WIP Music Videos - Improvements & Issues
#1
If you use the music video section in the way it was designed to be used, everything works pretty well.  That's to say, if you have individual videos of songs that all tie to an album (or albums) then it all works reasonably well.  What I have found though is that it doesn't handle full concerts very well as they are not usually linked to an album.

This leads to problems such as :-
  • Listing artists as appearing X times but showing no related videos when clicking on the artist.
  • Having to navigate mainly by titles only to find a particular concert.
  • No link-up with the music library for artist biography etc.
  • No way to jump from the video info dialog to albums by the same artist.
There is also the issue of not being able to add individual performers to music videos in the same way that you can add actors to movies.  Even if you add your concerts etc using movie style .nfo files instead of musicvideo ones, the individual performers (added as actors) are not displayed in the Video Info Dialog.

I have been looking at this recently because I think Kodi could do a better job with concerts whilst retaining the current behaviour with individual music videos that form part of an album.

My current WIP adds to the current behaviour as follows :-
  • Performers can be added (as actors) via a movie.nfo file.
  • All performers involved in a music video/concert are listed in the info dialog and are searchable in the same way that actors are in movies.
  • Videos/concerts not linked to an album are listed under a 'Non-album related' directory.
  • Artist bio is fetched from the music library where available and displayed when navigating artists
  • The artist list can be extended (via a setting) to list all the performers. Similar behaviour to album and song artists in the music library
To ensure backwards compatibility, none of the original behaviour is changed.  This means that any videos linked to an album/artist will be displayed as before but there will be a new 'Non-album related' entry that lists all the videos/concerts that aren't linked to an album. 

Original video info dialog

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New version

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Original artist list showing one appearance by Kate Bush but clicking on her shows no video at all.

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New version showing artist bio from music library and new link to video

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I'm not entirely convinced that 'Non-album related' is indeed the best description to put there. Personally, I'd prefer 'Concerts' as in my case, that is exactly what they will be. Perhaps I should make that user definable ?

EDIT

The 'non-album related' is now a user-definable string which by default is set to 'other videos'. However, in cases like the above where there are no videos linked to albums, it won't be shown (the middle screenshot above will be skipped) and Kodi will go directly to the video(s) (as shown in the third screenshot above).

/EDIT

Anyway, just thought I would share what I have done so far and see what other peoples thoughts are. Maybe @HomerJau, @docwra, @scott967, @LongMan, @HeresJohnny might have some thoughts on the subject ?
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#2
First I would like to thank you for spending some time to improve music videos. I use it extensively and I really appreciate your efforts here and what you have done on music so far.
I am on vacation right now so I don't have access to my library to test everything, but I will make a few comments.

As stated elsewhere in this forum i don't just use this section for music videos. I collect videos of live performences, some of which are Concerts, while others may be individual songs or a mini-concert. I accept that it is not meant to be used this way, but most of the music videos that I collect are not from artists who release albums. They are mostly for singles so the traditional album tag would not work.
Quote:Performers can be added (as actors) via a movie.nfo file
Should movie.nfo be musicvideo.nfo? or are talking about adding a separate nfo for extra performers?
EDIT: I missed that you mentioned using movie style nfo for concerts. Can you explain why not just use musicvideo nfos?

At present we can use multi <artist> tags to include collaborators in music videos.
However, I do welcome the addition on the actor tag for music videos. I am not able to test right now but I think if an <actor> tag is included in a musicvideo.nfo file, the info is scanned into the database but there is no way to access it. In my case I will use it to list some dancers in some music videos that I collect who are sometimes are as famous or even more famous that the artist (musicisn) in the video. If posibble could you include the role so that it could be specified.
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#3
Quote:I'm not entirely convinced that 'Non-album related' is indeed the best description to put there. Personally, I'd prefer 'Concerts' as in my case, that is exactly what they will be. Perhaps I should make that user definable ?
Making it user definable is a very good idea.

