Media Players 103: Kodi File and Folder Organisation/Storage

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Hi Woody.

Good to hear you have something working!

My AV equipment is a fair way from my main wifi at back of my house plus 5 walls in between (two are double brick) so wifi signal/performance was horrible.

I tried various methods, wifi extenders and Ethernet over power lines with none successful. In the end I ran a 30m Ethernet cable to the AV rack and added an 8 port switch. Now all perfect. I even added a new wifi point there so now I get very strong wifi in my backyard too and I connect to that wifi point with my iPad when I use it as my Kodi remote control device (or for the Kodi Music Remote app which is very highly recommended for music)

Aeon Nox SiLVO skin is a modified version on the standard Aeon Nox skin, but looks like you've worked it out (I wrote some setup instructions in a PDF download in this forum).
 
Does this mean Kodi can support and playback hi-res multi-channel over HDMI?

I'm sure I read somewhere that it only supported Dolby 5.1 and limited to 16bit (downsamples anything higher), I could be wrong though.


This is something I'd like to do with my RaspberryPi but last I looked there was no solid way to playback the files without some form of downsampling or conversion from 5.1 > 2.0.
 
Does this mean Kodi can support and playback hi-res multi-channel over HDMI?

I'm sure I read somewhere that it only supported Dolby 5.1 and limited to 16bit (downsamples anything higher), I could be wrong though.


This is something I'd like to do with my RaspberryPi but last I looked there was no solid way to playback the files without some form of downsampling or conversion from 5.1 > 2.0.

Hi Simon_LDT,

I can confirm that I access Kodi on a Raspberry Pi.

The screen suggests no downsampling that i've detected and it definitely gives 5.1 over HDMI.

To my ears it sounds hi-rez and usually plays seamlessly if connected via Ethernet to my NAS.

Happy I went down this path.

Never been able to work out how to get the SILVO variant of the skin referred to in earlier posts. One day I might have a win on accessing this.

Needs to access FLAC files to work.

This thread was my only set-up source (and others similar on QQ).

Regards Woody
 
Does this mean Kodi can support and playback hi-res multi-channel over HDMI?

Kodi definitely supports hi-res MCH over HDMI but there are some limitations using certain hardware and/or if your hardware uses an Android operating system:

See this thread on the Kodi forum, scroll down in the first post to the green question (and read the question immediately above the first green question: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252916

I'm sure I read somewhere that it only supported Dolby 5.1 and limited to 16bit (downsamples anything higher), I could be wrong though.

This is something I'd like to do with my RaspberryPi but last I looked there was no solid way to playback the files without some form of downsampling or conversion from 5.1 > 2.0.

You may have issues if you have the original RPI (version one). Another QQ user may reply here and confirm.

If you didn't already have an RPi I would recommend using a WETEK Hub or Intel i3 NUC (both using LibreELEC - a Linux operating system with Kodi included). These both support hires multichannel FLAC and decode DTS-HDMA at hires too via HDMI or can pass-through to AVR for decoding on the AVR).

The WETEK is under 100USD. The Intel NUC will be over $350USD with memory and disc drive - they are functionally identical but NUC is faster for menu navigation and audio/video library scanning and has more USB connections for direct hard drive connection. Both have HDMI and Network (Ethernet and WiFi) connectivity.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I haven't actually tried it yet (although did have kodi on my Rpi 2 briefly before moving to Volumio for 2 channel music) but when I last did some reading about a year ago I read about some problems with kodi and hi-res and it put me off.

Will probably pick up another Rpi (the lateast) and give it a try. Would be nice to be able to stream flac 5.1 without having to boot up a disc and screen to use the original dvd-a/blu's, etc.
 
Will probably pick up another Rpi (the lateast) and give it a try. Would be nice to be able to stream flac 5.1 without having to boot up a disc and screen to use the original dvd-a/blu's, etc.

One of the nice things with Kodi. I can turn on my media player (boots straight to Kodi in about 5 seconds) then can play any track or album (from 1000+ albums) using my iPhone or iPad (no need to have any PC or TV screen running).
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I haven't actually tried it yet (although did have kodi on my Rpi 2 briefly before moving to Volumio for 2 channel music) but when I last did some reading about a year ago I read about some problems with kodi and hi-res and it put me off.

