The Kodi/XBMC Thread - Watch things and stuff

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Kodi/XBMC Thread - Watch things and stuff

The Gunslinger: Jul 24, 2004; Do not forget the face of your father.; Fun Shoe

Thermopyle posted:

I very specifically put "for me" in there!

I already have everything centralized with MySQL. If you're not using MySQL then I'm sure Emby is a lot more attractive to you. For me there's no upside and there's the very significant downside of all my metadata being dependent upon yet another party.

Yeah sorry I was just sorta quoting you to talk about some changes I made. I can't remember why I stopped using MySQL awhile ago, I think I just needed a transcoder for Rokus. I wish I could get everyone on something that can run Kodi/Netflix so I don't have to bother with the transcoding server. The only one I've used that works for most people was the FireTV but Amazon pulled Kodi, makes it more of a pain to install/maintain for friends and family.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 18:03

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# ? May 22, 2024 10:42

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

The Gunslinger posted:

Yeah sorry I was just sorta quoting you to talk about some changes I made. I can't remember why I stopped using MySQL awhile ago, I think I just needed a transcoder for Rokus. I wish I could get everyone on something that can run Kodi/Netflix so I don't have to bother with the transcoding server. The only one I've used that works for most people was the FireTV but Amazon pulled Kodi, makes it more of a pain to install/maintain for friends and family.

Sorry. This is the internet. Everything must be an argument with very clearly defined sides where everything you say is an attack on my side, and everything I say must defend my side.

There is no room for a conversation, damnit.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 18:15

kri kri: Jul 18, 2007

G-Prime posted:

All of the above is valid. In fact, honestly, once I get my NAS up and running, I'm probably going to migrate over to MySQL for the library for everything except my son's Kodi instance and keep that on Emby specifically (unless Kodi's parental controls improve). I know running both in tandem is going to be a pain in my rear end overall, but while he's this young, I value that functionality. The shared MySQL setup is so drat nice, though. Being able to stop a video in our basement and pick right back up in the bedroom at the exact moment we stopped is really cool for the wife and I.

Unless I am reading this wrong, you can do this with emby just like you can with mysql.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 19:39

G-Prime: Apr 30, 2003; Baby, when it's love,
if it's not rough it isn't fun.

I can, yes, but there are some kinks to it. For example, I can't turn off transcoding per device in Emby. It's all or nothing. One of my devices right now (probably 2 in the not too distant future, maybe a third shortly thereafter) is a real x86 PC with a wired connection and ample playback capabilities. I want that to play stuff as it's already encoded, rather than transcoding it and adding further stress to the box it's playing from. For the Fire TV Stick, I absolutely prefer transcoding, because it's on a much weaker CPU and a wireless connection in my old rear end home that has significant interference. That reduces the bandwidth requirements for that device a lot.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 19:53

Tanbo: Nov 19, 2013

G-Prime posted:

I can, yes, but there are some kinks to it. For example, I can't turn off transcoding per device in Emby. It's all or nothing. One of my devices right now (probably 2 in the not too distant future, maybe a third shortly thereafter) is a real x86 PC with a wired connection and ample playback capabilities. I want that to play stuff as it's already encoded, rather than transcoding it and adding further stress to the box it's playing from. For the Fire TV Stick, I absolutely prefer transcoding, because it's on a much weaker CPU and a wireless connection in my old rear end home that has significant interference. That reduces the bandwidth requirements for that device a lot.

Emby will only transcode when needed, I think you set something up wrong. You shouldn't have to specify per device to transcode or not, if it's transcoding, then the device would not have played it otherwise. My computers all play directly, I never specified anything about transcoding or not, while mobile devices transcode.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 20:38

G-Prime: Apr 30, 2003; Baby, when it's love,
if it's not rough it isn't fun.

I'll check that when I get home. Maybe I enabled some force transcoding option or similar.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 21:01

Tanbo: Nov 19, 2013

Did you setup path substitution? If you don't, then all clients, including PCs that would have no problem direct playing, will not know where on the network to access the file and cannot directplay, it will have to go through the emby server. I think in that situation it would do what's called direct streaming, which isn't really transcoding, but still unnecessary.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 21:06

The Gunslinger: Jul 24, 2004; Do not forget the face of your father.; Fun Shoe

I'm just using SMB shares and I didn't have to setup path substitution, maybe its different for others not sure. It still just direct streams (which I think is just direct play) everything to Kodi on the FireTV even without path sub. Just run task manager or use ps if on *nix to check CPU usage to be sure. You will know for sure its transcoding, ffmpeg will be eating CPU.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 21:13

Tanbo: Nov 19, 2013

Direct stream isn't direct play.

quote:

Transcoding will occur on all the mobile clients if they don't support the codec/container of the source video, or they can't access the media directly. Transcoding is a necessary evil.

Streamcopy is a form of transcoding, it means the device supports the stream, but not the container. It's just not as cpu intensive as a full transcode.

Direct play and direct stream are two different things. Direct play means that the client can access the file directly. IE it can see the windows shares. Direct stream means the client couldnt' see the file directly so the server is streaming it without transcoding.

I don't know if direct stream affects video quality though, I wouldn't think so, does use unnecessary resources on the server. Direct play removes the server from the equation entirely, which is preferred when possible.

Here's some of my path substitutions. Pretty simple.

Tanbo fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jul 6, 2015

# ? Jul 6, 2015 21:21

G-Prime: Apr 30, 2003; Baby, when it's love,
if it's not rough it isn't fun.

I bet path substitution (or lack thereof, in my case) is the problem. The box that actually hosts my files is also the Emby server, so I've just got it set up with local paths. I'll see if fixing that solves the problem.

# ? Jul 6, 2015 22:23

The Gunslinger: Jul 24, 2004; Do not forget the face of your father.; Fun Shoe

Tanbo posted:

Direct stream isn't direct play.

I don't know if direct stream affects video quality though, I wouldn't think so, does use unnecessary resources on the server. Direct play removes the server from the equation entirely, which is preferred when possible.

Here's some of my path substitutions. Pretty simple.

Hmm well ok, thanks for the info but I'm not sure how to get it to Direct Play. I've tried with and without a path substitution, it still just wants to Direct Stream everything. I've checked on the server and it only uses 1% CPU so I'm not sweating it or anything but obviously I would prefer DirectPlay if possible. I wonder if its because I'm running Kodi on a FireTV. It can see all of the Windows shares though which is what makes this confusing. Unfortunately the documentation on Emby is a bit half baked because I can't see a lot of troubleshooting info for this on the wiki or the forums.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 01:21

Tanbo: Nov 19, 2013

The Gunslinger posted:

Hmm well ok, thanks for the info but I'm not sure how to get it to Direct Play. I've tried with and without a path substitution, it still just wants to Direct Stream everything. I've checked on the server and it only uses 1% CPU so I'm not sweating it or anything but obviously I would prefer DirectPlay if possible. I wonder if its because I'm running Kodi on a FireTV. It can see all of the Windows shares though which is what makes this confusing. Unfortunately the documentation on Emby is a bit half baked because I can't see a lot of troubleshooting info for this on the wiki or the forums.

My guess would be SMB issues. Add your path substitution, then go into the emby addon on kodi and check play from HTTP instead of SMB. If it does direct play then, then it's a SMB issue.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 01:55

The Gunslinger: Jul 24, 2004; Do not forget the face of your father.; Fun Shoe

Tanbo posted:

My guess would be SMB issues. Add your path substitution, then go into the emby addon on kodi and check play from HTTP instead of SMB. If it does direct play then, then it's a SMB issue.

Ok I'll give that a shot, thanks for the help man.

Edit: yep that worked and I realized I had mistyped the username/pass for the network user inside of the Kodi emby Addon settings. Its direct playing now although it still says opening stream whenever it actually plays something but the server dashboard shows it as Direct Play and the CPU usage is nothing so I'm happy.

The Gunslinger fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jul 7, 2015

# ? Jul 7, 2015 01:59

Aeka 2.0: Nov 16, 2000; Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.; Dinosaur Gum

I'm really liking emby as a backend and for the front. Some of the plug-ins really polish a theater experience. I have mine set to play a couple trailers before the movie that match the movie's rating, and then it plays a custom file depending on the audio stream before the movie. For example if it detects DTS I have it play the late 90s DTS exploding disc intro. I'm just now diving into the MadVR settings, but I assume that comes with Kodi as well.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 05:16

wolfbiker: Nov 6, 2009

That sounds like it would be cool the first few times, then annoying. One of the great features of having an HTPC is that you don't have to watch trailers and intros before the movie like you do with a DVD or Blu-Ray.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 08:22

Hippie Hedgehog: Feb 19, 2007; Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

wolfbiker posted:

That sounds like it would be cool the first few times, then annoying. One of the great features of having an HTPC is that you don't have to watch trailers and intros before the movie like you do with a DVD or Blu-Ray.

Is it still probatable to emptyquote in this subforum? Cause that's what I want to do.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 14:17

The Gunslinger: Jul 24, 2004; Do not forget the face of your father.; Fun Shoe

If you watch a lot of movies then I'm sure it would be annoying. We only watch 1-2 movies every few weeks so the trailers are actually kind of neat. It lets us know what's out there since we cancelled cable and installed Adblock on all of the computers. You can always skip them with a click anyway.

I was considering setting up MySQL again last night but got Direct Play working fine now (cheers Tanbo) so I will stick with Emby. I am finally happy with my setup so it will be at least 3 months before I tinker with it for no real reason.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 14:43

Tanbo: Nov 19, 2013

I like the trailers, it helps me keep up on the new stuff coming out. Guess it could be annoying if you watch movies often.

Edit: Your welcome.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 16:58

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

Tanbo posted:

I like the trailers, it helps me keep up on the new stuff coming out. Guess it could be annoying if you watch movies often.

Edit: Your welcome.

This is why I keep a link to the trailers addon on my home screen. Every once in awhile, I jump in there and see some cool previews.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 17:58

Gozinbulx: Feb 19, 2004

I think an important aspect of Emby which may be being overlooked but is a pretty big deal for me, is the ability to bring up the context menu on a library item and being able to edit the metadata right then and there from within Kodi. Always wondered why that wasnt native to kodi.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 18:10

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Who's the guy that setup the awesome theatre experience with the trailers and the sound demo and even some of the snack clips from theatres? Was that you Aeka? It'd be cool to have that as an option when watching a movie, makes it much more of an event than just clicking play and lounging. If it dynamically plays current trailers that's even cooler. You wouldn't want it all the time, but sometimes would be cool.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 21:07

EC: Jul 10, 2001; The Legend

FISHMANPET posted:

Who's the guy that setup the awesome theatre experience with the trailers and the sound demo and even some of the snack clips from theatres? Was that you Aeka? It'd be cool to have that as an option when watching a movie, makes it much more of an event than just clicking play and lounging. If it dynamically plays current trailers that's even cooler. You wouldn't want it all the time, but sometimes would be cool.

I don't remember the guy here but look at the Cinema Experience add-on, it lets you configure all that.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 21:22

Tanbo: Nov 19, 2013

Cinema experience is also a different button than the regular play button, or at least it can be setup that way.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 21:25

InfiniteZero: Sep 11, 2004; PINK GUITAR FIRE ROBOT; College Slice

FISHMANPET posted:

Who's the guy that setup the awesome theatre experience with the trailers and the sound demo and even some of the snack clips from theatres? Was that you Aeka? It'd be cool to have that as an option when watching a movie, makes it much more of an event than just clicking play and lounging. If it dynamically plays current trailers that's even cooler. You wouldn't want it all the time, but sometimes would be cool.

Cinema Experience does all of this. You can add your own bumpers from the Internet Archive too -- my friends are big fans of the "Bring an invalid to this theatre next time!" bumper from the 50s and the one where Charlton Heston explains movie ratings from a tennis court.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 21:44

EC: Jul 10, 2001; The Legend

InfiniteZero posted:

Cinema Experience does all of this. You can add your own bumpers from the Internet Archive too -- my friends are big fans of the "Bring an invalid to this theatre next time!" bumper from the 50s and the one where Charlton Heston explains movie ratings from a tennis court.

Where do you get these from? I'm guessing you have HQ versions and not dogshit YT rips.

# ? Jul 7, 2015 22:09

The Gunslinger: Jul 24, 2004; Do not forget the face of your father.; Fun Shoe

That watched tag thing hit me last night in Kodi/Emby, I did some digging and found a setting in Emby Server that seems to have fixed it. Metadata->NFO->Sync Watch Data to NFOs for... and set the username to Blank instead of whoever was selected.

# ? Jul 8, 2015 15:14

Vykk.Draygo: Jan 17, 2004; I say salesmen and women of the world unite!

The Gunslinger posted:

That watched tag thing hit me last night in Kodi/Emby, I did some digging and found a setting in Emby Server that seems to have fixed it. Metadata->NFO->Sync Watch Data to NFOs for... and set the username to Blank instead of whoever was selected.

Should have dug around on the previous page of the thread :mad:

# ? Jul 8, 2015 18:18

Uthor: Jul 9, 2006; Gummy Bear Heaven ... It's where I go when the world is too mean.

I set up a home server (note: I've never done this before and I'm pretty bad at networking in general), put my movies on there, and created a MySQL database. Other than accidentally deleting my library backups (oops), I think I have it working right. Kodi finds my movies on the network drive and any changes I make on my HTPC reflect on my desktop.

But, I have one minor issue. I have a few custom TV shows and movies, which show up in my library thanks to custom *.nfo files. For them, I chose some local image files for the artwork on my HTPC. When I pull them up on my desktop, the images come up blank. Not even the default folder icon, an empty box.

I'm assuming this is because the image files aren't being found in the same location on the desktop, right? I mean, I have the images on both devices thanks to OneDrive, but the file paths to the images are different. Should I go through the trouble of moving the images to the server so both devices can find them, or is there a different issue I'm not seeing?

# ? Jul 9, 2015 04:28

Bigass Moth: Mar 6, 2004; I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.

he knows...

Is there a good alternative to ustvnow? When I try to use it it will only play for 15 seconds before it kicks me back to the menu.

# ? Jul 9, 2015 08:52

wolfbiker: Nov 6, 2009

You need to create a new account. From what I remember, after a certain amount of time it begins doing that.

# ? Jul 9, 2015 12:32

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

So I'm still running XBMC 13.2, but I'm having buffering troubles with some high bitrate content. It's a ~45 minute episode and in Windows Explorer I can download it in about 30 minutes, so I have enough bandwidth. I tried messing with the cache settings (http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache) but it doesn't really seem to be working...

I'm running on a PC so I've got a good amount of RAM and disk space I can use for cache, I'm just curious if anyone has any tips on tuning this.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 19:43

HERAK: Dec 1, 2004

FISHMANPET posted:

So I'm still running XBMC 13.2, but I'm having buffering troubles with some high bitrate content. It's a ~45 minute episode and in Windows Explorer I can download it in about 30 minutes, so I have enough bandwidth. I tried messing with the cache settings (http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache) but it doesn't really seem to be working...

I'm running on a PC so I've got a good amount of RAM and disk space I can use for cache, I'm just curious if anyone has any tips on tuning this.

Update to the latest version and see if that fixes it. There have been huge improvements between 13.2 and the current release candidate which is version 15 RC2.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 19:49

Flashing Twelve: Mar 20, 2007

I've moved my OpenELEC/NAS setup to new network addresses. OpenELEC will happily read and play from the NFS share at the new location, but any operation where it has to touch the old NFS share will just silently hang forever. I've removed the old IP sources from the list, and that works fine enough, but I also need to clean the library to remove all the dud files. The error log I'm getting (192.168.1.100 is the old IP):

code:

10:50:32 T:1969324032   ERROR: NFS: Failed to mount nfs share:  (nfs_service failed)
10:54:47 T:1969324032   DEBUG: NFS: Context for 192.168.1.100 not open - get a new context.
10:56:54 T:1969324032   ERROR: NFS: Failed to mount nfs share:  (nfs_service failed)
10:58:49 T:1810732096   DEBUG: RunQuery took 33 ms for 169 items query: select * from movieview  WHERE ((movieview.playCount IS NULL OR movieview.playCount < 1))
10:58:50 T:1810732096   DEBUG: RunQuery took 196 ms for 1811 items query: select * from episodeview  WHERE ((episodeview.playCount IS NULL OR episodeview.playCount < 1))
10:58:50 T:1810732096   DEBUG: GetSongsByWhere query = SELECT songview.* FROM songview  WHERE ((CAST(songview.iTimesPlayed as DECIMAL(5,1)) < 1))
10:58:50 T:1810732096   DEBUG: GetAlbumsByWhere query: SELECT albumview.* FROM albumview  WHERE albumview.strAlbum <> ''
10:58:50 T:1810732096   DEBUG: GetAlbumsByWhere - query took 1 ms
10:58:53 T:1828037696   DEBUG: RunQuery took 34 ms for 169 items query: select * from movieview  WHERE ((movieview.playCount IS NULL OR movieview.playCount < 1))
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: RunQuery took 198 ms for 1811 items query: select * from episodeview  WHERE ((episodeview.playCount IS NULL OR episodeview.playCount < 1))
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: RunQuery took 1 ms for 0 items query: select * from musicvideoview
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: GetAlbumsByWhere query: SELECT albumview.* FROM albumview  WHERE albumview.strAlbum <> ''
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: GetAlbumsByWhere - query took 1 ms
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: GetArtistsByWhere query: SELECT artistview.* FROM artistview  WHERE (artistview.idArtist IN (SELECT song_artist.idArtist FROM song_artist)
 OR artistview.idArtist IN (SELECT album_artist.idArtist FROM album_artist)) and artistview.strArtist != '' and artistview.strArtist <> 'Various artists'
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: Time to retrieve artists from dataset = 1
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: GetSongsByWhere query = SELECT songview.* FROM songview  WHERE ((CAST(songview.iTimesPlayed as DECIMAL(5,1)) < 1))
10:58:54 T:1828037696   DEBUG: Skin Widgets: Total time needed to request random queries: 0:00:01.455370
11:01:24 T:1969324032   DEBUG: NFS: Context for 192.168.1.100 not open - get a new context.

This section loops over and over. It looks like it's trying to mount the non-existent NFS share, failing after a 5 minute timeout, then trying again. Any idea how to fix this hang, or scrub every file entry from that old IP?

# ? Jul 12, 2015 13:23

jonathan: Jul 3, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

FISHMANPET posted:

Who's the guy that setup the awesome theatre experience with the trailers and the sound demo and even some of the snack clips from theatres? Was that you Aeka? It'd be cool to have that as an option when watching a movie, makes it much more of an event than just clicking play and lounging. If it dynamically plays current trailers that's even cooler. You wouldn't want it all the time, but sometimes would be cool.

That was me, (likely)

I can answer most questions.

# ? Jul 13, 2015 23:23

EC: Jul 10, 2001; The Legend

Any tips on including an "extras" section from ripped movies/tv shows? I'd like to see them show up as either a separate season (like specials in TV shows) or a button in the details (like Trailer in Movies), but I'll take any sort of library integration I can get.

# ? Jul 13, 2015 23:38

Uthor: Jul 9, 2006; Gummy Bear Heaven ... It's where I go when the world is too mean.

This doesn't work for a lot of extras, but I have taken some really long extras (like the 2+ hour ones on the Alien DVDs) and made them a separate, custom movie title. That way, they show up next to the movie itself (I edit the sort title so they show up together). If you have lots of shorter features that can't be easily combined into one, then having a bunch of titles would get annoying. You could play with sets, but I never really did that.

I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing with TV shows. I just don't know if you can mix custom videos with ones in the database under a single TV show title. I never tried. The only extras I've gotten from TV shows were from the Batman '66 DVDs, and those were included in TheTVDB as specials, so they were pulled in automatically.

This requires custom *.nfo files. I made a write up about them here. It's not hard, but it gets tedious with TV shows as you need to make a file for each episode.

# ? Jul 13, 2015 23:51

EC: Jul 10, 2001; The Legend

Uthor posted:

This doesn't work for a lot of extras, but I have taken some really long extras (like the 2+ hour ones on the Alien DVDs) and made them a separate, custom movie title. That way, they show up next to the movie itself (I edit the sort title so they show up together). If you have lots of shorter features that can't be easily combined into one, then having a bunch of titles would get annoying. You could play with sets, but I never really did that.

I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing with TV shows. I just don't know if you can mix custom videos with ones in the database under a single TV show title. I never tried. The only extras I've gotten from TV shows were from the Batman '66 DVDs, and those were included in TheTVDB as specials, so they were pulled in automatically.

This requires custom *.nfo files. I made a write up about them here. It's not hard, but it gets tedious with TV shows as you need to make a file for each episode.

All excellent info, but looking at it I don't really have enough of them to justify going through the motions. Maybe I'll setup a specific folder or something. Thanks!

# ? Jul 14, 2015 00:25

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

EC posted:

All excellent info, but looking at it I don't really have enough of them to justify going through the motions. Maybe I'll setup a specific folder or something. Thanks!

This might not help but i think Plex or Emby let you include 'Extras' as a separate season for TV shows.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 10:17

Bonzo: Mar 11, 2004; Just like Mama used to make it!

For TV shows you usually add them as Season 0.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 13:47

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# ? May 22, 2024 10:42

Vykk.Draygo: Jan 17, 2004; I say salesmen and women of the world unite!

Bonzo posted:

For TV shows you usually add them as Season 0.

You'd have to check TheTVDB for the episode "number" though.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 17:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Kodi/XBMC Thread - Watch things and stuff

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