Troubleshooting Direct Paths

If you set-up Direct Paths incorrectly, Kodi playback will fail without giving you a "PKC-specific" error. Some thoughts on what you could do:

• Try to access your media from another PC in the same LAN using either \\myNas\movies or smb://myNas/movies. If that does not work, there is no way Kodi/PKC could access the media
• Be aware that all paths are potentially case-sensitive, even when using Windows. Make sure that all paths are exactly spelled as you created them.
• Windows does not allow the characters \:*?"<>| in path or filenames. The network sharing protocol Samba/SMB hence turns illegal filenames like Episode 182 - Exorcist 2: The Heretic.mp4 into garbage like E4Q82R~Y.MP4
  • Solution: do a search-and-replace for all illegal characters \:*?"<>| to replace them with e.g. an underscore _
• There were some heavy changes to the smb protocol. Check e.g. the release notes of LibreElec for more info and tipps on troubleshooting smb