[User 282437]

I have a mix of Kodi installs on Android & Linux around the house. Had been using stand alone Kodi installs on accessing multimedia files on a NAS device and live TV from a mythtv server. We are more music listeners than video watchers. Kodi's Smart Playlists have been really handy

I'd tried Plex, Jellyfin and Emby  as a media server to the Kodi clients, but they've all been disappointing in one way or another. Building large music playlists on them seems especially tedious and cumbersome.

Anyway, over the last week I purged Emby and decided to implement this:

• https://kodi.wiki/view/MySQL
  

Learned a bit along the way, particularly that it is possible to mount samba shares on Android TV media player devices.  From there sharing playlists etc on the Kodi clients from a central mysql DB & file server became a doddle.

I remain a little disappointed that Emby or Jellyfin didn't work for me, but the Kodi shared library approach is a good alternative IMO.

Well done, Kodi team.

[tjay260476]

I also have a shared MySQL database solution too. All my media is on a dedicated server, I have also set up MySQL to back itself up too using a bash script - also I use Trakt as an offsite solution too. I only use Emby for watching offsite  - as I feel that Emby/Plex/Jellyfin excel at this.

I remember the 'old days' where I would have to sit at my HTPC on the floor in the living room having to do various updates etc. Nowadays, especially with the MySQL database, I can sit with a Kodi instance on my main PC and fix those issues without resorting to sitting down at an HTPC!

Nowadays it's a setup and forget solution!

Again, well done Team Kodi.

[Atreyu]

I have used and expanded use of Kodi for many years. Except the centralized DB approach

Maybe because I don't use the library. But right now reading this i find myself thinkin 'mmm...maybe I can push the nas to do some Maria....'.

Real good stuff indeed.

[User 282437]

I have used and expanded use of Kodi for many years. Except the centralized DB approach

Maybe because I don't use the library. But right now reading this i find myself thinkin 'mmm...maybe I can push the nas to do some Maria....'.

Real good stuff indeed.

Too bad the latest stable release breaks so much,. I got so frustrated I purged & reinstalled everything from scratch. On Linux it's working fine again. On Android no so much. Guess we'll need to wait for 19.1 or 19.2

[DaveBlake]

Too bad the latest stable release breaks so much.

@waddacrock what exactly does it break? Addons that despite 3 years warning the authors can't be bothered to update? Something else core to Kodi that you could provide clear and constructive feedback about and give devs at least the opportunity to fix (if they have the time and skill).

And tell me did you ever bother to test a nightly build during development so that you could contribute useful information? Or did you just sit there on the couch and wait for a free update to complain vaguely about?

[DProudmoore]

I recently upgraded to a bigger NAS and am running a central MariaDB library for my different clients too.

On my PC the delay loading my wall of movie posters is noticeable but nothing I can't live with. In the living room though I'm connecting via Ethernet over powerline instead of Ethernet directly and despite the Shield saying its also connected at 1000Mbps, the delay is far more impactful. Since it appears to load alphabetically there's what feels like seconds where some movies are missing their posters because they start with "The" and it hasn't reached T yet. Worse though is that the delays seem to affect the ordering somehow, with some movies having their sorttitle ignored unless I change ordering after they've loaded (from Ascending to Descending and back again for example).

I'm now in the process of debating with myself the Pros and Cons of sticking with the central database (Watched status being synced is really nice to have) or going back to each client working independently and locally.

[Karellen]

On my PC the delay loading my wall of movie posters is noticeable but nothing I can't live with. In the living room though I'm connecting via Ethernet over powerline instead of Ethernet directly and despite the Shield saying its also connected at 1000Mbps, the delay is far more impactful. Since it appears to load alphabetically there's what feels like seconds where some movies are missing their posters because they start with "The" and it hasn't reached T yet. Worse though is that the delays seem to affect the ordering somehow, with some movies having their sorttitle ignored unless I change ordering after they've loaded (from Ascending to Descending and back again for example).

I've seen others have success with increasing their sort_buffer_size... https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2984537

Maybe give it a try and see if it improves.?

[jmh2002]

I'm now in the process of debating with myself the Pros and Cons of sticking with the central database (Watched status being synced is really nice to have) or going back to each client working independently and locally.

There is a relatively recent new addon that offers a different solution to the central database pros and cons:

Watched Status Sync Add-on for Kodi https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=358519

It might be worth checking too.

[Klojum]

It might be worth checking too.

It uses some kind of cloud service which you may have to pay for later on. And data/user security hasn't even been addressed yet AFAIK. Not really a setup I'm looking forward to.
I suggest you keep testing the service until it's considered stable by at least several independent people. Just my 0.02c .

[jmh2002]

Agreed, that's why it would be great if some other users could check and test it too, especially maybe some Team Kodi members...

That may then encourage the developer towards further improvements and perhaps some changes more acceptable to the wider community.

If nobody shows any interest I doubt anything will change and an interesting concept may go to waste.

[DProudmoore]

On my PC the delay loading my wall of movie posters is noticeable but nothing I can't live with. In the living room though I'm connecting via Ethernet over powerline instead of Ethernet directly and despite the Shield saying its also connected at 1000Mbps, the delay is far more impactful. Since it appears to load alphabetically there's what feels like seconds where some movies are missing their posters because they start with "The" and it hasn't reached T yet. Worse though is that the delays seem to affect the ordering somehow, with some movies having their sorttitle ignored unless I change ordering after they've loaded (from Ascending to Descending and back again for example).

I've seen others have success with increasing their sort_buffer_size... https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2984537

Maybe give it a try and see if it improves.?

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried increasing it from 512KiB to 2MiB but didn't see any improvement unfortunately.

[black_eagle]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried increasing it from 512KiB to 2MiB but didn't see any improvement unfortunately.

Some good tips for optimizing mariadb in this thread.

[Skep]

Hi, I'm new to this and am also looking at options to share my Kodi library across several devices. Just wondering, do all devices need to be able to directly see the folder containing the media files or is it only mysql that needs to, and the rest of the devices deal solely with mysql?

[DarrenHill]

Thread moved to OS independent support.

If you want to actually play the media, the device to play it needs to be able to see and access it.