[AZmedia]

Hi All,

This is long overdue, moving to KODI.

With my current structure and file names, I can't figure out what KODI will recognize and what i need to change. Below is my structure, which was common a decade ago. Movie data is all from TheMovieDB and TV show data is from TheTVDB. I've been using the application Media Center Master to grab and create this data and structure.

Movies Folders - Each movie has its own folder
Trailers (folder contains trailer.mp4)
backdrop.jpg (backdrops that are numbered)
basic_movie_info.nfo  (It only contains an IMDB URL for the movie, nothing else)
folder.jpg (Poster image)
movie.xml (Has all the movie details, actor names, video specs, so on)


TV Shows - One Folder for Each Show
series.xml (contains show details, air time, actors, overview, so on)

Season Folder
folder.jpg (Poster for that season)

Metadata Folder for Each Season
S01E01 - Episode Name.xml (contains episode details, overview, and video specs)

[Karellen]

@AZmedia

A few problems with your setup. The Movie and TV Show folder structures look correct with the following exceptions...
1. We don't use a "metadata" folder
2. We don't use a "trailers" folder

Your biggest problem is...
1. Artwork naming
2. NFO file naming

Also, IIRC Media Center Master is not 100% compatible with Kodi. If you upload a movie, tvshow and episode nfo file seperately to Kodi Paste Site and provide the three links, I'll be able to confirm.

I highly recommend you refer to the guide here... https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Create_Video_Library then come back if you get stuck.

Also... https://kodi.wiki/view/Trailers and https://kodi.wiki/view/Artwork and some common pages... https://kodi.wiki/view/Video_management

[AZmedia]

Thank you Karellen for the links. The amount of info is overwhelming. I needed that guidance.

A couple things. 1) I don't want KODI to scrape, want it to use what is already in the folders. 2) I need to learn more how KODI handles trailers. The thousands I have are hand picked 1080p, many cropped to remove ads and promos.

I will ping the MCM forum and see who is using KODI for additional insight.

[Karellen]

1) I don't want KODI to scrape, want it to use what is already in the folders.

Kodi always searches for local info first. Scrapers are a fallback.
As long as your setup is correct, with correct naming, then Kodi will find and use the local info.

2) I need to learn more how KODI handles trailers.

Kodi handles one trailer per movie. In your above example, you would name your trailer 12 Angry Men (1957)-trailer.mkv
If you have more trailers, then best to treat them as Extras (wiki)

[Dumyat]

Just as a suggestion, before committing your entire movie and TV show libraries to Kodi, why not set-up a test environment first?

Maybe set up a new movie directory with 5-10 titles specifically to try with Kodi copied from your existing library. Then do the same for your current TV Shows, ie copy 5-10 TV shows.
Okay, you will use up some hard drive space creating duplicate movies/TV shows, but this will give you a very good indication on how to add/remove stuff to Kodi and all of it's other functionalities. Once you feel comfortable with using Kodi, you can always remove/delete these temp directories, then add your entire libraries to Kodi. 

I did the same sort of thing when I migrated from Windows Media Centre many years ago to Media Browser (Now Emby), then onto Kodi (XBMC at the time).

[AZmedia]

why not set-up a test environment first?

Hi Dumyat, that's definitely what I would do. Media Center Master can recreate/rename the files and structure to whatever I need and I would certainly test that and KODI with a small test set first.

However, there might be a simpler solution. I'm concerned about all the hours I'll spend learning KODI. We currently use PowerDVD without letting is scan folders, just use their Explorer access to view files on our Synology server. It works great for our purposes for 7+ years. The ability to easily create playlists is what we really like in PDVD.

But a few months ago I upgraded our media PC to PDVD20 and its been horrible, flickering, black screens, slow commands, etc. I also have PDVD16 on a laptop that works flawlessly. The mkv files that struggle playing in v20, play just fine on my old laptop with v16. We might roll back our media PC to use PDVD16 and try that before jumping to KODI. Cyberlink's Power DVD has grown over the years from 150MB software in v11-16 to now a whopping 450MB for v20. As they try to stay on the cutting edge, like 8K, Atmos and such, their software also demands the latest chipsets and GPUs, or you run into issue like we are having. Our media PC uses the Intel 630 GPU and I think this is the issue. I opted for a tiny box, should have got something larger with a Nvidia GPU or similar.

[Klojum]

Our media PC uses the Intel 630 GPU and I think this is the issue.

If it's only Kodi you need, you could do a testdrive of LibreELEC. It's a small Linux setup of 200-300 MB that only runs Kodi, with none of the Windows background noise, and you can run it from a bootable USB stick so your HDD/SSD in the media PC will remain untouched. Then you can see if those "horrible, flickering, black screens, slow commands, etc" are still present. And you can get familiar with Kodi in the process.

[AZmedia]

Thanks Klojum and everyone. I need a new media PC first, the KODI, that's the bottom line.

A few months ago we bought a basically new 2019 Optiplex Micro with i5 8500t and Intel UHD 630 using Win10 Pro. I thought that would work great for the living room TV but I now realize we need a PC with a discrete GPU (Nvidia, AMD). We wanted a tiny PC for that room but the Optiplex with PDVD20 struggles pushing 2160p HDR content to our older 1080p living room TV. I even used O&O SHutUp10 to disable much of Win10 allowing max resources for media. The Intel integrate GPU just doesn't cut it.


However, our 2012 Dell XPS laptop can play this same 4k HDR content fine with older PDVD16. This 10 year old laptop has that Optimus configuration, uses internal Intel HD and discrete Nvidia 540M. I looked into comparison test results and the Optiplex 630 has way greater performance than 540M. So does the Optiplex i5 compared to the laptops i7-2620M. So I thought the Optiplex Micro was more powerful and a good decision.

PDVD16 is a 162MB file. But PDVD20 is a whopping 450MB. That's a huge difference. So I installed the older PDVD16 on the Optiplex and it still struggles with the 2160P and HDR content.

Years ago someone told me to always get an i7 with a discrete GPU. It's all we would ever need for movies and TV shows. Said the i7 includes more media features than i5 or i3. When buying this Optiplex, I just didn't have $1,000 for PC.I need to buy a beefy tiny PC first, then install a test environment for KODI or LibreELEC.

Thanks everyone.

[black_eagle]

I need to buy a beefy tiny PC first, then install a test environment for KODI or LibreELEC.

I would strongly suggest that you try out LibreElec first on your Optiplex before spending any more money.  If you put it onto a reasonably fast usb stick and boot from that, you can try it out and see if the performance is better.  My guess is that it will be.

The installer will set it all up for you on your usb stick, simply click on the windows option here.