Video files wrongly categorized

[jbinkley60]

I just tried the Kodi Nexes 20 release as well as SMB connection, which altogether give me a much better experience. Although I still have some minor stuttering issues, I am done with fixing them. I guess I'll have to purchase and setup an NAS to have excellent playback experience. Thanks for you help all these days, Jeff. Really appreciate it

Happy to help and glad you are working. I will caution you though that the SMB approach has limitations and you may find yourself exchanging one issue for others down the road, depending upon your longer term journey. I'd suggest reading the Why Mezzmo section of the Mezzmo Kodi addon Wiki page and the features. While Kodi is a wonderful streaming client with lots of flexibility, I've seen many Kodi users end up spending a lot of time managing their libraries, addons and similar which ultimately detracts from the solution and can lead to frustration. The is especially true when you move beyond a single client, want to look at non-Kodi clients accessing your media library including web clients.

The goal with the Mezzmo Kodi addon is an easy button approach to get all of the features listed. With native Kodi and SMB you may end up somewhere unexpected with a level of complexity you didn't envision. Regardless of your journey I am happy to help.


Thanks,

Jeff

[PeppaTom]

Thanks again for you help. I did a little more dectivive work this morning, and I think I have located the cause of the issue : FFMPEG. I believe FFMPEG can't properly recognize my problematic files so it returns false or none info to the software(such as Kodi and Mezzmo). So the softwares don't know how to handle the video files properly which causes some issues.

[jbinkley60]

Thanks again for you help. I did a little more dectivive work this morning, and I think I have located the cause of the issue : FFMPEG. I believe FFMPEG can't properly recognize my problematic files so it returns false or none info to the software(such as Kodi and Mezzmo). So the softwares don't know how to handle the video files properly which causes some issues.

I saw your post with the resolution on the Kodi forums. Great work. This is not surprising as FFPMEG is an open source project and often can't keep up with the codecs and various combinations of codecs in use. Kodi and Mezzmo are a bit behind the latest versions of FFMPEG but that is actually good from a stability perspective. As Peter points out, this is the same reason the file info you posted earlier was miscategorized. One of the things I do is try to standardize on a few combinations of audio / video codecs and containers. I reencode stuff not in my desired formats into combinations which I know are stable. I may sacrifice a slight amount of quality in some instances but I've never noticed it and it keeps the family happy.

The comments in the GitHub thread you opened around DLNA not being suitable and SMB is better, is a pretty standard Kodi response based upon some very old thinking and is very incorrect. I've been doing IT networking for some of the largest networks on the planet for 40 years and can assure you SMB was never designed nor is suited to real time streaming at scale. It is a file sharing block based (i.e. chunks of data) protocol that is not optimized for low jitter usage, which streaming needs. Also, with SMB approaches every client reads the raw data from the file share meaning more clients grabbing random chunks of data for playback and reduces overall security by allowing every client direct access. The Mezzmo server approach improves that by Mezzmo being the only thing which accesses your library directly (improving security) and leverages HTTP with optimized buffering (to maximize streaming quality). Look through the Kodi forum threads on how many issues are there with regards to SMB connectivity issues, playback quality issues and much more. These are the same reasons the streaming services don't have you using SMB to connect to them.

The other challenge with the SMB approach is when you run multiple clients. Non-Kodi clients aren't supported, web access is somewhat basic and sharing across Kodi clients requires lots of maintenance, complex sharing configurations and much more. Mezzmo and the Mezzmo Kodi addon eliminate most of that complexity and gives you time back to enjoy watching your library. So many problems and questions reported in the Kodi forums around library management are solved problems with Mezzmo. A perfect example is the Mezzmo Selective Sync feature released yesterday. I am not aware of this being easily achievable with any other DLNA/UPnP based solution and Kodi. I see Kodi users continually wanting centralized control of managing content replication to their Kodi clients and Kodi profiles. This is the only simple solution to the problem that I am aware of. The bottom line is that Kodi is a great media client but an average media server.

Sorry for the sales pitch / rant. I understand their reasoning for the SMB push but it can leave users with an overall less optimal experience long term.


Thanks,

Jeff