Creating or editing custom music playlists

[wbravin 3]

Hello all

after a mammoth job of re-tagging all my music library with MusicBrainz, which of course changed the tags of my music and therefore invalidated all my custom music playlists. I am now ready to rebuild my music playlists.

Finally i have completed the above task and the proceeded to install emby on my freenas server and the emby plugin for kodi.
My music playlists are on my nas in a separate share in order not to develop duplications and kodi has the appropriate advancesettings entry to redirect kodi to look for playlists on the new shared drive.
 
All plays fine except of course for the playlists

In KODI when i start to build my new playlists, i am listening to a song and i right click on it and i get a context menu with the option of adding the song to an existing or new playlist. Fine 

this issue i have is when i build this playlist Kodi creates an M3U playlist it in the  c:\users\me\appdata\roaming\kodi\userdata\playlist\music. OK

However the main problem i encounter, is that the source for the music has become emby and now the M3U playlist entries shows

#EXTINF:0,Supertramp - Breakfast In America
http://127.0.0.1:57578/emby/Audio/13759/stream.mp3 -------- This makes it very difficult and time consuming  to manage a playlist
#EXTINF:0,The Rolling Stones - Let's Spend The Night Together
http://127.0.0.1:57578/emby/Audio/13772/stream.mp3 -------- This makes it difficult and time consuming to manage a playlist

It would like it to show location of the track which is my shared drive and file name

 

something like /supertramp/breakfast in america.mp3, instead of /13759/stream.mp3

 

I was wondering if anybody could suggest and alternative or better solution/process?.

 

How do i change the /13772/stream.mp3 to /The Rolling Stones - Let's Spend The Night Together.mp3

 

I do not see a process in emby to dump my M3U playlist created in KODI into emby and let emby to manage the playlists. 

 

I need to build about 57 playlists. This is a lot of work and since things change very quickly in IT there will come a time to edit the source of these playlists (it happened to me 3 times in 6 years)


Thank you all for looking at this

[sualfred 677]

Use the native playback approach and not the addon playback method. By using this you are working with real paths.

[wbravin 3]

Thank you for responding to me on your saturday.

 

Sorry I am fairly new, as you may have figured out, to emby and i do not know what you mean or what you are telling me to do

 

Once again thank yuo 

[sualfred 677]

On the initial Emby for Kodi setup you was asked if you want to use the addon playback or local paths. 

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/plugin.video.emby/wiki/settings

 

If you want to switch you have to reset the addon settings and drop your synced DB. 

[wbravin 3]

Many thank to all

 

I did this and the result is almost what i was looking for.

 

once i did this I went to Kodi to build a playlist

K#EXTINF:0,Badfinger - Day After Day

/media/music/Classic Rock 2/Badfinger - Day After Day.mp3odi produces a playlist with the following 

 

This path kodi will not play 

 

so i edit the playlist in notepad and replace

/media/music 

with z:\

and i replace any other / with a \

 

and

 

I copy the playlist to my shared folder

 

Using KODI's path substitution for each pc 

all my pcs using kodi have now an updated playlist 

 

voila kodi now finds and plays the tracks regardless of which pc i am using 

 

Thank you very much for this solution. Now i can safely start building all my playlist without the worry of having to build them again on an other pc or having to copy them to an other pc.

 

 

Cases solved thank you

[wbravin 3]

hello

 

Sorry to re-open this issue. But i must have missed a step. I am not out of the woods yet.

As recommended i went to emby settings and selected native playback.

i cleared all libraries

re-started kodi 

and uploaded the libraries again

 

all the libraries are uploaded and i can see all the files in all the libraries. However Ko0di does not play the selected item.

 

when i select an item to play and it doesn't, i  right click on it and i get the context menu, i then select information and once kodi presentes the information on this item, i go to refresh. I see there the path of the of the file and i get something like this;

 

/media/music/Classic Rock 2/Badfinger - Day After Day.mp3

 

This path is missing the address of where to find /media/music/

 

My devices are all windows 10 devices

 

my freenas server is server\media\music  or as a letter when i mapped for my share (in order to quickly change servers in the event if one of the servers is down).

 

I see the items but i can't play them 

 

what am i missing?

