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Full Version: How to add fanart to compilation CD's?
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Kodi 16
Confluence skin.
I use it only for Music.

If I choose an artist without thumb and/or fanart and select "Artist Information" from the context menu, then "Get Thumb" or "Get Fanart".
This takes me to the "Choose Fanart" window from where I can browse to any folder location....

But for a compilation Album, I'd like to add fanarts and thumbs for every track on the album since they all have different artists.
How can I do that when the filename has to be "fanart.jpg" and "thumb.jpg" ?
Obviously, I cannot have more than one file named "fanart.jpg" in that folder.

If I name the file something else, Kodi doesn't recognize it.
Please help, anyone?
You would need to create an Artist folder, and put fanart.jpg (background), poster.jpg (artist picture), and even folder.jpg (also the artists picture) into each folder. Then if your music is tagged correctly, it will pull the needed artwork from those Artists folders.

So it helps if you have a large music library, and most of your Artists already have these folders and artwork in them.
(2016-03-29, 00:14)Powerhouse Wrote: [ -> ]So it helps if you have a large music library, and most of your Artists already have these folders and artwork in them.
Well, with ordinary albums, that is of course no problem. But with a compilation album that, say i.e. has 18 tracks, all with different artists and sometimes with contributing artists as well, it feels like stupid programming (pardon the expression) to have to create 18 new folders just to store 18 different fanart.jpg files (?!?)

I have read in the forum that with video libraries, one can name the files something like movie<name>-fanart.jpg and Kodi will accept that. Isn't something similar possible also with music libraries?
Actually, if you have "Fetch additional information" turned on when scraping your music, Kodi will fetch art and biographies for ALL artists, whether on a compilation or not. The success of this however is partly down to how well your files are tagged AND the server Kodi is getting data from. As getting artist details for a compilation involves a lot of data, the server sometimes cannot keep up and artists get missed.

This data is stored in the database (artist bio and http links to fanart, thumbs etc) so there is no need to create separate directories for each artist.

Even if you update your entire library once it has been scraped, Kodi will not fetch any missing additional info for an album unless a file has changed (eg, you have edited a tag), however 'Query all artists' from the context menu will attempt to get any missing info.

Note, some of the art is only available in certain views, but if you want it in all of them, exporting your music library to separate files will create artist directories and place associated data in them.
(2016-03-29, 10:06)black_eagle Wrote: [ -> ]This data is stored in the database (artist bio and http links to fanart, thumbs etc) so there is no need to create separate directories for each artist.
I am not talking about fanart that gets scraped. That's ok. I'm talking about fanart that does NOT get scraped, which I therefore have to add myself. How can I add (organize and store) fanart for 18 artists on a compilation album where Kodi failed to scrape any of them, and only one single filename is allowed?

(2016-03-29, 10:06)black_eagle Wrote: [ -> ]Note, some of the art is only available in certain views, but if you want it in all of them, exporting your music library to separate files will create artist directories and place associated data in them.
Were does Kodi create these folders during export? In my Music Library?
If you wish to add personalised fanart, or fanart that is not available via the default scrapers, then yes you will have to create artist directories. However, if that fanart IS available to be scraped, then Kodi will show it to you provided you have turned on the option to display artists on compilations.

I have just checked this actually with Laura Pausini who is a featured artist on an album by Andrea Botticelli. The fanart is only linked in the database, yet displays correctly when I turn on all artists and browse her. There is no directory on my machine for Laura Pausini.

Yes, Kodi will create the directories in your music library, alongside your other artists. It will create fanart (if it has links to it) and artist.nfo (if the biography is available) in each directory it creates.
Black_eagle all you have said is true, but I suspect that Kodi can not currently cope with what Oyvindo wants. Remember your experience with "Adam Ant", well here again trying to find/create a common directory for song artists that do not have albums in your collection causes difficulties.

When scraping additional artist and album art, inc. images, Kodi will look in a folder for an nfo file and use the information that is there before attempting to get metadata from online sites. For albums, and artists with albums, in an artist > album > songs folder structure all this is straight forward. Kodi looks at the paths of the song files, finds the album and artist folders and checks if there is an artist.nfo or album.info file located there. You can create these nfo manually, use software like MediaElch or get Kodi to create them using export. But note Kodi will only attempt that for those artists and albums that have previously been scraped.

But what about those artists that do not have an approriate folder e.g. orchestra or conductor (music in composer folder), artists on compilation albums or just featured on a single track on someone else's album etc.? Kodi uses the common path of all the songs of all the albums by an artist as the path for that artist. For an artist with no albums there is no such path.

Export from Kodi is unable to save nfo or art work for such artists. Likewise scraping is unable to retrieve data from an NFO file - you could create one, but how does Kodi know where to look. On some systems (non-windows) empty path defaults to root directory, and a single artist.nfo file in root will get scraped as the data for every non-album artist. Tried that haven't we black_eagle Smile

What Black_eagle says about Laura Pausini is true, online sourced data/art is viewable for non-album artists, but there is no way to save or supply it locally.

Quote:Yes, Kodi will create the directories in your music library, alongside your other artists. It will create fanart (if it has links to it) and artist.nfo (if the biography is available) in each directory it creates.
Only if it can get a valid path. I have only seen this work for album artists, but if you have it work like that for others then let me have the detials.
(2016-03-29, 11:14)oyvindo Wrote: [ -> ]I am not talking about fanart that gets scraped. That's ok. I'm talking about fanart that does NOT get scraped, which I therefore have to add myself. How can I add (organize and store) fanart for 18 artists on a compilation album where Kodi failed to scrape any of them, and only one single filename is allowed?

