Kodi Community Forum

I'm using Kodi 17.6 and the Titan skin. I'm not sure if this is a Kodi issue or a Titan one, but I suspect it is Kodi. I'm very new to Kodi and have been working on my music library for months.

After a lot of troubleshooting, I've discovered that Kodi doesn't like punctuation marks in artist names. In the case of Olivia Newton-John, the tags for Artist and Album Artist as well as the artist folder were properly named Olivia Newton-John with the hyphen. When that folder was read into Kodi, it stripped out the hyphen and displayed the artist as Olivia Newton John. This ended up causing some weird behavior, like the local logo graphic not being used, like remote assets being forced instead of preferring local resources as configured, and like extrafanart not cycling or only some of the extranfanart images cycling and others being ignored.

I tried renaming files, changing file types (JPG to PNG), manually configuring artwork, you name it. The next time I would come back to this artist, the information would have been "forgotten" by Kodi. Text instead of a logo, etc. 

Finally, it occurred to me to remove the hyphen from the tags in my music files and the artist folder to match what Kodi was incorrectly stripping out. After removing and re-adding the artist from/to the database, everything worked perfectly, and all the extrafanart cycled properly.

Another ambient artist whose name is Nikosf. (with the dot at the end as an intentional part of his name) also encountered the same issue. Removal of the dot from the tags fixed everything.

Ironically, Kodi has no issues with the band a-ha and its hyphen. Everything works just fine with that artist.

I had a similar issue with Linda Ronstadt where I had misspelled the artist folder (Rondstadt), but all the artist and album artist tags were correctly spelled, yet extrafanart would only cycle 2 of the available 7 images. Fixing the folder spelling, removing the artist from the database and then adding it back in, didn't work. But renaming one of the extrafanart files (fanart2.jpg to f.jpg) and then updating the library did work. I then renamed f.jpg back to fanart2.jpg and everything continued to work normally. No idea on this one, as there was no punctuation involved.

Out of a collection of over 1500 artists, only a handful have had issues like this, and it has taken me quite some time to figure out why. And maybe my theory is simplistic.

Has anyone else encountered this and is it fixed in Leia?

@bluemartian

I'll move your post to the Music forum so the Music developer has a better chance of seeing it.

A ton of work has been done on the Music Library by @DaveBlake for v18, and if I recall correctly, that issue was resolved in v18. Why not give v18 a try? It is pretty much a very stable product now, especially the music library and we are not that far off the Official Release.

It may be worth you browsing some of the threads in the Music forum.

Also worth a mention- No fixes will be performed on v17.

(2018-12-24, 01:45)bluemartian Wrote: [ -> ]I'm using Kodi 17.6 and the Titan skin. I'm not sure if this is a Kodi issue or a Titan one, but I suspect it is Kodi...

...logo graphic not being used, like remote assets being forced instead of preferring local resources as configured, and like extrafanart not cycling or only some of the extranfanart images cycling and others being ignored.

... After removing and re-adding the artist from/to the database, everything worked perfectly, and all the extrafanart cycled properly.
etc.

No version of Kodi cares about folder names used to organise your music files, but some of the art addons and skins might.

In v17.6 fetching extended fanart and artist logo art from local files is done by the skin (or a supporting addon), so I am sure that all the issues you list are related to Titan. I have never used that skin (or many others) but I am guessing that it requires all the music for an artist to be within a unique folder and that folder name to match artist name but does not allow for non-alphanumeric characters in the name.

Leia provides greater support for fetching local art itself that does not require the music to be specifically organised. I have no idea which skins have been updated to make use of that or which still rely on addons.

But as @Karellen suggests perhaps try Leia

Abject apologies for the very long delay in getting back to this thread. Life happens...

(2018-12-24, 05:01)Karellen Wrote: [ -> ]A ton of work has been done on the Music Library by @DaveBlake for v18...

Yes, I've been following the music threads eagerly and am looking forward to all the music-related improvements, as Kodi for me is a glorified jukebox for music only.

(2018-12-24, 05:01)Karellen Wrote: [ -> ]...if I recall correctly, that issue was resolved in v18.

Good news! Glad to hear it.

(2018-12-24, 05:01)Karellen Wrote: [ -> ]Why not give v18 a try? It is pretty much a very stable product now, especially the music library and we are not that far off the Official Release.

I've tried 18 a couple of times now, one of the betas and also one of the RCs. The main reason I've stayed with the official release is that the skin I've been using (Titan) is not available for 18. Titan seems to be the best at displaying extrafanart (which is something I've spent an enormous amount of time preparing for my collection) and I like other elements of that skin, too. I've found several other skins I like as well, but keep coming back to Titan.

I've heard of some mods of Titan but not sure what these are or where to find them.

Also interested in any skin recommendations that handle extrafanart well.

(2018-12-24, 05:01)Karellen Wrote: [ -> ]Also worth a mention- No fixes will be performed on v17.

Yes, I realize that. I was asking if it had been fixed in Leia.