I suspect it's hardware/brand-dependent. Lots of people say they have nothing but great luck using a Pi for 5.1 FLAC, but I get lots of dropouts. I've decided to write it off to lousy HDMI implementation on Onkyo's part, but I could be wrong.

Kodi on a Pi also downsamples to 48k, though I'll leave it up to others to decide if this is audible.

So far, the best luck I've had is with an Oppo BDP-103 being fed DVD-A rips consisting of single files with cue sheets. That's been working consistently for me, but attempting the same trick with DSD has gone nowhere. The player just does nothing.
 
I suspect it's hardware/brand-dependent. Lots of people say they have nothing but great luck using a Pi for 5.1 FLAC, but I get lots of dropouts. I've decided to write it off to lousy HDMI implementation on Onkyo's part, but I could be wrong.

Kodi on a Pi also downsamples to 48k, though I'll leave it up to others to decide if this is audible.

So far, the best luck I've had is with an Oppo BDP-103 being fed DVD-A rips consisting of single files with cue sheets. That's been working consistently for me, but attempting the same trick with DSD has gone nowhere. The player just does nothing.

I beleive this is similar to what I read about a year back when I was looking at 5.1 on a Pi. From what I gather, the Pi should easily be able to handle 6 channels over HDMI, it's all down to the software and drivers available. I'm sure I read something about Kodi not only downsampling to 48k but also to 16bit, although that could be an older build.
 
I beleive this is similar to what I read about a year back when I was looking at 5.1 on a Pi. From what I gather, the Pi should easily be able to handle 6 channels over HDMI, it's all down to the software and drivers available. I'm sure I read something about Kodi not only downsampling to 48k but also to 16bit, although that could be an older build.

When playing a FLAC file on Kodi via a Raspberry Pi, the screen indicates that the source remains unadulterated.

Regards Woody
 
I beleive this is similar to what I read about a year back when I was looking at 5.1 on a Pi. From what I gather, the Pi should easily be able to handle 6 channels over HDMI, it's all down to the software and drivers available. I'm sure I read something about Kodi not only downsampling to 48k but also to 16bit, although that could be an older build.

I know first hand that the newer versions of Kodi (from 16.0 onward at least), do not down sample anything unless it is told to do so in the setup options.
 
I just went through a little exercise in patience and thought I'd share with the group just in case anyone else experiences this. I'd be surprised if this hasn't already been mentioned.

First off, I'm still using Kodi 16.1 because it works. In the Audio output settings, I keep the "Output configuration" set to "Fixed", with the number of channels at 5.1 and the sampling rate limited to 192.0. When I use the "Best Match" configuration, my receiver struggles and I get the ol' two second cut off at the beginnings of songs. Even worse, if I play a stereo track it struggles and often doesn't go back to 5.1. So "Fixed" has always been my best option.

All that being said, tonight all tracks played only in stereo. Sure, switching configurations temporarily solved this, but at the expense of the aforementioned issues. I went around and around trying to figure this out. It was maddening.

Anyway, if you've read this far, here is the solution: Check the configuration of your soundcard. Windows updated itself (please tell me if you know a way to stop this in Windows 10) and somehow, and for God knows what reason, my soundcard defaulted back to stereo. I wish I would've looked there first!
 
I just went through a little exercise in patience and thought I'd share with the group just in case anyone else experiences this. I'd be surprised if this hasn't already been mentioned.

First off, I'm still using Kodi 16.1 because it works. In the Audio output settings, I keep the "Output configuration" set to "Fixed", with the number of channels at 5.1 and the sampling rate limited to 192.0. When I use the "Best Match" configuration, my receiver struggles and I get the ol' two second cut off at the beginnings of songs. Even worse, if I play a stereo track it struggles and often doesn't go back to 5.1. So "Fixed" has always been my best option.

All that being said, tonight all tracks played only in stereo. Sure, switching configurations temporarily solved this, but at the expense of the aforementioned issues. I went around and around trying to figure this out. It was maddening.

Anyway, if you've read this far, here is the solution: Check the configuration of your soundcard. Windows updated itself (please tell me if you know a way to stop this in Windows 10) and somehow, and for God knows what reason, my soundcard defaulted back to stereo. I wish I would've looked there first!

