[DarkHelmet]

Yeah, I'd say it could indeed be that the cut is made after 100 artists. The last artist for me is Body Count.

One other thing I noticed is that if I start playback from any folder (artists or genres) the addon just plays that particular song that I press enter upon. In the old addon all the items from that folder would be added to the now playing list and playback starts with the video I chose (just like a music album). This even happens when "play next item from folder" is activated in the video playback settings in kodi's general video settings.

The "play all" option was also offered by the old addon for cases where the user would have that option deactivated.

What is "add to playlist" supposed to do? Add that item to kodi's now playing list or add it to a vevo playlist? I get a "script error" followed by an "Http error 400: bad request" when I choose that option.

In case you need any logs, please say so and I will happily provide logs.

[learningit]

deleted same as below

[learningit]

Yeah, I'd say it could indeed be that the cut is made after 100 artists. The last artist for me is Body Count.

One other thing I noticed is that if I start playback from any folder (artists or genres) the addon just plays that particular song that I press enter upon. In the old addon all the items from that folder would be added to the now playing list and playback starts with the video I chose (just like a music album). This even happens when "play next item from folder" is activated in the video playback settings in kodi's general video settings.

The "play all" option was also offered by the old addon for cases where the user would have that option deactivated.

What is "add to playlist" supposed to do? Add that item to kodi's now playing list or add it to a vevo playlist? I get a "script error" followed by an "Http error 400: bad request" when I choose that option.

In case you need any logs, please say so and I will happily provide logs.

To "play all" or to "play from here", right click (or type 'c') on the directory item you want to start from to bring up the context menu and select "Play from Here". That will give you the same functionality.

"Add to Playlist" is supposed to open the configuration screen if you haven't set an email and password for your Vevo account. Playlists are kept in your Vevo account and requires a valid Vevo account. If you have entered your account info, there's probably an error in the email or password field which would give the '400' error.

[DarkHelmet]

Yeah, I'd say it could indeed be that the cut is made after 100 artists. The last artist for me is Body Count.

One other thing I noticed is that if I start playback from any folder (artists or genres) the addon just plays that particular song that I press enter upon. In the old addon all the items from that folder would be added to the now playing list and playback starts with the video I chose (just like a music album). This even happens when "play next item from folder" is activated in the video playback settings in kodi's general video settings.

The "play all" option was also offered by the old addon for cases where the user would have that option deactivated.

What is "add to playlist" supposed to do? Add that item to kodi's now playing list or add it to a vevo playlist? I get a "script error" followed by an "Http error 400: bad request" when I choose that option.

In case you need any logs, please say so and I will happily provide logs.

To "play all" or to "play from here", right click (or type 'c') on the directory item you want to start from to bring up the context menu and select "Play from Here". That will give you the same functionality.

The options I have when I bring up the context menu are "play with", "play only this", "add to playlist", "Get related", "add to favorites", "to albums of the interpret" and "addon settlings". Note that some of these options are translated to German so the English options may vary a bit from my translations. "Play from here" is not offered. It's rather the opposite "play only this" that is offered.

"Add to Playlist" is supposed to open the configuration screen if you haven't set an email and password for your Vevo account. Playlists are kept in your Vevo account and requires a valid Vevo account. If you have entered your account info, there's probably an error in the email or password field which would give the '400' error.

I don't have an email and a password set and I get the aforementioned error message. I'll register at vevo and fiddle around some more.

[learningit]

The options I have when I bring up the context menu are "play with", "play only this", "add to playlist", "Get related", "add to favorites", "to albums of the interpret" and "addon settlings". Note that some of these options are translated to German so the English options may vary a bit from my translations. "Play from here" is not offered. It's rather the opposite "play only this" that is offered.

If you are getting "play only this" it means that the global setting under Settings->Video->Playback->Play The Next Video Automatically is set "on". For some reason under Helix that setting only seems to work with Library items and not addon items. If you set it "off" the "Play From Here" option will appear in the VEVO addon context menu. I'm not sure if that is the intended behavior or not in Helix, but that's how it works. In the future, I will add "Play All" to avoid the conflict described above.

I don't have an email and a password set and I get the aforementioned error message. I'll register at vevo and fiddle around some more.

I'm surprised at the above, the addon should open the config settings if the email field is blank when accessing playlists. I will test further.

If you are able to change the default.py file with a text editor, locate the following line:

Code:

json_cmd= '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "AudioLibrary.GetArtists", "params": { "limits": { "start" : 0, "end": 100 }, "properties": [ "thumbnail", "fanart", "genre" ], "sort": { "order": "ascending", "method": "artist", "ignorearticle": true } }, "id": 1}'

and change the 100 to something larger, say 200 to see if more items are loaded from the library. I'm not sure how many items in total can be added to a Kodi directory, but it should be able to handle 200. I will probably need to break the favorite artists list into multiple pages for performance reasons. If you are able to test this I would be interested in knowing if it works, the library I have with me now only has 80 artists in it so I can't really test. Thanks.

