Genesis for Dummies – The Complete Guide

GENESIS FOR DUMMIES

 

Genesis for Dummies

1. Intro

Welcome to Genesis for Dummies. The aim of this blog is to help new Kodi Users come to grips with how Genesis works and how you can best optimise it for your own use.

I felt the need to write this Genesis for Dummies blog as lots of people have been moaning about Genesis since Lambda decided that he would no longer support or update genesis anymore.

Genesis is the victim of it own success. For so long it has been the biggest and by far the best addon available in Kodi.

However disappointing the news of its demise as the old saying goes its not over until the fat lady sings.

Hopefully this Genesis for Dummies blog will help you understand it a little bit more and also allow you to tweak or add a few settings that will help you still use Genesis for a long time yet.

This blog was based on a blog written courtesy of @raywilson1986 for TvAddons and tweaked for our site. So I would like to put on record thanks to him for his great work.

 

2. What is Genesis?
Genesis is a Kodi Third Party addon built by Lambda and is part of the Tvaddons repo,  it collects movie and television streams from all over the internet like a search engine, offering you a magnitude of streaming links that you wouldn’t have access too using similar addons that only get their streams from one website. For example, if you were to use the 123Movies or IceFilms addons, you’ll only be presented with streams from those two websites, only.

Genesis for Dummies

What Genesis does is use it’s built in database of sources and hosts to search through them to give you the maximum amount of streaming options available.

Currently, Genesis gets it’s streams from more than 70 different websites.

How does it work?
Genesis works in a very simple way, it uses TheMovieDB.com to create a database of movies and TV shows, then when a movie or episode is selected to play, it will search the 70+ websites in its host database to see if their are any streams for that movie or episode. This means that occasionally you will find some movies or TV shows that have no streams. Unfortunately there is nothing that Genesis or Lambda can do about this, some things just aren’t uploaded to the sites it scrapes.

A good example would be that you could search for the UK soaps “Coronation Street or Hollyoaks” in Genesis, and it will return the season and episode information from when the show first started. If you then went into a season and selected an episode to play, odds are there will be no stream for it, because these types of shows just aren’t usually uploaded. (There are other addons that cover this please look at our site for guides).

What has happened is when you search for the show, you’re searching TheMovieDB, which returns the results of the show and episode information. Going into a season and selecting an episode then makes Genesis search its host database for streams. So, in short, Genesis doesn’t know if a stream is available until you’ve tried looking for it. This is something to bare in mind if you’re trying to watch older or less popular shows.

3.Add-on Settings
To access your add-on settings, go to your Video Add-ons and highlight Genesis. Press ‘C’ on your keyboard and select Add-on Settings. Other devices may vary, especially if you have a remote. More information here: Context Menu in Kodi.
You can also access these sections by going into Genesis and then going to Genesis Tools.

General
Appearance: Select the icon set that you’d like to use within Genesis. There a few different looks that the addon can have.

Genesis for Dummies

 

 

Genesis for Dummies
Enable Fanart: Enabling this will include fanart metadata. This may slow down load times between pages but looks amazing.

Info Language: Select the language you’d like information to be shown in.
Sources Timeout: This setting determines how long, in seconds, Genesis will search for sources for. The greater the setting the longer it will search and the more sources it can possibly find. The lower the settings the less time it will search and you may miss out on sources. However, this is just a max time. If you set it at 60 seconds but Genesis does it’s search in 30 seconds, it’ll load from then, it won’t wait another 30 seconds.
Latest Movies: Choose what shows in your ‘Latest Movies’.
Latest Episodes: Choose what shows in your ‘Latest Episodes’.
TV Calendar: Choose what shows in your ‘TV Calendar’.