 

Thanks  for looking at this 

[sualfred 677]

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Optional-Network-Paths

 

[wbravin 3]

Danke

 

 

 

Thank you for replying  on a sunday morning. I hope you have a beautiful day in germany as we do in Italy

 

 

I do understand network paths. what i do not know is where to add this information to the emby environment (plugin or Server) or kodi

[wbravin 3]

Hello again 

 

I think i figured it out

 

When adding a folder and you select a path like /media/music, there is a space below called optional shared network folder. id this correct?  if so can i put my mapped letter for my shared drive in lieu of \\192.168.1.104\media\music. I have this mapped on all my pc as Z

[sualfred 677]

don't work with mappend drive letters. Use smb paths with the IP, they are valid on all systems.

[wbravin 3]

Thank you for clarifying this 

[wbravin 3]

Hello

 

I think i screwed up something 

 

I went into emby server  and added the to the shared network folder the path to my nas \\192.168.1.104\media\music

 

when i proceeded to change to native playback I removed the library and proceeded to re upload it.

 

In kodi the library started to scan and it got stuck on a file at 98% for over 2 hours.

 

I stopped the sync tried to start it to no avail.

 

So I deleted KODI and all its settings

deleted all the libraries in emby server and added the folder music for which i added /media/music as the path and the  shared network folder the path to my nas \\192.168.1.104\media\music

 

I re installed KODI and reinstall the emby plugin

Once logged in to the emby plugin i went to manage libraries and added a library

Now the sync is stuck at 0% for over an hour

 

I read in the github under shared folders that i needed to add a in the kodi file manager and a a source . so i added the path to my music folder as such \\192.168.1.104\media\music

 

What step did i miss

 

Once i learn how to do the music folder i will do both the movies and the tv shows libraries I

 

Thank you for helping

[sualfred 677]

Kodi log please

[wbravin 3]

Thank you for looking at this . I hope that this is what you need

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you

Edited October 13, 2019 by wbravin

[sualfred 677]

Please try it again with disabled debug log.

[wbravin 3]

Hello Thank you for the time you are putting into this

 

I stopped  the log collection

 

I performed a performed a locad data reset

 

and restarted emby for kodi

i logged in as wbravin and my password and selected emby_2 as the server

emby asked me to select native or addon

i selected native

emby asked me to add libraries i chose all (i also added the movie folder to the emby server)

Emby asked my to sync i selected proceed

Emby started to sync the first movie (2 fast 2 furious) and now it is stuck again at 0%

 

If i chose to select addon playback emby will sync all

 

So i think that emby is trying to access the 192.168.1.104 server and cannot (BTW this is the address of my freenas server not the jail which is 192.168.1.108)

 

Thank yo9u so much for your support

[wbravin 3]

hello all

 

just to add more information

 

In reading the github I read that it is suggested to install on the emby server the the kodi companion 2.1.4..0 plugin which i did.

 

Now when i select native mode and emby proceed to add libraries and start the sync process i get a error message (as opposed to just hang there)  and asks me if i want to stop the sync ( to which i said yes) 

 

when I read the error emby is telling me that it cannot find \\192.168.1.104\media\movies. yet this path was added to the shared network path f field when adding a folder.

 

I really do not see the need for native or addon playback modes is one not enough. The only issue i have with the addon mode is the naming of the files convention when loaded into KODI. Otherwise emby works

 

I do not see this as a permission issue so i tried to change the path to \\192.168.1.104\mnt\media\movies but to no avail

 

I must be missing something but i do not se what

 

Please help

 

 

Thank you

Edited October 14, 2019 by wbravin

[wbravin 3]

solved 

 

thank you

[Luke 37049]

What was the solution?

[wbravin 3]

Hello Luke

 

 Sorry I spoke too soon. I did move one step forward to a permanent solution. So to recap

I had a permission issue ... resolved this evidenced a file naming issue

I had a file naming issue ... resolved this generated a sync issue

I had a media sync issue to kodi

 

In addressing the above issue, it was suggested that i use the shared network path. 

 

I used \\192.168.1.104\media\movies this just resulted in having the emby plugin for kodi hang at the first record. 

