[Cyberyaga]

OK...

I started using XBMC a little while ago. But now, I'm really making everything to be the way I want it.

I downloaded XBMC like two weeks ago, so I'm running the latest. On a Windows 7 machine 64bit.

I have two main issue:

1)I was smart enough to realize that you have to include music folders into your library, in order for them to get scanned and have the all the fanart and artist info downloaded. Everything is looking good, except that the artist thumb, doesn't get downloaded, but one stupid thumb from a song keeps coming up as the default for ALL of the artist in the entire collection. How do I fix this? Where o where is that damn thumbnail?

2) I have a folder with all my movies. Each in it's own little folder. In it, I have the subtitles, and fanart files. I used "media center master" to organize my stash. After adding the source in XBMC, it puts everything in the library. Now here is the problem: Where is XBMC storing the fanart? It is not using the ones in the respective movie folder, because if I delete the fanart from a movie, it still shows up in XBMC.

BTW, I just figured out that the XML files that hold the configuration are in "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata"

Thanks in advance for helping me out in this.

[rocketpants]

welcome.

To help out a bit more can you post your directory structure (music and movies) and a bit of info on the thumb that is displaying for all artists (is it the first one in your library? default XBMC artist thumb?)

1)I was smart enough to realize that you have to include music folders into your library, in order for them to get scanned and have the all the fanart and artist info downloaded. Everything is looking good, except that the artist thumb, doesn't get downloaded, but one stupid thumb from a song keeps coming up as the default for ALL of the artist in the entire collection. How do I fix this? Where o where is that damn thumbnail?

Thumbnails are scraped either from local data ((http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Thumbnails) or from your music scraper (by default allmusic.com). The thumbnail is named from some sort of hash of the media location and stored in the %appdata%\XBMC\Userdata\Thumbnails directory.

Try listing your music library by artist and getting info on an artist and change the thumbnail that way. This would be a pain to do for a large library

2) I have a folder with all my movies. Each in it's own little folder. In it, I have the subtitles, and fanart files. I used "media center master" to organize my stash. After adding the source in XBMC, it puts everything in the library. Now here is the problem: Where is XBMC storing the fanart? It is not using the ones in the respective movie folder, because if I delete the fanart from a movie, it still shows up in XBMC.

To use local fanart XBMC needs it named in a specific way (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=FanArt)) so I suspect that yours is not using that naming convention and instead is scraping from themoviedb or whatever sraper you are using. Once again you can set the fanart manually for each movie by bringing up info on each. Or you coudl remove the source, rename all your fanart to comply with XBMC and then re-add the source it should pick up your local fanart.

When it scrapes your local fanart it still saves it in your thumbnail directory so it doesn't matter if you delete the original file. Having the data in the movie directory only helps in rescanning your library at some future time if needed - XBMC doesn't read it each time as it uses its own db and thumbnail cache.

[Cyberyaga]

Thanks for the help...

Movie Directory structure:
e:\Media Library\Movies\Title1\Title1.mkv
e:\Media Library\Movies\Title1\Title1.srt
e:\Media Library\Movies\Title1\Fanart.jpg
e:\Media Library\Movies\Title1\backdrop.jpg
e:\Media Library\Movies\Title1\backdrop2.jpg
e:\Media Library\Movies\Title2\Title2.mkv

Music Directory Structure:
e:\Media Library\Music\Artist\Album\Song1.mp3
e:\Media Library\Music\Artist\Album\Song2.mp3

First off, the thumbnail for the artist that is showing up is from a MP3 file that was at the root of my music folder. I've removed it from there, but the thumb still shows as the default for every artist that doesn't have a thumbnail. Adding it manually will be a incredibly long process, since my library is huge(that's what she said ).


Second, I have my music and movie libraries to scan at startup. So, I'm going to take another jpg backdrop and name it fanart.jpg to see if it takes.

BTW, can I change the naming convention of fanart.jpg to something else? Media Center Master is a great program, but it saves the backdrops as "backdrop.jpg". Will changing this in the advancedsettings.xml work? http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Adv...Cfanart.3E

Again, thanks for your help

[rocketpants]

First off, the thumbnail for the artist that is showing up is from a MP3 file that was at the root of my music folder. I've removed it from there, but the thumb still shows as the default for every artist that doesn't have a thumbnail. Adding it manually will be a incredibly long process, since my library is huge(that's what she said ).

As I understand it, once you have scanned the library adn the thumbnail has been cached it doesn't matter if you remove the original source as the thumbnail will still be there in /userdata/thumbnails. You could try removing the source and cleaning your library then re-adding the source and letting it scrape all the data again. It works reasonably quick if you are not downloading artist details during the scrape.

Second, I have my music and movie libraries to scan at startup. So, I'm going to take another jpg backdrop and name it fanart.jpg to see if it takes.

BTW, can I change the naming convention of fanart.jpg to something else? Media Center Master is a great program, but it saves the backdrops as "backdrop.jpg". Will changing this in the advancedsettings.xml work? http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title...l#.3Cfanart.3E

That change to advancedsetting.xml looks exactly like what you are after but I've never tried it myself so can't say for sure. But the same applies as for the music library - just adding a new source of fanart (your backdrop.jpg) wont automatically update the library. You either need to update each one or drop the library and rescrape.

The extra fanart that you have (backdrop2.jpg etc) is also handled differently in XBMC. I think it depends on the skin you use (even if it supports extra fanart). The Transparency skin does support extra fanart so you could read about how to set that up there for a start.

[Cyberyaga]

Just an FYI...

I ended up deleting my XBMC folder under appdata. It gave me a clean start, and my issues with the thumbnail are gone.

Since my music/movie library is in decent condition, it came back almost 100% after I added it again.

Now it's downloading the Artist thumb properly. And no thumb from another album.

I'm using transparency as my skin, so I'll read more on the multiple backdrop.

Thanks a lot for your help.