PKC settings

Below is a description of each setting for the PlexKodiConnect (PKC) add-on. Each Kodi profile will have their own set of settings.

• Connection
• plex.tv
• Sync Options
• Customize Paths
• Playback
• Plex Companion
• Appearance Tweaks
• Advanced

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Connection

• Choose Plex Server from a list: Searches the local LAN and plex.tv (if you're logged in) for Plex servers and asks you to connect to one.
  • If you pick the same PMS that you were connected to, a really quick incremential sync takes place (even if e.g. the IP changed)
  • If you connect to another PMS, your Kodi database gets purged and a complete resync is triggered
  • Using this option, it is unnecessary to manually specify IP and port of your PMS
• Server Address (IP): IP or URL to your Plex server. It works for local or remote servers.
• Port Number: Port to your Plex server - by default, it is 32400, unless you manually changed it.
• I own this Plex Media Server: toggle this to True if the PMS is yours, False if the PMS is your friend's
  • This setting gets populated automatically, except if you entered your PMS' IP manually
  • This setting is important to choose the correct background sync technique. Try changing it if the background sync does not seem to work or if you get signed out of your PMS repeately (unauthorized for PMS)
• Enable HTTPS: Enable to use secure SSL connections. PKC automatically prefers SSL over unencrypted.
• ​Verify Host SSL Certificate: This is the same as when you access via browser (bypass the SSL warning). This should be left disabled if you are using a self-signed certificate or connecting to a local PMS.
• Client SSL certificate: Point to your SSL client certificate's path. With a "normal" Plex SSL setup, this is not required.
• Reset login attempts: This option is to retry authenticating yourself in PKC. If you fail to enter the correct password twice, you can use this option to try again or simply restart Kodi.
• Enter network credentials: This will take you through the process of setting up your Samba(SMB) access credentials for your network. Samba is the protocol used by Windows file sharing.
• Reset PMS and plex.tv connections to re-login: Resets all connection infos and starts up connecting as if you had just freshly installed PKC on Kodi.

plex.tv

• Automatically log into plex.tv on startup: If you disable this, PKC will not bug you to log into plex.tv every single time you startup Kodi
• Log-in to plex.tv: PKC will use the PIN method to connect to plex.tv. If you already were logged in, this resets the login.
  • plex.tv login is mainly used to get credentials to connect to a PMS that requires credentials, e.g. when you have several Plex users set up.

Sync Options

All changes in this section require you to restart Kodi.

• Show syncing progress: Enable to display a visual dialog when the incremental sync runs.
• Maximum items to request from the server at once: You could ask your PMS for thousands of items at once, which might crash your PMS. If you experience issues with your PMS, try lowering this setting from the standard 200.
• Force artwork caching: Caches all Plex artwork immediately to Kodi during sync processes.
  • This helps artwork display faster without having to wait for Kodi to update cache in the background.
  • You might need quite a lot of disk space for Kodi
• Limit artwork cache threads: Mostly for Raspberry Pi or other low-power Kodi hardware. Lower this setting if you experience Kodi issues or crashes during sync.
• Limit download sync threads: Mostly for Raspberry Pi or other low-power Kodi hardware. Lower this setting if you experience Kodi issues or crashes during sync.
• Enable constant background sync: PKC is constantly connected to your PMS to quickly pick up on new/changed Plex items and to sync playstates from Plex to Kodi. If you disable this option, only full library syncs will pick up on these changes.
• Wait before sync new/changed PMS item: The Plex server tells others immediately if it added or changed an item. However, Plex then still needs to download metadata and artwork. By waiting for a while longer (30 seconds by default), PKC ensures that it will only sync completed items
  • If you experience missing artwork or even missing metadata on Kodi, you have to raise this time limit
• Do a full library sync every x minutes: By default, PKC starts an incremential full library sync every 30 minutes (except if you're playing a video). This usually takes only a couple of seconds and picks up on changes that the PMS did not communicate using background sync.
  • If you worry about putting too much strain on your PMS, raise this time limit
• Sync when screensaver is deactivated: Triggers a library scan if the Kodi/PKC wake up from screensaver. This will pick-up any Plex items that were added/changed and hence missed by PKC when Kodi/PKC was asleep.
  • Especially useful if you're using Kodi for Android: Android will frequently put Kodi into a special "sleep" that won't otherwise be registered
• Download additional art from FanArtTV: PKC can download additional or missing art like posters, banners, CD/DVD covers from FanArt.tv
  • Activating this option will slow your synchronisation speed!
  • Download speed seems to depend heavily on the exact point of time. It's not a good idea to do an initial full sync on a Saturday evening, for example
  • If your sync is really slow, consider deactivating this option. Instead, you can use another Kodi plugin offering the same functionality: Artwork Downloader
• Enable Music library: PKC will not start or stop to sync Plex music to Kodi.
• Playback mode: This determines the type of playback used for your files. Changing mode requires a complete Kodi database reset. Only pick Native (direct paths) if you know what you are doing! See Direct Paths for more information
  • Add-on (default): This playback mode is controlled by the add-on. You can Direct Play, Direct Stream, Transcode and use the Plex trailers. This is the only mode that will allow for remote playback outside your LAN
  • Native (direct paths): This mode is suggested for low powered device and maximum compatibility with other Kodi add-ons. The playback is controlled by Kodi, so Plex features that effect this area are limited. Make sure the Kodi client has access to the same paths used by Plex, or use Path Substitution in the Library options prior to syncing your content