Thanks again for the info!

Thanks for your response Dave. Sorry again (see previous post) for the delay in getting back to this thread.

(2018-12-24, 11:16)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]...so I am sure that all the issues you list are related to Titan.

I think you're right about that. I may just have to give up on Titan, but I really want all the extrafanart I've prepared for my collection to be displayed well -- I've spent so much time on it.
 

(2018-12-24, 11:16)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]I have never used that skin (or many others) but I am guessing that it requires all the music for an artist to be within a unique folder and that folder name to match artist name but does not allow for non-alphanumeric characters in the name.

I have my collection organized like that, following the Kodi recommendations in the Wiki. I've since done a lot more work on my collection and have come across other "punctuated band names" (AC/DC, Sophie & Ives, Sanford-Townsend Band, etc.) that don't have issues, and some with no non-alpha chars that do have issues. Even Kodi's default skin occasionally shows a "missing character box." for hyphens (A-ha). So it doesn't seem limited to Titan.
 

(2018-12-24, 11:16)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]Leia provides greater support for fetching local art itself that does not require the music to be specifically organised. I have no idea which skins have been updated to make use of that or which still rely on addons.

I'm really looking forward to this feature (and all the other music-related improvements).
 

(2018-12-24, 11:16)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]But as @Karellen suggests perhaps try Leia 

  
Will do. I've give Leia another shot and perhaps knuckle down and try all the skins. There must be another one that does extrafanart decently.

Thanks!

(2019-01-24, 03:37)bluemartian Wrote: [ -> ]I have my collection organized like that, following the Kodi recommendations in the Wiki. I've since done a lot more work on my collection and have come across other "punctuated band names" (AC/DC, Sophie & Ives, Sanford-Townsend Band, etc.) that don't have issues, and some with no non-alpha chars that do have issues. Even Kodi's default skin occasionally shows a "missing character box." for hyphens (A-ha). So it doesn't seem limited to Titan.

Leia does not need users to have a strict artist based folder structure for their music (which is a huge relief for Classical music lovers as well as others), and the wiki needs an update to explain that. Of course some skins and/or addons may still expect an artist folder, but no doubt things will change with time.

There is another issue with punctuated artist names, sometimes in the tagging the hyphen character isn't an actual hyphen but another non-asci character that looks like a hyphen. If Estuary isn't showing the character then that is what has happened. Some Musicbrainz entries are like that, so when identified it would be good to correct at Musicbrainz too and help whole community.

(2019-01-24, 10:47)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]There is another issue with punctuated artist names, sometimes in the tagging the hyphen character isn't an actual hyphen but another non-asci character that looks like a hyphen. If Estuary isn't showing the character then that is what has happened. Some Musicbrainz entries are like that, so when identified it would be good to correct at Musicbrainz too and help whole community. 

HAHAH!!  Are you trying to get the poor guy in trouble?  He'd get lynched if he tried to go to Musicbrainz to "correct" the Unicode Hyphen Character with a keyboard based ASCII Hyphen/Dash like normal people are used to.

There are a whole raft of editors replacing Apostrophe's, Hyphens, Elipsees ( ... ),  Speechmarks, Quotes with "proper Unicode versions".  These have to be filtered out of filenames\tags at the ripping\tagging level.  Otherwise it is quite easy to have two folders side by side that look identical but have different types of hyphen in them.  One fractionally shorter than the other.

Yeah, for us it is annoying... but it is their database.

This is going to catch out a lot of artists like Newton-John especially.

Look at the Olivia Newtron-Bomb page at MB 
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/10ccb5d8-...19b522a214

Carefully compare the hyphen you seen in the Wikipedia quote and the one at the top of the page for the artist.  Yep, Unicode Hypen in the artist name.

Olivia Newton‐John is different to Olivia Newton-John.  The second one I typed and it has a longer dash (and shows thicker in this forum font).  The first came from MB and has a Unicode Hyphen.

Comically in Windows you can actually have these as two differently named folders side by side!  (Go on - try it... it looks comical!)

This page is relevant as this lists what are swapped around:
https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/User:Jacobb...tion_Guide

Now this is a "recommended guideline", but to many on there it is The Law.

If you don't already have something in place starting to handle this cosmetic madness... then you may want to split this off to a new thread.

I fix it in my own files by using the EAC ability to character swap.  And the plugin for Picard.


Where is can catch a lot of people out is if they have old files tagged years ago, and then they update those tags on new editions.  That will lead to the older file having the ASCII hyphen and the newer files the Unicode hyphen.

And that is one of the main reasons why Musicbrainz sucks when it comes to names instead of MBIDS. Kodi needs some kind of normalization filter, in both directions. I really prefer Discogs which is more flexible and has even more data in its database.

(2019-01-24, 20:53)BatterPudding Wrote: [ -> ]HAHAH!!  Are you trying to get the poor guy in trouble?  He'd get lynched if he tried to go to Musicbrainz to "correct" the Unicode Hyphen Character with a keyboard based ASCII Hyphen/Dash like normal people are used to.

