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tonyrulez · 2021-01-19, 08:12

Hi there!

I have lots of TV shows and unfortunately TheTVDB and TMDB imports were a hassle. Reordering episodes, removing duplicates, etc. Anyway, my point is that I can do this once, but in case I want to use my library on an other machine, I don't want to redo it. And I don't mean copying my user data folder. I want to export everything that got scraped, episode order, episode description, posters, thumbnails, everything into nfos, picture folders or whatever, so next time I want to import a show that I backup up like this, KODI will say "look, all the info is here, no need to scrape from TheTVDB or TMDB".
These shows have ended (some for quite some time), there won't be any change to them. And importing them correctly was a pain in the arse. And some are still incorrect, only correct for the sake of TheTVDB*. So, is there any way to achieve this?

*For example: Agatha Christie's Poirot. According to Wikipedia, IMDb, and my own collection, S02 is 9 episodes, S03 is 11 episodes. However TheTVDB and TMDB both thinks they are both 10 episodes, putting S03E01 at the end os season 2 as S02E10. Series is locked in TheTVDB, and couldn't convince them that the order they are showing is wrong. Had to reorder my correct episode order so it correspont with their wrong one...

**Karellen** · 2021-01-19, 09:04

You can do what you want and preserve all your changes.

Run the Video Library Export using the Separate Files method... https://kodi.wiki/view/Import-export_library

If you have local artwork, do not export Artwork when asked.

tonyrulez · 2021-01-19, 09:44

Thank you, this does exactly what I needed!

One last question: can I hide these file in Windows with Properties\Attributes: Hidden? With all the nfo and jpg the TV show folders got a little "crowded". Can I import them later from the backup even though they are hidden?

**Karellen** · 2021-01-19, 10:56

(2021-01-19, 09:44)tonyrulez Wrote: can I hide these file in Windows with Properties\Attributes: Hidden? With all the nfo and jpg the TV show folders got a little "crowded". Can I import them later from the backup even though they are hidden?

I don't know. I have never needed to Hide files using Attributes. But I daresay if you do, then Kodi won't find them.

Do you have movies in their own folder or are all the movie files lumped into one folder? If all movies are in one folder, then yes it will become very, very crowded which is why we recommend to always use movie folders.

tonyrulez · 2021-01-19, 11:37

(2021-01-19, 10:56)Karellen Wrote: Do you have movies in their own folder or are all the movie files lumped into one folder? If all movies are in one folder, then yes it will become very, very crowded which is why we recommend to always use movie folders.

All movies are in a separate folder, I'm not worried about them. However TV show seasons are in a folder, and if a season has 20-30 episodes, it's hard to navigate in that folder, because it's now 60-90 files in there. But if it would cause problems, I rather live with this.

**DarrenHill** · 2021-01-19, 12:06

If you mean navigating into the folders via Windows then it's the issue that Karellen describes - the hidden attribute under Windows doesn't work so well in practice.

Personally what I do is just set the file manager to sort by extension, and then all the media files, nfo files and image files are grouped together and you can just go to the block of files you're interested in and navigate within that. Not ideal, but workable (especially if all your media are in the same format, such as all .mp4 or all .mkv etc).