Playback
Max Quality: This setting sets the max quality of streams that Genesis will return. If you set this to ‘HQ’ then you will not see any 720p or 1080p streams.
Host Selection: Directory or Dialog are your two options here. If you wish to use the download feature in Genesis then you must select ‘Directory’ here. ‘Directory’ also has other uses, for example, you can refresh the returned sources from the context menu if you wanted/needed too.
Hosters with captchas: If you enable this then you will return streams that require you to input a captcha before viewing. For those unaware, a captcha is where it will ask you to type a word or phrase in before the stream will play.
Hosters with 1080p files: If you enable this then file locker websites with 1080p streams will appear. If disabled you will only see 1080p streams from direct websites such as GVideo and VK. File hosting sites are generally considered to have slower connections.
Hosters with 720p files: If you enable this then file locker websites with 720p streams will appear. If disabled you will only see 720p streams from direct websites such as GVideo and VK. File hosting sites are generally considered to have slower connections.
Auto-play: If enabled then Genesis will auto-play streams when selected, instead of presenting you with a list of streams. This option has had issues in the past and i personally find it better if off.
Auto-play (Library): If enabled then Genesis will auto-play streams in your Kodi library when selected, instead of presenting you with a list of streams.
Force SD playback in Auto-play: If enabled then Genesis will ignore any 720p and 1080p streams when auto-playing. Only good if you have a limited bandwidth.
Resume Playback: If enabled Genesis will ask if you want to resume a movie or episode from where you last stopped it.
Playback Info: If enabled you will see a small pop-up notification telling you what host and source it has picked to play and how many seconds it took to start playback after it picked that source.

Movies & TV
In the ‘Movies’ and ‘TV’ section of your Genesis settings you can enable and disable individual hosts. Disabling ones that you have no interest in using or you know are geo blocked can help speed things up. You can always re-enable them later if you wish. Very useful in the UK when sources are blocked as no point searching if  you cant use the site.

HD Hosts & SD Hosts
In these two sections of the settings you can rearrange the order of the file hosters to be suit your needs. Some will be faster or slower depending on your ISP and/or location, but this varies so much that it’s hard to tell you what will work or not work for you without testing. However, there is a thread located on this forum dedicated to the priotity settings, which can be viewed here: Post Your Genesis Priorities Here.
As with the Movies and TV section in the settings, disabling some here that you do not wish to use can also help speed things up.

Below is an example of how my hosts are setup after tweaking them on a recommendation from a dev on TvAddons forum.

HD Hosts quickest to slowest

  • MrFile
  • Gvideo
  • Yify
  • Dizimag
  • VK
  • Muchmovies
  • Videomega
  • Turbovideos
  • Openload
  • Vidplay
  • MovieTV
  • Moviefarsi

SD Hosts Order (sorted from HQ down to LQ)

  • Openload HQ
  • Mrfile HQ
  • Uptobox HQ
  • Dizimag HQ
  • Turbovideos HQ
  • V-vids HQ
  • Skyvids HQ
  • Gvideo HQ
  • Mightupload HQ
  • zStream HQ
  • Vidspot MQ
  • Streamin MQ
  • Allmyvideos MQ
  • Vidto MQ
  • Streamcloud MQ
  • Letwatch MQ
  • Divxpress LQ
  • Filehoot LQ
  • Beststreams LQ
  • Vidzi LQ

Accounts
This should be self explanatory, in this section is where you can sign into the numerous accounts that Genesis supports. Breaking them down, Trakt and IMDB will allow you to view your collections, watchlists and regular lists that you may have on these websites.
Alluc and Ororo will make it possible to search those websites for streams. Both will require you to sign up to free accounts on their websites. if you dont use these them remove from host list as will save search times.
Real Debrid and Premiumize are premium subscriptions that offer faster connections to some of the file hosters used in Genesis, stopping the file hoster from throttling your speed connection.
Easynews and Furk are premium torrent/usenet based sources that require accounts to use.

I use Real Debrid with my Genesis below is an example with the search including it.

Genesis for Dummies

 

As you can see plenty of 1080p links, Real debrid works better for Tv Shows in Genesis than movies but Real Debrid has movie support in a lot of other addons be sure to read our blog on it HERE

We also covered how resolvers work in a blog that can be read HERE, Very interesting insight to how this works.

