Set up Direct Paths

Prerequisit: Kodi needs to be able to access your media!

Your movies and TV shows need to be directly accessible to Kodi - and not PKC - in order to use Direct Paths. This is a guide on how to accomplish just that.

1. Setup your media server shares

Setup directories shared over SMB (typically, but any network protocol supported by Kodi should work, like NFS) on the server where your media lies (this might not be where your Plex Media Server is):

• See here for Windows,
• here for Mac
  • Beware that you cannot use characters like \:*?"<>| in path or file names when SMB is used
• and here for Linux
  • Beware that you cannot use characters like \:*?"<>| in path or file names when SMB is used

2. Tell Kodi how to access the shares

Your path(s) additionally needs to be explicitly listed in sources.xml as well as its username and password in passwords.xml! PKC automatically does this for you: navigate to the PKC settings Sync options section, then Set network credentials for Direct Paths and direct play

• Make sure that you have set a password. Not setting a password or leaving it "empty" is known to cause issues

• Example xml entry for server in sources.xml (automatically done by PKC). See the Kodi wiki for more info

<sources>
    <files>
        <default pathversion="1"></default>
        <source>
            <name>PKC server</name>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://server/</path>
            <allowsharing>false</allowsharing>
        </source>
    </files>
</sources>

• Example xml entry for server in passwords.xml. Be aware that both username and password are URL-escaped! (thus a space becomes %20)

<passwords>
    <path>
        <from pathversion="1">smb://server/</from>
        <to pathversion="1">smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@server/</to>
    </path>
</passwords>

3. Check whether media is accessible

Check that your media is indeed accessible to Kodi:

• In Kodi, start adding a Video source following this guide from step 1 to 6 only - NOT to the end!
• If you manage to navigate to your media, it is indeed accessible to Kodi
• Hit Cancel in step 6

If step number 3 does not work for you, then Direct Paths won't work for you!

4. Setting up Plex and PKC

If you managed to access your media on the LAN with Kodi, you now have two possible ways to setup direct paths:

• Option 1: let PKC substitute paths (works 90% of the time)
• Option 2: substitute paths on the PMS (works 100% of the time)