Hello, I have 2 Zidoo X9s boxes and streaming on them using Plex for kodi. Using Kodi 17.6 and I am having no problem streaming all 1080p content but the playback is not exactly smooth. IS there a reason why? Is there a plex app for ZDMC 17.6? Can you guys help me get a smoother playback? All movies play fine and are watchable but looks like I am having maybe 20 fps. I have been trying the Plex app for Android and it was worse... The Plex server is on my PC. I am streaming using wifi. Anything I could do to get smoother playback? Thanks in advance.
What you are seeing is frame rate judder, the plex app for kodi/Zdmc uses the Kodi internal player.i have the same issue. You can sync refresh rate to display but then you will lose audio passthrough.I've set up plexkodiconnect useing direct paths and external player setting inside kodi/zdmc and now have silky smooth play back. Alternatively use SMB shares from your PC and set "use external player"in Kodi.
Ok, how do I do that? ANy tutorial? Just a few steps would help me. I need to enter some path but how do I find this info? Thanks a lot in advance!
https://github.com/croneter/PlexKodiConnect/wiki/Installation Install the add on in the zdmc version of Kodi, it has a setting " play media with external player". The regular version of Kodi does not have this setting. The installation of the add on is simple and straight forward. Setting up direct paths requires a lot of work on the server side. If you don't fully understand the process as described in the link below, I wouldn't recommend it and would advise to leave your plex server out of the mix and to use SMB shares instead. https://github.com/croneter/PlexKodiConnect/wiki/Option-2-Substitute-Paths-on-the-PMS
I would like to know.... my files are all located at the same place: F:/Movies F:/Series etc. I would like to know what to put for the following: Original Plex Movie path to replace? F:/Movies ? Replace Plex Movie with? smb://Movies ? They make it unclear on the website. The addon also asks for a Network Username and I have seen no explanation on this neither. Thanks a lot. I dont want to use upnp or SMB cause I prefer the management of plex and how it handles subtitles. I will keep on looking because I have taken the last few hours to try and find how to see SMB on my Zidoo. I have done all the home group thing and shared my files... I am using Windows 10. UPNP has always worked fine without a problem though. So I understand nothing of this will work if SMB is not working....
Yes SMB shares from your PC will have to be visible from your Zidoo box before any of this will work. http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/how-to-config-smba-on-win10.3362/
Ok I will do this if I cant find another way. It is annoying. Maybe programmers of the Zidoo firmware can do somewthing about this...?
Maybe consumers can finally stop using PLEX? Maybe consumers can finally start reading up on the difference between firmware/a programm/an app/a standard. Maybe schools should educate them to a level where they are interested in figuring stuff out, instead of reading step by step tutorials. Maybe. Not very likely though. Plex is despised by at least two thirds of the Kodi community. Its a commercial product, only really supported on plattforms they decide to release their app on. Not that you'd be likely to get that support. They forked Kodi, so it would be more appealing to iPhone users, then made the product commercial - leaving the Kodi community entirely. PlexKodiConnect is an addon that aims to integrate Plex back into the Kodi ecosystem, because customers just like you, for SOME reason, dont want to drop it - because apparently they like Plex' monthly fee exosystem And the advertising with "easy" in the tagline. Also Amazon gave them Top advertising space on every Fire TV plattform - when they wanted you not to talk about the fact, that they banned Kodi with an entirely made up set of reasons. If you find it hard to set up PlexKodiConnect - dont blame Kodi, dont blame Zidoo, dont blame the devs of PlexKodiConnect blame yourself for trying to realize it that way. ZDMC is another Kodi fork, that has nothng to doe with Plex and Plex initself is not a "standard" that Kodi supports. If you want it to - and someone wrote an addon, that you now dont find easy to set up with an external player - thats on you. ZDMC doesnt use the default Kodi player for normal movie playback, precisely so they can make features like "auto framerate switching" easier. The PlexKodiConnect Addon uses the default Kodi player, like any other addon. If you circumvent Zidoos way of trying to give you "smooth playback" (their own player), you'll have to try Kodis settings for auto framerate switching (setting the Zidoo to 24p - when needed), or use the sync to refresh rate setting in Kodi. Sync to refresh rate - depending on your TV - may not give you smooth mothion - or it might. Now you have another user mentioning to you - that with a certain method, you can make Plex provide direct video Links to a Kodi Addon - which can then hand it off to an external player, which might then be able to do auto framerate switching - and you want Zidoo to do that or you - because you dont find it easy... Here is easy for you. Stick to open standards. Share your Movies on the network via SMB, use ZDMC as intended. Drop Plex. "Who will write me a step by step, because - I want... Also please use the folderpaths I provided - those are F:/Movies and ..."
