[Powerhouse]

I've posted the following in the ACE Skin forum, and didn't get any real response, so thought I would post it here to see if others have any answers...

Being somewhat new to XBMC (been using Windows Media Center with MyMovies for years), and using ACE since its release, I'm trying to get all my Movies, TVShows, Music, and Music Videos all labeled correctly so as to make the whole experience look awesome for not only myself, but also family and friends.

My Movies (DVD and BluRay) are all in separate folders, as are my TVShows and Music Albums. Each folder has been scraped, and so Poster, Fanart, Discart, Actors, etc. is in each folder. This makes everything in ACE just look awesome.

However, I've been having issues with Music Videos that I'm hoping someone can help me with. I have pointed the Concerts Menu to the location of my Music Videos. Every Artist is in a separate folder. The AudioDB scraper ( http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=136105) has made great strides in adding my large collection (I've counted over 5,000 Music Videos) to show up within ACE (currently at 2,600 that actually show up with data from the Scraper). However, I would like to add the artwork for Artists/Albums myself to each folder.

According to the Wiki (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...wnloader), the following should work...
Musicvideos:
poster
fanart
extrafanart
extrathumbs
clearlogo
clearart
discart

OK, I've messed with this a lot, so here is what I've figured out.

My layout is the following: Artist\musicvideo.mp4(or mpg, avi, etc).
The following artwork names work:
artist - musicvideo-poster.jpg
artist - musicvideo-thumb.jpg
Also, artist - musicvideo-fanart.jpg should work, but I don't know now to bring it up in ACE.
poster.jpg
fanart.jpg

So the musicvideo-poster.jpg would be the Album cover. The musicvideo-thumb.jpg would be CDART, and the musicvideo-fanart.jpg would be whatever fanart you have for the group. For examples on these check out the fanart.tv, in my example below, I used several of the arts from fanart.tv (http://fanart.tv/artist/bf600e2b-dc2d-48...cd0/311/). the poster.jpg would be the Artist picture you see when you view Concerts/Music Videos by Artist, and the fanart.jpg shows up as the background when you actually click on an album to see the music inside.

So for example, the music group 311 folder looks like this...

311 - All Mixed Up.mpg
311 - All Mixed Up.nfo
311 - All Mixed Up-fanart.jpg (different image than the fanart.jpg, but didn't load)
311 - All Mixed Up-poster.jpg
311 - Amber.mpeg
311 - Amber.nfo
311 - Amber-poster.jpg
311 - Beautiful Disaster.mpg
311 - Beautiful Disaster.nfo
311 - Beautiful Disaster-poster.jpg
311 - Come Original.mpg
311 - Come Original.nfo
311 - Come Original-fanart.jpg (different image than the fanart.jpg, but didn't load)
311 - Come Original-poster.jpg
311 - Come Original-thumb.png
311 - Down.mpg
311 - Down.nfo
311 - Down-poster.jpg
fanart.jpg
poster.jpg

Here is an example of the nfo files (this is for 311 - All Mixed Up.nfo)...

<musicvideo>
<title>All Mixed Up</title>
<artist>311</artist>
<album>311</album>
<genre>Alternative rock</genre>
<director></director>
<composer></composer>
<studio>Interscope</studio>
<year>1995</year>
<runtime>3:50</runtime>
</musicvideo>

If you run the Update Library command, and the Artist and Fanart don't show up, do the following...

Highlight a Concert/Music Video you intend to play
Press 'C'
Select Music Video Information
Select Reload, and the following information will come up...

Locally stored information found.
Ignore and refresh from internet?
No or Yes

Select 'NO' since we want the local information.

Now if you go back to the Main Menu, and follow all the steps above, you should see the correct Artwork loaded. At least mostly, there still seems to be some issues loading the correct Artwork.

[Powerhouse]

Now with the above being said, on to some questions...

1. From the Main Menu, select Concerts/Music Videos, and bring up the Submenu (press down) and select Artist. Now you should have a list of Artists, and when you highlight over them, you should see the Artists Image (poster.jpg located in the Artist folder - 3 Doors Down\poster.jpg). I believe some of these (if you haven't downloaded any yet) are brought up via the thumb cache in XBMC using theAudioDB plug-in for Music Videos. If you have a poster.jpg of the artist and it doesn't load, Hit 'C' on your keyboard, and one of the options in this view has Artist thumbs, and you can click this and manually select the poster.jpg in the folder for that artist. Not sure why XBMC can't do this automatically when I tell it to update.

