2021-02-12, 19:10
The demise of Windows 7 and Media Centre + Media browser has forced me to move on and I'm trying to use Kodi.
One of the nice things about Media Centre was that it was very relaxed about metadata and if it found a folder wtih a folder.jpg and some video (including DVD folders or ISO files) in it, it would just use the folder title and the jpg as the poster and name, and listed the playable content for you to view when you clicked into the folder.
I was hoping that Kodi could do the same - I have way too much stuff to fix all the metadata "just so", and in many cases I've dumped things into a folder because it suits me to view them together, even though they don't conform to a strict show/season/episode scheme. So, for example, if there's a one-off show by someone I like, I want to just throw it in with the episodes of their TV shows or whatever.
Through brute force, and some help from Media Center Master to wrangle the metadata, I've got my 2000 movies indexed and it looks great, but less than half of my TV shows are getting indexed and a bunch of those that are indexed, are wrong in some way with episodes not showing up. I have local metadata for most of them, but Kodi doesn't like it, and using the scraper option isn't helping much (keeps overwriting UK shows like House of Cards, with the US re-makes). And as for all the many ripped DVDs stored in VIDEO_TS folders... I've no idea what to do with those (no, not ripping them all to individual episodes, I'll be dead before I'm finished)
Some people might point out that the Files view offers me more or less what I'm after, and that's true, but firstly I can't find any way (even after googling, trying other skins and add-ons) to add an entry to the main menu that would take me straight into the TV folder (and display it using the Files view) - so you have to go Video->Files->TV Shows. Manageable but clunky. And secondly I do like to be able to see what's new, what's unwatched etc and I lose all that if I just remove the TV Shows entry from the main menu.
Don't get me wrong - Kodi is pretty fantastic and if I was starting from scrach I guesss I would be willing to do everything just right, but I'm 60, I've 25 years of accumulated content, and life's too short to wrangle it all into a form Kodi likes. So I guess I was hoping there was a switch somewhere to make the TV Show library behave like the Files view and if there's no metadata, just list what it finds and let the user figure it out.
One of the nice things about Media Centre was that it was very relaxed about metadata and if it found a folder wtih a folder.jpg and some video (including DVD folders or ISO files) in it, it would just use the folder title and the jpg as the poster and name, and listed the playable content for you to view when you clicked into the folder.
I was hoping that Kodi could do the same - I have way too much stuff to fix all the metadata "just so", and in many cases I've dumped things into a folder because it suits me to view them together, even though they don't conform to a strict show/season/episode scheme. So, for example, if there's a one-off show by someone I like, I want to just throw it in with the episodes of their TV shows or whatever.
Through brute force, and some help from Media Center Master to wrangle the metadata, I've got my 2000 movies indexed and it looks great, but less than half of my TV shows are getting indexed and a bunch of those that are indexed, are wrong in some way with episodes not showing up. I have local metadata for most of them, but Kodi doesn't like it, and using the scraper option isn't helping much (keeps overwriting UK shows like House of Cards, with the US re-makes). And as for all the many ripped DVDs stored in VIDEO_TS folders... I've no idea what to do with those (no, not ripping them all to individual episodes, I'll be dead before I'm finished)
Some people might point out that the Files view offers me more or less what I'm after, and that's true, but firstly I can't find any way (even after googling, trying other skins and add-ons) to add an entry to the main menu that would take me straight into the TV folder (and display it using the Files view) - so you have to go Video->Files->TV Shows. Manageable but clunky. And secondly I do like to be able to see what's new, what's unwatched etc and I lose all that if I just remove the TV Shows entry from the main menu.
Don't get me wrong - Kodi is pretty fantastic and if I was starting from scrach I guesss I would be willing to do everything just right, but I'm 60, I've 25 years of accumulated content, and life's too short to wrangle it all into a form Kodi likes. So I guess I was hoping there was a switch somewhere to make the TV Show library behave like the Files view and if there's no metadata, just list what it finds and let the user figure it out.