You can not just put art work for artists that do not have albums somewhere and get it automatically loaded in the way you can with album artists. For the same reasons about path all explained in previous post. But you can manually select the art work for each artist as any image file from anywhere on your system. Click on "Artist Information" on context menu for the artist, then "Get Thumb" or "Get Fanart", then browse to the file. Unfortunately this choice of image file(s) then can not get exported (to xml or NFO) either, so if you rebuild your library you would have to repeat the manual selection all over again.

It is not ideal, yet another weak point needing improvement that I may get to eventually. Smile

Also because of network traffic it may take several goes to scrape metatdata and artwork from online sites for all artists even if they are correctly identified. It may be worth trying "Query for all artists" again, if art work is missing on popular artists that you can expect to be found. A bug in Jarvis means that since power up Update Library also must be run even if there is no new music otherwise "Query for all artists" does nothing.
Hmmm, well either Kodi, or cdART Manager has created hundreds of Artist folders (that I assume are from my many compilations), and loaded them with artist.nfo, fanart, and posters.

This bothered me, as I would look at my Music Folder, and see Thousands of Artists, when I know I don't have that many Artist albums. Eventually, I cleared these empty folders out (no Albums or Music in them, only .nfo and .jpg files). And because of this behavior in Kodi (or cdART), I no longer have added my Compilation folders (Mostly Billboard top 100 from 1952-2015) back into Kodi.

This was one of the things I was hoping DaveBlake would fix in future versions of Kodi. 8)
(2016-03-29, 19:19)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]It is not ideal, yet another weak point needing improvement that I may get to eventually. Smile
Gentlemen, thank you so much for clarifying this to me. You have surely saved me tons of hour in wasted research :-)
I sense also that you are acknowledging that this is a week point in Kodi that should be addressed (?) I sincerely hope you will find the time to look into it.

Please allow me to recap my suggested solution:

1. When I add a fanart or a thumb, Kodi should allow me to freely point to any .jpg file and not restrict this to a single particular filename. The filename should not have to be unique as long as the complete path (UNC) including the filename is unique. Kodi should treat the image just as it does with any image retrieved through scraping (I believe scraped images are stored somewhere in the Kodi path using arbitrary coded names)

2. If I ask Kodi to export everything, fanart and thumbs associated with artists without a folder, should be collected and stored in a single top folder named "Various Artists" using a defined naming convention such as i.e.; <ArtistName>-fanart.jpg and <ArtistName>-thumb.jpg
There should be no need to add the same artist more than once even if he/she appears on several compilations.
Then Kodi would know where to look for and load those images. If ArtistName is not precise enough, one could allow the use of MBArtistID instead (1. priority) and ArtistName as 2. priority.

I believe that shouldn't be too difficult to implement, or.....?
(2016-03-29, 19:53)Powerhouse Wrote: [ -> ]Hmmm, well either Kodi, or cdART Manager has created hundreds of Artist folders (that I assume are from my many compilations), and loaded them with artist.nfo, fanart, and posters.

This bothered me, as I would look at my Music Folder, and see Thousands of Artists, when I know I don't have that many Artist albums. Eventually, I cleared these empty folders out (no Albums or Music in them, only .nfo and .jpg files). And because of this behavior in Kodi (or cdART), I no longer have added my Compilation folders (Mostly Billboard top 100 from 1952-2015) back into Kodi.

This was one of the things I was hoping DaveBlake would fix in future versions of Kodi. 8)

Since I don't see that behaviour with Kodi it must be cdART addon creating those folders. cdART is not something I will be working on, sorry. But thanks for the info, maybe black_eagle has that addon too hence what he said. But the lack of core support for nfo and art work non-album artists is something I may get to improve, just so much to do!
Oyvindo, there are no "shoulds" in Kodi deveolpment Wink

(2016-03-29, 19:59)oyvindo Wrote: [ -> ]....I believe that shouldn't be too difficult to implement, or.....?
Off you go then, any one is welcome to contribute to Kodi Smile

I believe 1) of your solution is true already.

With 2) you need to also consider all the other artists that for one reason or another do not have an obvious unique path too.

But thanks for your ideas.
(2016-03-29, 20:19)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]Off you go then, any one is welcome to contribute to Kodi Smile
I'd love to, but regretfully, I'm no longer a programmer. I used to program in assembly code and hex machine code back in the early 70's though :-)

(2016-03-29, 20:19)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]I believe 1) of your solution is true already.
Well, I tried it, and Kodi 16 running on my QNAP refused to even see any files not named fanart.jpg or thumb.jpg. But they could be located anywhere.
What happens if I load a fanart from a file named fanart.jpg and then later delete or replace that file in the same location? Will it confuse Kodi?

(2016-03-29, 20:19)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]With 2) you need to also consider all the other artists that for one reason or another do not have an obvious unique path too.
An artist without "a home" is in my mind by definition a "Various Artist", no matter what the reason is for being homeless, until the owner gives it a home. Smile
One alternative is the "artist slideshow" add-on. This one uses the artist, not album artist to find fanarts. If it doesn't find any art it is possible to add your own art. It is easiest to use the companion "artist slideshow helper" to move all the art found by the addon into artist-named folders.

The add-on needs skin support, and it only works for the music file currently playing, not for the library.

scott s.
.
(2016-03-29, 22:40)scott967 Wrote: [ -> ]The add-on needs skin support, and it only works for the music file currently playing, not for the library.
WOW! Does that mean I have to play every single file in order to add fanartHuh
My library has 125.000 tracks of which approx 18.000 are compilations.
Confused
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