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Positron · 2023-01-26, 19:32

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, please feel free to move. Using Kodi on Shield TV. When watching movie, TV, etc., the OSD shows, the time-line bar, the ending time, etc.; but when listening to an audio file, the display is completely different. Is there some way to show the video-like OSD when listening to an audio (mp3) file? This would be, to me, very useful when listening to various audio files which are lectures (sans video), etc. rather than music.

izprtxqkft · 2023-01-26, 19:38

in the default skin estuary this is handled by entirely different skin files MusicOSD.xml and VideoOSD.xml the only suggestion would be to put the audio into a video container so it plays as a video but i have never tried such a thing
this would also break any music specific functionality as it thinks its playing a video

Positron · 2023-01-26, 20:05

Thanks for reply. In this case (for me), breaking music functionality is not a problem, since these lectures are treated more like video than like music. Any suggestion as to how to place .mp3 file into a video container?

izprtxqkft · 2023-01-26, 21:02

i dont have any recommendations for a utility to do this for you

**jjd-uk**

It not clear exactly what you're missing as both Info view and OSD view have timeline. Is just the time remaining stuff? as you can easily edit the relevant xml files.

Opening in video view will mean any id3 tags in the mp3's don't get read, but if it's just audio material such as lectures then you probably not got much in the way of tags anyway. So to do that then mp3 must be seen as a valid video file extension, which it isn't by default, however this can be changed via advanced settings, see https://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings....extensions, then once that is done you should be able to add location and browse to the files and play them.

Positron · 2023-01-27, 00:16

Thank you. If I understand correctly, you are saying that in the videoextensions section of the advancedsettings.xml file, I should add the .mp3 extension? And the advancedsettings.xml file needs to be created if it doesn't already exist? And that file is found in the userdata/ folder? And according to https://kodi.wiki/view/Userdata, the userdata folder on an nVidia Shield is: smb://<nvidiashieldurl>/internal/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata ? But I haven't been able to figure out how to access/create that file/directory on the Shield. I have been trying to use the NET USE command at a command prompt, but haven't been able to get it to work. In Windows Explorer, in Network, the Shield is visible, but has no options to connect to it.

**jjd-uk**

Create file on pc as seem to have access to one, then easiest way to get it across to Kodi is probably to use the File Manager to copy across the advancedsettings.xml either from network or a usb stick with it on. See https://kodi.wiki/view/File_manager and as for path see https://kodi.wiki/view/File_manager#Special_Protocols for the internal shortcut paths, for advancedsettings.xml the path special://userdata is the one you want.

Positron · 2023-01-27, 01:12

Thank you. I'll give this a try.

**jjd-uk** · 2023-01-27, 17:31

I was only available on my phone yesterday but hopefully you were able to work it out yourself from the provided info. Your advancedsettings.xml should look like this https://gist.github.com/jjd-uk/7470582d6...ab623848cb

Positron · 2023-01-27, 23:47

Thank you. Yes, that's exactly how mine looks. Your instructions were very good, and I copied the file to the correct location. Now, it did have an affect, but unfortunately not the one I was hoping for.

Given: a directory/folder containing both video (.mkv) and audio (.mp3) files. Previously, if I browsed to that directory in video mode, I would see only the video files; the audio files were not displayed; I needed to browse to the directory in music mode in order to see the audio files. Now, with advancedsettings.xml in place, when I browse to that directory in video mode, all of the files are displayed (including the audio files). BUT, when I then play one of the audio files, the OSD is exactly as it was for audio files previously; i.e. I still get the music OSD for audio files, and the video OSD for video files, even with that file in place.

Any further thoughts?

**jjd-uk** · 2023-01-28, 01:46

Hmmm, I had made the assumption if launched from video section you'd get the video playback gui. I guess it sees lack of video so still treats it as music. Not sure how easy it would to create a fake video and add the audio.

kcook_shield · 2023-01-28, 02:28

Maybe the following would help? :

https://video.stackexchange.com/question...ith-ffmpeg

Positron · 2023-01-28, 19:46

Thanks for that; you gave me the idea to search for .mp3 to .mp4 converter solutions. I found that there's a ton of on-line converters, and I tried the first in the list, but it turns out that they all (as far as I could see) have a file size limit which was exceeded by any .mp3 file that runs close to an hour or longer. There were also a few software solutions, but most not free, although many had a free trial version, which I suppose left watermarks or had other such limitations.

So the one mentioned in your link, FFMPEG, is a well-known, free solution, and one which I may try at some point, though it seems complicated to me, and I don't presently have it installed.

But truly, converting audio to video just for the sake of showing a particular OSD, seems excessive to me. For now, I suppose I'll continue to use VLC for those files. Just my opinion, but I've always felt that, while Kodi is excellent for video, it is actually quite poor in it's handling of audio files. I really don't like the way it handles audio even for music, but when one introduces other audio files, such as lectures, etc., it leaves much to be desired. I realize, though, that I'm probably a tiny minority here, and there is very little likelihood that any changes will be forthcoming on that front.

**black_eagle** · 2023-01-28, 19:54

(2023-01-28, 19:46)Positron Wrote: I really don't like the way it handles audio even for music, but when one introduces other audio files, such as lectures, etc., it leaves much to be desired.

Would you care to elaborate on this further ?

**jjd-uk** · 2023-01-28, 20:36

Well the alternative is to mod the Estuary skin to add whatever you need. But you've not explained in detail exactly what you need that the video osd has but the music osd doesn't. If it's just end time then that would be a very minor edit.