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v17 Artwork Beef - automatically add extended artwork
#46
rmrector,
great!! Thank you very much! I will download it and I will try it, and then I will tell you what happens. I appreciate your help, thank you very much.
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#47
Works perfect!! Is working again in my kodi, thanks for the update and for your help
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#48
@rmrector: Hello!

Let me first say that I'm really impressed by what you've made here. I was researching some strange issues I was having with movie set artwork, having lost my centralised structure made for the Automator, and your addon was able to just sort it all out in one wonderful sweep. That got me thinking, and I wanted to replace Artwork Downloader completely. So I did. I prefer your interface, your setting and basically the way you structured everything.

This leads me to my question/issue. The skin I'm working on uses Skin Helper's extrafanart option. That seems to work fine in conjunction with the movies, but not the series. I've tried messing with the options and preferences, to no avail. I'm just a skinner and know nothing of Python, but it appears to me that the AD and your Beef are writing different things when series are concerned? I've noticed that my local art is present and marked in the fanart selection section, but nothing comes of it; the fanart doesn't rotate, it only serves as a pool, randomly selecting one static background?

I have nothing against the way you've organised the artwork in the add-on, but it seems a shame to be limited to just one image per Season, not to mention it's a huge chore to set up properly. (At least, none of mine were set up automatically, perhaps I've missed a feature somewhere?) It's the only thing that's really missing, and the only thing preventing me from using Beef as my sole artwork manager. Before I begin the tedious task of returning back to Artwork Downloader, I was wondering if there's a chance to some cross-compatibility option for series (extra)fanart?

Keep up with your amazing work!

Best regards,

Alanon.
Eminence 2 MOD, Revived & Improved

If you've found me helpful, eh, maybe press the Like button? If you like, you can click here for donations. :)
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#49
@Alanon: Thanks!

Artwork Beef handles multiple fanart in a completely different way than AD, treating them the same as all other artwork, by naming each one in the database rather than downloading them to a folder in the file system. Artwork Helper is the simplest way to display them in your skin, which can also pull in the classic extrafanart if your skin users aren't using Artwork Beef to manage artwork.

Season fanart can only be set automatically if the artwork has been tagged with a season on fanart.tv, but they often aren't. If it is clear the backdrop belongs to a season you can report it on fanart.tv. The folks there are fairly responsive to requests to update them; report the image, and in the text box include the season number and a quick half-sentence describing why it belongs in that season. I'll set it up to allow more than one season fanart to be selected in the next update.
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#50
@rmrector:

Wow, now that addon brings some nice goodies! Now all that remains is for me to clear up some things that are still fuzzy even after some tinkering.

First, where do I get the animated artwork? Artwork Downloader had it in a semi-automatic dialogue, but I can't seem to access or change any of my animated artwork since I migrated? How do I obtain them when using Beef exclusively? When I want to add artwork, animated is never among what is listed?

The second query revolves around rotating backgrounds (pun intended). When I started the migration I asked Artwork Beef to "add missing artwork for all items". Could it be that the local fanart images downloaded to the root by Artwork Downloader which I didn't delete meant that it automatically wouldn't retrieve web artwork, but confine itself to what's there? I ask because I always see Local Artwork as selected in the dialogues. If this is so, I would appreciate a setting to forcibly re-scan the whole library per the settings and quantities configured in the add-on, for an easier transition? Right now, I'm stuck in between, with no easy way to cut the cord. Confused

Also, I added in the helper code to the skin, and so far it seems to be doing exactly what it should. However, I'd like to rely only on the main add-on and not the Helper, since that would simplify support for the skin, and might be easier to maintain in the future. I am testing out a fadelabel control, rotating the fanart1, fanart2, etc images seems to be doing the trick, and it seems just a tad quicker than the helper calls. It's not as modular, certainly, but then again my image code is rather centralised, so modular isn't too helpful. The question is, would I lose any features, aside from the modularity?

And, finally, if I do migrate to Beef completely, am I right in saying I'll lose all film thumbnails? There's a mention in the OP to that effect...



PS. About the series thing, to be clear, I much prefer a centralised series slideshow than a per-season slideshow. The whole process seems overly complicated. I only mentioned it in passing.
Eminence 2 MOD, Revived & Improved

If you've found me helpful, eh, maybe press the Like button? If you like, you can click here for donations. :)
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#51
Hi
Thanks for your work, i just install it and run it

I have a 17 kodi installation and a library wich download automatically (outside kodi)
every artwork i need (except animated artwork)
It's perfect for my entire movieset artwork to be displayed on my skin,

That's why i m using your addon getting only local file system.
It works like a charm but i m guessing it's removing from the library all the animated artwork,
wich were automatically scraped by kodi.

