[HomerJau]

The Problem:
Many of the Music lovers here have struggled at times to get our Concerts into Kodi for playback.

The Kodi Music Video library has only minor updates over the years as its caught between 'Music' and 'Videos' with music video data stored in the Kodi's video database, but the artist metadata in the music db.

Up until now users have needed to create NFO files for music videos and concert videos to get them into the Music Video library. Some have just settled to get them into the Kodi Movie library or play them as 'files'.

The two main problems most have are due to all concerts being sourced as Blu-ray or DVDV conversions (and some TV captures) where the concert is in one single file (Of course a Concert is one long continuous musical event). You get to play the entire concert but its difficult to play a specific song or create play lists containing specific concert 'songs' (example: A David Gilmour playlist with songs from various Pink Floyd and his own solo concerts).

One way around this is to split a single concert video (mkv file) into chapters, with this a user can jump to any song and create playlists. But Kodi has always had a small glitch (pause) when users play all the concert song files in sequence, as Kodi opens the next video file. This is especially the case when playing HD video high bit rate TrueHD/Atmos or DTS-HDMA streams or users with slower networks or processors. Splitting takes extra time too.

I've always split my concerts and just 'lived' with the glitch, but I know some that can't stand the glitch so use a single file and live with not being able to easily play any song at any time.

GOOD NEWS - THESE PROBLEMS ARE NOW SOLVED!
I stumbled across a relatively easy way to get Concerts from my BDV and DVD rips into Kodi's Music library.

If I take a single big Concert file and create a CUE file at the Chapter breaks, add the Video File and CUE to a new folder under a Music Source and scan with Kod Music, the Concert appears as an Album' under the audio library Artist and shows each chapter as a song. I can choose to play any track just like playing an audio album. Kodi switches to full screen video playback automatically, just like I am playing a Movie. If I have 'Auto Play next' enabled, there is no glitch between songs/chapters. My iphone/iPad remote apps can play all of my concerts as a complete album OR I can pick and choose which songs to play, queue my favorites etc.

I've done this with a fresh Kodi 19.1 install with no Kodi customization. It just works!

EDIT: You must add .mkv and .mp4 file types (and any other video file types) to the audio files supported by Kodi:

<musicextensions>
  <add>.mkv|.mp4</add>
</musicextensions>

Add this to your advancedsettings.xml in your userdata folder.
-- End Edit


Here's screen shots (Aeon Nox Silvo skin) showing a Convert along with Albums:


Clicking on the Concert shows the concerts songs (chapters). You can play any song:



For anyone wondering how they can create a CUE from an MKV with chapters:
There's a tool in Music Media Helper that edits MKV chapters tool and can rename the chapters based on a MusicBrainz lookup. This tool can also create a CUE file from that chapter data (including the MusicBrainz track names) with a click. So its pretty much automated. This tool can also change the default audio stream. (Media Helper is free but Windows only).



Music Media Helper also has a tool to create M3U saved playlists (supported by Kodi) that can contain a mixture of audio and video files and I'm just adding support to add a songs embedded in a single concert MKV with multiple chapters. Beta testing tomorrow.

With this CUE discovery I can now do everything I want with my Concert Videos in the Kodi Music library! (Whoa!).

I'm hoping our resident music Devs can take a look at this as now Music Videos can reside within music database and maybe there's now more that can be done to integrate concerts into the Music world (an easy way to identify 'audio only' and 'music video'?). I've had a play with 'Folder Nodes' but I'm only learning, I'm sure @DaveBlake  and @black_eagle could do wonders to truly integrate Music Video into Music!

Happy Days concert & Music Video lovers!!

I'm looking forward to the discussion...

(to be honest I was torn between absolute elation and total frustration - if only I'd known this earlier

THX
Garry

Example CUE for a Convert MKV file:

REM GENRE "Rock"
REM GENRE "Concert"
REM DATE 2008
REM COMMENT ""
PERFORMER "The Police"
TITLE "Certifiable Live"
FILE "The Police- Certifiable.mkv" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Introduction"
    PERFORMER "The Police"
    INDEX 01  00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Message in a Bottle"
    PERFORMER "The Police"
    INDEX 01  00:42:43
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Synchronicity II"
    PERFORMER "The Police"
    INDEX 01  05:28:40
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
etc...

