2015-09-16, 06:32
This was prompted by various user requests over time, then I did some testing.
The basic requirement is that a user can open a library view of music artists, that shows all music files and music video files with that artist, grouped by album and song.
What I found is that Kodi is close to being able to do that for the special case that music video uses the mp4 container and the music video files are scanned into the music library.
In this case, the music scanner is able to read mp4 tags and will add the music video file, and all artist and album info, though it seemed to only call the scraper for album info, not artist info. I didn't test if artist.nfo or album.nfo files work.
Playback also calls dvdplayer, though I haven't tested how now playing playlist responds to mixed audio/video files.
So then I considered the case where the music video is a "concert" style file, i.e. with multiple songs. I used a CUE file and that worked as far as scanning, except that during playback (in files mode) it worked like a bookmark (playback started at the indicated beginning of song in file but did not stop at end of song). Trying to playback in library mode locked up Kodi for some reason.
My assumption is that if user wanted to playback an entire "concert"-style file, he could using a "gapless" playback.
There probably would be a need for an advanced filter and smart playlist rule to filter in/out music video files.
Bottom line is I think this capability is very close to existing, and after playing around a little it seems like it might actually work better than having music videos as a video content type, with the caveat that switching back and forth from paplayer to dvdplayer may be an issue (or maybe just use dvdplayer for all playback?) Karaoke mode would have to be considered too I guess.
scott s.
.
The basic requirement is that a user can open a library view of music artists, that shows all music files and music video files with that artist, grouped by album and song.
What I found is that Kodi is close to being able to do that for the special case that music video uses the mp4 container and the music video files are scanned into the music library.
In this case, the music scanner is able to read mp4 tags and will add the music video file, and all artist and album info, though it seemed to only call the scraper for album info, not artist info. I didn't test if artist.nfo or album.nfo files work.
Playback also calls dvdplayer, though I haven't tested how now playing playlist responds to mixed audio/video files.
So then I considered the case where the music video is a "concert" style file, i.e. with multiple songs. I used a CUE file and that worked as far as scanning, except that during playback (in files mode) it worked like a bookmark (playback started at the indicated beginning of song in file but did not stop at end of song). Trying to playback in library mode locked up Kodi for some reason.
My assumption is that if user wanted to playback an entire "concert"-style file, he could using a "gapless" playback.
There probably would be a need for an advanced filter and smart playlist rule to filter in/out music video files.
Bottom line is I think this capability is very close to existing, and after playing around a little it seems like it might actually work better than having music videos as a video content type, with the caveat that switching back and forth from paplayer to dvdplayer may be an issue (or maybe just use dvdplayer for all playback?) Karaoke mode would have to be considered too I guess.
scott s.
.
