[pigeldi]

One question to this old thread: If you export, change and then import your library, I guess all watched statuses of the movies are gone? Or is it really just updating the movies? If so, people should not have had double entries in their library.
If all watched statuses will be gone, it would probably be faster in the end to edit the database directly.
For the future I will also go with symbolic links I guess, sound like a good idea to point all drives to one single folder and then beeing free to move stuff around on the disks.

I think so, yes. I avoid this by using the trakt addon, which automatically updates what you watched in your XBMC library.

And does it also sync back if you reimport and everything is unwatched? How does it know that it should then not update that statut to trakt, but load the status from trakt to XBMC?

There also seems to be an add-on (http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-addon-serv...dListHowTo), but from the description I have the same question, how to sync the status back to a movie?

And another add-on: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=129448

[hhman]

Just an addition to the ntfs symlink option.
Over the years I relocated some of my sources multiple times, always worked perfectly with every video source.

With my Music source in the other hand xbmc both times insisted on rescanning the whole folder, downloading the whole info again and marking everything as new (a real pain, took hours).
I really paid attention to maintaining the same file modification time while moving the real folder and pointing the symlink to the correct destination. It worked several times for video sources. I don't really know if I managed to botch both "music" movements or if there is some difference between the handling of video sources and music sources. Unfortunately I didn't save logfiles either.

[pigeldi]

Just an addition to the ntfs symlink option.
Over the years I relocated some of my sources multiple times, always worked perfectly with every video source.

With my Music source in the other hand xbmc both times insisted on rescanning the whole folder, downloading the whole info again and marking everything as new (a real pain, took hours).
I really paid attention to maintaining the same file modification time while moving the real folder and pointing the symlink to the correct destination. It worked several times for video sources. I don't really know if I managed to botch both "music" movements or if there is some difference between the handling of video sources and music sources. Unfortunately I didn't save logfiles either.

One question to the symbolic links:
If I create them, I can use them on the same computer, but if I want to follow this symbolic link through the network from another computer, I get the message
"The symbolic link cannot be followed because its type is disabled"

I think I will then rather create different shares (I would not have created one symlink per tv show but one per movies folder, so that would just be 3 in my case).

[hhman]

One question to the symbolic links:
If I create them, I can use them on the same computer, but if I want to follow this symbolic link through the network from another computer, I get the message
"The symbolic link cannot be followed because its type is disabled"

I never tried symbolic links over network. Unix symlinks and nfs can work if the paths are the same, on windows I think symlinks are a pure ntfs option.
But the whole point is to decouple the local xbmc installation from the network location.
So I have a local folder in a location you can maintain always constant independently from the installation - say C:\XBMC (or in my case a special really small partition M: holding the symlinks only). Avoid your user home because it will change with installations - with XP it was (usually) c:\Documents and Settings\username, these days it is C:\Users\username, who knows tomorrow. Also maybe you won't be able to keep the username constant through reinstalls.
In there you'll have your symlinks - say Telefilms --> \\nasname\sharename\foldername.
In xbmc the source will be C:\XBMC\Telefilms.
So if you need to change the foldername or the name of the share or the nas you just delete the symlink and recreate it, say C:\XMBC\Telefilms --> \\newnas\multimedia\Telefilms
XBMC in this way becomes completely independent of the network location.
If you create a single share for source (\\nasname\Telefilms) and use that as xbmc source that is already good however xbmc will still depend on the name of the NAS/Network server.
I understand these days we can use the folder substitution in XBMC in order to achieve the same result, but didn't personally use it yet - since setting up all my sources with ntfs symlinks I didn't have to.

[pigeldi]

I understand, that makes sense. My <nasname> should not change that often, it now did for the first time, but then this would indeed help. Having now a direct share without a drive letter in the path is at least already much more future-proof than what I had before.
Thanks for the explanation.

[TemplarLord]

And does it also sync back if you reimport and everything is unwatched?

Yes it does. By default when you install the addon and provide the username and password for the trakt account it will sync all movies and TV shows you added to your current XBMC library.

How does it know that it should then not update that statut to trakt, but load the status from trakt to XBMC?

By default the selected action in Trakt is Sync, that's what I always use. There are also options to delete the current Trakt library and start anew etc. You can also rate each episode and movie and select what you want to sync between XBMC and Trakt.

It's a really flexible addon and works very well. If you decide to use it, don't abort the first sync, even if it looks like it's doing nothing. Let it run its course the first time, later it updates by itself in the background.

[gmc99]

You can also used the "WatchedList" add-on.

I have only used it for TV shows but have used it may times to store the watched status of episodes.

I have reinstalled XBMC several times and always got back the watched status of episodes.