With regards to the Video info dialog. I think adding a artist information button similar to music info dialog would be quite useful. There have been many times when I wished that I could navigate from a music video back to the artist page in order to queue more videos from that artist.
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#4
(2020-08-22, 11:00)LongMan Wrote: Should movie.nfo be musicvideo.nfo? or are talking about adding a separate nfo for extra performers?
EDIT: I missed that you mentioned using movie style nfo for concerts. Can you explain why not just use musicvideo nfos?

Yes.  musicvideo nfos only contain a limited subset of what can actually be scanned into the library via a movie nfo.  Even if you include more information and tags in the musicvideo type, they just get ignored.  Also, using movie style nfos allows you to specify a role (or multiple roles) for performers.  If you look at the Pink Floyd example, you can see that the band are shown as the artist but each individual performer is also listed, along with their role underneath the name.  David Gilmour is listed as 'Lead guitar / Vocals', Nick Mason as 'Drums' etc etc.  Clare Torry is also in the list as a backing singer. 
(2020-08-22, 11:00)LongMan Wrote: If posibble could you include the role so that it could be specified.

See above, that's already possible using movie style nfos.  I'll look at exactly what can be done with the musicvideo type of nfo, but TBH I haven't used those for years.  Not since I found that the movie type gave a slightly better experience although it's been so long I can't exactly remember what it improved Laugh
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#5
Just learned something new. I was not aware that I could use a movie nfo for music videos.
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#6
As an example, this is the nfo file for the Knebworth concert in the screenshots https://paste.kodi.tv/ezufuteqeh
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#7
(2020-08-22, 12:47)black_eagle Wrote: As an example, this is the nfo file for the Knebworth concert in the screenshots https://paste.kodi.tv/ezufuteqeh

Is this showing up as a music video or as a movie? I noticed that there are no <artist/> tag in the nfo.
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#8
(2020-08-22, 15:17)LongMan Wrote: Is this showing up as a music video or as a movie? I noticed that there are no <artist/> tag in the nfo.

Yes there is Smile  Line 9 has the artist tag.  In any case, the important thing to do is to set the content on the root directory to 'Music Videos'.
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#9
Thanks. I will give it a go when I get home.
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#10
This looks interesting black_eagle. Thanks for posting!
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#11
Thanks for asking my input, I feel flattered. Since I am more of a hands-on guy, I will give an opinion once I can take it out for a drive with an upcoming nightly.
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#12
(2020-08-23, 19:59)HeresJohnny Wrote: Thanks for asking my input, I feel flattered. Since I am more of a hands-on guy, I will give an opinion once I can take it out for a drive with an upcoming nightly.

Test builds available for Win 32 and win 64 @HomerJau , @LongMan 

As well as the stuff I mentioned previously, this adds the ability to open the Artist Info dialog from the context menu of a music video artist (if artist is in your music db).  It also fixes the 'same director' button in the video info dialog that has never worked for music videos, assuming that info is available.

Anyway, see if you think it's any better or worse Undecided   Don't forget to use movie style nfo files for the best experience Wink
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#13
I was able to give it a spin today. I had to make some movie style nfos. I agree that the user experience is better. I like it, it is something that I actually asked for. (ie adding actors to music videos)

The same director button works.

The role is set for any people listed as artist. I guess that's deliberate. It would be nice to be able to put Duo, Band, Quartet or Orchestra where appropriate. What do you think?
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#14
(2020-08-29, 05:02)LongMan Wrote: The role is set for any people listed as artist. I guess that's deliberate. It would be nice to be able to put Duo, Band, Quartet or Orchestra where appropriate. What do you think?

I agree that that might be nice.  On the other hand, the major artist is indeed the 'artist'.  I'm not sure if it's possible to do without breaking anything else but I'll take a look.  Glad you think the user experience is better so far Smile
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#15
@LongMan and anyone else that might be interested.  I have updated the code somewhat and there is a Windows 64bit test build here -> https://mirrors.kodi.tv/test-builds/wind...eo-x64.exe

Testing, comments etc would be appreciated.  Thanks!!
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