Kodi Community Forum

Yes XBMC will support (maybe already support) animated GIF.

@ kuzeth

You should look into setting up Artwork Downloader to "Use local files". That way it will save all your artwork next to the media files on your network shares (rather than directly into XBMC's database in AppData) and then if you ever mess up XBMC and have to reinstall without being able to restore from a backup, it will automatically re-populate the artwork with the files saved locally. The catch is you have to have all your movies saved in their own individual folders, named identically to the movie stored within. Using Files2Folder greatly accelerated this process for me when I discovered the option for local artwork. Literally took me no more than 10 minutes to shift about 1200 movies into separate folders.

This is what your library will look like if you decide to go this route:



This also works for TV Shows and Music.

(2014-06-20, 19:18)kuzeth Wrote: [ -> ]Latest bug.

Upgraded to 13.1 from Beta 4, fucked something up horribly and spent the last hour trying to un-delete (delete done via network share) of my Roaming folder contents meaning I lost all my thumbs/fanart changes and everything. Haven't panicked like that in a while. Restored with old Roaming contents and lost about 60 odd movies, all covers and changes.. That one got the ol' heart racing.

Anyway.

I manage to restore everything to normal, thank Christ, and the only casualty has been a bug when playing music full screen: (Bottom right hand corner)



As you can see, the duration bar is over-lapping with the time. This was fine before I managed to mess things (the upgrade) up, if someone can help it would be really appreciated, I'm going to resume banging my head against the wall in frustration that everything I do, I manage to screw up royally.

Thanks guys.

Hey guys, this is no longer an issue managed to fix it up myself.

Edit: Hey Surlias, just noticed your post.

Thanks for the advice and taking the time to screen shot your setup, but I'm not too keen on having my movies in separate folders. I backup the roaming folder contents. [read: userdata] Using that I can clean install 100 times over and just copy the contents to the new roaming folder and pick up exactly where I left off.

I do have another issue though, I made a thread for it, but hopefully no-one minds me posting it here as well as its somewhat on-topic.

"I've been adding a few albums to my music library and whenever I try to go to Album Information, to change the thumb manually, it just takes me in a loop, asking for the album and artist name over and over and over and over *deep breath* and over and over again. It takes me on a loop every time I try and go to Album Information or Artist Information meaning I can't change the thumb/fanart for any given album and artist.

I'm using this little xml by Whitebelly, and its working out great for artists, but how can I change it to adjust albums?

<musicdb>
<artist>
<name>Leon Redbone</name>
</artist>
</musicdb>

If there was a way to remove all scanning/scraping when going to album information / artist information (perhaps an advanced settings xml) that'd be fantastic as I keep all my information local.

Thanks in advance! "

Upgraded to 13.1, used Amelondbar's skin for TV shows running Tripanel view, the issue of CD Art not always showing fixed up, extended info widget error I (was) getting is fixed too. Everything is running perfectly

As soon as I can get this issue sorted out (artist/album info loop) my HTPC's XBMC install won't need to be touched for a few years.

Thanks for having me and helping me out everyone. Its greatly appreciated, I sincerely apologize if I'm getting on anyone's nerves with all these questions.

(2014-06-21, 17:19)kuzeth Wrote: [ -> ]Hey Surlias, just noticed your post.

Thanks for the advice and taking the time to screen shot your setup, but I'm not too keen on having my movies in separate folders. I backup the roaming folder contents. [read: userdata] Using that I can clean install 100 times over and just copy the contents to the new roaming folder and pick up exactly where I left off.

What's wrong with individual folders? Eventually you might be unable to carry over your roaming data to a future version of XBMC that lacks backwards compatibility.

Also, using local artwork allows you to manually manage and edit files yourself if you want to make an adjustment to a piece of artwork or use a poster that isn't available on one of the scrapers. For instance, I recently added both the theatrical and special edition cuts of Beauty and the Beast, so I edited the poster for the extended version:



And while perhaps it was ill-advised, I didn't like how the chair looked all hacked off in the Parenthood clearart:



Folders or no, I don't see a drawback to this setup myself.

Yeah, you need to use individual folders. Any other method will only become a MASSIVE pain should something go wrong with XBMC.

Use individual folders. Export your library to individual files often. Downlaod and manipulate all your extra art yourself. That is if you want a clean, sleek and impressive looking library.

(2014-06-22, 01:52)Batiatus Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, you need to use individual folders. Any other method will only become a MASSIVE pain should something go wrong with XBMC.