[DarkHelmet]

Changing the value to 200 indeed resulted in more artists being shown. It didn't take noticably longer than with 100 artists. It was blazing fast with both settings.

I remember, that the first time I hit favorite artists in the old addon that it took quite long to get the results. After the first query it was faster.

With setting "play next video automatically" there is indeed the option to "play from here". Shouldn't it be the other way around? If that setting is on, play from here is the default behaviour and it should provide the option to play just that video and with that setting off, playing that video will result in playing only that video and having the option to play from here as an option in the context menu?

[DarkHelmet]

I just noticed that "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke shows up under the artist "Blur" in favorite artists. Guess because it contains the phrase blur. Any method to change the query for just the artist?

[learningit]

Changing the value to 200 indeed resulted in more artists being shown. It didn't take noticably longer than with 100 artists. It was blazing fast with both settings.

I remember, that the first time I hit favorite artists in the old addon that it took quite long to get the results. After the first query it was faster.

Thanks, I'll make a mod to increase the artist limit tomorrow- need to add next page, etc. There is a difference in what I do and what the previous addon did for Favorite Artists. The old addon actually built a sql database to store the artists and their data. I took the approach of just creating a directory entry which will do a search for the artist when pressed. The difference, I think, is that the search will sometimes return nothing or for some names will return what it thinks are close matches but may not be the actual artist. On the plus side you also get associated or related acts listed, on the negative side the list may not have anything to do with the artist searched for. It is much faster and lighter on system resources though. Another big pro is that the artists are refreshed each time the Favorite Artists function is selected.

With setting "play next video automatically" there is indeed the option to "play from here". Shouldn't it be the other way around? If that setting is on, play from here is the default behaviour and it should provide the option to play just that video and with that setting off, playing that video will result in playing only that video and having the option to play from here as an option in the context menu?

I don't really understand why it behaves that way either, but it seemed to change with Helix.

[learningit]

I just noticed that "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke shows up under the artist "Blur" in favorite artists. Guess because it contains the phrase blur. Any method to change the query for just the artist?

I'm not sure what the new API does. Even when I specifically tell it I want to do an artist search, it sometimes returns items with similar names - even video titles. There is a way to trim the returned videos by looking at the artist name and throwing out ones that don't have the search returned artist field, but I need to think about how to deal with artist names like "Sly & The Family Stone" where the returned artist field looks like: 'sly-family-stone' but other combinations with the '&' char come back as 'x-and-y', so I'll probably end up asking whether this video should be included. Which is more work than I have time to put into the first version - I'll work on this when I get some time, the errors should get reduced.

[DarkHelmet]

If you need any more testing please say so. Your work is greatly appreciated, thanks again.

[learningit]

If you need any more testing please say so. Your work is greatly appreciated, thanks again.

I'll take you up on that.
Can you please test the following: locate the following line:

Code:

json_cmd= '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "AudioLibrary.GetArtists", "params": { "limits": { "start" : 0, "end": 100 }, "properties": [ "thumbnail", "fanart", "genre" ], "sort": { "order": "ascending", "method": "artist", "ignorearticle": true } }, "id": 1}'

and delete ', "end": 100 ' from it, so you will have:

Code:

json_cmd= '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "AudioLibrary.GetArtists", "params": { "limits": { "start" : 0 }, "properties": [ "thumbnail", "fanart", "genre" ], "sort": { "order": "ascending", "method": "artist", "ignorearticle": true } }, "id": 1}'

save it out and run the addon. This will attempt to load your entire library into the dir. This may crash Kodi, I'm not sure how many items can be added to a dir. If either the addon or Kodi crash, I'd like to see the log. This will really help me because I won't be home to my larger setup for a while and need to test on my laptop which doesn't have a large music lib on it. Even if this works I need to make some changes to break the dir listing up into manageable chunks (I think unless the performance is fine with a large listing).
Thanks.

[DarkHelmet]

Works like a charm. Took maybe two seconds to deliver the result and I have quite a big music database. It was definitely even faster than with the old addon. Well done

[learningit]

Works like a charm. Took maybe two seconds to deliver the result and I have quite a big music database. It was definitely even faster than with the old addon. Well done

Thanks for your help. I put V2.0.10 in github which fixes the artists cutoff issue. I still have some rough edges to fix on the actual Favorite Artist search/match, but that will take a bit of time and experimenting to get right.

[DarkHelmet]

No worries, take your time. Great work so far.

[v8surf]

Loving the addon, but iI seem to be having massive buffering issues with the Nashville station for some reason?
But if I go to videos(or artists)/country/... and pick from there the buffering issues go away most of the time. I think that when the buffering is still there its due to a poor internet connection, but I can go straight from perfect video if I pick it, straight back to buffering every 10-20 seconds if I choose the Nashville channel.

I'm in New Zealand if that makes a difference? Not using a proxy or VPN, but my ISP has global mode enabled so I can get it direct.

Cheers,
Graeme