Sub grouping recordings by season in Kodi

[BrettB]

Sorry, I was just being lazy typing "Midsomer" (this was shorthand for "Midsomer Murders"); likewise when I typed "Roadshow" (for "Antiques Roadshow").  I did not mean to suggest that I have one series called Midsomer and another called Midsomer Murders.

To be more clear:
...
- I have one episode of Midsomer Murders.  This episode does *not* appear at the top level.  Instead, there is a folder for the series, and the single episode is in the folder (but the series folder does not contain a season folder).  My impression is that you would expect this episode to appear by itself at the top level.
...
- Alfred Hitchcock Hour:  I have 31 episodes, all from season 1.  There is a "Season 1" folder underneath the series folder.  This is the only series with multiple episodes that has a "Season" folder.

For these 2 cases where the NextPVR addon folder scheme is not appearing the way you'd expect, I'm wondering if there are either failed or pending recordings in other seasons in the database which are tricking the addon into thinking it needs to display season folders, but then they are getting filtered when the actual (available) recordings are loaded. I'd suggest testing using either the NextPVR.exe client or knewc (in Client UI mode) or Nlite to see the "entire" recordings list for those series folders.

You might also check the folders on disk to see if there are any leftover files from other episodes. (I sometimes have old thumbs, logs, edl, 0-byte files, etc. that have gotten orphaned for one reason or another.) However, I don't really think that this would cause the problem you describe.

Barring any of those cases, I'm going to guess it would be most helpful if you could put a copy of your nextpvr.db somewhere and give Martin a link to it. Then he can look at the data in the database and figure out why these are behaving differently.

[mvallevand]

Ok that is much clearer but I probably need your database via a link to the cloud (OneDrive, Google Drive etc).

Out of curiosity, does NextPVR web show Alfred Hitchcock in one or two folders?

Martin

[dsreyn]

[quote pid='543623' dateline='1594126648']

For these 2 cases where the NextPVR addon folder scheme is not appearing the way you'd expect, I'm wondering if there are either failed or pending recordings in other seasons in the database which are tricking the addon into thinking it needs to display season folders, but then they are getting filtered when the actual (available) recordings are loaded. I'd suggest testing using either the NextPVR.exe client or knewc (in Client UI mode) or Nlite to see the "entire" recordings list for those series folders.

You might also check the folders on disk to see if there are any leftover files from other episodes. (I sometimes have old thumbs, logs, edl, 0-byte files, etc. that have gotten orphaned for one reason or another.) However, I don't really think that this would cause the problem you describe.

Barring any of those cases, I'm going to guess it would be most helpful if you could put a copy of your nextpvr.db somewhere and give Martin a link to it. Then he can look at the data in the database and figure out why these are behaving differently.

[/quote]

I don't have any failed recordings, and for Midsomer Murders, there is one pending recording from the same season as the existing recording.  I don't see any leftover files either.  I just sent Martin a PM with a link to my database.

Doug

[dsreyn]

Ok that is much clearer but I probably need your database via a link to the cloud (OneDrive, Google Drive etc).

Out of curiosity, does NextPVR web show Alfred Hitchcock in one or two folders?

Martin

The NextPVR web interface only gives me one folder per show, no matter what.  Unless there's a setting I haven't found, there's no way to change that.

Doug

[mvallevand]

Ok I got it now after seeing the db you sent me.  When I was determining whether not to flatten I was also including the pending shows, but the recording list wasn't loading them.  Just replace the dll with this one in  portable_data\addons\pvr.nextpvr and it should fix the things you noted.

Martin

[dsreyn]

I just gave your new DLL a try, and that looks like it fixed everything - all of the behavior is consistent now.

Thanks,
Doug

[mvallevand]

Great thanks for the feedback it is unlikely I would have caught this. Using this do you think there is a setting missing?

Martin

[dsreyn]

Well, I think my only comment at this point is that I'm not completely clear on why the two configuration settings need to be set to make this work, or on how the two options interact. "Single file display" selected on its own certainly works as described. The mouseover description for "Kodi skin styled recordings" is a little less clear, but if that is selected (and if "single file display" is *not* selected), it looks like that removes the "SxxExx" entry from the episode titles? I guess that's what the mouseover text is saying, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Anyway, the other thing that much less clear is if I have "Kodi skin styled recordings" selected already, why does selecting "single file display" cause season subfolders to appear? I think this is the part that a user might find confusing.

So I guess what I'm really saying is that I don't think there are any options missing, but the way the current options behave and interact might be a little non-intuitive.

Doug

[mvallevand]

The Kodi look and feel setting removes the season and episode from the subtitle if I keep it of when it is flattened the top level would sort shows by season not name. It all comes down to Kodi not supporting season episode lists. When I mistakenly removed this mode to show files the way Kodi was designed there was a lot of criticism and I put it back to sub's default. I agree this mode and the flatten concept hard to explain. I'd love someone to document it with screen shots for the wiki but I doubt that will happen.

I will be making the flatten option disappear unless Kodi look and feel is enabled Many users may never see this.

Martin

[mvallevand]

I woke up today with an idea how to enable the preferred default (kodi look and feel off) and still have season folders.  This requires installing this new zip and using a new display setting "Show season folders"

The option to show single recordings (flatten) will only be displayed and active when the kodi look and feel is on.

Martin