Kodi is great for local movies ripped from blu-ray's and DVD's but for music files, I prefer Musicbee, jRiver and Foobar. I do use Kodi for two channel shuffle play however and the sound quality is equal to the others. Totally a preference thing. Glad you got it all sorted out.
 
How to get the most out of playing Music in Kodi - My 3rd Blog/Post in the series (Second one here)

In this section I will discuss requirements and rules around how you should store your music media files to get maximum features and functionality from your Kodi media player experience.

About File Formats:
Kodi plays just about every music media file format (wav, mp3, FLAC, DTS etc) (not DSD). However, if we want to add our music to the Kodi Music Library (see below) we need to use a file format that supports 'tagging' (the addition of metadata to each music file). This tagged data is read by Kodi when a file is scanned (imported into the Library) and is used to create the Kodi Music Library database that users can interact with.

I am recommending using FLAC as its a universal free lossless codec (supporting hires and MCH) that's supported in just about every audio program (except iTunes!!) and can be played back on just about every media player and DVD/BD/AVR player/AVR that plays music from media files. Many of these other programs/players/amps also read and use the tagged metadata so effort won't be wasted if you decide to play them on other gear in the future. So its FLAC as far as these QQ threads are concerned.


Browse and Play Media:
Firstly, Kodi can play media by using its conventional folder/file browser to navigate to a music file and click 'play'. Without using its 'Library' feature, without 'tagging' or any Folder or File naming rules being followed. However, using Kodi without a Library means you lose many of its great features (see Kodi Music Library below). I strongly recommend using Kodi's Music Library, if in doubt just go through the process below on a couple of albums and try it out!


Kodi Music Library (= more work but far better user experience for playback)
By using Kodi's Music Library you create a database of your Artists and all their Albums (and tracks) you have on your hard disc(s). The Music Library db gives you:

  • Search/Sort/Filter/Display (by artist, album, year, genre etc)
  • Ability to create smart playlist and queue songs for auto playback
  • Ability to use smart phone and tablets to play music without a TV screen connected to the media player (Headless playback)
  • Ability to find and display metadata biography, artist photographs, album art (cover and disc images), genre, release date etc

Even if you are not interested in the metadata and images: I strongly recommend organizing your music media as described here for the first 3 features above alone.

To get all of the above features you need to do three things:

1. Use a fairly rigid Folder structure for your music files
2. Tag your music files with basic Artist/Album data
3. Add your folder structure as a 'Music Source' in Kodi and 'Scan' the contents **

** Adding a new Source in Kodi is way more difficult than it should be - In Kodi 17 (next version) they've simplified this at last (hooray!)


Media File Storage - Folder Structure and naming:
Let's start by assuming we're going to use an external USB hard drive for our media (You can use another PC, Server or NAS but those options require a network connection - to be discussed later). For now lets assume we will use Kodi and you have your media as FLAC files already (see the upcoming 'Conversion' thread), lets copy them onto a new USB drive ready for use in Kodi:

Firstly I'd recommend adding 'Root' folder, then under that folder we must add a folder for each artist and under each artist a folder for each Album (actually each album release):

My USB is H:

Here is a sample of what the Folder structure is (Root folder: 'Audio Surround', Artist Folder: 'Pink Floyd' and Album Folders:
folders.png

Note there are 4 optional additional files in the artist folder (Pink Floyd folder) which are explained later in this post.

The only critical naming in the folder structure is the ARTIST NAME - This must match the tagged Artist Name and match the actual artist name as this is used to scrape (auto find and retrieve) other metadata, photos etc. To scrape the Albums only the Tagged Album name seems to be required (it looks like the text in parentheses is ignored...) The actual album folder name does not appear to be important to Kodi - I just used a suffix to identify which folder was which release for my own ease of use and sanity.

So that's not too restrictive or demanding (if you are starting from scratch). Even if you already have existing FLAC files they are no doubt stored in folders by album name so maybe just a bit of reorganisation.