I have even taken the WatchedList to a totally different PC and used it to update the data there for episodes I have watched on the original PC.

It does not base what you have watched on the path of the episode but in the case of TV shows, the TVDBid (I believe), season and episode number.

I believe it works in a similar way with movies but I haven't tried it.

[nirran]

I'm soon going to get a bigger hard drive to use instead of 2 external and 2 small internal hard drives and going to move all my media to that one instead.

Just one question, in the XML file, do i have to change path for every single movie/show or just change the path/paths at the bottom of the xml file?
If none of the above, where can i find the paths I have to change?

[edrikk]

Just an addition to the ntfs symlink option.
Over the years I relocated some of my sources multiple times, always worked perfectly with every video source.

With my Music source in the other hand xbmc both times insisted on rescanning the whole folder, downloading the whole info again and marking everything as new (a real pain, took hours).
I really paid attention to maintaining the same file modification time while moving the real folder and pointing the symlink to the correct destination. It worked several times for video sources. I don't really know if I managed to botch both "music" movements or if there is some difference between the handling of video sources and music sources. Unfortunately I didn't save logfiles either.

One question to the symbolic links:
If I create them, I can use them on the same computer, but if I want to follow this symbolic link through the network from another computer, I get the message
"The symbolic link cannot be followed because its type is disabled"

I think I will then rather create different shares (I would not have created one symlink per tv show but one per movies folder, so that would just be 3 in my case).

That's exactly what I have setup... Windows 8.1 symlinks pointing to an ext4 NAS directory (for a subset of my media). You need to enable this in Windows for it to work against a remote machine:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libra...85435.aspx

fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation L2L:1 L2R:1 R2R:1 R2L:1

Local to local symbolic links, L2L:{0|1}
Local to remote symbolic links, L2R:{0|1}
Remote to local symbolic links, R2R:{0|1}
Remote to remote symbolic links, R2L:{0|1}

[hhman]

That's exactly what I have setup... Windows 8.1 symlinks pointing to an ext4 NAS directory (for a subset of my media). You need to enable this in Windows for it to work against a remote machine:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libra...85435.aspx

fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation L2L:1 L2R:1 R2R:1 R2L:1

Local to local symbolic links, L2L:{0|1}
Local to remote symbolic links, L2R:{0|1}
Remote to local symbolic links, R2R:{0|1}
Remote to remote symbolic links, R2L:{0|1}

Interesting. Didn't have to do this on a W7-32 machine in order to point to a (windows) share from a Qnap NAS (underlying is some *nix filesystem, I don't remember which variant).
Anybody else wants to comment where he needed this or not ?

[AndySZA]

Why doesn't the internal XBMC "File Manager" alter the path in the database when you use it to move media around?
One would have thought this would be an integral feature. Then you would have no need for exporting and re-importing databases or symlinks.

[hhman]

I think that's been on the (user) wishlist for a long time. There was an experimental plugin, also, local db only (no mysql).
I suppose either there are some deeper involved problems (maybe the icon cache structure) or no dev really cares enough about this :-(

[mYnDstrEAm]

I know this is an old thread just wanted to add a short note here: it's probably best to use symbolic links for your media sources - then you only need to change the location it points to (right click -> properties) after moving your folders. No need for any export/imports and doing a search&replace of the videodb.xml file.

This also applies to other OS like GNU/Linux, not just Windows. On KDE you can create symbolic link (shortcuts) by just holding ctrl+shift and dragging a folder.

Maybe Kodi could automatically create and use (or at least prompt the user to do so) a symbolic link for the media source path when configuring a media source so that it can be easily changed(?)

[PatK]

this is an old thread

8 years at least. symbolic links are useful for thumbnails where it's smarter to save limited memory, but it'll slow a lot of the processes Kodi uses. Moving files/folders sources is not a big effort if you have exported to separate files, the re-importation of the meta-data is locally pretty quick.

[mYnDstrEAm]

8 years at least.

It's what was shown somewhere at the top of the search results when I searched for it (and didn't find any other thread). It may be useful to others also searching for it. Is there a wiki page about migrating folders?

symbolic links are useful for thumbnails where it's smarter to save limited memory, but it'll slow a lot of the processes Kodi uses. Moving files/folders sources is not a big effort if you have exported to separate files, the re-importation of the meta-data is locally pretty quick.

Really? Which processes are slowed down, by how much and why? I don't see why having symbolic links for media sources would slow things down. 
Also I thought one would export to a single file, edit the xml file, then import the library and then clean up the library (after disconnecting the former media) (and I'm pretty sure it's not unlikely one would have some trouble with this approach...whether it's having duplicate entries or having to "add to library" again for some items etc).