[dougblake]

Hi,

Firstly apologies if this has already been asked and answered before, i have tried to solve this one on my own.....

I downloaded XBMC (windows, ver 9.04.01) and also the Aeon Theme (Version 0.91). I added some media within the 'Videos' menu and all the relevant data, i.e. movie details and images was downloaded automatically so when I went into 'Movies' from the root menu I could see the images.

I thought that while browsing the main root menu (Music, Movies, TV-Shows ect) the backgrounds should change accordingly with the media you have already added, i.e. if I have a James Bond movie the background for James Bond will appear when i browse across 'Movies' within the main menu. All i could see was different colour backgrounds - red, blue, purple ect.

After doing some checking I thought it was because I didn't have the latest (beta) version of Aeon so I used GIT to download this and changed to this latest skin. This time I still had movies images when I went into the Movie menu but I had only black backgrounds when on the root menu. After some more research I found I also needed a newer version of XBMC so I downloaded a Nightly Builds version (ver 21741) and copied the .dll files & aeon skin required into the xbmc directory and tried again.
Since this most recent download I've gotten the colours back when moving across the menu options but still no images based on the content of my movies folder.

Please please can someone point me in the right direction.

My other problem is with Music album covers - it doesn't seem to download any at all. I added a couple of albums but no images were downloaded - It did seem to querey data though on the album but no images. I tried inserting a music CD into the computer and it recognised the album and downloaded the album names but again no image for the album, where am I going wrong with this?

thanks for any help

[Leeuw]

dougblake, to change the backgrounds go to Settings->Customize->Backgrounds.

For Music, the scrapers tend to have issues (at least for me) in some of the nightly builds that get resolved eventually. But if you are in the States you should switch to the Allmusic scraper instead of the default discogs. To do so, go to Settings->Music->Library and you will see a "Default Scraper" option.

[dougblake]

Leeuw,

Thanks for your reply. I understand how to change backgrounds for particular menus, but this only led me to choose a folder where I had a set amount of images stored. What I thought would happen is where XBMC had automatically picked up on the fact I have a James Bond Movie and downloaded a backdrop and details for this already, then when I am on the home root menu, I would see a picture of James Bond as a backdrop if I highlight Movies (highlight and not select). Does that make sense? Is this not the case that it'll automatically show you while on the home screen backdrops based on your media?

I am in the UK but i'll have a play around changing the scappers to see if that has any effect. If not, i'm presuming the only option is to manually download the images for each album and place this an image file within the album?!

[Leeuw]

Thanks for your reply. I understand how to change backgrounds for particular menus, but this only led me to choose a folder where I had a set amount of images stored. What I thought would happen is where XBMC had automatically picked up on the fact I have a James Bond Movie and downloaded a backdrop and details for this already, then when I am on the home root menu, I would see a picture of James Bond as a backdrop if I highlight Movies (highlight and not select). Does that make sense? Is this not the case that it'll automatically show you while on the home screen backdrops based on your media?

Ah, I see what you mean now. For particular movies, you will need to store individual fanart images in your movie folders. The XBMC wiki has a very good guide on this, but basically xbmc will look for a fanart.jpg image in your movie folder and will display that image when a particular movie is highlighted, or will display a random image from your backgrounds folder if there is no fanart.jpg stored. When the xbmc scrapers are working it will auto-download fanart when you first load your movie library, but it sounds like scrapers aren't downloading images for you right now (same for me too with the current nightly build). There are some very good programs that can automate this process for you -- try Ember Media Manager for starters.

I am in the UK but i'll have a play around changing the scappers to see if that has any effect. If not, i'm presuming the only option is to manually download the images for each album and place this an image file within the album?!

Yes, although there are programs to automate downloading artwork for each of your albums (the album covers should actually be stored in the ID3 tag for your music files). Try searching in the forums and you should find a ton of info.

Hope that helps!

[dougblake]

Ok i'm now half way there.

What I did was to locate the folder where the backdrops are stored that XBMC auto downloads when it scans your media folder.

In my case -

C:\Users\Doug\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails\Video\Fanart

This folder contained a collection on .TBN files. I loaded XBMC and set the path for the movies backdrops to this location.

When I am on the home screen and I browse across (not select just highlight) 'Movies' the backdrop changes from a colour to a random picture BUT this folder also contains images from TV Shows and not just movies.

Is there any way to automatically get this to work or is the only option to manually create a folder and copy the correct movie images into there and tv show images into another?

If this isn't done automatically after time you will end up with a collection of old images that don't releate to any new movies you have recently added right?

Thanks for your help.

[Lukas]

I think this is a similar thread: http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=54048. Last post (page 2) kind of presents a solution to your prob.


Grtz


Lukas

[skaymakca]

Not to bring up an old thread but for completeness - Here's a script and my solution to the background images:

http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p...ostcount=1