I used to have all my albums stored in folders like this (one folder per album with Artist name in the folder name):
\Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (BDA Quad)
\Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (BDA 5.1)

So I wrote a small app to auto move and rename to the Kodi structure (Let me know if you want this app - Windows only)


File Naming:
If you tag your music Kodi doesn't care about the track name. However, I'd recommend naming each track after the song title and prefixing with the track number (sequence) so that looking at the files will make sense to you or if you want to create a Playlist you know what file/song to select.

The FLAC Files are in each album folder:
files.png


There are manyTagging programs and Conversion programs that auto name files for albums using the tag data (Track No. and Song Title) - more later. Also there are 3 extra additional file , only 1 is needed: folder.ppg is an image of the album cover, the others are discussed later in this post.


Tagging Your Files:
If your music files don't already have tags for: Album, Artist, Album Artist, Year (of release) and Genre - then you should add/edit the tags. (Remember Tags get scanned into the Kodi Music database to give us lots of functionality I mentioned earlier)

There are many free programs, some are cross platform (Windows/Mac etc). It seems everyone has their own favourite as well as something they dislike (A thread on Tagging Programs to come I think). Anyway, I'd have been using Tagscanner for years and I like it a lot. Kodi forum recommends MusicBrainz Picard, which I've tried but it seems more complicated that it should be... (but that's probably because I already know Tagscanner and never bothered to look at MB Picard more closely...)

TagScanner website
MusicBrainz Picard website

In either program the goal is to select and load your media files then add the Album, Artist, Album Artist, Year and Genre. Now this should not be about typing in wads of data as most Tagging programs will recognise or can seacrh for an artist and album and the auto load the albums tracks/song titles etc. That's the way to do it.

Here's a typical screen in Tagscanner showing tags for a couple of the Pink Floyd albums in my example earlier:
Tagscanner.png


Of course, there are always some limited edition releases (especially with MCH) that will require a bit of manual data entry.

Hey! Don't Panic! Remember - Most Conversion programs can auto tag during the conversion process (or immediately after)

Kodi page on Tagging here http://kodi.wiki/view/Music_tagging


UPDATE: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT REQUIRED UNLESS YOU WANT TO CUSTOMISE KODI TO DISPLAY YOUR OWN DISC IMAGES, ARTIST LOGOS AND CONTROL YOUR OWN FANART FOR SLIDESHOWS AND BACKGROUNDS
(you do not need to do any of this to play MCH music (or any other music) using Kodi or to use an automated slideshow or see artist logos etc - This is totally optional)

Additional files and folders for each Artist folder:
(this is not critical its optional - you can do this at any time )

Kodi uses 4 additional files in the Artist folder in its user interface (if the current Skin supports these features). These files support images and info that is Artist Specific.

Example image from an Artist Slideshow showing how these addional files are used (look for the number key below):
ExampleSlide.jpg


(refer to the numbered key in figure above)
logo.png - The Artist logo (4)
fanart.jpg - Background Image (typically 1920 x 1080) - not used in the Slideshow - See image (A) in next figure
folder.jpg - Artist thumbnail (typically 700 x 700) - image (B) in next figure
artist.nfo - an XML (text file) with metadata - Biography, Date formed/born, Disbanded/Died etc)
extrafanart (a folder) - this holds the images used by the automatic Artist Slideshow (if option enabled in Kodi) while the Artist's music is playing (1)

The resolution is not critical for the last two images (Kodi auto scales those to fit the your screen/skin). Fanart (including images in the extrafanart folder) ideally will be in HD 1920 x 1080 if you have an HD TV.

You can copy your own images into each Artist folder or you can use a free scraper program to do it automatically (download over the web). I have been using MediaElch to do this link. This will auto create all 4 extra files above (assuming that data/images exist on the web in its search).

MediaElch gets most of its data - biography, artist logos, fanart from The AudioDb (I'd encourage you to visit this website where you can view, download and upload info/images on artist and albums, its a community effort for sharing music metadata, both artist and album data (not music media). Here's The Audio Dbs page for Pink Floyd: Here You can contribute with your on data photos.

