QQ Media Player NUC Buyers Club - Discussion

[MrBurns]

Real quick if no one minds.
using Elton John self named as an example. 1st is CD, 2nd is CD Layer from SACD, 4th is Quad from SACD, 5th would be 5.1 and the last ATMOS.
Those would work properly with the way the KODI NUC are configured?
-> Elton John
-> Elton John (SACD)
-> Elton John (Quad)
-> Elton John (mch)
-> Elton John (ATMOS)

Best practice would be to tag them with the correct musicbrainz ID's. I've checked and there are original, sacd, sacd mch and atmos on there at the very least.

Tagging like that means you can have the same album in multiple versions and Kodi will not mix them up. Like in the screenshot below, there are three versions of Marillion's Misplaced Childhood. The top one is the original, the centre is the four disc boxset with the 2017 remastered album and the bottom is a double disc version with some extended and alternate mixes on disc 2.

 

[jarrod2750]

I know some of you close to me in the northeast got your NUC today. No comments, reviews, criticisms ?

Yes I received mine on Monday. Thank you! I didn’t get a chance to set it up yet but are looking forward to it. I’m very appreciative of the effort !

 

[GOS]

I know some of you close to me in the northeast got your NUC today. No comments, reviews, criticisms ?

It's going to be a while before I can do anything with mine. Between work, spending quality time with grandkids...well. You know. Next thing you know, it's Monday morning again and off I go.

 

[sobi]

I know some of you close to me in the northeast got your NUC today. No comments, reviews, criticisms ?

Mine arrived in perfect shape — thanks!

I’m in the same boat as GOS. Juggling too many demands on my time, but I have a feeling I’ll get around to it sooner than later!

 

[mrcond]

OK, so I've played around a little and WOW! This is fantastic. This will completely change how I listen to my surround collection. The video clarity and artist info database is a game-changer. Looks fantastic on my 77-in OLED TV, and the sound quality is as if I'm playing the blu-ray.

I'm having a little trouble connecting my Windows server library, but will probably go the external connected USB drive route, which is what I am sampling right now. (Guess I won't be getting much work done today!)

Brilliant. Much appreciation for all the hard work @HomerJAU and @LuvMyQuad have put into this. And anyone else that may have been involved behind the scenes.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

OK, so I've played around a little and WOW! This is fantastic. This will completely change how I listen to my surround collection. The video clarity and artist info database is a game-changer. Looks fantastic on my 77-in OLED TV, and the sound quality is as if I'm playing the blu-ray.

I'm having a little trouble connecting my Windows server library, but will probably go the external connected USB drive route, which is what I am sampling right now. (Guess I won't be getting much work done today!)

Brilliant. Much appreciation for all the hard work @HomerJAU and @LuvMyQuad have put into this. And anyone else that may have been involved behind the scenes.

Try this. Start playing a piece of music, something pretty well known. Press ok on the remote to bring up the player controls at the top of the screen. Go to the 4th icon from the right. It looks like a sheet of text with a music note on it. Instant lyrics. To get out of that, hit the back button on the remote. Its one of my favorite kodi things.

 

[skindzier]

@HomerJAU I've been playing with Kodi (21.2 and the 3/11 nightly build of 22) and MMH 9.0.0.0 Beta 7 to experiment with tagging prior to receiving my NUC. I've got several BDAs ripped to single mka files for each stream. For example, with Alan Parsons Project - Pyramid, I have an mka for Atmos and one for the DTS 5.1 stream I'd like to set those up so they come up under the main album name as different discs as you described in the locked Introduction thread:

Kodi’s UI will combine two or more folders (albums) into one in the UI but show them as two or more ‘discs’ by:
Tagging each of your CDs with same ‘Album’ tag (or MusicbrainzIDs) AND using a different ‘DiscSubtitle’ tag value

Since you now have each CD in its own folder, you can have a ‘discart.png’ in each folder, one for CD1 another for CD2.

In the Kodi UI when looking at an Album view you see only 1 listing for the two folders (remember from my intro: Kodi does not use the folder name or folders to group tracks into albums, it uses Tags). When you enter the album, normally you view a song/track view/list, but because you used the ‘DiscSubTitle’ tag, you see a ‘disc’ view instead.

The Disc view shows 1 listing for each unique DiscSubtitle tag you use for the same Album tag (or MusicBrainz AlbumID).