[DaveBlake]

Oh Gary, not a new use for cuesheets when I wish users would stop using them all togther. Of course no reason for me to get my wish, just me seeking a more simple life one day (rather than embrace the design consequences of many songs per file). But hats-off to you for creativity and innovative use of Kodi, I am all for that. 

The idea has been mooted many times to have just one media database with all music and video together. This is usually approached from the video end of things, and having done much to improve the music library side of things while the video db has languished (I view the video db as an ugly older sister that frequently bloats etc., meanwhile Cinderella has come to the ball) I'm hesitant at what monster  a combination database could be if not designed with care. The support headache could also be interesting.

I know a media database isn't what you suggested, you just want to include concerts (and other music with moving pictures) into the music library, but I still caution that it be designed with care. Yes I am guarding over my precious music database like a mother bear - no one poke the bear! Music videos got bloted into video library with some attempt at a music link, and Black_eagle has tweaked in some improvements, but it is far from ideal implementation. I would not support a similar "bolting on" for concerts and music libaray.

So growling over....
Tell me about concerts (like I am a Martian, because it is not a media I have ever looked at).
- What data do we have for a concert?
- How does that data relate to other things we have in the music db (or video db)?
- Could the file have embeded metadata? (that would be so nice).
- Are there remote sources that can be scraped for concert data?

I'm probably not the dev to do this work, just the one that will heckle from the sidelines, but I can help gather the requirements and ideas for a good implemenetation.

Just to add this functionality has consequnces way beyond databases, it gets into the whole having separate music queue/player, video queue/player debate. We can already land there via mixed .m3u playlists, which works by accident (and a bit of fixing from me) but not design and so is vulnerable to regression. The old separation between video library navigation UI and music library navigation UI starts to trip over itself. The "Click on an item" behaviour, what happens before and after playback, is different as is the implementation. We really may need to start a new game of Jenga at this point, not just plop a plank on top and keep running.

[MikeKL]

At a personal level I would ideally like ability to work with my original Music Video and Music Concert DVD's, where all individual tracks can ripped and separated into .mkvs in latest x264 and/or x265 compression formats (maintaining only best quaility Audio) with master tagging held within each file.

HomerJau's MMH Windows only App fully supports this logic, performing a well-coordinated and managed split of ripped Artist Music Video and Concert DVD's into individual tagged .mkvs (As well as creating .nfo’s for each file, to support existing Kodi local support for Music Videos)

If Kodi could support reading tags users include in Music Video .mkv’s, similar to support for personal mp3 & flac files + look in overall folder for DVD Album Art i.e. folder.jpg; would this not better mimic read and standard presentation approach direction (already happening) with Music, Movies and TV shows?
i.e. users stick correctly name formatted files into named folder structure, select media type, run library update, see added Music Audio/Music Videos, TV Shows and Movies, searching kodi GUI in standard expected manner for these media types?

As Homerjau mentioned “fly in the ointment” with splitting files is the current inability to seamlessly playback files when deliberately in Music Video “Album/Concert” playback view. (Intelligent Seamless Playback)
Maybe ability to introduce seamless playback of Music Videos (certain formats) when in album view could be a possibility and included in future Kodi releases?

Note: mp3tag supports adding/editing of .mkvs (been using mp3tag to doublecheck standard tags being included into my seperated .mkv files perfectly by MMH)

[scott967]

Some tag-reading capability has been added to the video library scanner.  At the time I only cared about mp4 format and tags so I think I got the relevant tags read for the video library (holds less data than music library).  I don't use mkv fro music video so never looked into video scanner  handing of tags in mkv.

You can (I think) add mkv as a music filetype and have the music scanner read the files.  I've tried that for mp4 and as I remember it worked but I didn't like playback so went back to default.  Never attempted with mkv.

scott s.
.