Customize Paths

Customized path settings are used for both Native (direct path) playback mode as well as Kodi Direct Play mode. See Direct Paths and Direct Play for more information

• Replace Plex UNC paths \myNas with smb://myNas: see Direct Paths
• Replace Plex paths /volume1/media or \myserver\media with custom SMB paths smb://mystuff: see Direct Paths
  • Original Plex path to replace: Text string that the Plex paths for Movie, TV Shows and Music starts with. PKC will search for these strings to replace them.
  • Replace Plex path with: String to replace with. Also, any backslashes '' in the remaining string will be automatically replaced by slashes '/'

Playback

• Enable Plex trailers: This enables playback of trailers before a new movie starts. Also see the Plex homepage on Extras
  • You will need a PlexPass for this to work
  • Plex trailers before a movie are not available if you chose Native (direct paths) playback method
• Ask to play trailers: Asks every time before a new movie starts whether trailers should be played.
• Number of trailers to play before a movie: Take your pick
• Ignore Specials in next episodes: Specials don't show up in views that show the next upcoming episode
• Jump back on resume: When resuming content, jumps back playback by x seconds.
• Prefered playback method: Only applies if you chose Add-on as playback method. Also see Direct Play
  • Direct Play (default): PKC will first try to access a video file directly (e.g. through smb://myNas/movies/movie.mkv) using the Customize Paths options as well as your network credentials. If that fails, Direct Streaming kicks in
  • Direct Stream: Kodi streams video through http without transcoding. If you chose a video quality below the video's quality, the video will get transcoded
  • Force Transcode: PKC forces the PMS to transcode the video to the Video quality settings below
• Video quality: Leave the default value of 1920x1080, 20Mbps or the highest possible to avoid transcoding.
  • If you have a slow network connection and Kodi gets stuck on playback, try lowering the quality here
• Force transcode H265: Only applies if you chose Add-on as playback method. Transcode the content to H264 for playback.
• Boost audio when transcoding: Changes the audio volume when the video is transcoding
• Subtitle size when transcoding: Changes the size of burnt-in subtitles when the video is transcoding

Plex Companion

Kodi will show up as a Plex device on other Plex devices. You can use e.g. your Android Plex to navigate through Kodi, start and control Kodi playback ('flinging' videos to Kodi).

• Enable Plex Companion: If you wish to do so, here you can disable Plex Companion
• Use alternate Device Name: By default, PKC uses the Kodi device name (under settings > services). Enable to specify another, customized name which will be visible in your other Plex devices in the network.
• Plex Companion Port: Only change this if you have another service running on the default 3005 port

Appearance Tweaks

Tweaks for PKC video nodes for TV Shows:

• Extend Plex TV Series "On Deck" view to all shows: Plex has a weird logic to display in-progress TV shows and next-up episodes.
  • Set to ON (default): PKC "fixes" this by showing all TV shows that are in progress, even very old ones
  • Set to OFF: See the standard Plex On Deck episodes
• On Deck: Append Show Title to episode: In the PKC video node On Deck, the TV show title is added to the episodes title.
  • Example: 'Opening Doors' will become 'Desperate Housewives: Opening Doors'
• On Deck: Append season- and episode-number: In the PKC video node On Deck, the season number and episode number is added to the episodes title.
  • Example: 'Opening Doors' will become 'S4E14: Opening Doors'
• Recently Added: Append Show Title to episode: Same as above, but for the video node Recently Added
• Recently Added: Append season- and episode-number: Same as above, but for the video node Recently Added
• Recently Added: Also show already watched episodes: Choose whether or not to display recently downloaded episodes that you have already watched

Advanced

• Log level: Turn on Debug for troubleshooting and reporting bugs. Having this set to Debug may slow the add-on down considerably.
• Startup delay: Delay the add-on from loading for x seconds. This is useful to give time for your server to wake up.
• Repair local database (force update all content): Useful to try to quickly repair your Plex library in Kodi.
• Cache all images to Kodi texture cache: Will trigger a run through your Kodi database to cache every Plex image to Kodi. This is unnecessary if you chose "Force artwork caching" above.
• Generate a new unique device Id: Every PKC instance needs a unique Plex Id. If you've cloned Kodi, get a new unique Id for every single device here.
• Partial or full reset of Database and PKC: Wipe your entire Kodi database clean. Optionally delete all files created by PKC. Optionally delete all artwork that was cached by Kodi.
  • This option will allow you to completely reset your PKC add-on settings - useful if something is not working or if things don't work out after a PKC update.