general questions about setting up Emby and using with Kodi

[ecrispy 23]

I plan to use latest Kodi v20 on a Odroid N2 running CoreElec. I also have a decent sized media library. Till now I was using Emby on a Windows pc with a bunch of drives connected, but I will be moving to a smaller Linux server, and slowly moving my media to cloud. I plan to use an rclone mount.

I'm assuming the best bet is to use the latest Emby NextGen (v.8.0.2) along with Kodi Sync addon on server? Is Embuary still the best skin to use or are other newer skins just as good. From what I recall Embuary has some special code to discover all the Emby libs, create nodes for them vs having to do it manually etc. But I dont know if this still works with the next-gen addon, or if other skins have this too?

Also I'm pretty sure .bif files will be useless as Kodi's player doesn't seem to have thumbnail previews, right?

Any other recommendations/best practices? do people customize their Kodi addnd for Emby etc?

[quickmic 1345]

Skin:

 

Quote

Also I'm pretty sure .bif files will be useless as Kodi's player doesn't seem to have thumbnail previews, right?

8.X versions are capable showing thumbnails. Enable the option "use path substitution".

Best, just try it. Use a PC/Mac for tests and not the actual Kodi device.

Edited March 17, 2023 by quickmic

[ecrispy 23]

12 hours ago, quickmic said:

Skin:

 

8.X versions are capable showing thumbnails. Enable the option "use path substitution".

Best, just try it. Use a PC/Mac for tests and not the actual Kodi device.

Thank you, thats great to hear! also thanks for pointing me to kodinerds, looks useful.

May I ask how you got thumbnail previews to work in Kodi? I mean in the player, isn't it using Kodi's player which doesn't support them? Or am I not understanding things? I requested this a long time ago but there was no interest from Kodi side - https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=359431

 

[quickmic 1345]

22 hours ago, ecrispy said:

May I ask how you got thumbnail previews to work in Kodi?

This not easy to explain. Short version, Kodi uses ffmpeg to extract thumbs on the fly (stock Kodi function). However, Kodi prevents extraction on http content (plugin addon mode).

Therefore the option "use path substitution" fakes local content and Kodi triggers the thumbnail extraction anyway.

...bif files are always ignored

[ecrispy 23]

On 3/18/2023 at 12:18 PM, quickmic said:

This not easy to explain. Short version, Kodi uses ffmpeg to extract thumbs on the fly (stock Kodi function). However, Kodi prevents extraction on http content (plugin addon mode).

Therefore the option "use path substitution" fakes local content and Kodi triggers the thumbnail extraction anyway.

...bif files are always ignored

maybe we are talking about 2 different things. I mean the previews over the progress bar, which need to be precomputed and stored in bif files. I think what you mean is thumbnail extraction to show in media views, in place of poster eg for episodes. Right?

[quickmic 1345]

6 hours ago, ecrispy said:

maybe we are talking about 2 different things. I mean the previews over the progress bar, which need to be precomputed and stored in bif files. I think what you mean is thumbnail extraction to show in media views, in place of poster eg for episodes. Right?

Yes I meant the "Bookmarks" in Kodi which are actually bookmarks AND e.g. DVD chapter images.