[weevo]

Hi there,

I hope this is the right sub-forum for this topic, but here goes..

Using kodi 14.2 on Win7 htpc. After getting my music library thumbs and fanart the way I like them, I undertook to attempt to back up and restore everything to another system. I have a lot of music, and a lot of the artists either didn't scrape and I had to add them to musicbrainz, or they did scrape but didn't have anything in the way of artist fanart or thumbs - so about 1500 of the 2400 artists I updated manually in some way or other - tedious but looks great to have everything in one place in a comprehensive library that has for years been a scattered bunch of mp3s sitting in folders..

Trouble is (I think) when scraping I would go out to the internet, find what I wanted for fanart or thumbs and stick them in c:\temp, where I would point kodi to pull it in to the thumb.

I've managed to use the backup app and it seemed to restore my thumbnail folders (all of them from 0 to f which I confirmed do contain all of the thumbs and fanart I grabbed). Yet when I go and export the music library on my main htpc to a single file, and import it to the backup system, the thumbs and fanart I had picked originally and that I can see sitting in the thumbnail folders in c:\users\<me>\AppData\Roaming\kodi don't populate. On closer examination of the muscdb.xml file I can see what is perhaps the cause - the artists I had to manually fanart and thumb all show a location of c:\temp\<filename>.

Now....this might be a brain fart, but..how do I tell kodi not to look in C:\Temp like it's showing in the .xml file? Do I really have to go into the .xml and manually edit the thumb/fanart locations from those thumb cache jpg files that are strewn all over those 16 kodi thumb folders ? If kodi knows what to display on my main htpc with regards to artist thumbs/fanart, it must know where the thumbs are (and they were since deleted from c:\temp) ? What's the point of having the option to back up thumbnails in the backup app if there is no link or mapping to those thumb filenames during a library import/export?

Also does this mean if I upgrade kodi to 15.1 from 14.2 are all of my artist thumbs going to get nuked on my main htpc (where currently they are the way I want them) since they are no longer in C:\Temp?

Thanks
Steve

[weevo]

So after more trial and error today, I tested a fresh install on a fresh system, and added a single folder of mp3s from one artist as a source via smb, then I scanned it to a music library where I manually picked thumb and fanart from a common network share that is mapped to the same letter on all of my machines. Then I exported that to a single .xml, noting the thumb and fanart for the artist entry referred to the proper network share letter mapping.

Then I took a different fresh system, again added the same single group of mp3s as a source with smb, and then going and importing the .xml I had just created with the single artist and the thumbs on the network drive, which I had mapped on the new system. After importing I scraped using Universal Artist Scraper which gave a description but no thumbs or fanart.

I guess I really don't understand what the .xml is actually supposed to be doing.

If I go to Files under Music and select 'Remove Source', it removes everything under Music regardless of whether I've gone in and imported the library.

I just don't understand how this simple backing up of a music library can be so complicated and fraught with gotchas, or if I'm missing a step or doing things out of order. It should be as easy as - clicking Export library and having a true snapshot of everything the program sees at that moment, regardless of it having to take a little longer to deal with .jpg thumbs and artwork properly.

I have a lot of compilations in my collection so the solution of .nfo files is not going to work as i'm not going to create folders for every single song on every compilation I own.

[weevo]

Still no luck, despite following all online instructions..guess this feature just doesn't work as described.

[DarkHelmet]

I can only confirm that I tried twice to export and import my music library when switching to a new pc and it kinda worked only half-ish. Thumbs, fanart and such didn't really work except when I had the folder.jpg, fanart.jpg in the artist/album folder already. In this case however a backup is not necessary at all.

In the end I always ended up setting up the library from scratch.

[weevo]

Hi Darkhelmet,

Appreciated your response there...after a week or so of playing with it off and on using some dummy systems as testers I figured out the following (and came up with a semi-decent solution that didn't involve me having to script something):

! - Because when I set it up I custom-chose a large number of artists' fanart and thumbs that didn't scrape those things from UAS from c:\temp where i never intended to keep them (or even knew i needed to keep them somewhere), there's no getting around going back and re-choosing the fanart and thumb for each artist on my main install of Kodi, only this time choose them from the network folder where I intend to keep them permanently, which writes a correct entry to the Textures13.db file. It's going to be time consuming but...it will still ultimately save time in the long run and allow me to install and restore Kodi on any TV in my place, mostly pain-free.
2 - You can't just go through the textures13.db and edit the file location of the jpgs and pop the fanart in the new location you specify, because of the hash that got created at the time I chose the fanart when it was still sitting in my c:\temp folder (which eventually got emptied) - so even though Kodi knows that the jpg is no longer in C:\temp, and the db has its cache folder location, you can't tell it otherwise in textures13.db because that hash is tied in with the cached jpg - only choice is to change the fanart and thumbs from the interface, which creates a new hash and puts the network location in there.
3 - Once the textures13.db file has those correct network locations, you don't even need to export/import the library on the new system - using the Backup app will bring over everything including the originally scraped artist description text from UAS and stick the right fanart and thumb up that you had chosen - no need to re-scrape anything or import the musicdb.xml - so that's one small consolation.