide mix of content types and inconsistent file and folder naming conventions, and many of my shows are one-off not in any seasons format. I had hoped that a valid nfo file in each root directory would be enough to get the folder to appear in the TV Shows page, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Does Kodi also look at the folder content, even when using Local Information Only, and barf if it doesn't like it?

I'll try your skins suggestion.  Doesn't work for Aeon MQ8.  Does sort of work with Aura, but the there's a bunch of broken content related to weather when I highlight the new shortcut to my TV stuff. I'll work through a few more and see if one of them is in the Goldilocks zone. I think I've reached Sideneus 4 and the Pillars of the Dawn, but I have barely begun my journey

[Karellen]

I had hoped that a valid nfo file in each root directory would be enough to get the folder to appear in the TV Shows page,

That would display the TV Show, but there would be no episodes displayed, so it would be an empty entry (and hidden by default)

Does Kodi also look at the folder content, even when using Local Information Only, and barf if it doesn't like it?

Yes it looks for the episode files. Have a read of the wiki here... https://kodi.wiki/view/Naming_video_files/TV_shows

[wuss]

can I change the behaviour so Kodi doesn't hide the TV Show folders for which the metadata is missing or incomplete? (sorry to keep asking questions).  That might largely solve the problem  I appreciate that's arguably the same as just using the video sources view, except it means that where the metadata is present and correct I'll get the full Kodi experience.

I had actually started this whole migration project from the wiki entry on naming that you linked me to (thank you). The problem is for much of my content I neither know, nor care, what season or episodes are in a folder. Often what I've got is the ripped files (ifo,vob) in VIDEO_TS folders inside DVD1, DVD2 etc.  It would take a lot of effort to figure the right season and episode names, and for no real benefit to me. Also a lot of my folders have only a single TV show in them - perhaps a one-off special of some kind e.g. the recent "8 days to the moon and back". I stuck the mkv in a folder, tiny media manager has found the metadata, artwork etc and added it, but Kodi still won't index it and I've lost too much hair trying to figure out why, and it's exhausting to contemplate fixing 500+ TV shows one at a time.

I think part of my problem is that a typical Kodi user has a different philosophy to me and cares about all the metadata whereas for me appropriate folder and file naming, and the right cover art, is mostly sufficient.  For movies I sometimes care about directors, or genre, or actor, but for TV shows not much. I just want to browse my stuff in a pretty and consistent way with a 10 foot UI.

[Karellen]

can I change the behaviour so Kodi doesn't hide the TV Show folders for which the metadata is missing or incomplete?

Item 3.6 here... https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/Media/Videos#Library but it won't show you the episodes, it will just display the empty tv show. Good to have it enabled though as it will let you know if a scrape went bad.

Also a lot of my folders have only a single TV show in them - perhaps a one-off special of some kind e.g. the recent "8 days to the moon and back".

That is the way Kodi works. Each TV Show needs its own folder inside the Source folder. You cannot mix lots of episodes from different tv shows in the one folder. It won't work.

But to do what you want and display your Source on the main menu, you need to change skins. If you like the look of Estuary, then install the Estuary Mod v2 skin. Then you can create your own menu items as explained in one of the links I provided.

[wuss]

ok cool, I'll work on the modded estuary skin (I do like that one). Thanks for the help.

What I guess I could also try is to write a tool to crawl my TV sources and for every video file it finds create a dummy episode nfo file using the file name as the episode title? In other words is Kodi happy to index something if it finds an episode nfo file and a correspondingly named video file (or subfolder) in the same folder?  Is that all it takes?  and if I do that, will Kodi still try to use external information (assuming Local Information Only has been chosen) ?

I don't mix shows in a folder but I haven't used seasons folders for one off, or one-season only shows. And where it's just a set of DVD rips, I don't have season or episode info to work from.

[Karellen]

I don't mix shows in a folder but I haven't used seasons folders for one off,

Ok, I had the impression you were mixing shows, but great if you are not. Season folders are optional, so if you don't have them it is ok.

You can use nfo files and there is a simple template here... https://kodi.wiki/view/NFO_files/TV_shows

The filenaming is still important. Kodi looks for the S01E01 numbering in the filename, and if it does not find it, the scanner will skip the files.

[the_other_guy]

top level menu items which are a direct link to sources.
for estuary this will need to be added to C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\skin.estuary
find <visible>String.IsEqual(Container(9000).ListItem.Property(id),tvshows)</visible>
add after <param name="list_id" value="6900"/></include>

xml:
 <include content="WidgetListEpisodes" >

                            <param name="content_path" value="llibrary://video/tvshows/myfolder.xml"/>

                            <param name="widget_header" value="myfolder"/>

                            <param name="widget_target" value="videos"/>

                            <param name="list_id" value="6090"/>

                            </include>

C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\library\video\tvshows
make myfolder.xml

xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>

<node order="40" type="folder">

    <label>myfolder</label>

    <icon>DefaultFolder.png</icon>

    <path>D:\download2019</path>

</node>

can I change the behaviour so Kodi doesn't hide the TV Show folders for which the metadata is missing or incomplete?
Media Center Master may help with this