How to store your kodi artwork in the same folder as your videos

The use of artwork will transform your mundane media player into a showpiece to be proud of, especially when teamed up with your favourite skin. Kodi will allow you to display Posters, Fanart, Album Covers, Actor and Artist images to name a few. Install the Picture Slideshow add-on, and you will have a constant display of video or music fanart to brighten your entertainment room.

If you prefer not to manually source and save artwork to your local media folders, then scraped artwork can be automatically downloaded and saved into your local folders by installing one of the following add-ons:

• Artwork Dump– for v19 and later
• Artwork Beef– for v18 and earlier

v19 Matrix introduced new artwork settings. These new Kodi settings replace the artwork settings in the new python range of scrapers. They also remove the need for the advancedsettings.xml artwork tags which were introduced in v18.
(Note: if the advancedsettings.xml tags are still available in the advancedsettings.xml file, then on first run of v19 these tags will be automatically loaded into the new settings system)

• Music artwork settings are located in Settings > Media > Music > Artwork
• Video artwork settings are located in Settings > Media > Videos > Artwork

The Kodi scrapers automatically download artwork with little input required by the user. These pages are for those users that want greater control over their artwork by saving artwork locally or creating their own.

Jason Fitzpatrick
Jason Fitzpatrick
Editor at Large

Jason Fitzpatrick is the Editor in Chief of LifeSavvy, How-To Geek’s sister site focused life hacks, tips, and tricks. He has over a decade of experience in publishing and has authored thousands of articles at Review Geek, How-To Geek, and Lifehacker. Jason served as Lifehacker’s Weekend Editor before he joined How-To Geek. Read more.

By default, Kodi does not store artwork and other metadata with your actual media, but doing so is highly beneficial. With a quick settings change, you can park your videos and their associated metadata in the same place.

Why Store Data Locally?

Kodi usually downloads and stores metadata with the Kodi installation itself—so thus if you have it installed on a media center PC in your living room, that is where the metadata is also located. There are two great reasons why you would want to move away from the default configuration and store your artwork and metadata with your actual media.

First, it speeds up both library rebuilding and the library experience in multi-media-center households. Crunching through the metadata and downloading all the artwork when you first set up Kodi is a pretty intensive operation that can take hours to grind through a large collection—so if you have multiple Kodi boxes, you waste a lot of time (and space). If you store your artwork and metadata with your media, then Kodi will pick up that metadata it scans. The process is not only radically faster but more consistent—the artwork you picked out the first time around is retained, and you don’t have to fiddle with changing movie posters or TV season art.

Second, it keeps all the metadata with the media, so if you switch media center software, archive your content, or share it with a friend, the artwork stays with the media instead of remaining locked up (and potentially lost) with the local Kodi installation.

How to Export Your Current Kodi Artwork Metadata

If you take a peek at your media before you begin the process, you’ll see that there is nothing in your media folders but the core media itself. In the screenshot below, for example, our Back to the Future folder has nothing but the video file itself. All the metadata for the movie is locked away in the Kodi database.

To change that, we need to force Kodi to export all the metadata for all our video files to the individual folders. Thankfully, this is trivially easy if you know where to look. To start the process, run Kodi and click on the Settings icon.

Within the Settings menu, select “Media Settings”.

Within the Media Settings menu, head to Library > Video Library > Export Library.

When prompted, select “Separate”—we want separate metadata files for every entry in the video library.

Confirm “Yes” to exporting thumbnails and fanart.

Next, Kodi will ask if you want to export actor thumbnails. In our tests, neither button had any effect—actor thumbs did not appear in our media folder. So for now, we recommend just choosing “No” (since chances are low that you’d want them cluttering up your media folder anyway).

When asked to “Overwrite old files”, you have a choice. If this is your first time exporting and you know you have no old metadata in the folders (or you wish to overwrite it all), then click “Yes”. If you want to export the metadata to folders that don’t already have local metadata (but you do not want to overwrite any existing metadata in that folder), click “No”. You’ll still get some metadata exported, but it won’t write over any older metadata you might have put there in the past.

