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I've been trying to get the CDArt addon working the last couple of days; I started out with the default package then came across stef.an's addon.... I have an issue where my library gets scanned fine, but the addon is failing to download any CDArt at all. I had a very quick look through the logs and can't see anything obviously wrong, other than the addon seems to be failing to connect to the remote database; I tried the URLs manually (on a different machine) and they don't seem to work..... Network connection on my device is fine:

I cleaned out my Kodi music library, and added only two albums to it to reduce debug time.... I checked the fanart.tv website to check the albums I added exist, and both do, so there is (or at least, should be) content for the addon to download, here's the full debug log I captured......



Any ideas?

Currently the "old" API remains down on fanart.tv, so this is the only somewhat functional version, but be warned, it doesn't work really stable yet, read the last few posts/pages.

Github: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....er/tree/NG
Direct download: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....ive/NG.zip

I'll leave the Helix branch "as is" for now because it will work again if they restore the old API.

(2015-11-16, 20:43)stef.an Wrote: [ -> ]Currently the "old" API remains down on fanart.tv, so this is the only somewhat functional version, but be warned, it doesn't work really stable yet, read the last few posts/pages.

Github: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....er/tree/NG
Direct download: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....ive/NG.zip

I'll leave the Helix branch "as is" for now because it will work again if they restore the old API.

Thanks, that would explain the issues I was seeing

I'll take those files and try them out.... Not fussed if its' not stable, I'm only experimenting and playing around with Kodi at the moment, thought i'd try it out with my Pi, seems pretty good..... Thanks for all the script work you've been doing; your code changes are nice and tidy, and lots of useful debug

(2015-11-16, 20:43)stef.an Wrote: [ -> ]Currently the "old" API remains down on fanart.tv, so this is the only somewhat functional version, but be warned, it doesn't work really stable yet, read the last few posts/pages.

Github: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....er/tree/NG
Direct download: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....ive/NG.zip

I'll leave the Helix branch "as is" for now because it will work again if they restore the old API.

You have truncated links there stef.an.



While i'm here, when you get chance, could you have a look at the "Backup cdART Files function" please? It doesn't seem to respect the setting "Replace illegal characters in folders/Filenames" setting if enabled.

For example, I store all additional artwork away from the music library to keep those folders clean. I have the following:

.../cdART Folder (Artwork)

and

.../cdART Folder (Backups)

...as target folders for artwork. For the artist "W.A.S.P." (Note: the trailing period) the Artist folder becomes W.A.S.P_ in the "Artwork" folder, but is stored in the "backups" folder as W.A.S.P. which Windows cannot handle. It then thinks the folder is a file, and I am unable to do anything with it. Quite often the folder name will end up being named with random characters, but is still undeletable or cannot be manipulated.

TIA.

Good work so far btw. Tidy Dialog boxes FTW!!!



Dan/Gib.

I cleaned out the cdART folder, uninstalled the old addon and installed you new version supporting the new fanart.tv API.... Seems to work ok, fanart has been downloaded

However, I just wanted to ask where the disc art should be? the cdART manager has not downloaded any disc art, here's an example of what's been downloaded for an artist:



Looking at the wiki, i was expecting to see a disc.png file for each album, but there is no such indication.... Am I missing some directories (i.e. album specific directories)?

It appears none of the album covers have been downloaded either.... By the way, my cdart directory is not the same as where my music media is.

Thanks.

CdArt and Album cover get saved in the CD folder, where the mp3 are

(2015-11-13, 00:27)stef.an Wrote: [ -> ]Hello jiquem, this usually means you don't have any Music in your library. Is Kodi music running in library mode and have you scanned for music?

Jumpy73, the explanation is simple: You've just encountered a bug in the code which I've fixed now. (Everything after 20:08:46 has nothing to do with cdART Manager)
Please download the new release and report back if it works, thanks!

For the others... I've just reprogrammed the caching mechanisms which I think didn't work for a looooong time (at least it didn't work since i got to know XBMC...).
Now every dataset is downloaded only once from fanart.tv and then reused.
This really speeds up things but you might miss somethign if art gets updated! You can "reset" the cache by using "Refresh fanart.tv data", I'll refine this later.

I'm slowly starting to understand python (though I'll NEVER like it) and what the script is doing. We'll see what's the future of this script

Hello,

As junglist_matty said in his post the cdART manager has not downloaded any disc art, nothing happened when we try to make the automatically cdart downloaded. Only that way don’t work !!! I have Kodi 15.2 Isengard.
Did you have a way to resolve this problem Thanks a lot for your help.

meowmoo already gave the answer to junglist_matty, disc related art is always stored in the disc's directory and will only work if you organize your albums in an adequate folder structure (read the very first page of this thread).

In the meanwhile I finally found out that *I* can't really support cdART Manager until I completely understand what it does in which circumstances.

