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A few questions for emby / kodi on a PI


runtimesandbox

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runtimesandbox

Hi all, I'm new to emby but after a few days testing it am in love. So simple and the biggest plus for me was the meta data manager. 

 

I have been using xbmc / kodi on a couple of raspberry pi2  for a few years running raspbmc / OSMC. My current setup is using multiple user accounts and a mysql database to sync them all together. This is a pain as I have a separate database for each user and when a tv show or film is not detected correctly is just a unnecessary hassle trying to correct it. 

 

I want to use the kodi addon to replace the mysql database but have a few questions and things i need to get my head round first.

 

First is user accounts. Currently I have multiple users setup. You turn the TV on and the pi is sitting there at a user selection screen. With the emby addon would I continue to use multiple users and setup the emby addon with each user on the emby server? (I believe this to be the case, just checking).

 

Following on from this, the way I believe the plugin works is being creating a copy of the database locally and syncing all changes? As i have quite a large database this takes up a few GB/s on the emby server. Will this take up the same amount of space on the kodi device? If this is the case, is it one database per user (ie multiple copies of the synced database or one shared between the users?)

 

Final question, after installing the plugin and looking through the settings I see that it uses smb or there is an option for http streaming. Can someone explain to me abit more about these (is http streaming for only if you are using kodi outside your network)? My emby server runs on linux and all the media is stored on a seperate NAS. Is it possible to bypass streaming it from the server and get it directly from the nas (i think I saw an option for this) but via NFS instead of samba. NFS is much much more efficient on the pi than samba. I didnt see an option in the settings at all for NFS. 

If it is possible, do I need to add my media folders to kodi as normal then choose use local source?

 

 

Hope this all makes sense, looking forward to moving completely over the emby!

 

 

 

 

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Angelblue05

Yes, just create an emby user for each Kodi profile you are going to have.

 

No, the only thing Kodi caches is artwork, so you shouldn't see any difference in size from regular Kodi usage. There is no sharing between profiles, because the database is built around the Emby user's setting. Sharing would end up in errors and we could not implement emby user access settings. Only what is available to the user in the Emby webclient is imported into the database.

 

HTTP is for outside network or to connect to a remote server.

 

If your library paths in your Emby server > dashboard > library reflect the nfs path, it should use nfs for playback, instead of smb. If not you can always use path substitution to convert your current path into nfs. You can also use direct path instead of plugin redirection. It should start playback faster on pi, but you would lose some emby features like parental control, cinema experience, and strm would not be supported.

 

You don't need to maintain anything in Kodi. The add-on takes care of pretty much everything. All you need to do is set up your interface the way you want. You will see how smooth the interface is when Kodi doesn't manage the library! Let us know how it goes.  :)

Edited by Angelblue05
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runtimesandbox

Thanks for your quick response Angelblue05, think i understand most of it quite well now. Not sharing isn't a problem, was just curious as to how it worked. 

 

Can you explain a bit more about the library paths / path substitution or point me in the direction of some documentation? Had a quick google but its mostly windows forum posts :)

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deepseth

Following on from this, the way I believe the plugin works is being creating a copy of the database locally and syncing all changes? As i have quite a large database this takes up a few GB/s on the emby server. Will this take up the same amount of space on the kodi device? If this is the case, is it one database per user (ie multiple copies of the synced database or one shared between the users?)

 

No, the only thing Kodi caches is artwork, so you shouldn't see any difference in size from regular Kodi usage. There is no sharing between profiles, because the database is built around the Emby user's setting. Sharing would end up in errors and we could not implement emby user access settings. Only what is available to the user in the Emby webclient is imported into the database.

 

One other thing that's worth noting is that the database itself is generally pretty small. It's all the artwork that takes up the disk space, so based on the above, you'll potentially have several GB replicated multiple times.

 

That was definitely the case for distinct users in XBMC v12, unsure if there's now any deduping for Kodi v14/v15, but I dont imagine it would have necessarily been a high priority, disk is (relatively) cheap...

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Angelblue05

Indeed it is the artwork that will take most place.... my thumbnail folder is about 300MB per profile (have 110 shows with 250 movies).

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runtimesandbox

Thanks for the info RE thumbnails taking up the space. Not a massive issue either way, SD cards are cheap or I can probably do an NFS install of OSMC.

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runtimesandbox

Ive been reading around on path substitution.

 

How far do i substitue the path? ie my nas with media is 192.68.0.10

Do i substitue nfs://192.168.0.10/ OR nfs://192.168.0.10/Media OR nfs://192.168.0.10/Media/Films?

 

Cheer for all your replies  :)

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deepseth

I believe the path substitution stuff is a find/replace (i'm not sure if it's regex or wildcard or just straight string pattern matching, but straight string pattern matching will work).

 

Hopefully that'll help!

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