2. I'm using the Right List View in ACE, there is a picture frame at the bottom left of this view, but I haven't figured out what loads in it. There is also whatever Albums you defined in your NFO files (if you don't see the correct Albums, again hold on to that thought for just a little bit more). The Albums view also has information like Themes, Type, and Mood. Which according to the XBMC Wiki, should load from the artist.nfo (needs to be lower case for some reason). I have tried putting an artist.nfo under the artist folder, but it doesn't load the correct information. Here is an example of one I made for 4 Non Blondes...

http://musicbrainz.org/artist/efef848b-6...a48fbdd51d
<artist>
<name>4 Non Blondes</name>
<genre>Pop/Rock</genre>
<style>Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Contemporary Pop/Rock</style>
<mood>Cathartic, Quirky, Self-Conscious, Tense/Anxious, Earnest, Rebellious, Angst-Ridden, Reflective, Searching, Witty, Yearning, Aggressive, Brooding, Irreverent, Organic, Provocative, Melancholy</mood>
<yearsactive>1980's-1990's</yearsactive>
<born></born>
<formed>1989</formed>
<instruments></instruments>
<biography>4 Non Blondes was an American rock band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1989. The group was formed by bassist Christa Hillhouse, guitarist Shaunna Hall, drummer Wanda Day, and vocalist and guitarist Linda Perry. Prior to the release of their first album, Roger Rocha replaced Hall on guitar, and Dawn Richardson replaced Day on drums. They hit the charts in 1993 with "What's Up?", their only major hit single. Perry left the band in 1994 to begin a solo career, and the remaining members disbanded shortly after.</biography>
<died></died>
<disbanded>1995</disbanded>
<artist>

Perhaps it needs to be named something other than artist.nfo. I've tried the artistname.nfo, and the artist - musicvideo.nfo, these don't work either.

3. So if you actually click on the Album displayed under the Albums View, you are taken to the Concerts View. This one should display the Artist Albums Poster (3 Doors Down - Here Without You-poster.jpg), and the Fanart (fanart.jpg) as the background. You will also see the Year, Country, Genre, and Studios listed next to the Poster. These are actually loaded from the song nfo file (3 Doors Down\3 Doors Down - Here Without You.nfo). So in this view, when a song is highlighted, the album art is shown, but on the previous screen (see 2 above) when highlighting the album, no artwork (should show the album cover) is shown.

---

Oh, and also...

4. I am missing the Party Mode being listed in the Concert/Music Video sub-menu? Could this be an ACE issue, or is it just missing in XBMC currently?

[Powerhouse]

Ok, found another interesting issue with Concert/Music Videos, this based on the ACE skin, but probably applies to all skins.

If you download the Artists picture (which I've been doing and placing them in the same folder as the Music Video and calling it poster.jpg), it doesn't always seem to display that picture when searching through Music Videos (Artist view).

Yet if I put the same Artist picture, in the folder under Music (you know, where you keep your Music MP3's), it will then show up under Concerts/Music Videos when searching by Artist.

So I have folders called...

D:\Music Videos\Britney Spears
D:\Music\Britney Spears

So somehow Music artwork is also tied into Music Videos artwork.

It would be nice if we could combine them into a single listing...

D:\Music\Britney Spears

...where you could list separate albums under each Artist, and each album would have the music (flc, mp3, wmv, etc) and any Music Videos you would have for that album as well (avi, mp4, mpg, mkv, etc), would be in that folder as well.

[scott967]

You sort of have that, if go into the music library in artist and album view, you can pull the context menu and have an option there to switch to music videos of that artist or album. But you are really jumping between music and music video, and I don't think it is effective if you want to create a now playing playlist doing that. Note that in music video, artist is just stored as an "actor" and all you can save is the thumb. While album is saved as a attribute of a music video file, there isn't any data associated with it, not even a slot for the album cover. Each music video (if you select the setting) when it is scraped will have a fanart and default snapshot from the video as thumb (I use local nfos, not sure if an online scraper does it differently). Now for confluence, it will show the thumb in all the music video views. If you assign a poster, the poster will be shown in some views, but in others still the thumb is shown. Ace by contrast, seems to always show the poster in all the music video views if it exists. So if you use the poster slot for album cover, you need to consider that. I also looked at Transparency! and that one uses thumbs except in the "full list" view. I think I kind of prefer confluence method.

scott s.
.

[lxdorney]

Hi All,

First of all I would like to thank all people who work on this project and for all help and support from you guys.

Is there other way around to select my videos with IDs like if you press 0009 then play that video.
I have a 1000 Videos extracted from DVDeoke with VOB file ext. how to import as music videos with search by IDs, title, artist, genre and etc.
<musicvideo>
<title></title>
<artist></artist>
<album></album>
<genre></genre>
<runtime></runtime>
<plot></plot>
<year></year>
<director></director>
<studio></studio>
<track></track>
</musicvideo>

how about IDs?

I know KARAOKE addons but is working with mp3.

PS. I dont Know if this is the right place to post


Thanks

[manderlore]

I had problems getting the artist picture to work. But I came up with a solution when I saw one picture that I had a movie from that artist that worked.

1 I created a new move called actors.mkv (just a renamed empty text file).

2 I wrote actors.nfo file that only listed the actor (artist) that I wanted to add, example:
<movie>
<actor>
<name>Britney_Spears</name>
</actor>
</movie>

3 Then I took a picture file called Britney_Spears.jpg and put that in a folder called .actors

4 Lastly I added the movie in kodi as a movie and used local information only.

Done! This can also be done if you want to change other actors picture. and you can also add several pictures at once by just using multiple <actor> tags with names. You can also remove the movie from the library later so you don't have to see it listed, and the actor pictures will still be there.