 

Genesis for Dummies

 

If you wish to sign up to a Real Debrid account its very cheap and can be done on the link below

 

Library

Movies: This is the path location where Genesis will store movie .strm files.
TV: This is the path location where Genesis will store TV show .strm files.
Auto update TV shows: If enabled this will automatically look for new episodes in the background for shows that are in your library. This will use CPU even if you’re not using Genesis. You can also manually search for new episodes in Genesis Tools.
Show notification during update: If enabled you will see pop-up notification informing you that Genesis is updating your TV show folders.
Update library after adding content: If enabled Genesis will automatically set the library to update with your new content. Otherwise you will have to manually run your library update.
Avoid creating duplicate content: If enabled Genesis will first look in your Kodi library to see if the content already exists, if it does it will not try and create it again.
Check movie before adding it: If enabled Genesis will first check to make sure there are sources available for the movie before adding it to your library. If no sources are found the movie won’t be added to your library.
Check first episode of season before adding it: If enabled Genesis will first check to make sure there are sources available for the first episode of each season before adding it to your library. If no sources are found the season won’t be added to your library. The general consensus is that if the first episode of a season is available, then all episodes of that season are also usually available.

Downloads

In this section you can set the download path for your movies and TV shows. Would not recommending downloading as the laws in most countries these days is very different to that of streaming and is illegal.

Subtitles
If you wish to use subtitles with Genesis, enable them here, and select your primary and secondary languages.

 Genesis Tools
Most of the options in the Tools section are already covered with the above information of the Add-on Settings, however there are two other options here that are very valuable, and they are clear sources and clear cache.
When you search for sources/streams to play of a movie or episode, the results are stored so that if you try and play it again, it will load much faster as it doesn’t search again. However sometimes streams will die or you’ll only get early, lesser quality uploads, and you’ll want to refresh this search. Clearing sources in Genesis Tools will do this for you.
As with the sources and streams, every time you load a page all the images you see get stored in your Genesis cache. The reason is very much the same as with sources, it helps load pages faster. However, this can take up space on your hard drive, so using the clear cache option will help free up space and refresh artwork.
Some users do this as regularly as once a week, some once a month. This is entirely up to you how often you do it, but I do it weekly so i recommend doing it occasionally to keep things clean.
If you are having issues with Genesis playback, clearing both your Genesis Cache and Sources can help aid in fixing playback issues.

Incorporating Genesis with your Tv Show next Aired addon 

We covered this superb addon in another blog that can be read HERE and includes a great video to help setup this excellent added feature

Smart Play
Smart play is a feature that came in in version 5.0.7 and was designed so that you should no longer see any ‘no stream available’ messages when there are dozens of streams available.

How it works is quite simple; you choose your source to play your file and should that file be deleted, instead of chucking you out of the stream to select another source, it will automatically search for another stream. It will continue to do this until it finds a working stream to play.

F.A.Q.
Q. Why does one device find sources that another doesn’t?
A. Because of the nature of what Genesis does results vary when returning streams. Some servers get overloaded quickly, and if you don’t return streams from one source that you did on another device, it’s likely that the source was not overloaded then, but is now. Hardware can also play a part. An Android box with 1-2GB of RAM will process data much slower than a PC or laptop with 4-8GB of RAM, for example.
Q. Why am I not seeing any Afdah results on my Android box?
A. Previously Genesis used a Google search to find streams from Afdah, however that ended up causing issues as with so many requests to the site from one IP address, it resulted in Google sending back “are you a robot?” queries, meaning Genesis could not parse information from Afdah. To combat this Genesis now uses the Afdah website itself to get results, however their website uses SSL verification, and Kodi on Android is shipped with Python version 2.6, while for Windows it is 2.7. Unfortunately Python 2.6 has trouble with SSL verification. This out of Lambda’s hands. Until Kodi bundles a higher version of Python with the Kodi software, this will not change.

 

Q. I added a TV show/movie to my Kodi library but it scans the wrong info into my library, what’s going on?
A. This isn’t a Genesis issue, this is your scrapper using the wrong information. Highlight the show/movie, bring the context menu up, select ‘Movie Information’ or ‘TV Show Information’, and then select ‘Refresh’. You can then assign the correct information.

 

Q. Can we choose how many titles show per page? / Can we have more titles show per page?
A. No, unfortunately TheMovieDB API does not allow for more than what is currently displayed per page. The number of titles per page are already set at the max amount, and nothing further can be done about this.

 

TECLAST AIR ULTRAPAD

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