[mats_o]

I'm trying to get the best performance out of videos/files view.
I use folders and subfolders to organize my media and I also want it displayed that way and therefore i use files view.
It's just a little bit to slow so I'm trying to find a way to make it as fast as possible. The folder structure is on a NAS connected over a gigabit network.

I found some posts about using Poster.jpg instead of folder.jpg but it seems like poster.jpg wont work on folders (ie I just get a blue folder instead of the image i get with folder.jpg)
I have tried with settings/media/videos/Artwork level but it doesn't seem to make difference

So therefore I was thinking if there is a way to cache the folder jpg:s on the local drive of the kodi box or in the database or ......

Edit: I do believe that this was a lot faster on the Apple Tv4k (running 17.6) than LibreElec 10.0.02 (running 19.04) on an I5-2405 with a GT-710. I cant verify this since the AppleTv is an ex-AppleTV now.

[Karellen]

Poster.jpg

No uppercase letters.

If that does not work then for folder view in the default skin Estuary, use the<MovieFileName>-poster.jpg format.

[mats_o]

Sorry about that typo. Should have been poster.

No variant of poster seems to work for me. In Confluence (the skin I use) they just become blue folders until you add a folder.jpg. I can't even find anything else than a listview for files/folders in Estuary and there all folder icons are white (and I'm not talking about the poster/banner to the left)

The folder.jpg:s then seems to be copied to the thumbnails folder structure on the kodi box (which means it's already on SSD).

[Karellen]

I'll move you to the Confluence forum. Maybe @Hitcher might have an idea.

A screenshot of one of your movie folders that clearly shows all the artwork files and movie file will be helpful.

As a sidenote and out of curiosity, what is it about your folder organisation that prevents you from using library view?

[Hitcher]

Tested using poster.jpg and it worked fine. This method won't cache the images though so you're hitting your NAS and spinning up the HDD's each time you browse in file mode.

[mats_o]

As a sidenote and out of curiosity, what is it about your folder organisation that prevents you from using library view?

As far as I know I can't have folders and subfolder in library view (In Kodis GUI -not the filesystem) and my brain think in folders. I'm very happy if I'm wrong on this ......

[Karellen]

As far as I know I can't have folders and subfolder in library view

That is correct.
But why do you need to see folders? Aren't you more interested in the movie titles rather than what folders they are in? What about using Movie Sets?
I ask because if you have some special order, then you should be able to create it with playlists, assuming its not just some weird jumbled order. Then you have the enhanced features using the library.

[mats_o]

I'm very happy that you ask because I very much would like to find a better way to solve my sorting needs.

Actually I'm not that interested in the tittles (I seldom remember them any way). For example if I'm looking for the James Bond movie Moonraker, I would go to the James Bond subfolder and there are all the James bond movies I own.

[mats_o]

@Hitcher
I'm getting mixed results.
If I go Videos/files/Video (the name of my SMB share) poster.jpg fails most of the times (or is so slow that I think it failed -IE not loaded in minutes. folder.jpg loads in sub 1 minute) 
If I go Videos/library/files/Video poster.jpg loads most of the times

Are you sure that it reads poster/folder.jpg from the NAS every time? To look deeper into the file access I installed an extra box (I5 2405 and W10Enterprise + Kodi 1904) and I did a network capture (using wireshark) and I could only see it downloading the jpg:s the first time.
Therefore I believe it stores and reads them from userdata/thumbnails after scraping. I also deleted the thumbnails folder and after that I didn't have any folder jpg:s loaded in Kodi.

After this Kodi was removed and reinstalled on that box (so that my messing around shouldn't interfere)

[Hitcher]

Could be a SMB issue.

[Karellen]

For example if I'm looking for the James Bond movie Moonraker, I would go to the James Bond subfolder and there are all the James bond movies I own.

You could do that with Movie Sets... https://kodi.wiki/view/Movie_sets

You could also create Cinematic Universes... https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Movie_universe

Using Tags you could use Smart Playlists to group content... https://kodi.wiki/view/Smart_playlists

[mats_o]

For example if I'm looking for the James Bond movie Moonraker, I would go to the James Bond subfolder and there are all the James bond movies I own.

You could do that with Movie Sets... https://kodi.wiki/view/Movie_sets

You could also create Cinematic Universes... https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Movie_universe

Using Tags you could use Smart Playlists to group content... https://kodi.wiki/view/Smart_playlists

I'm looking deeper at movie sets but I don't believe you can build levels with that like putting a folder in a folder and that is something I use
As far as I understands it you can't put a custom Icon on a smart playlist and since that is why I started this thread I don't believe that will work

[Karellen]

I'm looking deeper at movie sets but I don't believe you can build levels with that like putting a folder in a folder

Correct. The library is a flat structure. But movie sets allow you to create one level.
The emphasis on Kodi is displaying your movies and tv shows, not replicating folder structures.

As far as I understands it you can't put a custom Icon on a smart playlist

As far as I know, that is correct, unless you resort to modifying the skin files. Maybe @jjd-uk might know if that is possible. Are you using Estuary skin? If not, ask in the thread of your skin.

[jjd-uk]

If you want a custom hierarchy in the library then it's custom nodes which should be used. Nodes can be allocated any icon of your choosing.

[mats_o]

I'm on Confluence and Probably will stay there.

Well that proves that file view is the way to get the needed functionality. Good in the way that the research I have done haven't been wasted.

Changing the Artwork level do affect the performance, so does having the right filetypes.

With Artwork level:none Kodi will search for folder.jpg, movie.tbn, thumb.jpg and thumb.png

With Artwork level:basic Kodi will search for banner.jpg, banner.png, fanart.jpg, fanart.png, folder.jpg, movie.tbn, poster.jpg, poster.png, thumb.jpg and thumb.png

Kodi will use the .jpg and not search for the .png if the .jpg is found so by using jpg four calls can be saved and in a larger library it saves time.
If artwork level:none is ok for you - it's a lot less calls and therefore faster.

If on Windows - do kill the offline files cache (three calls per image file above) so it makes a difference then done a few thousand times

Next test: how much faster will a local drive be (if i got one large enough)