So I've decided to dig into it and currently I'm reorganizing the complete plugin. I'll use the "NG" branch for this and whenever I feel I have a more or less "stable" version I'll push a new release to github - which will then be "mine" and I'll be able to "support" it to a certain degree (mind the quotes )
I'm doing my best to fix some bugs but I'm very sure I'll introduce some new because as it looks now there won't be that many lines of old code left afterwards. Also I've already dropped some functionality (e.g. custom colors) and be warned, maybe the new release will miss some functions you use. You should decide from scratch if you want to install my version, because you really have to trust me if you do so

I'm just glad you're actively working on this addon. I know when you reported that the scraper source updated their api that your addon was broke. So I've been patiently waiting to go back at it. I for one am willing to wait for a more polished version that you know works the way you intend it, rather than dealing with a buggy program. Just keep us up to date!

If I understand the way the existing cdART Manager version works correctly, the main reason it uses a separate database is for the storage of MBID's (if found/matched). It might be faster therefore to get rid of the cdART Manager database and inject the MBID values directly into Kodi's own database. Not only would this save time during the scanning stage, it would also help those of us who have multiple systems running MySQL/MariaDB where currently we have to either copy cdART Manager's database or rebuild it on each system we might want to run the addon with. That's not possible at the moment, but I'm assuming here that 'Jarvis' will have a relevant field (or fields) in the database for artist MBID's which can be manipulated which isn't currently the case.

I don't see the need for a database just for storage of previously downloaded artwork. The folders / library itself can be queried to see what has artwork of each type present, and what is missing, in addition to using the missing.txt file that can already be created on each run.

Just an idea.

You're right, as far as I've read there's no way to get the MBID into the database via the RPC API yet. Hopefully this will be changed with Jarvis or (even better) the default scraper adds the MBID on standard library updates, which is currently possible by tagging (no option for me) or NFO-files. .nfo could be an option but I think there are quite a few people who want to keep their music directories tidy.

As far as I understand it (and I could be wrong here), but reading between the lines, Jarvis is going to add support for the MusicBrainz 'ARTIST' tag, which I assume would add the relevant MBID's directly to the Kodi music library database, i.e on the first scrape as a pose to updates. Up till now this hasn't been possible, hence the reason cdART manager created it's own Db. But by doing that, it essentially requires the equivalent of 3 complete scans of the library. Once to add the tracks to Kodi, a second time to add those same tracks to cdART Manager's database, and then a 3rd time if you have 'check MBID's to be current' enabled.

I would of thought, with Jarvis supporting MBID's for artist, parts 1 and 3 will be performed during the initial library scan, hence removing the need for step 2 altogether. Some are going to use NFO's regardless. I'm pretty sure Universal Artist/Album scraper used MusicBrainz as a metadata source, so with this in mind it shouldn't be necessary for any external tagging to get support for MBIDs. However I did read somewhere that MusicBrainz has a limit on the number of requests performed against it's Db to prevent DDoS-like activity, whether that applies to people with accounts on MusicBrainz or not I don't know.

On a different note, I'd welcome the ability to exclude certain folders from cdART Manager scanning, as I have some albums (anime, game soundtracks,etc) that will never appear on MusicBrainz, so processing them is a waste of time. I have several root level folders set up in order to segregate these categories of music from the 'regular' albums for identification purposes among other things. For me it would probably greatly reduce the length of time spent on library scans. Not a priority request, just something that cdART Manager currently lacks.

Okay - I'll keep that in mind
You're right, musicbrainz is limited to 1 request per second, one at a time. This is a really low rate nowadays and the response times of their service ist slow. I hope one of the bigger players will offer them a caching service some day.
Currently I'm experimenting with a file based datastore instead of the database. The "business developer" inside me tells me a database is the only way to go but in fact the amount of data we are talking about is rather small.
The file based storage would make it much easier to manipulate content for the average user without the need for an interface (while I would create interfaces for the commonly used functions like exclude from scan). A migration would be easy whenever Kodi implements real support for MBID's.

I currently have about 1000 true albums and (with "All Artists" disabled) some hundred artists. This could be easily handled by a raspberry pi with a normal sd card as storage.
About how many Artists/Albums do you have here?

I'm not sure without checking, and since I recently wiped my databases due to some changes I've made in my path structure I can't really tell you right now. What I can tell you is that in terms of 'tracks' I have 30,000 (approx) of all categories. Which takes some time to add to the library regardless of which scraper is used. AudioDB is currently faster as it doesn't check for (and choke on) the MBID's as far as I can tell, but using either scraper on a new library scan takes a considerable amount of time. When I get chance I'll PM you the stats for the scanned library if you wish.

Quote:I assume would add the relevant MBID's directly to the Kodi music library database,

the MBID is in the v15 KodiDB also, strMusicBrainzAlbumID, strMusicBrainzArtistID.

but I tag my mp3's with MB picard, so the MBID is in all my mp3s also, maby that's the reason...



I just installed and tested the latest version from stef.an, works fine, no issues so far, and much much faster when hitting the DL all cdArt/cover/banner Button (688 cd's, lots of artists)