Hello Everyone,
I’ve just said goodbye to my seventh Zidoo in three years, they all had issues or just died like the last three did in the last twelve months.
I stuck with them for so long only for one reason and that was we had grown used to them.
The reason I started this journey in the first place is that we have a daughter with learning difficulties and poor motor skills who couldn’t deal with physical discs but can handle a remote control.
It opened up her world to our disc collection and gave her a level of independence she absolutely loves.
I only learned about OSMC last week while looking for an alternative to the Zidoo and the Vero V at least on paper seems like the frontrunner.
I am nowhere near as skilled or computer literate as the people on here but I am driven to learn no matter the complexity as long as I can give my daughter back her autonomy when it comes to being able to watch her favourite films and shows as well as the rest of my family who have come to absolutely love having our own private streaming alternative.
So now I have gotten my introductory ramble out of the way I do have a couple of questions for the forum.
1: Is my perception of this product as a more stable alternative to the Zidoo correct?
2: Living in mainland Europe am I better off ordering direct from the UK or one of the European sellers, will I receive the same back up service from resellers and OSMC if issues arise?
Thanks in advance for any advice, it will be extremely appreciated.
Martin.
2 Likes
Although there is a bit of setup on the front end it shouldn’t be anything that requires any kind of advanced computer skill for a basic setup. I would suggest to take a browse through Kodi’s wiki…
https://kodi.wiki/view/Quick_start_guide
which will inform you of what is involved in getting it going. If you want to go one step further you can install Kodi on your PC and work out everything there before committing yourself. If you find it suits your purpose then the Vero is a great choice to getting that on your TV.
Hello.
Thank you for your reply.
I have put Kodi on my laptop and started to familiarise myself with it, obviously it is very different from what I am now used to coming from the Zidoo with its own file naming and organising schemes.
My first task is as far as I can see to rename and reorganize all the files on my Nas so they can be recognized by Kodi, it is quite daunting as I have over 10,000 MKV files stored on it, including individual TV episodes.
My next task is learning the naming schemes for different versions of the same movie (Directors, extended etc…) and how to deal with trailers, apparently Kodi only supports one trailer per film but more can be stored as extras?
There is also the question of connecting to the Nas, with Zidoo I just used Samba but apparently to avoid issues with large files I need to make the OSMC think the Nas is directly attatched storage?
As you can see I really am starting from scratch again after three years of getting used to a completely different way of doing things.
Martin.
I can’t help you with naming ‘000s of files, but if you can outline how the Zidoos do it maybe we can suggest some shortcuts.
You can use Kodi’s built-in Samba client, (easy enough to set up on your PC,) but we recommend mounting the NAS in Vero’s filesystem for best performance. See here.
Hi,
So on Zidoo for example a film file with multiple versions would be structured like this…
Film file would be Superman (1978) and then inside the file it would be…
Superman (1978).(1#Theatrical Cut).mkv
Superman (1978).(2#Special Edition).mkv
Superman (1978).(3#Extended TV Cut).mkv
Superman (1978).trailer.1.mkv
Superman (1978).trailer.2.mkv
I don’t mind putting in the time and doing them manually it’s just making sure I get the file naming correct so the new machine recognizes everything properly.
Martin.
So like this…
Superman (1978) Theatrical Cut.mkv
Superman (1978) Special Edition.mkv
Superman (1978) Extended TV Cut.mkv
Superman (1978) Theatrical Cut - Trailer.mkv
My understanding is that a Trailer has to be connected to one of the versions, correct?
And then any further trailers would need to be stored as extras in a folder named extras within the same folder as the movie mkv’s? Although i’m not seeing how to name and number those extra trailers within the folder on the Kodi Wiki.
I would suggest to save a bit of your sanity and consider using something like Bulk Rename Utility to handle as much of the repetitive renaming as it is capable of. It is able to make lite work of things that are find and replace type tasks.
Typically I’d suggest to someone wanting to organize a decent sized media library to consider letting a media manager like Tiny Media Manager or TV Rename deal with renaming and reorganizing for you but since you are using versions doing this will cause more headaches than they solve as I’m not aware of any that currently are able to handle these versions and extras that your working with.
As for the concerns with the network protocol I wouldn’t worry about that at this point. Although there are some who have had issues with regular Kodi networking, and using other protocols and/or system mounts are a fix, this is actually a relatively uncommon problem.
A bit too late regarding my sanity I’m afraid, that ship sailed long ago.
To be honest I’m pretty much done going through all the TV show MKV’s which accounted for about 7000 of them, now it’s only around 1200 movie MKV’s to go through and as I will probably be waiting a couple of weeks for the machine to arrive it gives me time.
Great news regarding the network though, I did find the idea of having to deal with that first a little daunting. If needed it will get done but it would be nice to be able to kick it down the road for a bit longer.
It’s really the naming conventions I’m trying to make sure I get right upfront to save further headaches.
Martin.
Martin, just connect your storage, go into videos, files, then select your drive, all files are shown, no need for complication.
Thanks for the reply, I am absolutely going to start off the way you suggest and find my way as I go.
Martin.
That user is suggesting you skip making a library entirely which means you don’t get your poster wall, extended metadata, consolidated movie versions, and a bunch of other features. That isn’t the similar to Zidoo experience you were looking for. You are already on the right track naming files for accurate library scraping. You can work out a well managed library on the PC as mentioned, and then tell Kodi to export library as separate files. This will save all your metadata to files next to your videos. Once you have that, when you are ready to setup your Vero you just need to add your source and when it scrapes it will pick up everything as you had it set on Kodi on your PC.
Thanks for the clarification.
Martin.