Kodi Community Forum

I've successfully had my multiple PCs running XBMC pointing to a MySQL DB for well over a year and love the functionality it provides.

I've decided to do some work on also synching up the artwork (fanart / thumbs) to a shared location on my NAS (Synology DS1511+) and came across this HOW-TO:Synchronize_multiple_XBMC_libraries > Syncing_thumbnails_and_fanart

So following those directions I added the following to my advancedsettings.xml file (same one I previously edited for MySQL settings)


I launch up XBMC, and do a couple of refreshes on TV-Series and expect the new "Thumbnails" folder to be populated, and nothing....

I've turned debugging on, looked in the logs, and the advancedsettings.xml file is being read... but further down the log, it states that the Thumbnail folder is still associated to the Special / Masterprofile path and has completely ignored the fact that I redefined it.

I've tried replacing the NAS name in the path with the IP, and no luck.

Anyone have any ideas on what I could try? Do I need to "start from scratch" to make this work or "Clean" the DB out?

Unfortunately it simply isn't working, no errors in the log, etc...

What version of XBMC are you using? Path substitution only works on Eden.

JR

Wow... no wonder... I'm using v10.1 (insert face palm here)

I was reading that wiki page, and noticed the "green" box at the top of the page mentioning the page needed to be updated for "Eden", but I totally overlooked the "blue" box above it where it says

Looks like I have some work ahead of me, I will most likely start from scratch using Eden Beta 2.

Thanks for pointing that out jhsrennie, I had done quite a few searches and a lot of reading here in the forums (some posts dating back a couple of years) where I guess this new functionality is being discussed in older threads.

Hopefully anyone else that wonders down the same path I did will find this post useful.

Hope I'm not hijacking this thread ...

I tried figuring it out, and did read the Wiki page, but without finding a clear answer to my question;
When all media is stored on a NAS (QNAP), and all XBMC boxes access that exact same share, do I still need to set a thumbnails folder?

I do have MySQL setup for syncing.

I apologize if it sounds like a stupid question.

My TV Series and Movies all already have fanart etc in their folders,... just wondering. (using Eden Beta 2 on all machines)

All my media is stored on my NAS, however I do not have the Thumbnail/Fanart images stored in each Movie/TV Show's folder. So having a common / shared place for this was key, otherwise it would be missing on some systems.

Are you using some 3rd party application to grab the artwork for you and place it in the folders? If so, then I assume you would not need to use this 'advanced setting' for path substitution. Although having the ability to do so now means for many of us that 3rd party apps like that will no longer be required (I actually deleted all the tbn/fanart/posters/etc.. files off the NAS that were in some of my TV/Movies)

Thanks for the reply - I was just wondering why my Eden setup still bogs down with the message "compressing database" which makes me believe that somehow a local version is still maintained of the database ... which in turn makes me wonder about the thumbs and fanart as well ...

For grabbing artwork I use mainly Sick Beard and Couch Potato. Specially Sick Beard does a great job.

Having that in mind, wouldn't it be nice to have a scraper running on the shared server (NAS), versus having each XBMC trying to scrape? This way I do not have to keep an XBMC machine running all the time.

I remember reading way back that there was an addon or something that would launch the scraper at timed intervals. Like you said be nice if there was a lightweight app that would run in hte background monitoring folder changes and scraping as required.

I haven't seen the "compressing database" message you're talking about personally.

I'm having an issue with <pathsubstitution> code in advancedsetting.xml.

Ive followed instructions to the letter and the library is updating from MySQL, but I can't watch anything. It seems that the client XBMC is still looking for the old paths from my host computer.

Any help?

Note: I've pasted the code below.

<pathsubstitution>

<substitute>
<from>E:\TV\</from>
<to>SMB://HOST/TV/</to>
</substitute>
<substitute>
<from>F:\Movies A-Q\</from>
<to>SMB://HOST/Movies A-Q/</to>
</substitute>
<substitute>
<from>G:\Movies R-Z\</from>
<to>SMB://HOST/Movies R-Z/<to>
</substitute>
<substitute>
<from>special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/</from>
<to>SMB://HOST/Users/Andrew/AppData/Roaming/XBMC/userdata/Thumbnails/</to>
</substitute>

</pathsubstitution>

Using XBMC v11 beta? Have you tried using the IP address instead of the netBIOS name?

Yes, on Eden B2. Using the IP address where? In the pathsubstitution code?

instead of "HOST".

btw. you dont have to substitute the movies you just have to add them on your local machine as smb share and not as local path.

Okay. Didn't even know I could do that!
So instead of SMB I just do something like this?
I'm not an expert by any means, but I've never seen that done before?

<substitute>
<from>G:\Movies R-Z\</from>
<to>***.***.***.***/Movies R-Z/<to>
</substitute>

Sorry, apparently I effed this up.
I imported the library that I used on my host machine to my client one per the instructions on the wiki entry for syncing libraries in Eden.

Should I start again and add the files from SMB share and restart that library entirely? Or can I just add the folders and then restart XBMC and MySQL will do the rest.

Im definitely confused by this now. I thought that path substitution commands in advancedsettings.xml would enable this work. I'm not a total newb, but this is killing me for some reason!

TeKo Wrote:instead of "HOST".

btw. you dont have to substitute the movies you just have to add them on your local machine as smb share and not as local path.

He's doing both, actually.

Path subs in this instance are just a cheap way to make the DB work with local paths without having to rescan them with network paths.

Other methods will also be added to the wiki (like exporting the XML file, then editing it with find/replace), but this seemed like the easiest to start with.

andrewtdop Wrote:Sorry, apparently I effed this up.
I imported the library that I used on my host machine to my client one per the instructions on the wiki entry for syncing libraries in Eden.

Should I start again and add the files from SMB share and restart that library entirely? Or can I just add the folders and then restart XBMC and MySQL will do the rest.

Im definitely confused by this now. I thought that path substitution commands in advancedsettings.xml would enable this work. I'm not a total newb, but this is killing me for some reason!

In theory it should work just as you had it set up before with the path subs for file shares. When you import the library when it had a local path, each box thinks the file is located at say G:\MOVIES even though that is only true for one machine. By using path subs it will instead look for it on the SMB share.

I'll try a few test situations myself and see if there's anything I'm missing in these instructions.