[Dumyat]

 3. In order to fully understand the logic of AB and the options, I had to go through all the pages of this thread to find your changelog posts in which you nicely comment why you introduced some options, sometimes responding to a user suggestion or feedback. It would be good for new users to have those comments in the documentation of the addon. Just a suggestion.

I think Axel makes a good point and with the recent demise of the AD addon, I suspect there are plenty of users like myself who would now really like to utilise AB to manage their library artwork, but are maybe a little hesitant of doing something wrong when setting up AB for the first time and end up deleting/overwriting all of their existing AD artwork, even after reading the set-up documentation.
Additionally, I have hundreds of custom artwork images I have created in my current movie and TV show library folders and really wouldn't like to have them all wiped out, because I didn't quite fully understand how to configure AB settings properly.
I guess this is one of the main reasons that I haven't actually used AB as yet with the potential consequences of one wrong move when setting things up for the first run. This isn't meant as a criticism in the slightest, as I would dearly love to have a replacement for the AD addon.

Maybe as a suggestion you could provide screen shot examples of AB's settings page and how to configure them correctly for a first run, particularly if you were previously using AD and already have artwork in your media folders and don't need to overwrite/delete these items? Sometimes I find it's much easier to follow instructions this way, when you have something visually to follow. What do you think?

[Streggi]

Can I understand how the episode fanart, always generate episode thumb from video file and the kodi media/videos/extract thumbanils from video files all inter-related please?  I'm trying to improve the quality of my episode thumbs in the episodes fanart view, but I don't seem to be able.

Does the AB settings override the Kodi settings?  If always generate episode thumbs is set to no, does it first try to find episode fanart and if fails then creates a thumb?

[rmrector]

Animated artwork will come in the future.

@Dumyat That's a fairly wild assumption. There is no combination of settings or actions in Artwork Beef that will wipe out all of your image files, never mind "one wrong move" (barring a bug that I am unaware of, which screenshots of settings will not solve). Is there something in the documentation that suggests this is a looming threat? Backup your important files, this is the only way to protect them from any misbehaving software or broken hardware or misconfiguration that may adversely affect them.

@Streggi Episode "fanart" and "thumb" are two different images that can be displayed in different places. Fanart are high resolution, high quality images of specifically chosen scenes, either from press images or captured from a frame of the video file. Skins usually show them as a background or a big image in the foreground. Artwork Beef only adds episode fanart from TMDB, and only automatically if the series is chosen in the "Select series for episode 'fanart'..." option; you can still manually browse and assign episode fanart with "Select artwork..." on the episode to see if they are available for a series. Neither Kodi's thumbnails option nor Artwork Beef's thumb options affect episode fanart.

Thumbs can be low resolution, squashed, and watermarked (if using the TVDB scraper), or maybe one of the same images that AB will pick for fanart if using the TMDB scraper (not really sure how that scraper works, it may also pick the same image as the TVDB scraper), or generated by Kodi from one hardcoded point in time, so not necessarily a well chosen shot (if the scraper doesn't provide a thumb, or the Artwork Beef thumbnail option is enabled). Skins tend to show them in smaller boxes. Artwork Beef will not add any episode thumbs from web services, but if configured will replace them with Kodi generated thumbs. The actual image will only be generated when the episode is displayed in the video library if Kodi has also been configured to generate thumbnails. If Artwork Beef's "generate thumb" option is disabled then episode thumbs are mostly left alone, but will be downloaded if the download artwork option is enabled.

In my skinning experiments I fall back to the series fanart slideshow if there is no episode fanart, rather than display the thumb in its place - I do use the "generate episode thumb" option, but still only display it in a small box.

[Dumyat]

Animated artwork will come in the future.

@Dumyat That's a fairly wild assumption. There is no combination of settings or actions in Artwork Beef that will wipe out all of your image files, never mind "one wrong move" (barring a bug that I am unaware of, which screenshots of settings will not solve). Is there something in the documentation that suggests this is a looming threat? Backup your important files, this is the only way to protect them from any misbehaving software or broken hardware or misconfiguration that may adversely affect them.

Don't think I've made any wild assumptions, other than reading other users experiences in this thread:-
Here https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2694726 and here https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2697008 for instance, both reported within the last 5 pages of this thread.
Apologies if it's then not reasonable for me to maybe have some reservations, ask questions or make suggestions, that might help other users from experiencing the same thing happening to them. 'One wrong move' should not be interpreted as something negative or a slant against AB. That was certainly not the intention, but apologies again if that has been your own perception. I only ever try to contribute on this forum in a positive manner in the hope of helping and assisting other users.
My current media library is quite extensive, so would be very time consuming to fish out important files to protect, plus I don't really have enough free hard drive space to do that. I will put some media on my development machine and try AB there. I guess the instructions you have described here are still good to use?:-
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2694963

[Streggi]

Thanks for the great answer about episode art.