[HomerJau]

A while back @DaveBlake and I discussed reading tags from MKA (Matroska audio use same tags as MKV) and at that time I believe Dave said Kodi music used TagLib for all its tag reading. TagLib did not support track tags in Matroska files then, I have checked regularly and support was not added the last time I checked. Ffmpeg does support Matroska tagging.

MP3tag (and Music Media Helper) both support Matroska tags and use same tags, but there’s no official standard I’ve found for Music tracks tagging. It’s just that I chose to use MP3Tag’s tag names for compatibility. Some of those tag names are not ‘music like’ so not intuitive if read by users.

Ideally, as Dave wrote in his response above, Kodi Music would read tags in all video files if video is to be supported officially in the music library. There would be no need to use this CUE file workaround to get video files and tags into Kodi music.

[Daydream]

I'm with @DaveBlake on this one.

Why users persist in treating concerts as anything else but movies (and scrape the metadata accordingly) I will never understand. There can be chapters if so desired just like with any movie. But to slice and dice a concert and associate tracks with albums, and attempt to associate inside tracks with the music dbase and some other abracadabra.. I fail to see the logic.

Plus a concert is more often then not the expression of a tour, the artists perform songs from a number of their albums, plus covers, plus impromptu takes on I don't know what other sources. There are intermezzos, pieces that can't be linked anywhere. What is one gonna do with ABBA - The Movie? Create subchapters where the music is? Is one gonna listen/stream the music from a bluray or buy the live album (if it exists)?

It just goes to show how weird things get when one tries to force them in a dbase where they don't belong.

[HomerJau]

I disagree @Daydream 

Concerts and Music videos are music not movies. Metadata about Artists is in the music database this should be shared with music videos. This media should be associated with music Artists.

Your example of Abba The Movie is not a good argument. This is a Movie it should not be in the music database. However, if a user wanted to create a cue with all the cue tracks pointing to just the songs, why would anyone want to stop this? If you are a fan of that artist that maybe exactly what you’d want to do.

As a music lovers, accessing music videos from the Kodi music interface is what many would want. I know I do.

[MikeKL]

@HomerJau have to thank you for personally looking into ALL available options that would enable users within Kodi to manage older Music Videos and Music Concert DVD content, as either single large chaptered files and/or individual files per Song/Track.
(Not just looking into options but providing a Windows app to support the direct creation of data to support varied option proposals )

Its clear in my mind that Kodi Music Library be the natural overall location for management of purer Music Video and Music Concert aka DVD/BlueRay content that we store on our home networks for personal use.
We need to have a common cleaner sustainable way to manage these types of ripped files under Movies or Music in Kodi as approriate for overall contents.

Current situation of Folder, File naming, Artist/Album Art control within folders and/or via URL links using tags, nfos, cues is for anyone attempting to manage this content under Music Video Library within Kodi, a frustrating learning journey.

In coming days I will have a play around with your CUE proposal under Music as for sure current methods in Kodi Matrix using standard Estuary Skin (with no advanced user interface tweaking) via Music Video and/or Movies Library is an unsatisfactory overall experience.

[DaveBlake]

In case I came over as too much a grumpty bear in the previous post,  I am certainly open to additional musical media such as videos of concerts or other videos that have music as an essential component being included into the music library (ballet and opera anyone?). My caviat is that it is done cleanly and well designed not just tacked on both as data and as UI access to browsing the library. Oh and added to the API too so that in turn remote apps and web UI can access it.

It isn't something I am going to use personally, but I will happily advise on implementation and help out if we can get a group of power users to map out what the user requirements and media info available to support it are.

Odd thoughts...
I guess the streaming services finally put an end to the concept of indexing video. I remember movies on DVD that offered scene level access to movies, but I don't think that Kodi has ever had anything like that just resume and skip by time. Splitting concert videos into tracks sounds much like that to me.

I guess you also want those songs to pop up in a search e.g. I know I have the track in my collection, ah on that music video or concert etc.. But for those video tracks do we have anything other than artist(s) and track title? No track number, album, original release date or disc subtitle, although maybe genre, mood, BPM, and ratings make sense, and perhaps a Musicbrainz ID of some kind. So not sure I would add to the songs table, more a "music video scene" table, or is that a "scene" table in the video database? Althought it could be something while logically separate ends up combined when normalised for efficiency. Wherever it is users want to navigate to it (browse, filter etc.) via music library UI and , right?