Give it a moment to work, and once it’s complete, take a visit to one of your video folders. If we revisit the folder for Back to the Future again, we find that the movie poster and background fanart have been exported to the folder as well as a .NFO file which contains all the text metadata about the movie (which includes general data like actor names and summary, as well as specific data like how many times we’ve watch the movie).

There are only two minor caveats to keep in mind. First, there is no way to configure this process automatically, so if you make any serious changes to your library, then you need to manually run the process again to export your changes to the media directories.

Second, if want the secondary Kodi media centers in your home to pick up the changes you make, you’ll need to update their libraries. You can turn on auto updates by visiting Settings > Library > Video Library > Update library on startup, to make this a simple restart-the-computer affair. When the library update is triggered on the secondary machines, they will see the local metadata and use it.

That’s all there is to it! With a simple change, you can export all your metadata and store it safely with your videos.

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Jason Fitzpatrick
Jason Fitzpatrick is the Editor in Chief of LifeSavvy, How-To Geek’s sister site focused life hacks, tips, and tricks. He has over a decade of experience in publishing and has authored thousands of articles at Review Geek, How-To Geek, and Lifehacker. Jason served as Lifehacker’s Weekend Editor before he joined How-To Geek.
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Kodi maintains a texture cache on local device storage for all artwork displayed in the GUI, whether from an online source or the local file system. These textures are optimized and stored locally for faster loading.

When artwork is added to the library, Kodi initially only has a URL or path to the artwork. The artwork itself is only downloaded (if from an online source) and then cached when the image is displayed in the GUI or other interface such as the Chorus web interface.

All images that Kodi loads, with the exception of textures that are provided directly by the skin, are cached to the userdata/Thumbnails folder.

Note: It is not possible to disable the artwork cache and operate exclusively from locally saved artwork as described in the related artwork pages.

The artwork URLs associated with library items are stored in the art table inside the video or music databases. These store the original URL to the artwork (e.g. from local artwork files or from web sources such as or ). This means that central databases store where the art is obtained from, and multiple devices then just keep a local thumbnail cache as described below.

The caching procedure utilizes an optimized copy of the original image saved in .jpg or .png format and an SQL database that maintains the local cache.

The cache operates primarily on an “as and when needed” basis; i.e. textures are cached when they’re first requested for display in a skin or web interface. In some cases textures may be cached before they’re immediately needed, such as thumbnails generated from video files. In either case, the main caching procedure starts with an image URL. It caches as follows:

1. Kodi generates a hash (CRC) of the URL, like “6a643bff”.
2. The texture is optimized (see #Texture optimization) and cached to a device-local file with the given URL hash. It is cached as a PNG if transparency is required and JPG otherwise.
3. For local files, another hash of the image is generated based on size and modified date, which can be used to check if the original image has changed.
4. These details are stored in the SQL database Textures.db, along with information on when the image was cached.

When loading a texture for display in a skin or web interface, Kodi basically just has a URL to the image. Given a particular URL, it loads the texture as follows:

1. If the image is provided by the skin, skip to step 5.
2. If the URL is directly to a cached version of a texture in the cache, skip to step 5.
3. If the URL is for an image already cached in the thumbnail cache, swap the URL to the cached version and skip to step 5.
4. Cache the image as outlined in the section above.
5. Load the image. If the image is provided by the skin, skip steps 6 and 7.
6. The access time for this texture is saved in the texture database.
7. If the image is not from a web service (HTTP/S) and at least 24 hours have passed since it was last loaded, check the hash generated in step 3 of “The caching procedure” for changes to the image. If the hash has changed, cache the new image as outlined in the section above.

