I have a WebDav server that contains some movies and shows. I use Infuse on Apple stuff and NOVA Video Player on Android to watch these. The directory is not organized, file names aren’t manually adjusted, and the movies and shows are mixed together. Yet, both of these programs are able to index recursively, get metadata, create a library and let me watch my media without issues.
Kodi, on the other hand, seems to be unable to index nested directories, requires you to tell it what type of media is in the individual directories and cannot identify anything correctly unless I go and manually rename directories/files. It also is exclusive for TV usage and not very suitable for desktop.
So, are there alternative programs to Kodi, ideally better suited to desktop usage or extensions I can install to make it work properly?
Is there a reason nobody is mentioning PLEX?
I use Jellyfin in conjunction with Kodi. Basically I only have Kodi as front-end, as it treats subtitles better than the Jellyfin client does. Works great.
The directory is not organized, file names aren’t manually adjusted, and the movies and shows are mixed together.
Sounds like a nightmare for me
I was a long time Kodi user from back when it was called XBMC.
About 5 years ago I got tired of messing about with managing media, editing config files and installing addons. Moved to Emby first, and now I am on Jellyfin. No media management required, the backend server does it all for me and the front end is great, never gives me any problems and plays everything. I run the front end on multiple Nvidia Shields with no performance issues.
I’d manage your media better with movies and TV in separate parent folders and not all mixed together. When you setup Jellyfin, you point it at a folder and tell it what media type it is. Mixing up different media types in the same folder structure just makes things harder than they need to be for no gain.
Ok but Jellyfin is a web service. Not really suitable for a Home Theatre PC. If there was a frontend application that worked in a kiosk type way, then it would replace Kodi.
Not really suitable for a Home Theatre PC
Not sure where you got that idea, but it’s absolutely what I use it for. That I can also watch content from multiple sources as well is part of the appeal. Plus no constant upsell like Kodi and Emby.
No, Jellyfin has a server backend which manages the media and serves it up to the client frontends which support most modern operating systems like Windows, Linux and Android. See https://jellyfin.org/ for details.
I’d ditch the HTPC, and go for an Android based media player like the Shield, no moving parts, no keyboard/mouse and rarely requires an update. Had a HTPC for many years and anytime I wanted to watch something I had to mess about with it first before it would play.
I used Kodi with LibreElec for years in a similar setup. It was nice… but in practice I didn’t really use the “cool” functionalities (like indexing, image preview, Web remote control, etc) so instead I checked how Kodi works and noticed DLNA. I saw that my favorite video player, namely VLC, supports DLNA. I then looking for DLNA server on Linux, found few and stuck to the simplest I found, namely minidlna. It’s quite basic, at the least the way I use it, but for my usage it’s enough :
- install VLC on clients, including Android video projector, phones, XR HMDs, etc
- install minidlna on server (RPi5)
- configure minidlna to serve the right directory with subdirectories ( /var/lib/minidlna by default )
- configure few extra software that get videos to push them (via scp script and ssh-key) to rpi5:/var/lib/minidlna/
voila… very reliable setup (been using for more than a year on a daily basis.
Just organize your library properly and pretty much every software will manage it better. There are options for organizing and renaming them mostly automatically, like EastTAG or filebot. Some people use Sonarr and Radarr to organize shows and movies, but those are probably overkill for you. The various *arrs will be more useful if you’re consuming new media through a server hosting Plex or Jellyfin. Kodi is also a waste if the library isn’t already meticulously organized and you don’t need a 10 foot interface.
If you’re only consuming on desktop and you insist on being disorganized, then why even bother with anything other than VLC? It runs on Linux, Windows, iOS, and Android.
People keep talking about needing to “organize your library” but what do you mean by that? Is metadata tagging sufficient? Or does Kodi care about filenames and directory structure?
Sonarr puts shows in
- show folder
- season folder
- show name - S01E01 - episode name.mp4
Wait, is this not standard practice?
I’ve always organized media files this way; I index my music similarly.
kodi is best as a front-end for an already curated library. ive used it extensively since the xbmc days…
i use mediaelch to scrape, generate metadata files and rename files and folders into a standard way. it [can] generate things in a kodi-compatible format. kodi is set to just pull in that data. i concurrently use emby (jellyfin) to access that same metadata.
your problem is conflating the curation of your library with the applications that will use it.
kodi does need a full computer to run. thats where emby comes in. its for viewing the same shit on any other device
Thanks for the mediaelch tip !
your problem is conflating the curation of your library with the applications that will use it.
This is not some extremely hard job that’s way out of the scope of a media center. As I said, other platforms already have applications that can do this without breaking a sweat. I’ve never had to manually organize my files in years in any other platform.
other platforms already have applications that can do this without breaking a sweat
Then go with those applications and that’s it. In the same vein, you can say that Kodi needs an organized library, so organize it and Kodi won’t break a sweat. That’s what a lot of people are telling you in this thread.
i cant even imagine wanting a mess of stuff as you describe, or expecting some media app to manage that mess on the fly. but hey, if thats how you want it. good luck.
ive got 2500 movies and > 35,000 episodes in my library.
It’s not a mess on properly implemented clients but I also have a fraction of the media you have. I put new stuff in, they get indexed, I watch them, I delete them. I am not going to do extra work for the privilege of using Kodi 🤷
i do zero work for kodi. i curate a library i care about and that is not your end goal. kodi is definitely not for the ‘watch and delete’ crowd.
Well, that’s why I’m asking for alternatives but I also know a few people who rip a ton of blurays and throw them to a server and never curate it, and those are the only people self-hosting their media that I know anyway.
you seem to already have apps that do that stuff you want… i was more answering ‘how to make kodi work’
Not really, as those aren’t available on Linux directly. The ‘how to make kodi work’ bit is because my research didn’t give me any apps that can do this by default so I thought kodi might have extensions or forks I missed.
What desktop?