The DiscSubtitle value can be anything:
Simply: Disc 1 and Disc 2

Or values that describe the disc content:
Studio Mix and Live Mix

Or can even be used to show a single BDA disc with multiple mixes as multiple ‘discs’:
Example: DiscSubtitle values for 1 Steven Wilson BDA:
Stereo (original mix)
Stereo (SW mix)
5.1 mix
Atmos mix
Instrumental (Atmos)
Etc

Using the chapter editor in MMH, I'm tagging like this, with a different DiscSubTitle for the 5.1 - the tags are being saved in MMH, as they do come up if I get out & pull the file up again:

Unfortunately, in Kodi, they are not being separated into multiple discs - it is dumping all the tracks into one list under Pyramid. The split albums into individual discs slider is on in Kodi setup. Is this a Kodi/MMH tagging issue, or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks again for all your efforts!

 

[MrBurns]

Unfortunately, in Kodi, they are not being separated into multiple discs - it is dumping all the tracks into one list under Pyramid. The split albums into individual discs slider is on in Kodi setup. Is this a Kodi/MMH tagging issue, or am I doing something wrong?

No, you're working with a wrong premise unfortunately. Kodi primarily uses Musicbrainz tags to keep albums separate, however it can also do that by using slightly different album names and not using mbids at all.

Albums in Kodi are split into different "CD's" when the disc numbering dictates that (and the setting is enabled). So if you tag 10 files of an album as disc 1 and ten as disc 2 then it should show as one album with two individual discs in it.
Disc subtitles are mainly used for grouping discs together into "virtual discs" for easier display. For instance, Pink Floyd's A tree full of Secrets is 18 discs, but by naming disc 1 & 2 the same, disc 3 & 4 the same etc, Kodi will display 9 discs, each containing 2 actual discs. If two discs in an album/set have the same name, they will be combined in the UI. If they don't they will show as individual discs.

If the album name and artist name are exactly the same, and there are no mbid's for kodi to use, then yes, it'll put that together as one album. What you could probably do is use an album title of Pyramid-Atmos for one version. Something like that should work, although I would suggest always using musicbrainz ID's whenever possible. Ideally, you'd tag it with disc 7 from this https://musicbrainz.org/release/41fb3611-66cc-463e-8dce-aeaf1ffe7c2d

To be fair, I don't know how that will work with multiple MKA albums/discs but it should do. Its the same logic. It should then show the one album but opening it should show the two discs, the Atmos version and the 5.1 version.

 

[humprof]

Minutiae: I've renaming Atmos MKV files purchased from IAA & elsewhere in order to make them taggable (and playable as music files rather than video files). And I've run into a problem. Here's my process

• As per @HomerJAU's advice, I begin by renaming each file in Windows File Manager, replacing the .mkv extension with an .mka extension. Tedious, and I wish there were an easy way to just snap my fingers and do a presto-change-o, but...so far so good.
• Then I open the files in mp3tag to inspect them, add or change anything that needs adding or changing, find the album in MusicBrainz if possible, etc., etc. To my delight, Jonathan has already tagged the files quite nicely, and for the most part all I need to do is add MusicBrainz info. BUT:
• I'm running into a problem when it comes to album artwork. The files generally come from IAA with a 4000 x 4000 pixel album cover embedded in the file. MusicBrainz will ask me if I want to replace it (usually with a 1200 x 1200 pixel version), and I say "Yes." But that's still an embedded image, and when I play the album in Kodi, the cover art doesn't display.
• If I go to the trouble of searching Ben Dodson's iTunes Artwork Finder and downloading album artwork into the album folder as a jpg, then retagging and "attaching" that downloaded file as my cover art, Kodi will display it.

So my question is: is that my only option? Will Kodi only display attached artwork rather than embedded artwork?

 

[HomerJAU]

Kodi will display the artwork if it’s named folder.jpg or cover.jpg in same folder as the album file(s).

Priority is embedded then cover art file

 

[MrBurns]

So my question is: is that my only option? Will Kodi only display attached artwork rather than embedded artwork?

There is a setting to control this. However, once the album(s) are scanned in, you then need to scrape them to get any online art to work.

 

[steelydave]

As per @HomerJAU's advice, I begin by renaming each file in Windows File Manager, replacing the .mkv extension with an .mka extension. Tedious, and I wish there were an easy way to just snap my fingers and do a presto-change-o, but...so far so good.

There are lots of free utilities like Bulk Rename Utility that will automate doing this for you - i bet some clever clogs could probably even write a batch script to do it too.