1. Images are limited to a maximum pixel dimension to fit in a 16:9 box, with a default configuration of 1920×1080 for images that are 16:9 (like fanart) and larger than this, and 1280×720 for all other images. This can be changed with advancedsettings.xml.
   • If you are experiencing slow loading images or lagging GUI navigation on low powered equipment and/or your Kodi device has minimal storage available, these defaults can be lowered to noticeably reduce the cost of artwork. For higher powered equipment these settings can be increased to maintain the original artwork size. (eg 3840×2160 fanart)
2. Images are re-encoded in a decoder-friendly way so that the image can be displayed as quickly as possible.

This optimized image is exported with Kodi’s Library Export feature, rather than the original full-quality image, so it is best to avoid exporting artwork if at all possible. [1]

The Texture Cache Maintenance utility can do this in a safer way, but this is the manual option. There is an image like /home/x/.kodi/addons/ . After changing that file, the old image is still visible in Kodi. To solve this we need to remove the actual thumbnail file from the filesystem and its reference in the DB:

This 6/6a643bff.png is the cached image under /home/x/.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails. So: you need to remove from your filesystem /home/x/.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails/6/6a43bff.png

Next time Kodi needs the image, it will recreate the thumbnail.

Note: The “Textures13.db” number/version can increase with later Kodi versions.

This last resort procedure is one sure way to repair any image caching problem: delete the Textures13.db database and the thumbnail directory. This procedure does not affect the entries in the Video and Music libraries, so Kodi will not find more images after, this is just a brute-force solution to a caching problem. It affects the artwork database only. Texture Cache Maintenance utility can do very targeted fixes of the texture cache, so consider it before doing this.

1. Be aware that this should be a last resort procedure. Deleting this database file and the thumbnail directory will remove all cache entries and links, requiring remote URLs to web services to be downloaded again.
2. As the URL link to the original artwork location is stored in the video or music databases, Kodi will use the existing URLs to rebuild the Texture database and thumbnail cache, rather than finding new images locally or from a scraper.
3. Using this procedure, you cannot change the scraping location for artwork. ie- If you originally scraped from online sources, you cannot expect that Kodi will now scrape from your newly added local artwork and vice-versa. It will retrieve artwork from the same source as it was before, so the result will be the same image. To bulk change artwork, refer to Importing-Scraping Artwork

You will need to perform the following for a clean start with respect to the artwork texture cache.

v18 Leia – Guide to setting up Extended Artwork and the Artist Information Folder

This setup is considered an advanced and experimental feature for power users. It is assumed you are familiar with the functions of Kodi and the advancedsettings.xml file.

Artist Information Folder – See Post#2
Extended Artwork – See Post#3
Extra Fanart – See Post#4

Artist Information Folder
For an explanation of the Artist Information Folder (referred to as AIF ), see the wiki page. Artist information folder (wiki)

Setup
Note: The Export options have changed in v18.2

To populate the Artist Information Folder with your Artist sub-folders refer to 3.4 Artist folders only in the Music Import Export wiki page (wiki)

Extended Artwork
In v17 and prior, Kodi only scraped the Basic Artwork. The use of other add-ons, such as CDArt was required to load Extended Artwork. In v18, Kodi can load both basic and extended artwork without other add-ons.

Basic Artwork consists of:

To use this feature, there are two requirements.

1. advancedsettings.xml
The following tags are required in the advancedsettings.xml file

2 Scraper Settings
The default Universal Artist Scraper and Universal Album Scraper have been updated to scrape extended artwork. These settings are disabled by default and need to be enabled in the scraper settings pages as shown.

Universal Artist Scraper

Universal Album Scraper

These settings take effect on new items added to the music library. Existing library entries will not have new artwork scraped.

Extra Fanart
Extra Fanart was traditionally saved in the extrafanart folder. Additional fanart images were saved to this folder for use as a slideshow by a compatible skin, usually by utilising the Skin Helper Service add-on or the Artist Slideshow add-on. The downside to this method is the skin needs to read the extra fanart directly from the extrafanart folder. This requires hard drives to wake causing delays in the GUI while waiting for the drives to become accessible. Filenames are not important as the skin slideshow simply displayed any image file in the folder.

v18 introduces caching of extra fanart, just like any other artwork in the library. This is the first step and must be considered experimental . The advantages are quicker loading times and fewer wakings of hard disks. It is more difficult for skinners to implement this method.

