Video management

Topics related to video library management

Adding videos to the library

To use your video files with "metadata" like summaries, cast info, DVD covers, thumbnails, and more, you need to add those video files to the video library by following these steps:

1. Naming files

• Movies

• TV shows

• Music videos

2. Adding media sources
3. Setting content and scanning

• Incorrect and missing content
• Home videos/custom videos
• Updating or removing videos
• Alternative and video guides

• Media sources -

Linking movies to TV shows

• Movie sets - A Movie Set is a collection of related films that are part of the same fictional universe. The scraper sites include artwork and metadata for Movie Sets which is scraped by Kodi and creates the Movie Set in your library. Movie sets are versatile and can be easily edited to suit your own needs.

• Video library tags - Video library tags, aka Tags or Keywords, can be used to further sort and organise your library into meaningful lists. Sites such as IMDB and TheMovieDB use Keywords to describe themes, plot details or character types to group and easily locate similar titles. They are generally different to the genre.

• File stacking -

• Media stubs -
• If you have a collection of DVD's and Bluray disks but do not want to rip them to a hard drive, then a Media Stub File allows you to add the collection of disks to the Kodi Video Library.
• It is a simple text based file that is added to your Source in exactly the same way as any other Movie or TV Show, which is then scanned or scraped into the library.

• Internet streams - Various internet video and audio streams can be played back in Kodi as if they were locally stored on your media center by using STRM files. As long as the format and streaming-method (network-protocol) is supported by Kodi, stream can be added. These are basic text files that look like <name>.strm and contain a URL to the internet stream. STRM files can also be added to the video library and can have cover art, summaries, etc.

Some internet sites may have an add-on available that can also access these media streams, rather than having to manually create STRM files. See Add-ons for more information on how to find and install add-ons.

• Import-export library - Kodi has the option to Export and Import the library databases. These options may be used for a number of reasons including the following more popular ones:
• Perform database backup and recovery
• Reorganization of data or eliminate database fragmentation (export, clean/remove database, re-import)
• Move data between Kodi databases on different platforms (eg Widows to Linux)

• NFO files - NFO files are used to populate the music and video library using locally stored information. They are helpful if data for your particular title does not exist, such as for home movies and sporting events. A Parsing and Combination NFO file can be used to control the search behaviour of scrapers when problematic and ambiguous titles prevent your preferred title from being scraped.

More

• Locking video sources / Parental controls

• Video library settings