[Sam Ash]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum and would like some input from more experienced Kodi users.

I have been looking for a cost effective way to archive all my movie collection onto a big USB 3 hard drive so that I don't have to manually look for movies and insert discs into my player. Most of my movie collection are 1080p blu ray discs but I have a few 4K UHD movies and documentaries. After doing a bit of research, I've invested in the NVIDIA Shield console and would like to use KODI because I have read that KODI is one of the best open source media management and playback systems and does a vey good job. To that effect, I have some questions:-

1. What is the best way to copy movies onto a hard drive for an exact 1:1 copy of the original ?
2. What format does KODI recognise and work with best in terms of playback without problems ?
3. Is KODI able to bitstream the original surround sound data to my AV Processor (Dolby True HD, Dolby Atmos, DTS HD Master, DTS X, Dolby Digital etc.) ?
4. I'd love to have a beautiful interface where all the cover-art of all my movies are displayed in a clean grid like format - something similar to Netflix or better still the kind of interface presented by Kaleidescape. When a movie or title is selected, a small description is presented too. Have a look at this link: https://www.kaleidescape.com
5. It would be nice to be able to categorise content, for example: Action, Adventure, Scifi, Documentary, Family, True Story etc.
6. Does KODI have a built-in high quality player ?
7. Is KODI able to deal with HDR metadata: HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision ?

I don't mind buying KODI plug-ins that are designed to achieve the above. If there is free ad-ons to achieve all this or close, that will be fantastic.

Looking forward to hear from passionate KODI users and developers.

[DarrenHill]

Thread moved to Kodi discussions section

[DaVu]

1. What is the best way to copy movies onto a hard drive for an exact 1:1 copy of the original ?

If you have ripped the media already, then use whatever your OS supports to copy data from "a" to "b"
 

2. What format does KODI recognise and work with best in terms of playback without problems ?

https://kodi.wiki/view/Features_and_supp...at_support

3. Is KODI able to bitstream the original surround sound data to my AV Processor (Dolby True HD, Dolby Atmos, DTS HD Master, DTS X, Dolby Digital etc.) ?

I can confirm that DD, DTS, DolbyTrueHD, DTS-HDMA does work with my hardware (Intel x86_64) and I expect the Shield to support the same. Not too sure about Atmos or DTS-X

4. I'd love to have a beautiful interface where all the cover-art of all my movies are displayed in a clean grid like format - something similar to Netflix or better still the kind of interface presented by Kaleidescape. When a movie or title is selected, a small description is presented too.

Take a look at our Skin-subforum and select a Skin which fits your needs. Nearly every skin will show a "plot" for movies and tv-shows as that's done by the scraper.

5. It would be nice to be able to categorise content, for example: Action, Adventure, Scifi, Documentary, Family, True Story etc

That's done automagically by scraping the movies. You are also able to filter the content depending on the genre.

6. Does KODI have a built-in high quality player ?

Be more specific what you expect from a "high quality player". If Kodis internal player doesn't fit your needs, you are able to define external players by using the playercorefactory.xml. See: https://kodi.wiki/view/External_players
 

7. Is KODI able to deal with HDR metadata: HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision ?

Never tested myself, so I can't answer that.
 

I don't mind buying KODI plug-ins that are designed to achieve the above. If there is free ad-ons to achieve all this or close, that will be fantastic.

Kodi add-ons shouldn't be paid and I can't imagine which add-on you might need. If you might need an external player which needs to be paid, then this doesn't have anything to do with Kodi.

[Martijn]

SHIELD supports all audio formats

[Sam Ash]

Thank you for your kind and useful input DaVu. I came across another thread and someone confirmed that Kodi on a shield is able to bitstream Atmos or DTS-X to a receiver with the audio "Pass Through" setting activated in KODI.

Colour mapping needs to be perfected and resolved by NVIDIA, I hope they address this issue soon.

I will definitely have a look at the Skin-subforum.

[Sam Ash]

SHIELD supports all audio formats

 Thank you for that confirmation Martijn.

KODI working on an NVIDIA Shield is nice and I am appreciating it.

I need to find a skin that will give me that refined interface offered by higher end media management systems.