Only a few skins are currently supporting this method, but more skins will implement this in the future.

There are three requirements to using this method.

1. Compatible Skin
Check with the skinner if this method is used by the skin.

2. advancedsettings.xml
The following tags are required in the advancedsettings.xml file. These are the same tags as used in the Extended Artwork post above, but with the addition of the Extra Fanart.

3. Saving Extra Fanart
The extra fanart must be saved alongside the other artwork with the following requirements:

Example Artist folder in the Artist Information Folder with local artwork and nfo file.

Apart from a robust streaming tool for online resources, Kodi media player can also be a great library browser and player for your own movies and TV shows collection. On this page, you’ll learn how to add your local movie & TV show collection to Kodi and setup if for better viewing pleasure on various popular Kodi skins.

This guide is demonstrated on Windows PC, with the default skin Estuary on Kodi Leia 18.9. The library integration processes for other popular skins go with the same principle, and we recommend you to use the latest stable version of Kodi to avoid potential issues.

How to Properly Integrate Your Local Library with Kodi

By default, from home screen, the Movies and TV shows section of your Kodi have nothing but a message saying “Your library is currently empty”. Now we’ll add content to these two section and turn them into a navigable and eye-pleasing directory to your collection.

Your movie collection doesn’t have to include movie information files, the movie video will do just fine, Kodi will scrape for movie information from online movie databases. And to make sure the accurate and detailed scrape of the media information, you are advised to use the following method to populate your media collection.

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How to Properly Integrate Your Local Library with Kodi

1. Create one folder for each movie/TV show file, named after the title of the movie/TV show.

2. Create a large folder for storing all your movie folders, give it a name like “All Movies”. And create a folder for storing all TV shows folders also, to differentiate from movie folders.

2. There’s one more hierarchy in TV show folders structure. TV shows of diffrent seaons and folders should be put int isolated folders named after TVshowtitle + season number + episode number (no space), like The Good DoctorS01E01 .

3. Launch Kodi, from home screen, scroll down and click Video.

This step of the guide will enable you to complete the following actions:

1. Add Sources – Add the Source folder to Kodi
2. Set Content – Advise Kodi what type of media is in the Source
3. Scraper Settings – Adjust the scraper settings to your preferences, or change to a different scraper
4. Add to Library – Scrape the media into the library

Each section is a direct continuation of the previous section, and only separated for clarity.

UPnP cannot be used to create a library. It is recommended that you share your media using another protocol such as SMB

Step 1: Select VIDEOS in the home screen menu.
(Or select Enter files section if that button is visible)

Step 2: Select FILES

Step 3: Select ADD VIDEOS. .

Step 4: Select the BROWSE

Step 5: Browse to locate your Source folder. Enter the Source folder so you see your titles. Select OK

Step 6: Either use the default name or rename the Source. The name doesn’t matter to Kodi, but keep the names unique for ease of maintenance. Then select OK.

Step 7: The set content window will display. This is where the media type is set.
Select the option This directory contains.

Step 8: Select the type of media that is in the Source.

Step 9b
Choose information provider– used to change scraper if required
-Settings– adjust scraper settings to your requirements
Default TV show scraper settings are explained here

Movies are in separate folders that match the movie title

• If Enabled Kodi will use the folder name to scrape the movie

• Kodi will load NFO files from NFO files named movie.nfo, but will fallback to .nfo as required
• Kodi will load artwork files using the short format .jpg/png filenames, but will fallback to the longer –.jpg/png format as required.

• If Disabled Kodi will use the filename to scrape the movie

• NFO files must be named the long format .nfo filename.
• Artwork files must be named using the long format –.jpg/png filenames.

