Kodi Community Forum

I am interested in having fanarts specified for ALBUMS (not artists).
Have a lot of soundtrack albums and it would be great to display background fanart specified for albums instead of artists.
For example, for albums of Hans Zimmer it would display fanarts for certain movies not Zimmer himself.

Currently in 18.x there is a support for adding user-specified fanart types.

What I can do now (using 18.4 + default Estuary skin):
1. Select some album (for example, "The Dark Knight Rises" album).
2. Select "Information" from context menu.
3. Select "Choose art".
4. Select "Add art type".
5. Add new "Fanart" type.
6. Specify some jpg for "Fanart".

Now the selected jpg is displayed when the album is selected in list.
BUT - this fanart is NOT displayed during playback.

Seems only ARTIST fanart is displayed during playback, why?

(2019-11-12, 19:03)rivera Wrote: [ -> ]Seems only ARTIST fanart is displayed during playback, why?

Because artist.fanart is what the skin is designed to display. Having added "fanart" for albums you will also need to change the skin to show album.fanart images. Sorry not a skinner, so I can't give more details.

(2019-11-12, 20:59)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]Because artist.fanart is what the skin is designed to display. 

But Kodi DOES display album fanart when the album is selected - and DOES NOT display during playback.

are you asking for album  art at full screen ?
MusicVisualisation.xml

xml:
<control type="image">

                <description>Cover image</description>

                <top>0</top>

                <width>80%</width>

                <height>100%</height>

                <!-- <aspectratio align="right">scale</aspectratio> -->

                <texture >$INFO[Player.Art(thumb)]</texture>

                    <!-- <bordertexture border="21" colordiffuse="button_focus">overlays/shadow.png</bordertexture> -->

                            <!-- <bordersize>20</bordersize> -->

                    

                <aspectratio>keep</aspectratio>

            </control>

\

     you would need hires images in the music folder and use <texture >$INFO[Player.FolderPath]fanart.jpg</texture>

Actually I meant background fanart, not album cover...

Most skins will get fanart in the full screen visualisation playback screen by using

$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]

By default this only picks up artist fanart so must be changed to

$INFO[Player.Art(album.fanart)]

For example for Estuary

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...on.xml#L22

xml:
<texture background="true" colordiffuse="88FFFFFF">$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]</texture>

would become

xml:
<texture background="true" colordiffuse="88FFFFFF">$INFO[Player.Art(album.fanart)]</texture>

However I see from post history that you are using Aeon Nox Silvo so I'm not sure what the exact modification for that skin would be required.

What you want in your description is impossible and needs manual editing, this could never be automated.

As you will know you have soundtracks and scores, the only way that you could ever get this automated is if you go to the music db for example and entering all the details for yourself and other people.

When you scrape from those sources then it will scrape what ever information you have set up.

Soundtracks are the hardest of all music genres to scrape and really it is more a thing of love, than say for example scrapeing a pop artist such as Adele.

Sadly there are times, that you need to put in the effort yourself, as they are not as mainstream as you would like them to be. Soundtracks is one of those, classical is probably another.

@Video Titles the OP clearly is putting in manual effort and making good use of the more flexible art config that v18 offers, he simply needed some help with the skin changes needed to show that art.  I hope we have given him enough to be able to achieve what he wants.

(2019-11-13, 15:11)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]@Video Titles the OP clearly is putting in manual effort and making good use of the more flexible art config that v18 offers, he simply needed some help with the skin changes needed to show that art.  I hope we have given him enough to be able to achieve what he wants.

Sadly this is hit and miss and still contains bugs. I have used this, changed the artwork, refreshed the skin and even exited out of Kodi and done a reload, and sometimes the artwork is still the same. It seems to take quite a few refreshes or reloads to get to the artwork that I have chosen, even then sometimes because I then have wanted to change something else, I am not worried if it has changed or not.

It maybe skin related I am using Titan Bingie and have tried to use different artwork, for the thumbnails and they would not change after a reload. I have even gone in to the skin directory and manually downloaded a graphic and then replaced the old graphic with the new and tried reloading and the old is there.

(2019-11-13, 16:47)Video Titles Wrote: [ -> ]I have even gone in to the skin directory and manually downloaded a graphic and then replaced the old graphic with the new and tried reloading and the old is there.

Sounds like an issue with the texturecache to me.  Have you tried using this to remove the problematic art ?

(2019-11-13, 16:47)Video Titles Wrote: [ -> ]I have even gone in to the skin directory and manually downloaded a graphic and then replaced the old graphic with the new and tried reloading and the old is there. 

@Video Titles Kodi caches art, there are good performance reasons for that but the cache management process does cause issues for users that expect to see immediate art changes. Changes to the content of a local image file will not be loaded until the image is displayed on screen a day after the last cached art check for that image.

(2019-11-13, 18:02)DaveBlake Wrote: [ -> ]@Video Titles Kodi caches art, there are good performance reasons for that but the cache management process does cause issues for users that expect to see immediate art changes. Changes to the content of a local image file will not be loaded until the image is displayed on screen a day after the last cached art check for that image. 

I’ve come across this previously. Thanks for the explanation. Is there a way to force Kodi to do a cache refresh? Maybe add a command to the Media, Music settings screen in Matrix.? I’ve done a few skin mods and it would be great to get a fairly instant update for testing.

(2019-11-13, 22:13)HomerJau Wrote: [ -> ]Is there a way to force Kodi to do a cache refresh?

Edit the textures database and change the Last Checked date to a couple of days ago. I only suggest that as I know you are comfortable with Kodi and its workings.

(2019-11-13, 16:47)Video Titles Wrote: [ -> ]It maybe skin related I am using Titan Bingie and have tried to use different artwork, for the thumbnails and they would not change after a reload. I have even gone in to the skin directory and manually downloaded a graphic and then replaced the old graphic with the new and tried reloading and the old is there. 

It looks to me that what needs edited is IncludesNowPlaying.xml

I would simply add a new <value condition />
BEFORE the existing <value condition />

scott s.
.

if you have images in music folders you could replace
<texture colordiffuse="75FFFFFF">$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]</texture>
with
<texture background="true" colordiffuse="88FFFFFF">$INFO[Player.FolderPath]album.jpg</texture>

album = image