[robweber]

After hijacking the reFocus thread for far to long I created this to help with requests/bugs on a very simple Fanart Grabber addon I created. This started as something for personal use but after seeing discussions on the reFocus thread I felt it may be something others have been searching for.

What is Does:

In previous version of XBMC (pre-Frodo) fanart was stored in a central folder. This made it easy for skinners to point to this location to do fanart slideshows on the main xbmc pages, or wherever they wanted to load random fanart. With the new image caching system these images are no longer easily accessible for "slideshow" type displays. This addon is very simple in that it gets a list of all your available fanart (via JSON) and exposes it via Window Properties for skinners to access

How Does It Work:

By default the service will start up and start populating the Window properties automatically. For further customization there are a few parameters that can be tweaked via the Addon Settings or from skin by calling RunScript(script.grab.fanart,mode=recent|random, refresh=time in seconds)
 

• Mode: Show recently added files or randomly grab from entire collection
  
• Refresh: amount of time between refreshes of the window properties, default is 10 seconds
  

To integrate this with a skin you only need to reference the property you want to display. As the service updates the value it will change dynamically. right now the properties available are

script.grab.fanart.Global.Title - the title of a random music or video file, 30% chance music, 30% TV, 40% movie
script.grab.fanart.Global.FanArt - path to the fanart image for this media

script.grab.fanart.Video.Title - the title of a random video (movie or tv show). There is a 10% chance of this being a TV show.
script.grab.fanart.Video.FanArt - the path to the fanart image for this video
script.grab.fanart.Video.Poster - path to poster image for this video
script.grab.fanart.Video.Plot - plot outline of this video

script.grab.fanart.Movie.Title - title of the selected movie
script.grab.fanart.Movie.FanArt - path to movie fanart
script.grab.fanart.Movie.Poster - path to movie poster
script.grab.fanart.Movie.Plot - movie plot

script.grab.fanart.TV.Title - title of selected tv show
script.grab.fanart.TV.FanArt - path to tv show fanart
script.grab.fanart.TV.Poster - path to tv show poster
script.grab.fanart.TV.Plot - tv show plot description

These will only have values when the addon mode is "recent"
script.grab.fanart.TV.Season - selected tv show season
script.grab.fanart.TV.Episode - selected tv show episode number
script.grab.fanart.TV.Thumb - path to thumbnail image of this episode

script.grab.fanart.Music.Artist - music artist name
script.grab.fanart.Music.FanArt - path to artist fanart
script.grab.fanart.Music.Description - artist description

To use this use the syntax $INFO[Window(Home).Property(script.grab.fanart.PropName)] within your skin.

Doesn't This Addon Exist Already?

Yea, kind of. There is an addon called the Artwork Organizer in the official repo already. It does a lot of the same tasks but is also highly configurable. This addon is meant to be simpler and a tool for skinners rather than users. If you need or want the advanced functionality then I recommend using that tool instead.

OK - How Do I Try It?

This module is in the official Kodi repo, but it requires skin support to work. Check with your favorite skin author.

https://github.com/robweber/script.grab.fanart/