Scan Recursively

Used for deep folder structures such as when additional Genre or Movie Set folders are used. Will allow the video scanner to search deeper to find the playable file

Selected folder contains a single video

Available only when you have selected Change content from the Context Menu on a Movie folder, instead of the Source folder. Allows you to adjust scraper settings for a particular movie which is different to the rest of the Source.

Exclude path from library updates

Prevents the Source from being scanned when an Update Library is running. When Enabled it will speed up the Update Library process in large libraries if the Source no longer has content added to it.

Skip filename matching for external audio tracks

Selected folder contains a single TV show

Allows you to change the Content settings for a particular TV Show without affecting the entire Source. Disabled when a Source is selected. Becomes Enabled when a TV Show folder is selected.

Exclude path from library updates

Prevents the Source from being scanned when an Update Library is running. When Enabled it will speed up the Update Library process in large libraries if the Source no longer has content added to it.

Skip filename matching for external audio tracks

Additional scrapers are available. Before replacing the default scraper, ensure the scraper works for your version of Kodi and is suitable for your needs.

All Movie scrapers- Movie scraper add-ons All TV Show scrapers – TV scraper add-ons

Step 10: Press Yes to scrape the content to the library
If No is selected, it can be scanned later from the Context Menu of the Source

Once you press Yes, Kodi will scan your library and attempt to match each title in your library to the title at the site of the Information Provider. If a match is found, the metadata and artwork is downloaded and used for the library display. Depending upon the size of your library, this could take some time. A single movie could take approx 30 seconds, a library of 400 movies could take over an hour.

When the scraping process is complete, be sure to check the Event Log to view any titles that were not added to the library, which is normally due to incorrect naming. See. Scraping Problems

At this point, you should now have a fully functioning video library. Repeat the steps on this page to add the remainder of your media Sources.

Animated GIF is fully supported on KODI JARVIS& MQ6 .

Please share found posted here.

I will be uploading a few of them myself

DEDICATED THREAD FOR ANIMATED MOVIE POSTER GIF.

Tutorial on how to create animated gif

Once again a little tutorial, pretty sure the last:

You can display animated stuff (poster/fanart) in every skin without any skin support with just replacing the artwork the manual way, but only one by one.
Go to your movie entry (it’ working for all either, sets, tvshows,seasons,episodes. )
-> open dialogvideoinfo by open context menu with a long push
-> informations (this is the dialogvideoinfo)
-> choose graphics
-> poster or fanart (or whatever artwork type)
-> enter
-> search.
-> and then search and choose the art you have storaged it on your drive.
You can to this with every artwork type, not only poster or fanart! But in this solution you are only replacing the former standard artwork type with your GIF artwork.
___

But the following are is a real implementation solution with skin support needed,
where the animatedposter/animatedfanart are standalone working with not replacing the standard artwork:

There are two ways that also can used combined, but first of all your skin have to support animated poster/fanart at all.
Whether your skin supports this you have to inform yourself in the Skin related forum thread, and also get support there.
Unfortunately, if your skin does not support it, you were unlucky, and everything that I write following has no relevance.

1st way – automatic webservice download – standard:

If your Skin support it, the skin is running SkinHelperService (a Helper Script Addon) as dependency.
SkinHelperService is a own addon but consists also of several “sub-addons” aka “sub-moduls”. Do not worry, it’s all in one install and everything is automatically installed with the skin.
The only module that interests us here is the “script.module.metadatautils” wich does the job.
In windows go to the path -> C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\addon_data\script.module.metadatautils\animatedgifs
If you use a other OS you have to find out the path yourself.
Then if you are connected to web and browse your movie library, then this folder would now filled with autodownload from webservice with tons of GIF files you should also see all of them in kodi (if activated, most with a toggle button)

There is also a context menu button “SELECT ANIMATED ART” where you see if more animated backdrops are available on the selected movie and can change them, or also unset the animated art.
For some reason this isn’t functional on my side anymore, maybe cause i think it’s of a bad side effect when using the second way combined.