Ok.... sorry for offending you. I am getting there... I have tried the new Home Theater. It is a start but nowhere near as good as plex for organizing media. I will try to undertand how Home Theater transforms movie titles into something completely random and maybe I will be able to dismiss Plex. So... what do you guys do if you are not using Plex? It's not like there's anything like it that exists for Zidoo right now.
Not offended - just try to get to know how things are "connected" and who is responsible for what. Framerate auto Switching is a "thing" that some Android Boxes support with the default Kodi player - on the Zidoo you still have to switch in the settings, if you are not using their "player". Thats an issue for example - one that maybe they can work on. You not being able to integrate Plex into Kodi "easily" is a whole other "collection of issues". Asking for simple how tos all the time, is another issue (this is not an App ecosystem, where all you have to know is "what app to use" - and then never looking into its settings once... ). Most people out there should simply use file system based solutions - so without a central database for your content. Plex originally started as a Kodi fork, because the Kodi team refused to integrate "on the fly video recoding" - and therefore wasnt "compatible" to iPhones or iPads, that only accepted one flavor of mp4 h264 in many cases. Plex - explicitly forked Kodi and went for that market as a commercial space, they could exist in. Then every 30USD stick device eventually got porwerfull enough to become natively able to run a Kodi build, and the need for "transcoding" essentially vanished over night (not for iPad users, but you catch my point) - so Plex became "the most easy way to organize your content" - by, again - forking age old Kodi functionality, but offering it "in a central space" (because all those Plex users bought those fancy 1000 USD HTPCs or "professional NAS solutions", that supported the Plex encoding module). Now the "claim to fame" of Plex became "remember your resume state in any movie across devices", and organize your movies in one central Database (each Kodi installation usually has its own). So it serves the "most easy" demographic - but those are not the people the Kodi Community was built on. Plex still serves a purpose - its just, that blaming you not being able to integrating it into Kodi maybe is not the chinese manufacturers fault, that you are blaming for your issue. If you can put your "central database needs" aside, and can work with Kodi integrating the places your are storing your movies on simply as a network share, any device that can share storage over SMB will do. This can be a NAS, a Windows PC, a harddrive connected to a router, or even the Zidoo Box itself. Kodi can scan the content and create its own Database (with images and info snippets), but it usually organizes "per Kodi installation". "The new Home Cinema -" if its the Zidoo thing I couldnt care less about. Those are "easy to use" frontends for people that need "app functionality" to function. It never will become an open standard, and I'm not interested in "lock in features" of chinese manufacturers, because I want to be able to change vendors easily if someone comes up with something better.. If you are one of the souls that manly uses Plex - because they dont know how to integrate smb shares in Kodi - its really as simple as looking up kodi smb share on google. On reddit - people for quite some time f.e. recommended Plex for this reason, simply because it was advertised as an easy solution. Now you come to a different forum, asking - essentially - about cross compatibility. And there is some (but there should be none.. ) because Plex - really is not an (open) standard, its a commercial product.
n_p is right. you should forget about Plex and learn to user kodi/zdmc properly ( you can turn off in zdmc " use external player " and turn on auto refresh rate. you will have a working kodi that used default kodi player and has the refreshrate swith )
@HaoSs: I have to test this out. I was under the impression, that auto framerate switching only works "as intended" with Zidoos player, and I could have sworn that I'd seen micro judder, but I will test this again. Any particular version of ZDMC, needed for "auto framerate switching" working as intended? (16.x, 17 ?)
If you are set on running Plex I would definitely recommend another player. When I ran plex I did so on an Nvidia Shield. It ran flawlessly.
Plexkodiconnect works really well on the zidoo, just set your path up on the server as an smb path rather than a local path and it uses the external player properly. Its the best solution if you've got several boxes and want to share the library. It also makes it easy when you want to update firmware etc you dont have to rescan your entire library or backup etc
