Kodi Community Forum

Spotimc works in frodo on my machine. Don't know about gotham though as that is coming out soon. SPOTIFY is now mostly free too.

Really? Last.fm still works without a paid account? Used to like that until it broke down. Will need to try again.

(2013-12-13, 22:45)ktjensen Wrote: [ -> ]Spotimc works in frodo on my machine. Don't know about gotham though as that is coming out soon. SPOTIFY is now mostly free too.

I haven't done any Gotham testing yet. Because I've got a limited number of machines in the house and a wife with a limited amount of patience for things not working, I tend to start testing new releases when the first beta comes out. So once Gotham goes beta, I should have a better sense on what, if any, updates need to be done to get AS compatible.

Quote:Really? Last.fm still works without a paid account? Used to like that until it broke down. Will need to try again.

I don't know if listening to music on Last.fm works without a paid account, but the API access for information is still free for third party applications to get data from last.fm.

Hi

I've been looking at creating a mount point in OpenElec, so I can stop using the SMB://WHS/MUSIC path in the Artist SlideShow -> Local Artist Folder setting.

As when I use an SMB:// path the "Use Local Images First" and "Use Both Local and Remote Images" options do not work and do not display local images, as we have already discussed.

So as a test I just ran this command in SSH terminal:

mount -t cifs -o username=user,password=pass,rw //192.168.1.100/music /storage/music

that LAN IP being the WHS file server. So now I can add this new path in to the Artist SlideShow settings e.g.

/STORAGE/MUSIC instead of SMB://WHS/MUSIC



And now the option "Use Both Local and Remote Images" is working, where my local fanart images are, for the first time now being displayed by Artist SlideShow.

So far so good, however after playing an artist in XBMC if I look in their extrafanart folder on the file server I am now seeing additional files generated by Artist SlideShow being stored there.



For this particular artist I am playing, these .tbn files and the _exclusions.nfo file are normally found locally on the HTPC in the folder:

/storage/.xbmc/userdata/addon_data/script.artistslideshow/ArtistSlideshow/9711592d

So my question is, since changing the "Local Artist Folder" path to my new mount point of /Storage/Music why are these .tbn files and the _exclusions.nfo now being saved in the artists extrafanart sub-folder on the WHS file server ?

Many thanks

EDIT: Maybe its to do with the rw (read / write) in the mount command I used?

So here's the somewhat convoluted logic for where images are stored when using the "Use Both Local and Remote Images" option.

If the artist directory exists in the defined path AND there is at least one image in the extrafanart folder, then AS puts all images (and the exclusions file) in the local directory.

If the above is not true, then AS stores the images in the normal cache location.

All images that the skin is going to display have to be in one folder, otherwise they can't all be shown. So that's why the logic. I suppose I could set it up to copy all the files from the cache directory and the local directory into a temporary third directory. That's how AS handles multiple artists for one song, and it seems to work.

My concern is about potential lag. If you have a local directory with a metric crap ton of large images, it could take more than a few seconds to copy them to the temp directory. So there could be a long delay before seeing any images. I know there can be a long delay already the first time you view an artist, but that's only the first time. This new delay would happen every single time.

The other thing is that I've got two sets of feedback about location from the people that don't like the current setup. One group would like to have a user defined directory where all images are stored (regardless of source) using the artist's name. I fear for my sanity trying that approach, as I'm bound to run into platform specific UTF-8 encoding issues when creating directories with arbitrary character sets. The second group (that's you right now) seems to want to have the images split based on source (local or remote) and merged later. So I'm tempted to leave it alone and make you all unhappy rather than changing it and still having part of the group unhappy. It's much easier for me that way.

Hi Pkscuot

Thanks for the detailed explanation, so this is expected behaviour then. I would rather it didn't add these extra files to my file server, but if that's the way its working I guess I can live with it as is. I think this is better than potentially having to wait for it to copy / merge the images in to a third temp directory.

I'm just happy at the moment having local images actually displayed by AS for the first time!

Cheers

Just to wrap up my quest on removing the Various Artist bio/content, the Aeon MQ5 skin uses a conditional variable which appears to use (at least sometimes) $INFO[MusicPlayer.Property(Artist_Description). Though I export my music db into my library folders, the Various Artist folder doesn't have an artist.nfo file that I could just modify and reload. I eventually succumbed to editing the xbmc MyMusic37.db to remove the Various Artist info, but obviously this is not advisable. Man, did I head down a slippery slope... At least I'm now very happy.

(2013-12-13, 23:23)pkscuot Wrote: [ -> ]Really? Last.fm still works without a paid account? Used to like that until it broke down. Will need to try again.

I think the way it works these days is you can install the Last.FM client on your machine and still access "radio", but for 3rd party apps you have to have a subscription.

scott s.
.

Scott s - will check on that about last.fm

---

Pkscuot - am happy with the function you have now. But still confused about where to put local artwork once a search is completed by your app AS. When your app fails to find remote artwork, I can find it myself on AMAZON or on GOOGLE IMAGES. But then need to know where to but this artist artwork. Do I create an extrafan artwork folder with specific name? Will your app find it?

