[McButton]

I have just started messing with the Music portion of Kodi and am experiencing some issues.
Mainly, I am running my music off of my NAS which is actually attached through my system via Ethernet.
When I access the files, the system freezes. Sometimes when I go to the file list and sometimes when I play them. I have to wait 10 seconds to 2 minutes before it unlocks.

I have tried with just adding them to the NAS and pointing directly to the files...
I have tried switching to Library view as well....

***I don't fully catch the difference from clicking Library view and not*** but both freeze.

I'm using OpenElec and this is happening on both of my systems.

Any ideas here? Thanks!

[McButton]

Correction, I'm not seeming to have success under LIBRARY view. Is it because it's caching in Kodi before playing rather than reaching to the NAS?
Is the LIBRARY the same as looking at Video files vs importing the covers?

1) Also, where do the artist pictures save? Kodi auto pushes album covers and misc to the folders but not the artist pics.

2) And, is there a way to scrape so that only the file title is shown rather than whatever it's meta data is?
For instance ACDC - Back in Black (title) = acDc --- backinblack (scrape)
I know I can go through each file in Windows and mess with it...but......

3) Is there a way to eliminate album scrapes or views? I just want all the songs showing rather than a bunch fo misc albums. If I could just have it show EXACTLY how I have the folder structure on my NAS without freezing, that would work.

4) Adjusting the audio tags in the Music Settings of Kodi only appear to have an impact on the actual file folder and not the Library. Why? If I remove the track or artist, they vanish..but not in Library view.

[DaveBlake]

What version of Kodi are you using?

My system is music on NAS drive with Kodi on RPi, there is a delay while the NAS drive "wakes up" when I first start playing. Is this what you experience, or does the system truely freeze and have to be restarted?

Lots of questions, so I will answer as if you are Isengard.

Is the LIBRARY the same as looking at Video files vs importing the covers?

Not quite. For the music library to work your music files have to contain music tags that define artist, title, track no., genre etc. You have to scan the source into the library and then this tag data is used to populate the library. This gives you genre, album, artist etc. node views of your songs. If there is cover art embedded into your files, or a "folder.jpg" you see that. In addition, like video, you can scrape additional info about artists and albums from online sources (or local NFO files).

1) Also, where do the artist pictures save? Kodi auto pushes album covers and misc to the folders but not the artist pics.

If you have a artist/album/song file hierarchy then you can put artist art in folder.jpg in the artist folder. But to see that you have to scrape, or use NFO.

2) And, is there a way to scrape so that only the file title is shown rather than whatever it's meta data is?

In library view you will see what the title tag contains, file view will show file name. Good tagging is the key to enjoying music library.

3) Is there a way to eliminate album scrapes or views? I just want all the songs showing rather than a bunch fo misc albums.

That is the songs node. You can customise the music nodes that you see by changing the xml files under userdata/library/music

If I could just have it show EXACTLY how I have the folder structure on my NAS without freezing, that would work.

Hmm... the "freezing" in file view could be Kodi scanning the music file tags, file view does that too on the fly so that you can see all the file properties. Do you see a progress dialog?

4) Adjusting the audio tags in the Music Settings of Kodi only appear to have an impact on the actual file folder and not the Library. Why? If I remove the track or artist, they vanish..but not in Library view.

Not sure what you are asking here. What do you mean by "audio tags in the Music Settings"? If you change the music files then the library will need to be updated, but also may need to be cleaned to see some changes (like remove artists).

[McButton]

Thanks so much for the reply. I'm on Isengard for everything.
The wake-up isn't a thing. It's pretty much always going. It just...freezes. However, it may be because I'm messing with it externally too. I'll have to test when I'm done.

I'm still not seeing a difference in Library vs not. I did notice that if I add a file to the NAS, its automatically there. The only difference is the artist info and artist pictures (not covers) won't populate unless I do a physical scrape. Even that seems odd. There is UPDATE LIBRARY and SCAN. Seems that Scan does the actual work.

I have no hierarchy at the moment. Outside of a few band albums, it's all just 1 folder per band. I'll try a separate artist folder with a cover for the few that I'm missing to see if that works. Good tip!

#3 about the views, I eliminated the need to pick my view type. It's all just showing folders with pictures now. I just want it alphabetical by folder and only show whatever mp3s are in there. Nothing else. I did that by pointing my MUSIC tab to Music-File/(nas directory). Works great. Still..I'll have to check the freeze. No progress dialogue on this. It's just there.

#4 sorry. I was being a bit vague. System/settings/music/File List = Track naming template gets edited to remove album # or title, it only works in certain views. In File view = song name only // Library view = artist - song name
**This part doesn't matter now. I just started scraping everything with Picard. It's amazing how many files I had with incorrect info anyway. Picard is only about 70% correct, but still... Either way, the views are fine for me now. I just wanted the track #s to vanish. I don't care if the band name shows or now, as long as it's alphabetical.

---I've learned a ton messing with this since yesterday. I did have to edit some of my skin xml, but I'm getting better.
Thanks again for the assist! Major information.

[DaveBlake]

OK so by "freeze" you mean there is a long delay but eventually things work? If you are messing externally then yes this can also delay things much like wake up can.

The following is Isengard specific, (Jarvis is a little different in that you get prompted to scan to library when you add a source).

In video the only way to create a library, etc. art etc. is to scrape from an online database (or NFOs), so when you add a video source and set the content (TV, Movie etc.) then it immediately scrapes.

In music to create a library you need to have tags in the files and to "scan to library" for the source. Scanning is not automatic, having added source you have to choose "scan to library" from the context menu. Then, having created a library from the tag data, you can scrape the extra artist and album info and pictures if you want to. In Isengard for a single artist or album scraping happens automatically when you look at the album or artist info dialog, but you can also choose "query info for all..." from the context menu (when viewing artists or albums) and that sets the scraper going.

There is a system setting to scrape automatically ("fetch additional info during updates"), but until you sort out your tags this can come up with some odd results. You can also set it to scan ("Update library on startup") new items in any source folders into the library.

Picard can be very powerful, but it can get things wrong too, tagging still takes a little bit of human oversight. But the end result of a fully populated library with enriched with art, biogs etc. can be very nice.

Good luck!

[McButton]

Freezes but works eventually. I tried without messing with anything at the same time...seems good.
I did notice a few things that I hope they figure out at some point...
1) I had to delete the music.db & thumbnails cache for ALL of Kodi to actually get the thumbs to LEAVE. If I add a source and clean the library, ALL of the artwork stays. Doesn't matter to me now, but I'm sure someone hates it.
2) I then added a new source. My folders are like so:
D://Music/MyMusic
D://Music/Comedy
D://Music/Classic
D://Music/Personal
***If I scan ONLY D://Music/MyMusic, Kodi will scrape covers and show thumbs in widgets for ALL of the above folders. I manually and inside Kodi deleted the source. Re-added, everything shows. That seems a bit crazy. It literally stopped at the MAIN folder and grabbed EVERYTHING that is in it.
-------------------------------------------
I did some Picard tweeking. It got better, but it still likes jamming things into randomness. It's odd that if I do a manual lookup, it takes me directly to what I need, but I has no clue how to scrape.

Anyway, everything is pretty much how I'd use it. I just want to be able to view the folders without having to do odd sorts (year/artist/etc). I want essentially windows view and have the widgets populate fanart and artist pics. Mission accomplished. Messy, but done.