• Then I open the files in mp3tag to inspect them, add or change anything that needs adding or changing, find the album in MusicBrainz if possible, etc., etc. To my delight, Jonathan has already tagged the files quite nicely, and for the most part all I need to do is add MusicBrainz info. BUT:
• I'm running into a problem when it comes to album artwork. The files generally come from IAA with a 4000 x 4000 pixel album cover embedded in the file. MusicBrainz will ask me if I want to replace it (usually with a 1200 x 1200 pixel version), and I say "Yes." But that's still an embedded image, and when I play the album in Kodi, the cover art doesn't display.
• If I go to the trouble of searching Ben Dodson's iTunes Artwork Finder and downloading album artwork into the album folder as a jpg, then retagging and "attaching" that downloaded file as my cover art, Kodi will display it.

For some formats I think kodi doesn't always support embedded artwork - I think for .dsf files this might be the case, so if you just put a 'folder.jpg' in the same folder as the files Kodi will display it. You can easily export embedded artwork from mp3tag by right clicking on the thumbnail and picking 'Extract cover' and saving the file as folder.jpg. The default save location should be the folder with the file you're extracting the artwork from, ie the right place.

 

[humprof]

There is a setting to control this. However, once the album(s) are scanned in, you then need to scrape them to get any online art to work.

View attachment 114762

There are lots of free utilities like Bulk Rename Utility that will automate doing this for you - i bet some clever clogs could probably even write a batch script to do it too.

For some formats I think kodi doesn't always support embedded artwork - I think for .dsf files this might be the case, so if you just put a 'folder.jpg' in the same folder as the files Kodi will display it. You can easily export embedded artwork from mp3tag by right clicking on the thumbnail and picking 'Extract cover' and saving the file as folder.jpg. The default save location should be the folder with the file you're extracting the artwork from, ie the right place.

Ah--thanks, both of you. (I knew y'all would be faster than Google!) Right-clicking and saving is easy-peasy!

 

[HomerJAU]

Using local folder.jpg is the way to get the cover art you want. The prefer online effects all your albums cover art.

 

[HomerJAU]

MMH 9 Beta 7 has an updated Chapter Editor with a new option to Save As MKA.

Input your MKV file, tag, save as MKA. Easy (if you have Windows)

 

[humprof]

Ah--thanks, both of you. (I knew y'all would be faster than Google!) Right-clicking and saving is easy-peasy!

More minutiae: after renaming to MKA and tagging half a dozen or so Atmos MKV albums so far, I've run into my first problem.

With one specific album (Arturo O'Farrill's Fandango at the Wall, FWIW) and no others, when I navigate (via "Files") to the album and select it, Kodi reads and displays all the tracks in the folder--but then when I select the first track and hit "play," all except the first two tracks disappear--and only the first one will actually play. There's nothing wrong with the files that I can tell: they play just fine in both VLC Player and Windows Movies & TV. (Although unlike Kodi, those programs aren't "fooled" by the MKA extension, and they read & play them as video files.) Like all the other albums that play perfectly, this one was downloaded from IAA.

Anyone have any ideas what could be going on here--why Kodi doesn't recognize and process these as playable files?

 

[HomerJAU]

Best practice would be to tag them with the correct musicbrainz ID's. I've checked and there are original, sacd, sacd mch and atmos on there at the very least.

Tagging like that means you can have the same album in multiple versions and Kodi will not mix them up. Like in the screenshot below, there are three versions of Marillion's Misplaced Childhood. The top one is the original, the centre is the four disc boxset with the 2017 remastered album and the bottom is a double disc version with some extended and alternate mixes on disc 2.

View attachment 114744

There is an update coming in Kodi v22 (next official version) that will allow users to identify the version of each album in album lists (e.g. codec: Atmos, DTS-HDMA, and with some further skin customisation: Quad, 5.1, SQ LP, BDA etc)

 

[HomerJAU]

More minutiae: after converting to MKA and tagging half a dozen or so Atmos MKV albums so far, I've run into my first problem.

With one specific album (Arturo O'Farrill's Fandango at the Wall, FWIW) and no others, when I navigate (via "Files") to the album and select it, Kodi reads and displays all the tracks in the folder--but then when I select the first track and hit "play," all except the first two tracks disappear--and only the first one will actually play. There's nothing wrong with the files that I can tell: they play just fine in both VLC Player and Windows Movies & TV. (Although unlike Kodi, those programs aren't "fooled" by the MKA extension, and they read & play them as video files.) Like all the other albums that play perfectly, this one was downloaded from IAA.

Anyone have any ideas what could be going on here--why Kodi doesn't recognize and process these as playable files?

What version of Kodi?

 

[humprof]

What version of Kodi?

I forget--20 point something.

 

[HomerJAU]

It needs to be 21.2 to get Matroska tags read by Kodi

Edited: Typo