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Full Version: Artist Slideshow addon (with skin and addon integration)
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Hello,

this is pretty much my first time experimenting with this addon and there are some Things that boggle me.

First off, is there any way to move the Cache Directory? I'd like to store all those Pictures on my media Server rather then the playback machine. I'm using path-substitution in the advancedsettings.xml right now but that's somewhat of a brute-force method and I don't feel like this is how it's supposed to be done.

As a second thought, why couldn't AS just use the Directory where the Music/Artist is stored (this of course would only work for organized collections, but this is the same with movies and tvshows so...), maybe in a configurable subfolder (something like D:\MyMusic\Artists\Artist\__extrafanarts__ or similar).

Or is this already possible and I just can't find it?
[quote='mihawk90' pid='1982071' dateline='1428964100']
First off, is there any way to move the Cache Directory? I'd like to store all those Pictures on my media Server rather then the playback machine. I'm using path-substitution in the advancedsettings.xml right now but that's somewhat of a brute-force method and I don't feel like this is how it's supposed to be done.
[quote]

There isn't a way to move the Cache directory. There is (sort of) a way to move stuff out of the cache directories though. I wrote a companion addon called Artist Slideshow Helper that will move all the stuff from your cache to a directory of your choosing. It will put them in a directory of your choosing in [artist]/extrafanart/. You could run that manually periodically or set it up to run every night using something like CronXBMC. Then you can set AS to use both local and remote images. Once there is a single image for a given artist in your outside directory, the cache directory won't ever get used again for that artist.

[quote]
As a second thought, why couldn't AS just use the Directory where the Music/Artist is stored (this of course would only work for organized collections, but this is the same with movies and tvshows so...), maybe in a configurable subfolder (something like D:\MyMusic\Artists\Artist\__extrafanarts__ or similar).
[/quote]

There is an option to set a local directory in one of the settings panes for AS. It's called "Local Artist Folder" and is in the SLIDESHOW pane of the settings. Using that in combination with AS Helper (above) should do basically what you want. Or at least what I think you want. If you haven't yet, you might check out the AS wiki page (in signature). It describes all the settings.
Uh yeah AS Helper Comes pretty Close (didn't see that one before). The only "issue" I'm having is that it creates a lot of empty directories for me because there are no Images for that Artist, those are mostly artists that aren't the main act though (my directory/file structure is based on Album artists, but my ID3Tags include featured artists as well). Integrating this into my existing structure is therefore a Little tricky, but it's a nice start.

Thanks for the hint Smile
Hi pkscout,

I would like to use the modded Confluence skin with Artist Slideshow you provide, but when I try to install the repo via zip from github kodi says something about wrong structure of this add-on.

Am I missing something here? Any help is highly appreciated!
(2015-04-17, 18:59)csteinforth Wrote: [ -> ]Hi pkscout,

I would like to use the modded Confluence skin with Artist Slideshow you provide, but when I try to install the repo via zip from github kodi says something about wrong structure of this add-on.

Am I missing something here? Any help is highly appreciated!

Just to confirm you got the right links:

Helix Repo
https://github.com/pkscout/repository.sk...-1.1.0.zip

Gotham Repo
https://github.com/pkscout/repository.sk...-1.0.1.zip

If one of those works, could you tell me where you got any other link so I can fix them? If these don't help, I'll have to look into it this weekend.
Yeah, the links are correct. If I unzip the ZIP and copy it to addons manually I can use your repo. Maybe something is wrong in my Ubuntu Installation?!?
(2015-04-17, 21:15)csteinforth Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, the links are correct. If I unzip the ZIP and copy it to addons manually I can use your repo. Maybe something is wrong in my Ubuntu Installation?!?

I'll check this weekend. I use OS X for my main development machine. Sometimes if you don't zip things just right on OS X they choke on Kodi. It might be that. Or it might be you. Wink
Thankyou pkscout for a great add-on! I had a problem getting it working at all previously (posted in this thread but didn't get a reply), but now, having updated my skin, it's working...but I get some stuttering of audio during playback which seems to happen in relation to the artwork slideshow (if it doesn't find any artwork there is no stuttering).

It happens maybe one, two or three times per song, with the audio cutting out for just a half second or so - enough to be very annoying and spoiling the experience. I'm not doing anything else on the system at the same time (Visualisation is off, PVR isn't recording, library isn't updating).

