[Undertaker555]

I am trying to export my whole Kodi library as Seperate files.

I understood, that Kodi only exports what it cached, so I opened the Information of every movie, show the actor pictures.
After that I exported. Well, everything exported, even my Movie sets were successfully exported, except the actors.

Both, in movies and series the .actors folder is completely empty.
To try it, I scanned in a new profile the HDD from new while offline, just to check if it is really not there.
And yes, it is not there. All artwork was imported, except for the missing actor pictures, obviously.

Really, all was cached, and when I export it as Single File, the actor pictures are there.
So what am I doing wrong?


Secondary question: So as I said, the actor pictures are in the "Single File" possible to export. Could I just copy-paste them from the Single File folder to my .actors folder on the HDD?
EDIT: Nope, doesn't work. I scraped it again with local data, and still actor pictures missing. So I need to somehow fix that export problem..

[DarrenHill]

Thread moved to general scraping

[Karellen]

@Undertaker555

The export of actors to the .actors folder does work. I use it all the time because Artwork Dump does not have the ability to export actors (due to a missing function in kodi core).

Why it would not work for you is a mystery. The Debug Log won't show me the details of the export, but if you could scrape a movie, then export and capture it in a log, I might spot something... maybe...
Are you using movie folders? I've never tried actors export in a flat folder structure.

Yes, you can copy the actors images between folders.

[Undertaker555]

Well, my structure is like that:

.actors
movie1.mp4
movie1.nfo
movie1-fanart.jpg
movie1-poster.jpg
movie2.mp4
movie2.nfo
movie2-fanart.jpg
movie2-poster.jpg
movie3.mp4
movie3.nfo
mov....
and so on.

I marked some big, to make make it a bit more clear.
So it is always video file + nfo and artwork, all in the same folder.
In that same folder, Kodi created the .actors folder when I started the export, but it exported nothing to there at all.


Well, I will not post my whole log here, just because I am a very careful person, lol.
But what I can post here is parts of the log. I can already say that something doesn't seem to be right, because in every single exported file is an ERROR.

ERROR <general>: CTextureCache::Export failed exporting 'DefaultVideo.png' to 'HDD:\Movies\The Movie 2007-icon.png'

[Karellen]

Well, my structure is like that:

You need to use Movie Folders as shown in section 3 here... https://kodi.wiki/view/Naming_video_files/Movies

You are using a flat folder structure as shown in section 4, so exporting actors won't work.

[Undertaker555]

Thank you! This sounds promising!

But are you sure, though?
I really don't want to waste time now, bringing in a completely new structure.
So it should be safe, after I create this new structure, that the actor export will work?

And is there any bulk tool or cmd command that you would recommend for that task?


EDIT: I just realized you have nearly 17.000 posts on the Kodi forums.. so it is quite promising that it will work, lol
EDIT2: Would you recommend putting the files of episodes with series like that, too? I mean, for each episode a folder?

[Karellen]

But are you sure, though?
I really don't want to waste time now, bringing in a completely new structure.
So it should be safe, after I create this new structure, that the actor export will work?

Yes, but to satisfy yourself, as a test change two or three movies, then export. Confirm that you did get the actors images.

But I also recommend that you don't export artwork from Kodi. Use Artwork Dump instead.
Scrape the movies
Artwork Dump will download the artwork.
If you want actors images, then run the export but select No to overwrite existing files.
This export won't overwrite the existing, good quality artwork, but will save the actors images and nfo files because they don't exist at the time the export is run.

EDIT2: Would you recommend putting the files of episodes with series like that, too? I mean, for each episode a folder?

No, but I do recommend putting the episodes in a Season folder like shown in the image here... https://kodi.wiki/view/Naming_video_files/TV_shows

[Undertaker555]

Thanks!

The Series are already like this. Movies need to be done now again, but I found an extremely useful cmd command for that.
So for anyone with the same situation, just put this into a notepad, save as .bat, put that file into the Movies folder, run it, and delete the file (which most likely put itself into such an folder).
This is the command:

@echo off
for %%i in (*) do (
if not "%%~ni" == "organize" (
md "%%~ni" && move "%%~i" "%%~ni"
)
)

I will report back when everything worked, or if something is wrong.

Huge thanks!

[Undertaker555]

While doing my exports I realized that actually some thumbnails are not exported, even when using Artwork Dump.
What can be the reason of that?

For some movies it only exports the fanart, and not the thumbs.

[Karellen]

While doing my exports I realized that actually some thumbnails are not exported, even when using Artwork Dump.

How long ago did you scrape these movies? Did you build the library from nfo files? Maybe the artwork links are dead because the images have been deleted.
Open your nfo file, and check the artwork links work.

[Undertaker555]

Just wanted to edit the post.
It fixed itself, and I don't have a clue what I did different.


EDIT: I can confirm that post no.5 was the solution! Thank you very much again!!!