It's a correct guessing?

Is there a chance to scrape those from some webservices?

Thanks again
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#52
Anyone having issues connecting to fanart.tv? Seems to be down for me.
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#53
(2017-06-21, 17:32)robichota Wrote: Anyone having issues connecting to fanart.tv? Seems to be down for me.

Yes it is. I get errors on every provider i ask for logo/clearart/discart since yesterday
After a while i didn't get the error anymore, but after that today i get again errors trying to download.
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#54
(2017-06-21, 18:08)nikeb Wrote:
(2017-06-21, 17:32)robichota Wrote: Anyone having issues connecting to fanart.tv? Seems to be down for me.

Yes it is. I get errors on every provider i ask for logo/clearart/discart since yesterday
After a while i didn't get the error anymore, but after that today i get again errors trying to download.

The problem on fanart.tv just solved.
Now is working and going good.

I have another question,
Seems like is having problems on adding the discart on movie sets, in right list view (i m using AEON MQ7 on Krypton)
When "Movieset - Discart" is enabled.

That means that if i enable the "movieset - discart" can't add any disc to my "right list view" collection (the single movie discart i working good)
if i disable that everything works, but now it doesn't add me any new disc to the collection who has a disc update.

I hope i could explain myself in the right way.

Basically, when i had that option flagged it didn't update with discart the collections i update. Just make me see the old discart, without adding the other movies on the set.

Now i de-flagged that option but even if i rescan the object it doesn't add anything to the set views.

New movies after the de-flagging are working propertly.

Is that some way to fix ?
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#55
Just found your down loader , works perfectly for me.. Just wanted to say THANK YOU.
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#56
(2017-06-05, 02:24)Alanon Wrote: ...
First, where do I get the animated artwork? Artwork Downloader had it in a semi-automatic dialogue, but I can't seem to access or change any of my animated artwork since I migrated? How do I obtain them when using Beef exclusively? When I want to add artwork, animated is never among what is listed?

& @nikeb Animated artwork is goofy at the moment, even in Kodi itself, but Artwork Beef does make it worse. I'll look into Skin Helper Service (I'm pretty sure it is the one downloading and arranging this artwork so that Kodi can show it) and at least not clobber what it's doing.

(2017-06-05, 02:24)Alanon Wrote: The second query revolves around rotating backgrounds (pun intended).

Also, I added in the helper code to the skin, and so far it seems to be doing exactly what it should. However, I'd like to rely only on the main add-on and not the Helper, ... fadelabel ...

And, finally, if I do migrate to Beef completely, am I right in saying I'll lose all film thumbnails? There's a mention in the OP to that effect...

PS. About the series thing, to be clear, I much prefer a centralised series slideshow than a per-season slideshow. The whole process seems overly complicated. I only mentioned it in passing.

It's a month later so you are probably one way or the other on this by now, but Artwork Beef will use the local artwork as the first selected, but if you have set the limit higher in the add-on settings then it should fill the rest from web services. Local artwork takes precedence to match scraper behavior, as one way to override the automatic selection. After you remove the local files, the next time each item is processed the images that were local files will be replaced with more images from web services.

A fadelabel control, I think that'll do it, you mad genius! I was wanting a way to do this without the plugin, but I just couldn't figure it out. The fadelabel may even be able to do what the `smartseries` plugin path is meant for, not resetting the displayed artwork when navigating from a series list to season list to episode list. Other than maybe that, I don't think you'll be missing much. I'll have to look into this, see if it could be turned into an easy to use include for skinners.

Artwork Beef won't add new movie thumbnails from web services. I'm still trying to leave all downloading and caching to Kodi, and I don't know of a simple way to control the size of artwork added this way, and Kodi's image resizer (from cached size to actual display in skin) doesn't produce the best result when greatly downsizing an image, so I don't want to just plop it right in at full fanart size.

PS I do too, but I thought that could be used to good effect for some series.

@Everyone I'll see what I can do to reduce the number of notifications when a web service is unavailable.

(2017-06-23, 12:06)nikeb Wrote: I have another question,
Seems like is having problems on adding the discart on movie sets, in right list view (i m using AEON MQ7 on Krypton)
When "Movieset - Discart" is enabled.
...

It looks like Skin Helper Service caches the list of discart for movies in sets, so when you change the discart for a movie in the set it doesn't change in the movie set view right away. Is that what you are seeing? Those images should show the updated image when the cache expires, which is probably less than a day.
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#57
(2017-07-17, 21:54)rmrector Wrote: It looks like Skin Helper Service caches the list of discart for movies in sets, so when you change the discart for a movie in the set it doesn't change in the movie set view right away. Is that what you are seeing? Those images should show the updated image when the cache expires, which is probably less than a day.