Use individual folders. Export your library to individual files often. Downlaod and manipulate all your extra art yourself. That is if you want a clean, sleek and impressive looking library.

+1
Individual folders all the way - manual manipulation/addition/deletion of artwork is made easy - exporting easier as well - and naming files isnt a nightmare either if you use third party media managers

Hey guys, thanks for the input

I manage most of my thumbs/fanart locally, but I go to the specific movie and choose "browse" and then pick the thumb I want. It then gets backed up to the userdata folder and I don't need to keep a copy of it anywhere.

I won't go into the why, maybe some of you will put 2 and 2 together, but to move 500+ movies from where they are at the moment would cause major problems for another program I use and I would need to re-check them to the new folder, which, would take way, way too long.

I haven't come across a single error not having movies in specific folders in the 4 odd years I've used XBMC. That being said, I can definitely see the advantages.

@Surlias

I'm thinking of doing local artwork. If I use file2folders how will this effect xbmc?

Will movies need to be re-added again? Or will xbmc pick up just the folder structure has changed?

(2014-06-22, 08:56)kuzeth Wrote: [ -> ]Hey guys, thanks for the input

I manage most of my thumbs/fanart locally, but I go to the specific movie and choose "browse" and then pick the thumb I want. It then gets backed up to the userdata folder and I don't need to keep a copy of it anywhere.

I won't go into the why, maybe some of you will put 2 and 2 together, but to move 500+ movies from where they are at the moment would cause major problems for another program I use and I would need to re-check them to the new folder, which, would take way, way too long.

I haven't come across a single error not having movies in specific folders in the 4 odd years I've used XBMC. That being said, I can definitely see the advantages.

Geez you've been lucky. Twice in a month I have XBMC completely kill my GUI settings and library all on it's own. My library then was over 1400 movies and 50 TV shows. Not it's over 1600 and 60. Using individual folders with each containing all specific files is the only way to go to make sure if anything happens you aren't royally F'ed in the A. I couldn't imagine trying to sort out 500 movies let alone 1600 in 1 folder (not to mention they wouldn't fit since I've got 10 4TB hard drives nearing capacity).

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(2014-06-22, 09:46)GTunney Wrote: [ -> ]@Surlias

I'm thinking of doing local artwork. If I use file2folders how will this effect xbmc?

Will movies need to be re-added again? Or will xbmc pick up just the folder structure has changed?

You will have to re-add all movies in your library. If everything is currently stored in 1 folder you could try to export individual files and see if it creates the proper .nfo files for each title which you'd then copy to the new folder structure along with the movie files. Then when XBMC re-scans it takes milliseconds to scrape the info and any editing to it you've already done rather than searching the net and starting from scratch. Export can also create al the image files you've already got, and again copy to new folders. Give it a try as it can't hurt.

(2014-06-21, 07:19)mikebzh44 Wrote: [ -> ]Yes XBMC will support (maybe already support) animated GIF.

Nice! I hope it will apply to icons too. I had made quick tests with Cirrus/Aeon icons when designing them and it looks cool:

@Batiatus Jesus, how are you sourcing all those movies and TV shows? I don't recognize the "Batiatus" username from anywhere. Oh, and its not 500 movies in one folder, its spanning about 16tb worth of drives. D:\Movies - E:\Movies etc.

Thanks @Batiatus

I've used files2folders and it's currently rescraping everything. 600+ movies so not too bad.

Although I've selected use local files it's still downloading artwork to the app data folder.

Any suggestions? My movies are stored on my NAS and in individual folders now.

@GTunney Until someone more intelligent comes along and tells you how to fix it, have you named the .png/.jpg as Folder (for thumbs) and Fanart (for fanart obviously)?

(2014-06-22, 12:18)GTunney Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks @Batiatus

I've used files2folders and it's currently rescraping everything. 600+ movies so not too bad.

Although I've selected use local files it's still downloading artwork to the app data folder.

Any suggestions? My movies are stored on my NAS and in individual folders now.

unfortunately Its been a while since I did this but when I moved each movie to to its own folder I had to remove the source, clean database, and then add it again cause XBMC would not see the change, it re-scrap and gave doubles.

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(2014-06-22, 15:37)kuzeth Wrote: [ -> ]@GTunney Until someone more intelligent comes along and tells you how to fix it, have you named the .png/.jpg as Folder (for thumbs) and Fanart (for fanart obviously)?

@GTunney This will not be necessary because you have each movie in its own folder artworkdownloader will download and rename all artwork.

Well you do have to reconfigure the source to recognize that "each movie is in a separate folder"