 

Over the week end i tried to insert into the share network path various flavours of the Server IP address. to no avail.

 

I added in kodi file section > add source the smb path to music, movies and tv shows. In creating this path using Kodi gui it gives me the option to add an smb location. I select this and it presents FREENAS as an option i select this and then select movies music and shows done  

 

Last night I entered smb://192.168.1.104/media/movies in the shared network path and it worked wahoo.

 

So on my development pc i added the music and tv shows libraries to kodi and they all synced all and it worked

 

I had the correct number of songs, artists, albums, shows, and movies. 

 

I looked at the file naming for each and the all came back with smb://192.168.1.104/media/music etc.

 

So i opened the song view in kodi and selected a track right click on the track and in the context menu appeared the option to add the track to a playlist. I did this and it worked. So i went to bed happy as a clam.

 

This morning I came back to the solution and tried to play a song, a show or a movies. to no avail.no activity shown

 

I see all the media in KODI with there relative information and the correct paths however when i try to play them i get nothing.  I tried to go to the playlist section of KODI music and found the playlist i created last night and tried to play it and this to resulted in the solution hangin trying to open the playlist

 

I inserted the substitution path in emby server

created a file location in kodi 

I have a user called emby with wheel permissions just as i do ion freenas

 

what am i missing to complete this integration

 

Thank you for looking at this  

Edited October 16, 2019 by wbravin

[Luke 37049]

Please attach the kodi log. thanks.

[wbravin 3]

Hello all

 

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!

 

i was so frustrated yesterday morning that i made idiotic mistakes.that caused me to uninstall and re-install  kodi and all the folders in emby server

 

even though i was told in this forum not to use mapped drives, i used the mapped drive letter for movies which was x:\

 

I added a folder for my movies and in the substitution path i inserted the mapped drive letter.

 

it scanned perfectly and the movies, i added a new movie to the shared drive and emby scanned it correctly.

 

so on to the next step KODI

 

I re-installed kodi and the emby plugin. 

 

I added the movie folder to kodi and emby scanned all the movies into kodi

 

I looked at the movies folder and selected a movie right clicked on the movie and selected refresh and the i saw the address of the movie  as x:\movie folder name \movie name which. was correct the movie count was correct.

I played the movie and it worked correctly

 

So I added to emby server the tv shows and music folders They all loaded flawlessly

 

I added these new libraries to kodi

 

This morning emby server finished creating and scanning the new folders and turned them into libraries. 

 

I tested the series and the music libraries by playing a item. it worked

 

I tried to add a music track to a new playlist in kodi and it worked

 

I tried to play the playlist in kodi and it worked

 

I went to edit the playlist manually by adding an album to the playlist and by trying to add an artists to the playlist and it worked

 

in the playlist the songs show up as  z:\The 5th Dimension\Greatest Hits on Earth\06 Save the Country.flac which is perfect

 

All my shared drives are mapped identically on all my pcs

 

so SUCCESS wahoo

 

now i feel confident that i can deploy this solution on my HTPCs and other laptops

 

Thank you all for all your help and for putting on with me

 

I am sorry I cannot provide any further kodi logs because of the re-build it deleted all the folders pertaining to kodi in order to have a fresh start

 

Again thank you....now on to the next adventure having kodi managed by alexa LOL 

[Luke 37049]

thanks for the feedback !

[wbravin 3]

Hello all

 

Just an update

 

I have now deployed the solution to 2 laptops and 2 HTPCs and all works well. Thank you for all your help and patience.

 

just a concern

 

wen adding a folder in emby server and selecting to add a network share value, this value is not used by emby server to scan the files. It seems to me that is used by the client to load and tag the files.

 

 

 

Is this correct?

 

 

if so, then all is good 

 

Then should the option of substituting the path be better added once one has selected the native playback and then the user selects the path?

 

If not then will i  have a potential issue in the future. As I mentioned all works fine not. 

 

Thank you for reading

Edited October 20, 2019 by wbravin

[Luke 37049]

 

 

wen adding a folder in emby server and selecting to add a network share value, this value is not used by emby server to scan the files. It seems to me that is used by the client to load and tag the files.

yes that is correct.