Hi rmrector thanks for you answer.
i actually rebooted my mediacenter, clear caches and clean the library (without deleting movies).
After almost 1 month, nothing has changed.
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#58
(2017-07-18, 11:52)nikeb Wrote:
(2017-07-17, 21:54)rmrector Wrote: It looks like Skin Helper Service caches the list of discart for movies in sets, so when you change the discart for a movie in the set it doesn't change in the movie set view right away. Is that what you are seeing? Those images should show the updated image when the cache expires, which is probably less than a day.


Hi rmrector thanks for you answer.
i actually rebooted my mediacenter, clear caches and clean the library (without deleting movies).
After almost 1 month, nothing has changed.

I solved it deleting the simplecache.db

Thanks to everyone.
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#59
(2017-07-17, 21:54)rmrector Wrote: It's a month later so you are probably one way or the other on this by now, but Artwork Beef will use the local artwork as the first selected, but if you have set the limit higher in the add-on settings then it should fill the rest from web services. Local artwork takes precedence to match scraper behavior, as one way to override the automatic selection. After you remove the local files, the next time each item is processed the images that were local files will be replaced with more images from web services.

A fadelabel control, I think that'll do it, you mad genius! I was wanting a way to do this without the plugin, but I just couldn't figure it out. The fadelabel may even be able to do what the `smartseries` plugin path is meant for, not resetting the displayed artwork when navigating from a series list to season list to episode list. Other than maybe that, I don't think you'll be missing much. I'll have to look into this, see if it could be turned into an easy to use include for skinners.

Artwork Beef won't add new movie thumbnails from web services. I'm still trying to leave all downloading and caching to Kodi, and I don't know of a simple way to control the size of artwork added this way, and Kodi's image resizer (from cached size to actual display in skin) doesn't produce the best result when greatly downsizing an image, so I don't want to just plop it right in at full fanart size.

PS I do too, but I thought that could be used to good effect for some series.

Yup, I figured it out in the end. I simply scraped the library again using beef exclusively, and left the local thumbs for good measure, and then forced a re-cache with the Texture Cache Utility. It's been working like a dream.

As for the fadelabel, I've been using it for a month, and when combined with some nice inclusions, the fadelabel even allows for rotation settings. For me, it provides a slightly faster experience than the smartseries. I feel as if there is a split second in the plugin call where there is a shadow while it gets triggered. The fadelabel doesn't have this, and you can even trigger it with animations as you see fit. However, I don't know why that won't work with the seasons and episodes. It seems that it simply wasn't built that way, and has to be bypassed somehow. From the skinning side of things, I'm looking to see if it's possible to invoke the series filepath or dbid, or something, when browsing the seasons and episodes. That would have the effect of freezing the fanart cycle as if it was perpetually focused on the series' title, whenever you enter to browse them, and would simply leave it in place. Not sure if that's possible, though.

As for the thumbs, I'm not sure, but all of the thumbs that are in my library seem to be either actual thumbs, or fanart images properly downscaled to 780x439. I'm a bit confused since I distinctly remember you being right - I've seen badly downscaled images from when fanart was downloaded as a thumb, but I simply could not find any examples of it in my library. Perhaps something was changed? I'm not a big fan of the things, but some views in my skin simply use them, and the only thing worse than using a bad thumb is using no thumb at all. I corrected it with using landscape, which helped a bit, but not fully. The best way to fill that void is definitely animated artwork, for me at least. In that regard, I have to echo the question of somehow downloading them properly or automatically. As it is now, they do not download automatically, but I presume that has more to do with the infrastructure available for them, and it's not something you can alter?

I also have a question concerning the artwork in the sets. How do you go about changing, say, the disc for a movie set? When I go and change it in Manage/Select artwork/discart, all I get are posters from the movies within a set, and a browse option. However, since all the images are in the cache, that's just not applicable in this case. I literally couldn't find a way other than manually downloading the new image, placing it in the local folder, and browsing to it. Which is too convoluted a process, IMO. Is there no way of going online and returning a list of discs? I would rather go through a list of all the discs for all of the movies within a set than nothing at all. Also, if I go to Manage/Select artwork to add, instead of getting an actual choice, I get random options for a different film. Again, not sure how much you can change, and how much is Kodi's inner workings...
Eminence 2 MOD, Revived & Improved

If you've found me helpful, eh, maybe press the Like button? If you like, you can click here for donations. :)
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#60
(2017-07-19, 10:18)Alanon Wrote: ...
As for the fadelabel, I've been using it for a month, and when combined with some nice inclusions, the fadelabel even allows for rotation settings. For me, it provides a slightly faster experience than the smartseries. I feel as if there is a split second in the plugin call where there is a shadow while it gets triggered. The fadelabel doesn't have this, and you can even trigger it with animations as you see fit. However, I don't know why that won't work with the seasons and episodes. It seems that it simply wasn't built that way, and has to be bypassed somehow. From the skinning side of things, I'm looking to see if it's possible to invoke the series filepath or dbid, or something, when browsing the seasons and episodes. That would have the effect of freezing the fanart cycle as if it was perpetually focused on the series' title, whenever you enter to browse them, and would simply leave it in place. Not sure if that's possible, though.