Unfortunately, you can not use the second way without the first one running automatically in background. Either only the first, or the first and the second, but not the second alone.
Unfortunately, i have not yet found a way to disable the automatic webservice download function without disable the function/displaying of animated stuff.

Pros:
Nothing to care about more.
Cons:
The webservice DB isn’t updated since long time ago. Most new and remastered stuff the last 2-3 years isn’t there.
No control on wich movies animatedposter/animatedfanart are auto downloaded, it is loading all! (Unfortunately you also cannot prevent this with second way)
And also no control wich backdrop will be downloaded if more than 1 available to choose – in often cases the ugly ones. (This you can override with the second way)

2nd way – use as artwork type – advanced:

Look 2.3: Artwork_types (wiki)
Copy/paste, and name animated files in your movie folders all the manual way:
(I didn’t know if TinyMediaManager or other MediaManager already implemented a autodownload/naming function via KyraDB API, i know nothing about it)
If you are already using local artwork, just place the .gif files the same way like your other artwork types are placed.
For example when your movies are in folders and your clearlogo is simple called clearlogo.png, then use for poster animatedposter.gif and for fanart animatedfanart.gif. -> without moviefilename prefix.
If your movies are in folders and your clearlogo is called Moviefilename-clealogo.png, then use for poster Moviefilename-animatedposter.gif and for fanart Moviefilename-animatedfanart.gif. -> with moviefilename prefix.
If in folders, both is supported and possible, but choose and make all the same, not a convention mixup.
(If your movies are not in folders, all stuff is in same directory you are forced to use the -> with moviename prefix)
Process the items in your library to make in visible in kodi:
For Kodi18 there are two possible ways: either modify the advancedsettings.xml look here 337089 (thread), or use ArtworkBeef.
For Kod17 there is only the ArtworkBeef way
ArtworkBeef: 258886 (thread)
Install the rmrector Repo and from that install ArtworkBeef (you get addon updates), or install ArtworkBeef directly from zip (have to update manual)
Go to Addons -> ArtworkBeef -> (push long) -> Settings -> Movies -> ADDITIONAL ARTTYPES FOR MOVIES (COMMA SEPERATED) -> type in ANIMATEDPOSTER, ANIMATEDFANART (or only ANIMATEDPOSTER if only want them under your manual control) -> OK.
Then go directly into the Addon functions (not the settings) -> ArtworkBeef -> (push short) -> add missing art for. -> all videos (new, old and all between) -> now all stuff get processed into kodi libary. (This will maybe take some minutes)
You can repeat that again and again when you add new stuff manual, if you want to add single items one by one without a whole process you can also do that by:
Go to the movie -> Press long to Context Menu -> Manage. -> AB: ADD MISSING ARTWORK

When you want to use also animated stuff for Movie Sets, you have to do the same steps: placing/naming files same as your other Collection artwork, and in ArtwworkBeef -> ADDITIONAL ARTTYPES FOR MOVIE SETS (COMMA SEPERATED)
(I really don’t know if it’s coded in every skin supporting animated stuff also does the job for Movie Sets, but it’s working fine on Aeon MQ Skins)

Pros:
Manual control of your animated stuff you want.
Overrides the random ones from way 1.
Storaged for future nearby movie, no loss.
Cons:
Little download/paste/copy renaming work (until Media Managers or Kodi Addons will implement automation of the @rschiks KyraDB API)
May the function of the context menu button “SELECT ANIMATED ART” get broken.

->DONE
___
Note:
Although when a skin is supported it, it’s on some skins working better and on some less. For example on my skin animatedposter works perfect, but animatedfanart is buggy/glitchy, not really functional.
When animated stuff activated, don’t use wall views or views where much poster visible on same time, also do not scroll too fast, it’s too much for Kodi it will crash no matter how strong your machine is.

Now all mysteries should be clarified, the rest you have to find out for yourself.