---

Also does anyone know how to create a playlist while browsing artists? Am going through my collection playing music and automatically downloading artwork, all works great. But don't know how to just create a playlist and change the name of the playlist. Right clicking in the CONTEXT menu shows no button to add song to a playlist.

(2013-12-17, 12:14)ktjensen Wrote: [ -> ]But still confused about where to put local artwork once a search is completed by your app AS. When your app fails to find remote artwork,

I have extrafanart folder's in each artist folder of my music library. I'm not 100% whether the skin or add-on grabs it, but it's definitely being used.

(2013-12-17, 12:14)ktjensen Wrote: [ -> ]Also does anyone know how to create a playlist while browsing artists?

Go to the Playlist page, under music from the home page. Should be pretty clear from there on.

(2013-12-17, 12:14)ktjensen Wrote: [ -> ]Pkscuot - am happy with the function you have now. But still confused about where to put local artwork once a search is completed by your app AS. When your app fails to find remote artwork, I can find it myself on AMAZON or on GOOGLE IMAGES. But then need to know where to but this artist artwork. Do I create an extrafan artwork folder with specific name? Will your app find it?

There is information on the wiki page for AS on how to setup a local artist directory.

Anybody using Artist Slideshow in Confluence Modified with Gotham alpha1? I don't know if it's the skin or AS itself but since it's skin dependent for it to function properly, I asked there first. I'm only getting the fan art but that's it. The AS folder has all the artist bio but it doesn't show. Also, Milkdrop doesn't seem to work either. Any help getting it working would be appreciated. thanks

Oddly enough, the slideshow addon has stopped downloading artwork for my music library. I haven't changed anything. Do you have any idea? I can send a log if needed.

(2013-12-24, 22:26)johnsills1 Wrote: [ -> ]Oddly enough, the slideshow addon has stopped downloading artwork for my music library. I haven't changed anything. Do you have any idea? I can send a log if needed.

If you are using only last.fm for images, then you need to select another source. Last.fm changed their API and no longer allows downloads of images. Otherwise I would need a log file.

Here is a link to my dropbox for the log file

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jowf51rxttr17vw/xbmc.log

When I first started up XBMC, I played music randomly from a playlist. Nine Inch Nails came up and did not download any artwork (using Fanart.tv)
Alex Clare came up and displayed previously downloaded artwork
Type O Negative did not work either, then I stopped the music and shut down XBMC

(2013-12-24, 23:43)johnsills1 Wrote: [ -> ]When I first started up XBMC, I played music randomly from a playlist. Nine Inch Nails came up and did not download any artwork (using Fanart.tv)
Alex Clare came up and displayed previously downloaded artwork
Type O Negative did not work either, then I stopped the music and shut down XBMC

I see what's happening. AS isn't technically broken, but the challenge with getting a valid Musicbrainz ID is showing in your case. Let me see if I can explain. And if you make it to the end, I actually have a couple of suggestions.

Fanart.tv (and theaudiodb.com) require a MusicBrainzID to lookup stuff for a given artist. To try and get that, AS queries the MusicBrainz database to try and get a match based on the information from the song that's playing. Because MusicBrainz tries to give you a long list from which to choose, AS has to ask lots of different questions to try and get down to one answer. Here's the logic:

1- ask for a list of artists based on the artist name of the playing song
2- go through that list looking for a complete match (i.e. Nine Inch Nails is the actual group name, not Nine Inch Elvis - which is also returned as a result when searching for Nine Inch Nails).
3- If you find one, ask for all the albums for that artist.
4- go through all the albums and look for a match. This is a little bit of a fuzzy match, and I think I could add some additional fuzziness that might actually help in your case.
5- if no album match, get a list of every song by an artist and see if you can find a match. Again, the matching is a little fuzzy.
6- At this point you either have a match or you don't. If you do, AS stores the MusicBrainz ID. If not it writes out an empty file. If it finds a match, AS will never check again for that artist. If there was no match, it will try again in a couple of weeks.

In your case, the two artists with no artwork don't have any because when AS tried to get a MusicBrainz ID, it couldn't. In the particular log you sent, AS already failed to find a match, and it probably hasn't been two weeks yet. It's possible in a couple of weeks you'll be playing stuff and the artwork will download.

One thing you can do is go look up the artist on MusicBrainz to see how the albums and songs are named. Then you can decide if you want to rename some of your music to match. If you decide to do that, go to the XBMC data directory (location will vary based on platform) and look in userdata/addon_data/script.artistslideshow. You can either delete the entire ArtistInformation directory or just the one for the particular artist. That will force AS to try and find the MusicBrainz ID again. Alternatively, you can open the empty musicbrainz.nfo file and past the correct MusicBrainz ID into that. Then AS will use it to get the artwork.

I know this is a bit complicated and a pain in the ass. At some point I'm hoping XBMC adds the ability to scrape the MusicBrainz ID when you scan your music library. Once that happens, AS is already ready for that. In Frodo the field is in the database, and I even ask XBMC for the MusicBrainz ID, but the information is rarely if ever there. My understanding is that Gotham will scrape the MusicBrainz ID if it's in the metadata of the music file. I think I saw a MusicBrainz scraper once, but I really don't have any idea what it scrapes.

I'm hoping somewhere in this ramble was something that will help you out.