As for the thumbs, I'm not sure, but all of the thumbs that are in my library seem to be either actual thumbs, or fanart images properly downscaled to 780x439. I'm a bit confused since I distinctly remember you being right - I've seen badly downscaled images from when fanart was downloaded as a thumb, but I simply could not find any examples of it in my library. Perhaps something was changed? I'm not a big fan of the things, but some views in my skin simply use them, and the only thing worse than using a bad thumb is using no thumb at all. I corrected it with using landscape, which helped a bit, but not fully. The best way to fill that void is definitely animated artwork, for me at least. In that regard, I have to echo the question of somehow downloading them properly or automatically. As it is now, they do not download automatically, but I presume that has more to do with the infrastructure available for them, and it's not something you can alter?

I also have a question concerning the artwork in the sets. How do you go about changing, say, the disc for a movie set? When I go and change it in Manage/Select artwork/discart, all I get are posters from the movies within a set, and a browse option. However, since all the images are in the cache, that's just not applicable in this case. I literally couldn't find a way other than manually downloading the new image, placing it in the local folder, and browsing to it. Which is too convoluted a process, IMO. Is there no way of going online and returning a list of discs? I would rather go through a list of all the discs for all of the movies within a set than nothing at all. Also, if I go to Manage/Select artwork to add, instead of getting an actual choice, I get random options for a different film. Again, not sure how much you can change, and how much is Kodi's inner workings...

Yeah, the plugin does have a small delay; less so on LibreElec than Windows, but it's still there. I took a moment to see how the fadelabel behaves, and it's not bad, but different. With the multiimage and plugin path the multiimage grabs a new starting image every time the path changes, so flipping between two series brings up different artwork each time, but the fadelabel seems to keep its random choice even when labels change, so it will show the same image for each series until it picks a new random choice. I did get it to show series artwork when viewing seasons and episodes, by giving the fadelabel the labels $INFO[ListItem.Art(tvshow.fanart1)] and so on. Navigating to a list of seasons had no trouble keeping the same image, but navigating to episodes from the season or TV show often did cause it to pick a new one (I think it'll be down to the slight difference in time when grabbing the info from the database and filling the list). Also, the time an image is displayed is based on the length of the URL/path, so it can be different for each image.

For thumbs, Artwork Downloader downloaded backdrops from TheMovieDB, which were usually stills from the movie, and resized them itself, so they won't be affected. The next time I'm in the mood to get deep in Kodi's guts I may look into changing that final resize to produce a better result when heavily downsizing an image, so that skins could use fanart in a small thumbnail box, rather than the Beef downloading and resizing fanart itself. Ditto animated artwork, I'd like to update Kodi to better support it so that the Beef just has to grab URLs, like regular artwork: animated artwork currently isn't fully cached (just the first frame), and Kodi will only display the full animated version when the image is stored on a local HDD, or with a clever path substitution it can reach LAN shares. There is a server than has animated artwork, though, Skin Helper Service will grab images from it with the right configuration. It's not an official web service like fanart.tv, so I'm not sure what the policy to access the images is, but the first step is either update Kodi or break down and have the Beef download images.

Set artwork should work the same as other media types, for now it doesn't offer a way to choose an image from one of the movies inside. I had considered it, but then decided against it because skinners can get artwork from movies in sets in another way (I think a list can be filled with a set's movies by building a library path with the setID). Now it doesn't seem like a bad option to at least allow for manual selection of that artwork, though. For that second problem, is it just one set? It may have misidentified the set, and the new set has only posters, so it skipped over that first window with the button that allows you to search for a new (and hopefully correct) set. I'll put that button on the second window, too, I think. Or not skip that first window in this case (though I do like it skipping directly to episode fanart).

@nikeb Great. If it happens again with after other changes and doesn't clear up after a short while, you might ping marcelveldt, the developer of both Skin Helper Service, the add-on that actually grabs this data and uses the other add-on, simplecache which then caches the data for X amount of time.
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Artwork Beef - automatically add extended artwork5