[MikeKL]

GOOD NEWS - THESE PROBLEMS ARE NOW SOLVED!
I stumbled across a relatively easy way to get Concerts from my BDV and DVD rips into Kodi's Music library.

If I take a single big Concert file and create a CUE file at the Chapter breaks, add the Video File and CUE to a new folder under a Music Source and scan with Kod Music, the Concert appears as an Album' under the audio library Artist and shows each chapter as a song. I can choose to play any track just like playing an audio album. Kodi switches to full screen video playback automatically, just like I am playing a Movie. If I have 'Auto Play next' enabled, there is no glitch between songs/chapters. My iphone/iPad remote apps can play all of my concerts as a complete album OR I can pick and choose which songs to play, queue my favorites etc.

I've done this with a fresh Kodi 19.1 install with no Kodi customization. It just works!

Just tried method with single MusicVideoAlbum.mkv, using MMH to rename chapters as per track names in existing .mkv and then creating corresponding cue file. 
I ensured that .mkv and .cue filenames were identical then loaded them into Music folder/library ONLY within clean installation of Kodi 19.1 running on Win PC.
Nothing appeared to be added within Music Library (empty) I can enter folder containing files but it contains "according to Kodi" nothing. (Kodi doesnt see .mkv file?)
I added completed standard music CD rip of same artist into same folder area and this is being read correctly into Music Library as expected.

---edit1--- Noticed an issue in filenaming and alignment within cue file will test more as maybe a user error somewhere (Found and corrected a typo in cue file)
---edit2--- Tried again with fresh clean userdata folder, re-start and re-add of music folder into libarary on same PC Kodi is running where think that in my case Kodi is having issues reading unexpected files type with assigned Music folder
(Loads audio .flac files but not video .mkv and .cue)

code:
XFILE::CFileFactory::CreateLoader - unsupported protocol(sources) in sources://music.tbn

[HomerJau]

@MikeKL It seems to me the ‘rules’ for this to work is:

Kodi version: 19.1 (I tested on Win10)
You need to create a folder for your ‘concert’ (album) under a Kodi Music Source (root) folder.
Only a single cue and MKV in the ‘concert’ (album) folder (not tested but this is how I’ve done it)
Do a music library Scan 

I’m not sure about naming as I’m pretty sure I’ve had cue and MKV file names that don’t match, but I’ll test that shortly.

EDIT: It doesn't matter what the cue and mkv names are, they don't need to match, or match the folder name.

You must add your video file types .mkv and .mp4 to the audio files supported by Kodi:

<musicextensions>
  <add>.mkv|.mp4</add>
</musicextensions>

Add this to your advancedsettings.xml in your userdata folder

[HomerJau]

I just removed the test concert source from Kodi Music and cleaned. All removed as expected.

Checked my 5 test concerts, a couple with cue and mkv names that didn't match. A couple with folder names that didn't match the cue or mkv names.

Added the test concert source again to Kodi Music, scanned. All 5 were added to the music library as 'albums' with their individual songs listed.

Kodi 19.1 Compiled: 2021-5-8 (Windows 10 x64)

[HomerJau]

In case I came over as too much a grumpty bear in the previous post,  I am certainly open to additional musical media such as videos of concerts or other videos that have music as an essential component being included into the music library (ballet and opera anyone?). My caviat is that it is done cleanly and well designed not just tacked on both as data and as UI access to browsing the library. Oh and added to the API too so that in turn remote apps and web UI can access it.

No problem Dave. I didn't read you a grumpy at all. Apologies for not responding directly to you. (I was busy with a MMH release).

I agree with what you are saying. Anything that's done needs to clearly thought out and designed for long term use and ease of support. Not a hack.

Read on as a lot of what is needed is already in Kodi.
 

Odd thoughts...
I guess the streaming services finally put an end to the concept of indexing video. I remember movies on DVD that offered scene level access to movies, but I don't think that Kodi has ever had anything like that just resume and skip by time. Splitting concert videos into tracks sounds much like that to me.