MedaiElch can be found here


Additional files in each Album folder:
(refer to the numbered key in figure above) These files support images and info that is Album Specific
folder.jpg - The album Cover (600 x 600 recommended) (2) (5 - the next song's album art)
cdart.png - Disc scan/image (typically 1000 x 1000) (3)
album.nfo - an XML (text file) with album metadata (release info etc)


Skins:
Kodi has various 'Skins' that alter the look and feel of the on screen Kodi user interface. Specific 'views' such as the Music Artist view below can be selected by the user (last view is saved as the default view for future). This is the 'List' view which a user can scroll through. Selecting an Artist will then show the 'Artists Allbum view. In turn this view can be changed - List, Album Covers etc (pretty straight forward):
Kodi_Artist_Menu.png



The graphics for the above Alice Cooper 'Artist view' consists of the large 'fanart' picture in the background (typically 1920 x 1080) (fanart.jpg from the Artist folder) and the artist 'thumbnail' (typically 700 x 700) (folder.ppg from the Artist folder) although resolution in Kodi is not critical. These image files reside in the Artist folder and can be saved there by a user or you can somewhat automatically 'scrape' or add those with free applications and add-ons. Nearly all my images were gathered automatically

These extra files mentioned in the Artist and Album folders are also used in the various Remote Control apps (for smart phones and tablets) I mentioned in an earlier post:

These next two shots of remote control app show various 'folder.jpg' images discussed in this post:
KMR1.png


image2.png

Hey HJ,

Are you still using Mediaelch? I'm looking for info on how to use it...Thanks, PK
 
Hi PK.

Yes. I still use it to scrape artist info which it writes to an XML text file read by Kodi, and to get fanart and album disc images and artist MusicBrainz IDs which Kodi prefers.

I’ve only ever used it one artist, one album at a time. Not sure if it works in batch mode. It’s important the artist and album folder names are correct but when scraping you get the option to edit names for lookup.

Let me know if you need more info
 
Ok so my "strategy" so far is to get familiar with Kodi by:
  • Loading Kodi on my Windows 8 desktop.
  • Convert a few CD's to flac using dBpoweramp. A folder.jpg file resides within each Album folder.
  • Use Kodi to do both an Artist and Album "Scrape"
My next step was to download Mediaelch. My hope is that it will automatically load/create the following:
  • logo.png
  • fanart.jpg
  • folder.jpg (Artist)
  • artist.nfo
  • extrafanart folder
  • banner.jpg
  • cdart.png
  • album.nfo
I wasn't able to find any info on how to setup/use the Mediaelch program so I'm stumbling around. I was able to get My Music folder loaded into Mediaelch but that's as far as I can get. It appears that the next step is to use the "Scrape" function. When I do that I get a pop up "Search Result" window that is empty.

Questions:
  • WTH am I doing wrong? lol
  • Will Mediaelch create those files/folders in the proper location?

Here are some screen shots:

1523654131754.png


1523654233960.png


Pop up Window after pushing the Scrape Button (red cloud)
1523654341562.png


Thanks...PK
 
Looks good PK.

In the view where you see the artists listed you must scrape the artist first (red cloud). Then once the data and fanart appears, then open each album and do those too (although scraping albums is not mandatory).

Two comments:
Kodi still wants every track/song file tagged (I use tag scanner) but Foobar has a MusicBrainz plugin (Kodi uses MusicBrainzIDs)

If the above scrape does not work for any of your artists then it could be the MediaElech version. About a year or so ago the scraper stopped working and it was fixed only in a ‘private’ build they only made available to donors. I donated a few Euros and updated to that which works. Please let me know if your version works.
 
Your second question answered:

Yes to all - if Mediaelch can find the data and images. I have had to create some for obscure artists or some less popular artists from 70s (less popular now). You can get free membership to fanart.tv and theaudiodb.com and upload images for others (I’ve done that)

The cdart is created when album is scraped, that’s the only reason I scrape the album and I only check that checkbox. I actually prefer to get my own album covers using:

https://www.albumartexchange.com

Search with text like this: Aerosmith: Greatest Hits

I usually choose 600 x 600 art but Kodi doesn’t mind 800 or larger. You can join and upload images for others here too)
 
Last edited:
If the above scrape does not work for any of your artists then it could be the MediaElech version. About a year or so ago the scraper stopped working and it was fixed only in a ‘private’ build they only made available to donors. I donated a few Euros and updated to that which works. Please let me know if your version works.
1523658302338.png
 
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