I had no idea this was controversial, oh well.

(2019-01-24, 20:53)BatterPudding Wrote: [ -> ]If you don't already have something in place starting to handle this cosmetic madness... then you may want to split this off to a new thread.

I fix it in my own files by using the EAC ability to character swap. And the plugin for Picard.

Please give details and name names.

I think having Kodi replace chars, or do a fuzzy match might be a tricky road to go down. Supporting the user to clean up their tagging, or at least make it consistent (which way they want) may be the best we can do at the moment.

Show Tools you say....

In EAC I use the CueTools DB Plugin V2.1.6 from http://cue.tools/wiki/CTDB_EAC_Plugin to tag my Rips with MusicBrainz data.  This is where some initial Unicode characters can come from.


Next, the Unicode characters and filenames.  Go into EAC OPTIONS and find the Character Replacement tab

I was about to paste an image, but can't work out how to do it on this forum.  I use the options on that page to set the substitutions based on the reverse of the page: https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/User:Jacobb...tion_Guide

I especially focus on the hyphen, speechmarks, apostrophe.  EAC also has some of its own already in this list.  A chunk from EAC's registry settings
~~~

Quote:Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AWSoftware\EACU\Extraction Options]
"ReplacementRule0"="\"''"
"ReplacementRule1"="\\-"
"ReplacementRule2"="/,"
"ReplacementRule3"=":-"
"ReplacementRule4"="*x"
"ReplacementRule5"="?"
"ReplacementRule6"="<["
"ReplacementRule7"=">]"
"ReplacementRule8"="|!"
"ReplacementRule9"="--"
"ReplacementRule10"="’'"
"ReplacementRule11"=""
"ReplacementRule12"=""
"ReplacementRule13"=""
"ReplacementRule14"=""
"ReplacementRule15"=""

~~~
I am hoping this forum doesn't fiddle with the fonts there.

After ripping my files head for Picard. 

In Picard Options, look in Metadata, and TICK "Convert Unicode punctuation characters to ASCII".  That should do it.

Note I am NOT using the Plugin "Non-ASCII Equivalents" as that butchers multi-national characters and turns everything American loosing the Umlaut in Motörhead

-=-=-

When ripping rare \ strange \ unusual releases I often find I have to do this backwards.  Starting with Picard and the CD to upload the data to MusicBrainz and add the release.  Once added and all changes have passed checks, then I go to EAC and actually rip.  This will then be bringing my own tag data from MB into EAC via the plugin.  Once ripped I'll return to Picard to make sure all acousticIDs and extra tags are then filled in fully.

When I am adding data at MB I am now in the habit of the Unicode punctuation due to various scripts that make it easy.  And I don't seem to be getting any problems back here in the music files as Picard is cleaning that up.  And, as KODI is keyed around the MBID it doesn't care what I type.

I guess that as Picard's source code is available it may be possible to directly lift the routine use to "Convert Unicode punctuation characters to ASCII".  I know their website search is built to treat all hyphens the same - just like when someone types "motorhead" and finds "Motörhead"

-=-=-

The main reason I bought this up is I've spent the last year or two over at MB getting my own collection better tagged and added into their system.  Sorting artwork, etc.  Based on reading about how important MBIDs are in Kodi v18.  I was starting to see the effect of these odd punctuation characters and was noticing a lack of details about there here at KODI.

Also, as MB is a live database which is constantly evolving it can be possible to tag your files one day and it is all pure ASCII.  Then a few weeks later you load Picard up, refresh the tags, and now they are all Unicoded as the data has been updated in the mean time.  On those occasions it is also possible for the MBID for the Release, Release Group or even Artist to also change if database work has been going on and records merged.  The old MBIDs should still work but will have become a redirect.  Is that change something KODI expects?  Does KODI know that it is perfectly possible to have more than one MBID for a single entity?

(2019-01-25, 14:19)BatterPudding Wrote: [ -> ]I was about to paste an image, but can't work out how to do it on this forum. 

If the image is on your computer, then use button 19. If the image has already been uploaded to a public image hosting site, then use button 14

(2019-01-25, 20:49)Karellen Wrote: [ -> ]If the image is on your computer, then use button 19. If the image has already been uploaded to a public image hosting site, then use button 14

 Karellen,

That is very helpful. I have been wondering how to display screenshots in the forum. (Now I can show everyone what they have been doing wrong!)

Seriously, thank you.

tobor

@Tobor

Glad it helped. Also, when using button 14, make sure when copying the image link you use the option Copy image location. On windows it is usually found by right clicking on the image. Using Copy Image doesn't always provide the full address.

Thanks @Karellen.  I found the image button (14) but missed that button (19) because the little tooltip pops up and says imgur so assumed that was another hosted option.

(2019-01-25, 10:41)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]I had no idea this was controversial, oh well.

 
Nor did I, but interesting!