Posts: 253
Joined: Sep 2004
Reputation:
7
Knocks
Senior Member
Posts: 253
I prefer to watch my movies from the Videos view instead of Movies view (for various reasons, including the ability to manage files more easily from a folder/file view and general imperfections with the library).
The problem is that the Videos view only shows artwork for movies when you select the actual file. If you have your movies in individual folders, artwork is not displayed when individual folders are selected EXCEPT if the folder includes a VIDEO_TS folder.
Is this by design, and is there any way around it?
Posts: 31,445
Joined: Jan 2011
Try toggling Settings -> Videos -> File lists -> "Combine split video items"
Posts: 13,692
Joined: Mar 2010
Reputation:
507
PatK
Team-Kodi Member
Posts: 13,692
Most of this is skin oriented, and for the most part movies that have been scanned into the library show the artwork at the folder level. Trick is if you want the all the benefits of library mode you have to scrape them in, of course you can continue to use the 'video' button which is filemode.
May I suggest you consider scraping in your collection, and for the stuff that doesn't seem to fit, create a special folder and set it to exclude the scanner.
Posts: 253
Joined: Sep 2004
Reputation:
7
Knocks
Senior Member
Posts: 253
2015-01-19, 03:39
(This post was last modified: 2015-01-19, 03:39 by Knocks.)
PatK, I may be a little behind on the terminology. What do you mean by "scraping" in this context? When I get a new movie, I go through the following steps:
1) Create a subfolder for it in the Movies folder (which is a shared SMB directory)
2) Throw the main mkv, bonus feature video files (if any), subtitles, nfo files, and other helpful information in that subfolder
3) Select either "Scan for new content" or "Movie information" in file mode - both seem to be doing the same thing, if this is a new folder
The result is that proper artwork is automatically downloaded in most cases, sometimes a manual title search is needed. But the artwork is only displayed when the actual MKV is highlighted, after you enter the appropriate subfolder. Am I missing something?
Posts: 31,445
Joined: Jan 2011
(2015-01-19, 02:12)Knocks Wrote: Tried it, no effect.
Could be a bug, then. A single folder that contains/represents a single movie entry should behave as a single entry in file view when that setting is toggled, including artwork.
Posts: 253
Joined: Sep 2004
Reputation:
7
Knocks
Senior Member
Posts: 253
2015-01-19, 05:57
(This post was last modified: 2015-01-19, 05:58 by Knocks.)
It is indeed a bug, and I have finally figured out what was happening. In Settings for my Movies folder, the "Movies are in separate folders that match the movie title" wasn't originally selected. And the problem is that setting has to be selected BEFORE you scrape the library. Changing the setting after the library is scraped does not update the setting for movies that you already have. I realized this after I noticed that newly added movies were displaying the artwork correctly on the folder level, but previously added movies did not show the artwork, no matter how many times I refreshed this setting.
Cleaning the library did not help. The only option in this case is to unplug the storage device and then clean the library, which deletes all your media information, and then re-adding everything again.
Another, related bug is when the artwork is displayed on the folder level, it's no longer displayed once you enter the folder or on the file level (like it does with TV episodes, for example).
It would be great to have these two bugs fixed.
Posts: 253
Joined: Sep 2004
Reputation:
7
Knocks
Senior Member
Posts: 253
PatK, I think we are talking about different things. There are two problems that I have discovered as a result of this:
1. In File view, artwork stops being displayed once you enter the folder for a single movie. This does seem to be a bug.
2. There is no easy way to re-scrape a folder if you decide to change the "Movies are in separate folders" setting. Artwork display behavior will persist as if you never changed that setting. This also seems to be a bug.