The support for this is already built into Kodi! (I was pleasantly surprised). Here is the Song table after scanning a CUE:

NOTE: the iStartOffset and iEndOffset. No doubt this was added with CUE files for audio (the audio player) BUT this also works for Kodi's video player!



 

I guess you also want those songs to pop up in a search e.g. I know I have the track in my collection, ah on that music video or concert etc.. But for those video tracks do we have anything other than artist(s) and track title? No track number, album, original release date or disc subtitle, although maybe genre, mood, BPM, and ratings make sense, and perhaps a Musicbrainz ID of some kind. So not sure I would add to the songs table, more a "music video scene" table, or is that a "scene" table in the video database? Althought it could be something while logically separate ends up combined when normalised for efficiency. Wherever it is users want to navigate to it (browse, filter etc.) via music library UI and , right?

I'm pretty sure this is mostly in place already. Kodi thinks the concert IS music! Its not a music video now (the tracks are in the audio db).

Here's the Album table after a CUE import. Kodi just scans and looks up the titles using the universal scraper. There was no album.nfo in the folder prior to scan. All the info here came from a Music Scan:

See last 5 entries for CUE scans:


The last 5 entries are from CUEs with concert MKVs. MusicBrainzIDs and other info was added by the music scan (universal music scraper). 

In my workflow I get the concert track titles using MusicBrainz. I guess I could create an 'album.nfo' with MusicBrainzIDs for the Artist and 'Album' since I know these.

In the two cases above (Kick 30 and Live at Knebworth) these 'album' titles were not found by the universal music scraper, hence no MusicBrainzIds. The Titles need to be changed to fix that (add MusicBrainzIDs to the CUE? Hack...)

Generally, most concert releases are in the MusicBranz database. So effectively what Kodi does now for music will apply directly to concerts. Its just that concert happen to have video streams.

Here's what Kodi shows if I hit 'Information' about a concert 'album' in Aeon Nox Silvo. None of this metatdata was added by me, this is all from Kodi’s lovely music library scanning:




Whats needed:
Dave, I think there's not too much needed to do in Kodi:

1. Allow to identify in the Kodi UI which 'albums' are concerts (music with video)
2. Make a standard Menu Node that only shows 'albums' that are concerts

(There may be some additional properties in the music db needed for video in the longer term: Resolution, Video Codec, aspect ratio etc be very limited number, just the things users like to see)

The BIG ASK:
Why do we need a CUE to get concerts in Kodi music (in the longer term)?

Why not get the Kodi music scan to read the MKV chapters directly? And if a user adds the 'artist', 'album' and other tags to 'concert' files (music videos), scan those into the db. The process and code already exists in the audio scanner, it's just adding support to read a multi song media files directly (instead of reading the multi song cue files like it does now).


A MUSIC RE-THINK:
I'm asking for a rethink on Kodi's separation of 'music' and 'music video'.

Moving forward 'music' and 'music videos' should be treated as singular. 'NEW MUSIC' with same model - database, UI, scanning etc). The only difference: The Kodi player called at play -  Audio or Video. 

Playback IS the only difference, don't get caught thinking otherwise. Music is Music, some music has 'audio only', some has 'video and audio'. Simple.

The same db model in 'NEW MUSIC' would simplify code and database maintenance. And as you can see and envision from the screen shots, it not a big development effort. Most of this is already in place in now Kodi.

It seems we're still trying to keep video and audio separated for music. A Re-Think please.

What to do with the current Music Video library?
Maybe consider allowing New Music scrapping to deal with NFO files just like the current music video scraper, but instead create records in the music database. In that way a user would just add their Music Video Sources as a Music Source and scan. (The music video library would no longer be needed).


Thoughts?

THX
Garry

[HomerJau]

@MikeKL What is the Kodi build date on your Win test system please?

[HomerJau]

I can also confirm that a CUE file pointing to multiple MKV concert files (from a concert MKV split into chapters per song) also imports successfully into Kodi 19.1 music library without NFO files needed for the music video library.