[da-anda]

do you want the full BluRay experience in KODI when you speak about 1:1 rips/copies? If so, you're out of luck on a Android based device atm, since we haven't found a way yet to run an additional JavaVM there, which is required by BD-J menus. If all you care about is a 1:1 copy of the main movie itself, then you are good to go. Many people use the tool MakeMKV to rip their BluRay to discs - it will create a bitstream copy of the selected audio and video streams (you don't have to rip all audio tracks which will save some disc space) and mux them in a MKV container which is perfect for playback in any media player and ofc also KODI.

As for skins - if you like a certain skin in general but a certain view is not to your liking, you always have the possibility to modify the skin and create your own version of it. Since skins are basically just some XML using special tags, they are easy to modify with regular text editors, and our skinning community is ready to help if you have any questions on how to achieve a certain look.

[tjay260476]

Take a look here

https://kodi.tv/addons/browse?keyword=&c...=title+ASC

For skins, then if there is something that almost does what you would like, have a look on the skin forum, see if there is a mod version of it, or if you are feeling inclined, ask what you want to change within a skin, and someone might have the answer you are looking for.

As said previously, most skins are XML based, so if you need to change the info, or put the menus in a different order, then all this can be edited in a text editor like notepad++

[Sam Ash]

do you want the full BluRay experience in KODI when you speak about 1:1 rips/copies? If so, you're out of luck on a Android based device atm, since we haven't found a way yet to run an additional JavaVM there, which is required by BD-J menus. If all you care about is a 1:1 copy of the main movie itself, then you are good to go. Many people use the tool MakeMKV to rip their BluRay to discs - it will create a bitstream copy of the selected audio and video streams (you don't have to rip all audio tracks which will save some disc space) and mux them in a MKV container which is perfect for playback in any media player and ofc also KODI.

As for skins - if you like a certain skin in general but a certain view is not to your liking, you always have the possibility to modify the skin and create your own version of it. Since skins are basically just some XML using special tags, they are easy to modify with regular text editors, and our skinning community is ready to help if you have any questions on how to achieve a certain look.

Thank you da-anda - By 1:1 rips I am referring to a 1:1 copy of the main movie itself. However, it would be nice to have the cover art for the tiled wall skin interface and if possible at automatic description of the movie although the later is not that important.

I'm so glad to learn that MakeMKV is also available for Apple Mac. All I need now is a 4K blu ray USB 3 External Reader.

Thank you for the useful input on the skins, I did find one that I like but will definitely need a little help in refining it a bit because unfortunately I am not a coder.

[Sam Ash]

Take a look here

https://kodi.tv/addons/browse?keyword=&c...=title+ASC

For skins, then if there is something that almost does what you would like, have a look on the skin forum, see if there is a mod version of it, or if you are feeling inclined, ask what you want to change within a skin, and someone might have the answer you are looking for.

As said previously, most skins are XML based, so if you need to change the info, or put the menus in a different order, then all this can be edited in a text editor like notepad++

 Thanks jay - Aeon Nox, Andromeda and Pullucid seem to have the tiled movie wall interfaces for movies so I guess I can look further into those. I really appreciate your help.

[jools5000]

I would suggest reading this thread regarding 4K HDR output as there is no device that is 'perfect' (yet!)
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=332180

Its best to spend some time in the hardware forum before buying anything to make sure you understand any limitations or issues with that you're planning to use

[da-anda]

However, it would be nice to have the cover art for the tiled wall skin interface and if possible at automatic description of the movie although the later is not that important.

No worries, KODI will grab all this information from online sources for you. The process is called "scraping" and will be done when you add/index your video collection to the KODI database/library. KODI comes with pre-installed scrapers (small tools that will grab the data from a specific meta-data website, like https://www.themoviedb.org/ etc) that we think work best for most of the media content out there, however for more exotic stuff like Anime there are more suitable scrapers in our repository. You can specify the scraper to use for each media source you add to KODI.
There are also standalone tools like TinyMediaManager (and a lot of others, most have a section/thread in our forum) which allow you to scrape and organize the meta data outside of KODI and store it along side your media as JPG and NFO files. The benefit of this is, that if you have several KODI instances running, that each instance can directly use your already prepared meta data and doesn't have to grab it from the internet again. Downside of this is, that the meta data could be a bit outdated at some point (like if plots or user ratings get updated on the meta data websites etc.)