I have another question about how AB works across different clients, particularly with creating thumbs on clients with limited storage.  Here's my setup:

- all clients sharing a mysql database
- Windows PC on which I've set AB to auto-download all images and it downloads absolutely everything (discart, multiple fanart etc) to the media folders on my shared network folders.
- various Fire TV devices
- A Mibox 3 with pitiful storage.  I've set this to NOT automatically download images and  on the AB movies settings page I've unselected landscape, discart, selected only 1 fanart rather than multiple etc to try and save space

Where I'm confused is as follows.  When my Mibox 3 goes to the network folder e.g. movies/adults/captain america winter soldier and sees all the images downloaded by my Windows PC e.g. the landscape image in the folder,  does it still ignore it and not cache a thumbnail if landscape isn't selected in its AB settings or does Kodi take over regardless and still cache the landscape image?  I've tried testing it and it seems like AB controls which images are cached, but I'm not 100% certain particularly as they are all sharing a mysql database which contains all the image references

If AB is in control of the cache at a local level, then that's brilliant as I can have a richer library on clients that have the storage space and a less rich one on clients like the Mibox e.g. I've turned off discart in Estuary Mod 2, in the hope that the Mibox isn't caching those images.

I'm going to use texture cache to do a full thumbnail rebuild on the mibox tonight to see what happens, and play a bit with the AB settings

[rmrector]

@Dumyat Everything that I can imagine you need to start using it is in the documentation, and there is page titled First usage that has what I think you should know before or just after the first usage, if you want to modify its behavior beyond the basic idea in the first two sentences of the first post.

To copy just certain types of files with full directory structure (like jpg, png, and gif, the files Artwork Beef might delete or replace), try the selected answer here for Windows, or the top answer here for Linux/mac. The end result can easily be copied back over the full library should something happen that you don't like.

I will have a handful of related changes that may help: I have another change to file handling in the upcoming version that resolves a theoretical cause of unexpectedly deleted artwork, though I haven't come up with a practical way it could have happened. I will adjust the one setting that could affect existing artwork files so that it is disabled by default. I've revisited the text of a few of the other settings to hopefully make them clearer. I'll explicitly document the expected changes to existing artwork files, by default and with the few switches that affect them. I'll probably disable the automatic processing by default, then explicitly document that it must be enabled if desired. The default install will then do absolutely nothing automatically and won't affect files until you flip one of a few documented switches in the add-on settings. Beyond that, my suggestion is to use it to see how it works.

@Streggi with a shared MySQL database, the other clients only need Artwork Beef for manually changing artwork, if you want to do that on a different client. In that case you want each client configured to download artwork (so that the old file is replaced), just disable the "automatically add artwork" options on all but one. The options to select specific art types under "Automatically add these artwork types from web services" only apply to artwork automatically added from web services, so they won't change much of the behavior on the other clients.

Kodi handles caching on each client, caching images on a case-by-case basis only when each image is displayed by the skin (or requested through the API from something like TCMU or remote controls), so configuring your skin to limit the art types display should do what you want. TCMU will probably also need to be configured to only cache specific art types for that one client (rather than all art types in the rich shared library), and also probably has a mode that can be run periodically to remove the other art types that may occasionally sneak their way in.

[manfeed]

Thanks again for your work in this little gem! 

I have a doubt, I have carefully tagged, scanned and scraped my music with this addon, and when everything was done I decided to upload some aditional artwork to theaudiodb.com (one back cover and one spine for an album) in order to check if everything worked as expected; thing is that after >36 hours afterward the addon is unable to find those artworks when started manually (I have checked and that album has Musicbrainz id in the music database). Is that normal? Have I to wait some specific time before the script finds the new artwork? I also tried the option "add missing artwork" when browsing albums but it only shows cdart and thumb for that album...

Thanks!

[o0nightfire0o]

how do you get this to automatically add the clear logos when in logo view?

[o0nightfire0o]

i dont think i was very clear, see artwork beef seems to work ok, but it supposedly gets clear logos too, but when i go into logo view, there arent any shown, so what do i need to do?

[Kokonutcreme]

@rmrector
That unexpected behaviour when I ran AB from program addons to update all movie files hasn’t been repeated since they were repopulated.

Tested running AB from context menu for a completed movie and no files were updated which is expected behaviour and no files were deleted.

Running from program addons and configured to download from web services was hit and miss. Some titles were updated and some that had missing files weren’t, even though I knew they existed on fanart.tv

Tried running again with my API included but it didn’t improve the strike rate.

