Path substitution: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 06:42, 3 May 2015

Path substitution

Note: This is considered an advanced (complicated) and experimental feature.

Path substitution is not officially supported for settings files with the exception of playlists. It probably won't hurt anything, but some things might not always work right depending on what you are substituting.

Thumbnails

Sharing the Thumbnails folder with Path Substitution is prone to problems, primarily because the Texture Cache consists of two interlinked data stores - the Thumbnails folder and the SQLite database Textures13.db. Sharing the SQLite Textures13.db between multiple clients is not supported under any circumstances due to the liklehood of database corruption.

Since sharing of the database is not realistically possible, attempts at sharing only the Thumbnails folder will either fail completely, or result in some artwork items never being displayed, or you may experience artwork being displayed but with higher or lower than expected image quality or even image corruption (a result of different clients overwriting previously cached artwork, as not all clients cache artwork at the same resolutions, or even use the same image formats).

If you must use Path Substitution to relocate (rather than share) your Thumbnails folder, by all means do so but only for individual clients and their associated Thumbnails folder. Do not share a single Thumbnails folder between multiple clients, as the Texture Cache is simply not designed to support this and you will experience problems.

Path substitutions are settings in advancedsettings.xml to force Kodi to use different file paths. These are processed in order, and are useful for substituting an absolute path on a PC with a path suitable for Kodi to handle. Path subs work for most file and folder paths. Path subs work across local and network paths, across different network protocols, and can even be used with some of the special protocol.

Examples

Save as "advancedsettings.xml" in your userdata folder:

Example 1 - changing the path of music files

<advancedsettings>
 <pathsubstitution>
  <substitute>
    <from>SMB://192.168.1.19/Music/</from>
    <to>G:\Music\</to>
  </substitute>
 </pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>

Example 2 - changing where thumbnails are stored

Note: This will slowdown thumbnail loading, but might be worth it for low-memory devices. See also HOW-TO:Reduce disk space usage.

<advancedsettings>
 <pathsubstitution>
  <substitute>
    <from>special://profile/Thumbnails/</from>
    <to>PROTOCOL://YOUR_NETWORK_SHARE/Kodi/userdata/Thumbnails/</to>
  </substitute>
 </pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>

Note: Not all special paths can be substituted. In particular, special://musicplaylists/ and special://videoplaylists/ should not be substituted, as internally these are multipaths that cannot be written to (thus saving of playlists will go elsewhere). Instead, one should use the advanced setting <system><playlistpath> to change this.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+{{mininav| [[advancedsettings.xml]] }}
 {{divbox|orange||<big>'''Note:''' This is considered an advanced (complicated) and experimental feature.</big><br /><br />Path substitution is not officially supported for settings files with the exception of playlists. It probably won't hurt anything, but some things might not always work right depending on what you are substituting.<br /><br />
 ;<big>Thumbnails</big>
@@ Line 4: / Line 5: @@
 Since sharing of the database is not realistically possible, attempts at sharing only the Thumbnails folder will either fail completely, or result in some artwork items never being displayed, or you may experience artwork being displayed but with higher or lower than expected image quality or even image corruption (a result of different clients overwriting previously cached artwork, as not all clients cache artwork at the same resolutions, or even use the same image formats).<br/><br/>
 If you must use Path Substitution to relocate (rather than share) your Thumbnails folder, by all means do so but only for individual clients and their associated Thumbnails folder. Do <strong>not</strong> share a single Thumbnails folder between multiple clients, as the Texture Cache is simply not designed to support this and you will experience problems.}}
-<section begin="intro" />[[Path substitution]]s are settings in [[advancedsettings.xml#<pathsubstitution>|advancedsettings.xml]] to force XBMC to use different file paths. These are processed in order, and are useful for substituting an absolute path on a PC with a path suitable for XBMC to handle. Starting in XBMC v11 (Eden) path subs works for most file paths. Path subs work across local and network paths, across different network protocols, and can even be used with some of the [[special protocol]].<section end="intro" />
+<section begin="intro" />[[Path substitution]]s are settings in [[advancedsettings.xml#<pathsubstitution>|advancedsettings.xml]] to force Kodi to use different file paths. These are processed in order, and are useful for substituting an absolute path on a PC with a path suitable for Kodi to handle. Path subs work for most file and folder paths. Path subs work across local and network paths, across different network protocols, and can even be used with some of the [[special protocol]].<section end="intro" />
 == Examples ==
@@ Line 23: / Line 24: @@
 ;Example 2 - changing where thumbnails are stored
-{{note|This will slowdown thumbnail loading, but might be worth it for low-memory devices such as the [[ATV2]].}}
+{{note|This will slowdown thumbnail loading, but might be worth it for low-memory devices. See also '''[[HOW-TO:Reduce disk space usage]]'''.}}
 <syntaxhighlight lang="XML" enclose="div">
 <advancedsettings>
@@ Line 29: / Line 30: @@
    <substitute>
      <from>special://profile/Thumbnails/</from>
-     <to>PROTOCOL://YOUR_NETWORK_SHARE/xbmc/userdata/Thumbnails/</to>
+     <to>PROTOCOL://YOUR_NETWORK_SHARE/Kodi/userdata/Thumbnails/</to>
    </substitute>
   </pathsubstitution>
@@ Line 40: / Line 41: @@
 == See also ==
 * [[advancedsettings.xml#<pathsubstitution>]]
-* [[HOW-TO:Sync multiple libraries/Sync thumbails and fanart]]
+* [[MySQL/Sync other parts of Kodi]]
-* [[HOW-TO:Sync multiple libraries/Sync other parts of XBMC]]
 * [[Special protocol]]
-{{Gotham updated}}
+{{Isengard updated}}
 [[Category:Settings]]
 [[Category:Manual]]
 [[Category:Advanced topics]]

Path substitution: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 06:42, 3 May 2015

Examples

See also

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