Is this something that happens only on first use, when images are being downloaded? Should I look at storing the images on my NAS (where the music files are) instead of the Kodi box?

My system is:
Artist Slideshow 1.8.2
Skin is CCM Helix 3.0.15
OS is OpenElec 5.0.8 (which is Kodi 14.2)
ASUS Chromebox M031U Desktop (Celeron 2955U 1.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 16GB SSD)
My music files are stored on a local NAS (WD MyBooklive 3Tb)
(2015-04-19, 19:47)gshodg Wrote: [ -> ]Thankyou pkscout for a great add-on! I had a problem getting it working at all previously (posted in this thread but didn't get a reply), but now, having updated my skin, it's working...but I get some stuttering of audio during playback which seems to happen in relation to the artwork slideshow (if it doesn't find any artwork there is no stuttering).

It happens maybe one, two or three times per song, with the audio cutting out for just a half second or so - enough to be very annoying and spoiling the experience. I'm not doing anything else on the system at the same time (Visualisation is off, PVR isn't recording, library isn't updating).

Is this something that happens only on first use, when images are being downloaded? Should I look at storing the images on my NAS (where the music files are) instead of the Kodi box?

My system is:
Artist Slideshow 1.8.2
Skin is CCM Helix 3.0.15
OS is OpenElec 5.0.8 (which is Kodi 14.2)
ASUS Chromebox M031U Desktop (Celeron 2955U 1.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 16GB SSD)
My music files are stored on a local NAS (WD MyBooklive 3Tb)

I'd have to see a debug log file (make sure to turn on debug logging in AS and Kodi). I can't think of anything AS is doing that would ever cause an audio stutter. AS queries a few web sites, writes a couple small text files and, if there are images found, download them. That system doesn't strike me as underpowered, but it seems like there is IO contention somewhere.
(2015-04-20, 06:21)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ]
(2015-04-19, 19:47)gshodg Wrote: [ -> ]Thankyou pkscout for a great add-on! I had a problem getting it working at all previously (posted in this thread but didn't get a reply), but now, having updated my skin, it's working...but I get some stuttering of audio during playback which seems to happen in relation to the artwork slideshow (if it doesn't find any artwork there is no stuttering).

It happens maybe one, two or three times per song, with the audio cutting out for just a half second or so - enough to be very annoying and spoiling the experience. I'm not doing anything else on the system at the same time (Visualisation is off, PVR isn't recording, library isn't updating).

Is this something that happens only on first use, when images are being downloaded? Should I look at storing the images on my NAS (where the music files are) instead of the Kodi box?

My system is:
Artist Slideshow 1.8.2
Skin is CCM Helix 3.0.15
OS is OpenElec 5.0.8 (which is Kodi 14.2)
ASUS Chromebox M031U Desktop (Celeron 2955U 1.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 16GB SSD)
My music files are stored on a local NAS (WD MyBooklive 3Tb)

I'd have to see a debug log file (make sure to turn on debug logging in AS and Kodi). I can't think of anything AS is doing that would ever cause an audio stutter. AS queries a few web sites, writes a couple small text files and, if there are images found, download them. That system doesn't strike me as underpowered, but it seems like there is IO contention somewhere.

Thanks pkscout - I think it was my NAS that was causing the problem, as it it locked up shortly afterwards. A reboot of the NAS seems to have fixed it.

However, I am wondering about how best to optimise use of your add-on. Should I leave it set to download the images downloaded on the box as it does by default, or should I use your other add-on to move them to the NAS? - I don't understand the pros/cons of this. How does your add-on work? Does it download the images from internet sources only on the first playing of an artist, and then they are stored locally forever and the add-on only looks externally when a new artist is played? Or are they downloaded from internet sources freshly every time that artist is played. I have a large music collection on the NAS, and there's much more storage space on there than the Chromebox which has Kodi. In time I may also add another Kodi instance in my house, in this case would storing the Artist Slidshow fanart centrally on the NAS be advantageous?
(2015-04-20, 12:52)gshodg Wrote: [ -> ]However, I am wondering about how best to optimise use of your add-on. Should I leave it set to download the images downloaded on the box as it does by default, or should I use your other add-on to move them to the NAS? - I don't understand the pros/cons of this. How does your add-on work? Does it download the images from internet sources only on the first playing of an artist, and then they are stored locally forever and the add-on only looks externally when a new artist is played? Or are they downloaded from internet sources freshly every time that artist is played. I have a large music collection on the NAS, and there's much more storage space on there than the Chromebox which has Kodi. In time I may also add another Kodi instance in my house, in this case would storing the Artist Slidshow fanart centrally on the NAS be advantageous?