Thanks to @chrissix for the guide

Tutorial on making animated GIF
Thanks to @mouflo

Over the years, Kodi (formerly XBMC) has become one of the most popular media players. It provides all the essential functionality needed for any home theater setup while remaining open source and free. However, Kodi is not limited to just your living room. With the Kodi app for iOS or Android, you get a streaming media player that can act as a video player, music player, picture gallery, and so much more.

One of the key aspects of Kodi is its ability to play locally-stored files. With Kodi, you can add folders that contain your favorite videos (or other media content) to play through its slick interface. Once added, using add-ons such as Plex, you can stream your media to other devices on your home network like your Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, iPad, and many of the other devices you use to consume media.

Step 1: Add Files to Kodi

The process to add media is pretty straightforward. In this example, we will be using videos, but it’s the same process for both music and pictures.

Open either Kodi for Android or Kodi for iPhone (follow the instructions in this link to sideload Kodi), then scroll through the menu until you find the type of file you wish to add. If you are adding a video, use the Video menu instead of Movies. By adding your video to the Video menu, you will not only keep your files organized, but the Movies menu has additional functionality geared toward movies such as collecting and displaying information found from IMDB.

When you select theVideo menu, you are greeted with three options. To add your content, select “Files,” then choose “Add videos,” which will bring you to a new screen entitled “Add video source.” This screen will allow you to navigate to the folder on your phone which contains the videos you want to add to Kodi. By adding a folder, any files of that type (in this case, videos) that you add to the folder in the future will also be accessible through Kodi.

So next, select the “Browse” button, which will reveal the possible file locations that Kodi can access. For your locally stored files, you will select “External storage.” Here you will find a list of folders created by Android.

If you want to add videos that you have taken with your camera, select DCIM folder. Or, if you want to add videos that you downloaded from the browser, select the Download folder. In either scenario, once you select the folder, it will appear as if the folder is empty. Kodi is only displaying folder, so the lack of any listing means that only files are within this folder. Select “OK” to return to the “Add video source” screen with its field populated. If you want, you can change the name of the folder as it is known to Kodi in the field above “OK” and “Cancel.” If not, select “OK” near the bottom.

Another screen that is known as “Set content” will emerge — ignore it and select “OK.”

Step 2: Browse Your Media Library in Kodi

To watch your content, select the folder you added to Kodi which will pop up above the “Add videos” button. Once selected, you see all the video files located in that folder. Choose the file you wish you play and Kodi will immediately begin playback for you.

With Kodi, playing your content is simple. And with Kodi’s versatility, it can be one stop shop for all your media. Now that you know how to add media, what content have you added to Kodi? Let us know in the comment section below.

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The first thing to do is add your media to your library. Kodi supports a wide range of containers and formats, so you should have no problem unless you’ve gone for a particularly obscure format.

Check the box (see Add Content to your Library, below) for advice on naming and organising your media so that allows Kodi to recognise it and display extra information about TV shows and movies. This uses the help of special ‘scrapers’: tools that extract metadata from online databases such as movie titles, TV episode synopses and artwork to pair them with your media files for identification.

Where should you store this local content for Kodi to get at it? If your micro SD card is large enough – we’d suggest 64GB or greater – then you can store a fair amount of video and music on there. You can transfer files across the local network – open File Manager and opt to browse your network.

Your Kodi/OpenELEC device should show up – double-click the file sharing entry and you’ll see folders for Music, Pictures, TV Shows and Videos – simply copy your files here to add them to your library. Once done, browse to Video or Music and the media files should already be present and accounted for, although at this point in time they’ve not been assigned a scraper to help you identify them yet.

It can be slow copying files across in the network – you can transfer files directly to the card when it’s mounted in a card reader on your PC, but you’ll need to access File Manager as root to do so – in Ubuntu, eg, typing $ gksudo nautilus and hitting Enter will give you the access you need.

A simpler option – if you have a spare USB port on your Raspberry Pi – is to store your media on an external thumb or hard drive. Just plug the drive into your Raspberry Pi, browse to Videos or Music and choose the ‘Add…’ option. Click ‘Browse’ and select the top-level folder containing the type of media you’re adding – TV, movies or music.