After my movie library was repopulated I then rescraped it and ran AB from program addons configured to add from local files only with no problem.

Aside from my initial experience, this is a great addon and love that it automatically updates new files after they’re scraped or refreshed.

When running AB from programs, what defines an “old file”?

[rmrector]

@manfeed Yup, Artwork Beef caches results for 72 hours. I've considered lowering it to 24 hours, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

@o0nightfire0o Could be that AB isn't actually setting clearlogo properly. Open the info dialog and then "Choose art", and see if there is a "clearlogo" image visible for a few popular movies and TV shows (and have images available on Fanart.tv).
If it isn't, something is probably up with Artwork Beef. First check that the "clearlogo" artwork is enabled in settings for that particular media type. If no artwork is found for any art types then your media may not have an IMDB or other unique ID. In this case make sure your scrapers are up to date, refresh the media item and run Artwork Beef on that item to see if it is available.
If the artwork is visible in the "Choose art" dialog, then the skin likely isn't pulling up logos correctly. They should be using something like `ListItem.Art(clearlogo)` for the list items.

@Kokonutcreme Without any hard details I can't say for certain what happened or know for certain if I have it fixed, but I have added a few changes that should help. It's doubly confusing that it didn't affect posters and fanart.
If Artwork Beef isn't finding any artwork for certain media items, it is probably because of a missing IMDB or other unique ID. Make sure your scrapers are up to date and refresh an affected item, then try Artwork Beef on that item again. If it works (the "Manage" -> "Select artwork..." context item will show all found artwork), repeat for the rest. If it doesn't, I'll probably need a list of a few of the affected titles to see what's up.

Old files are determined based on the last time they were checked for updates and their status. Generally about 4 months for items not missing any artwork, 2 months for items still missing some artwork and a bit shorter for recently released media. A bit of random jitter is added to spread them out for the automatic maintenance mode, but only runs automatically once per day even if library updates are frequent.

[manfeed]

@manfeed Yup, Artwork Beef caches results for 72 hours. I've considered lowering it to 24 hours, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

 Thanks for the info, 72 hours is ok for me, I think I can wait that long...

I'm taking advantage of the new available options for music artwork in my mod... it's great! Thanks also for your detailed info about the addon, extrafanarts and all the rest... it's pretty interesting 

I have a question... In the addon settings there's an option to import local art to the database, is that working for music or only for videos?

I'm asking that because over the years I have been carefully choosing logos, fanart, etc. that I have beside my music files and folders. I especifically have an extrafanart folder under every artist; would it be possible somehow to add those fanarts to the database as fanart1, fanart2, fanart3...? That way I could take advantage of your suggested option for getting rid of the extrafanart local folders.

Thanks in advance!

[Powerhouse]

I would just like to follow up on my earlier post with the issues I've had with this, to say that as of version 16.1, most of the issues have been addressed, and (with the setting's I've selected), that only Movie Set Artwork is downloaded (into a newly created folder on my NAS called "Artwork Sets"). Also, I now have lots of extra art for Music Videos (Logo's, Fanart, etc) which is nice.

So my only complaint (more a request), is that you allow the Music Artwork to download on Kodi version 17.x (in preparation of version 18), so this can all be updated for the latest release of Kodi. 8)

[Dumyat]

@Dumyat Everything that I can imagine you need to start using it is in the documentation, and there is page titled First usage that has what I think you should know before or just after the first usage, if you want to modify its behavior beyond the basic idea in the first two sentences of the first post.

To copy just certain types of files with full directory structure (like jpg, png, and gif, the files Artwork Beef might delete or replace), try the selected answer here for Windows, or the top answer here for Linux/mac. The end result can easily be copied back over the full library should something happen that you don't like.

I will have a handful of related changes that may help: I have another change to file handling in the upcoming version that resolves a theoretical cause of unexpectedly deleted artwork, though I haven't come up with a practical way it could have happened. I will adjust the one setting that could affect existing artwork files so that it is disabled by default. I've revisited the text of a few of the other settings to hopefully make them clearer. I'll explicitly document the expected changes to existing artwork files, by default and with the few switches that affect them. I'll probably disable the automatic processing by default, then explicitly document that it must be enabled if desired. The default install will then do absolutely nothing automatically and won't affect files until you flip one of a few documented switches in the add-on settings. Beyond that, my suggestion is to use it to see how it works.

That's great.....Thanks for all the info.
I will have good look at everything over the weekend. Like you say, probably best thing is to give it try and see how things work.
Cheers

[stephen147]

txt:
00:55:16.301 T:20868 WARNING: [script.artwork.beef] Error with provider 'fanart.tv': HTTP error: HTTPError

Script hasn't worked for me in a couple of weeks. Above error output in the log file.