Where the images get stored is really personal preference. If the drive where you have the Kodi user data files is really space constrained, moving them to your NAS would help. It would also help in the case where you have two Kodi clients. Other folks move the files because they have a bunch of art already from other sources and want everything in one place. Here's basically how AS works when a song starts:

1- check to see if image list files exists (one for each source you active in the settings) for the playing artist (or artists)
2- if one exists, check to see if it's more than 2 weeks old
3- if none exists or is older than 2 weeks old, refresh it
4- download the images that don't already exist locally (either in the user data location or in the local artist directory you specified - i.e. your NAS)

So once an image is downloaded, it is never deleted (unless you have the cache manager turned on in the advanced settings).
Hi like to say great addon first of all! I have this running on aeon nox skin and i was wandering if there was a way to have this on top of any window that is open? at present i have to tab to see the picture visualisation and doesn't run on the home screen. Thanks in advance Smile
(2015-04-27, 04:29)riggs1973 Wrote: [ -> ]Hi like to say great addon first of all! I have this running on aeon nox skin and i was wandering if there was a way to have this on top of any window that is open? at present i have to tab to see the picture visualisation and doesn't run on the home screen. Thanks in advance Smile

That's something that the skin author would have to implement. I'm thought one of the Aeon Nox variants did that, but I don't tend to keep up with how skin authors are using AS. There are too many to keep track of.
(2015-04-20, 18:17)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ]
(2015-04-20, 12:52)gshodg Wrote: [ -> ]However, I am wondering about how best to optimise use of your add-on. Should I leave it set to download the images downloaded on the box as it does by default, or should I use your other add-on to move them to the NAS? - I don't understand the pros/cons of this. How does your add-on work? Does it download the images from internet sources only on the first playing of an artist, and then they are stored locally forever and the add-on only looks externally when a new artist is played? Or are they downloaded from internet sources freshly every time that artist is played. I have a large music collection on the NAS, and there's much more storage space on there than the Chromebox which has Kodi. In time I may also add another Kodi instance in my house, in this case would storing the Artist Slidshow fanart centrally on the NAS be advantageous?

Where the images get stored is really personal preference. If the drive where you have the Kodi user data files is really space constrained, moving them to your NAS would help. It would also help in the case where you have two Kodi clients. Other folks move the files because they have a bunch of art already from other sources and want everything in one place. Here's basically how AS works when a song starts:

1- check to see if image list files exists (one for each source you active in the settings) for the playing artist (or artists)
2- if one exists, check to see if it's more than 2 weeks old
3- if none exists or is older than 2 weeks old, refresh it
4- download the images that don't already exist locally (either in the user data location or in the local artist directory you specified - i.e. your NAS)

So once an image is downloaded, it is never deleted (unless you have the cache manager turned on in the advanced settings).

I have an artist for which there was no artist slideshow fanart found. I got the artist created on audiodb.com (they were missing this artist) and I uploaded a background fanart image. It's not appeared in my Kodi artist slideshow. What else do I need to do?

Audiodb page is here: http://www.theaudiodb.com/images/media/a...485025.jpg
(2015-05-01, 15:15)gshodg Wrote: [ -> ]I have an artist for which there was no artist slideshow fanart found. I got the artist created on audiodb.com (they were missing this artist) and I uploaded a background fanart image. It's not appeared in my Kodi artist slideshow. What else do I need to do?

Audiodb page is here: http://www.theaudiodb.com/images/media/a...485025.jpg

AS caches the information from the external sources and only updates that every couple of weeks. This helps keep the load down on the external providers. If you don't want to wait for the cache file to update itself, you'll want to delete that cache file. To do that, go to your user data folder. Find addon_data/script.artistslideshow and then look in the folder Artist Information. The artist names are all hashed, so you might want to get Artist Slideshow Helper to generate a file of all the hash names. Once you find the right folder. Delete the cache files as needed. For the most part you shouldn't need to delete musicbrainz.nfo or theaudiodbid.nfo. Those both store the corresponding artist ID, and that doesn't change.