If you’ve plugged in a USB device, you’ll find it under root/media, while NAS drives are typically found under ‘Windows Network (SMB)’. Once selected, click ‘OK’. The Set Content dialogue box will pop up – use the up and down arrow buttons to select the type of media you’re cataloguing and verify the selected scraper is the one you want to use.

Check the content scanning options – the defaults should be fine for most people – and click ‘Settings’ to review advanced options (you may want to switch certification country to the UK for movies, eg). Click ‘OK’ twice and choose ‘Yes’ when prompted to update the library.

Once done, you’ll find a new entry – Library – has been added to the media menu on the main screen. This gives you access to your content with filters such as genres, title or year to help navigate larger collections. Now repeat for the other types of media you have.

If you want to include multiple folder locations within single libraries, you’ll need to browse to the Files view, then right-click the library name (or select it and press c on the keyboard) to bring up a context menu. Select ‘Edit Source’ to add more locations, and ‘Change Content’ to change the media type and scraper if necessary.

The smartest thing to do with any digital media library is host it on a media server, which allows you to easily access it from other devices on your network and – in some cases – over the wider internet. Kodi has UPnP media server capabilities that work brilliantly with other instances of Kodi on your network as well as making your media accessible from other compatible clients.

Media servers can be quite demanding, so we don’t recommend using a Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi Model B+. Instead, set it up on your most powerful PC (or Raspberry Pi 2 or Raspberry Pi 3) and use OpenELEC to connect to it as a client.

As media servers go, Kodi’s is rather basic. If you want an attractive, flexible server then maybe check out Emby.

Pair this with the Emby for Kodi add-on and you can access your Emby-hosted media without having to add it to your Kodi library. A similar add-on exists for users of Plex Media Server too, PleXBMC, providing you with an attractive front-end.

If you want access to other UPnP servers via Kodi without any bells and whistles, then browse to System > Settings > Services > UpnP/DLNA and select ‘Allow remote control via UPnP’. You can also set up Kodi as a media server from here: select ‘Share my libraries’ and it should be visible to any UPnP client on your network, although you may have to reboot.

Performance is obviously going to be an issue on lower-powered devices, such as the Raspberry Pi, and while the Raspberry Pi 2 is pretty responsive out of the box, you may find the Raspberry Pi Zero struggles at times. It pays, therefore, to try and optimise your settings to give your Raspberry Pi as much resources as it needs to run smoothly.

Start by disabling unneeded services – look under both System > OpenELEC > Services (Samba isn’t needed if you’re not sharing files to and from Kodi, eg) and System > Settings > Services (AirPlay isn’t usually required).

Incidentally, while you’re in System > Settings, click ‘Settings level: Standard’ to select first Advanced > Expert to reveal more settings.

One bottleneck for Raspberry Pi devices is dealing with large libraries – give it a helping hand by first going to Settings > Music > File lists and disabling tag reading. Also go into Settings > Video > Library and disable ‘Download actor thumbnails’.

You can also disable ‘Extract thumbnails and video information’ under File Lists, but you’ll lose a lot of eye candy and the thumbnail caching for future use.

The default Confluence skin is pretty nippy, although if you suffer from stutter when browsing the home screen, consider disabling the showing of recently added videos and albums: select Settings > Appearance, then click Settings in the right-hand pane under Skin. Switch to ‘Home Window Options’ and de-select both ‘Show recently added…’ options.

Speaking of Confluence, if you don’t like the default skin, then try Amber – it’s beautiful to look at, but easy on system resources. You do lose access to the OpenELEC settings when it’s running, but you can always switch back to Confluence temporarily or use SSH for tweaks, if necessary.

Add content to your library

Kodi works best with your locally stored digital media, but for it to recognise your TV shows from your music collection you need to name your media correctly and organise them into the right folders too.

Kodi supports the same naming convention as its rival services Embyand Plex – use the following table to help you: