Kodi Community Forum

Video Nodes (wiki) are a powerful way to manage how your content is organised under the Videos menu item, but they're not the most accessible of things, requiring as they do the default nodes to be manually copied from the Kodi installation, and each node manually edited. That set me working on a script for Kodi to try and simplify their management.

Hopefully features everything you'd expect from such a tool - the default nodes provided by Kodi are copied into the userdata folder. From there every aspect can be edited - from new nodes and parent nodes, to content, rules, limits, orders. And, from the context menu, icons, names, node order and more. It'll even let you browse for rules - such as title, path or playlist.

It'll also let you set rules in the parent node and automatically apply them to all nodes within that parent - so you can set a rule for the path, for example, and have all nodes within the parent pick up that rule.

Now available on the repo.

Source code, and latest changes, always on git - https://github.com/unfledged/plugin.prog...ode.editor.

Skin Integration

To use video nodes in your skins menu, you need a skin that supports adding video nodes to the menu/submenu. All skins which use the Skin Shortcuts script have this ability.

When using a skin that uses Skin Shortcuts to provide the whole menu, you can right-click a parent node and "Add to main menu", otherwise you can choose a video node via the skins menu customiser under "Video Library"

For skins that don't use Skin Shortcuts, please consult the skins forum or thread for details of whether they have this support.

I'd appreciate any and all feedback

What's a node?

Video nodes (wiki)

They're what you see when you go to "Videos". By default, Kodi has three parent nodes within (Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos), each with nodes such as Title, Year, Director, etc which define how the library content will be viewed.

nice work. would be great if you would make library nodes also selectable in script.skinshortcuts. (when called with type=shortcuts)

(2014-09-28, 01:42)phil65 Wrote: [ -> ]nice work. would be great if you would make library nodes also selectable in script.skinshortcuts. (when called with type=shortcuts)

They already are selectable

(there are however two bugs both relating to this scripts ability to 'Browse' for values to a rule - one of them stops custom video nodes showing up in the skin shortcuts script (the fake node it uses doesn't have an icon), and is now fixed on skin shortcuts git; the other means said fake node is selectable within skin shortcuts, and will be fixed sooner than later.

If they're still not displaying with the latest skin shortcuts git, a debug log of that script (preferrably posted to its thread) would be appreciated.

And thanks for the feedback!

As far as i can see i can only choose movies --> genres for example, not one step further. (for example movies --> genres --> action)
that way the user does not have to set up a custom playlist for many use cases. (i want basically the same as Skin.SetPath(some_skin_string_name,library://) on skinning level. )
I didn´t download the latest GIT though, there it is possible?
Probably the wrong thread to discuss script.skinshortcuts, so you could also just quote me and continue in the right thread. (or write a PM)

(I´m not talkin about custom library nodes here in specific, just the default ones)

Hi. I'm trying your addon.
First of all it's a GREAT IDEA. I already use custom nodes (i also created a guide) but now is far simpler than it used to be. So good job.
Second thing. There is a bug

First bug:
You use in rules the localized value instead of the playlist filter (at least with path startswith) and it doesn't set the path in the value.
For example if i set as rule "path" "startswith" "smb://something" i get:
instead of:
where "comincia con" is the translated version of "starts with".
This happens for all xml files (actors.xml, country.xml, directors.xml, genres.xml, sets.xml, studios.xml, tags.xml, titles.xml, years.xml) except index.xml.
If i try to change again the rule to something else it only changes index.xml

Another problem.
If i use "&" in the name (for example Anime & cartoons) your tool is able to create everything but when i enter in the node it can't list the xml files in it and if i try to delete the node i get an error and it fails.

I also have a suggestion.
Probably it's already planned for a later date since it's a lot of work but rules needs better ways to be filled. For example if i chose a playlist rule you should list all playlist, if i have a path rule you should show a path explorer, if you have a genre rule you should show a genre list etc etc

In the end is a very good tool that makes a lot easier to split libraries and there's a huge request for this. Thanks for your work!

(2014-09-29, 10:04)phate89 Wrote: [ -> ]I also have a suggestion.
Probably it's already planned for a later date since it's a lot of work but rules needs better ways to be filled. For example if i chose a playlist rule you should list all playlist, if i have a path rule you should show a path explorer, if you have a genre rule you should show a genre list etc etc

Thanks for the feedback

I'll look at the bugs this evening, but just wanted to say that for playlist, path, genres, etc - highlight the value field, and bring up the context menu

Ok found it. IT works well thanks
But isn't better to add the "browse" button in the ui like it is for smart playlist creation or library filtering? In the context menu is too hidden in that position

Probably, but the script isn't creating a UI (it presents as a plugin), so the best that can be done is another entry in the list labelled 'Browse' rather than adding a browse button - which is quite doable and, again, I look at it this evening

Just seen this, brilliant work! I'll give it a test later.

EDIT: Works very well.

(2014-09-29, 10:04)phate89 Wrote: [ -> ]There is a bug

Thanks for the bug report - the issues you raised should now be fixed on git

(2014-09-29, 16:45)zag Wrote: [ -> ]Just seen this, brilliant work! I'll give it a test later.

Works very well.

Thanks for the feedback

Tried and all bugs seems fixed. Thanks

The fundamentals of this script seem to be working well, so can anyone advise what is the correct way to get the thread moved to Add-ons Help and Support > Program Add-ons ahead of a beta release and (hopefully) a repo push?

Thread moved

Looking forward to this being on the official repo!