[therealjoeblow]

Personally, I think the add on is broken with respect to season posters for TV shows. I have turned on the local files option, and it downloads and stores all of the available other selected formats but *never* any season posters. Same as reported by numerous other users over the past several months.

TRJB

It does. Or at least on my side, don't wanna be categorical.
I have local info turned on, also, and i do as i said a few posts back.
I'm gonna double check cos now u made me doubt.

edit: Yeah, it worked manually (Helix 14.2 beta 1 here), but, i had to insist:
1. went to the show and info.... artword downloader manual.... season posters....
2. it does not update automatically so i navigated to the season in the library, press c over the poster, manage, chose art, poster, looked for the one i got and it was not there
3. went back to the main library show, press info, artworkd downloader manual, season posters
4. got to the season in the library, press c over the poster of the season i wanted to change, manage, chose art, poster, local items folder, this time it was there, so i chose it.
5. had to repeat the 4th step once again, and this time it was in actual poster, so i chose that one, and voilá....

This is more or less what i used to do on gotham too... Agree, not automatic, but at least i can chose the season posters.

Sorry, not trying to be obtuse here, but I have *no idea* what you are trying to describe. "artwork downloader manual"... I do not see that option anywhere.

On the "info" view for any TV show (when selected on the show from the main TV Show library view), I have buttons for "Browse" "Cast" "Refresh" "Choose Art", that is all. When I select "Choose Art" at the show level, I see "banner, poster, fanart, clearart, clearlogo, landscape, characterart, thumb", and a button for "Add Art", which if pressed brings up the viyrtual keyboard.

If I go into the show itself, then I see "Season 1, Season 2, etc", and if I hover on the season that is missing the art and hit the "c" key, there is an option at the bottom of the list called "Choose Art", and if selecting that, I get a screen similar to the one described above, only less items, just "banner. poster. fanart", and again the "Add Art" button, that if I press gives me the virtual keyboard again.

I don't *ever* see anything called "artwork downloader manual" or anything specifically labelled artwork downloader.

Using the "choose art" option that I described above at the season level and clicking on the poster option from the list, as you noted, the list does not automatically show any available art, and I am able to "browse" to to the "Item folder", but there is never any season posters there, no matter how many times I have run A/D from the main addon interface. As I noted, A/D has successfully downloaded all of the other available items, but never any season posters, so I cannot even manually choose them.

Can you please be more clear in *exactly* how you are finding the options/menu items you described above to manually force it to download the season posters?

Thanks
/TRJB

[pauly3069]

Hey guys.. tried to google and research but had no luck and don't wanna go through 150 pages of forum posts!
Ok heres my question........
Is it possible to change the download location for the artwork downloader addon? I want all the fanart media, logos, disc art etc. stored on my external HD not on my device itself as it only supports 8GB
So I was wondering if its possible to set up a 'Artwork' folder on my external server and have all my artwork downloaded to there from the addon, then thats where Kodi will look to go for all my fanart, logos, etc...as oppose to storing it under kodi->user data->thumbnails
I hope I explained it properly lol jist is I would love to download tons of fan art,logos, disc art etc. for each of my 500+ movies and 80+ tv shows without having it stored on my device itself but to my connected server where it can still be accessed by Kodi.

[vicmanpergar]

@therealjoeblow

I guess that depends on the skin u're using, but almost all skins i've been using have the specific options to download art WITH artwork downloader. They are usually differentely named but basically, from the library itself, sometiimes within the movie info page, or may be from other menu, u can use AD in Auto mode (this will try to download all the art automatically FOR the movie requested), or in manual mode, that will allow u to chose one by one, the art u want (poster, banner, etc...) and chose which one u want to download (for example, u can have more than one banner available for download and u chose the one u like the most).
The other option is Kodi itself specific i think, and that's the one u talk about when browsing to a specific local path and seeing what's there to chose from. IF Artwork Downloader had been used to download something specific u wanted, u would find it there using that second option, assuming u set it up to download and use local info.
What u are doing is navigating to the addon itself and running the bulk mode, if i understood u well. This is the automatic mode that scans the whole library.
Perhaps u should ask in the skin forum u're using, where are the options to run AD from a specific movie or show.
Being curious, which skin are u using?

To ilustrate it, this is the Info page from the movie library, where u can see the AD options, and others from one of the Aeon Nox skins:

[wgstarks]

Hey guys.. tried to google and research but had no luck and don't wanna go through 150 pages of forum posts!
Ok heres my question........
Is it possible to change the download location for the artwork downloader addon? I want all the fanart media, logos, disc art etc. stored on my external HD not on my device itself as it only supports 8GB
So I was wondering if its possible to set up a 'Artwork' folder on my external server and have all my artwork downloaded to there from the addon, then thats where Kodi will look to go for all my fanart, logos, etc...as oppose to storing it under kodi->user data->thumbnails
I hope I explained it properly lol jist is I would love to download tons of fan art,logos, disc art etc. for each of my 500+ movies and 80+ tv shows without having it stored on my device itself but to my connected server where it can still be accessed by Kodi.

No

[therealjoeblow]

I'm using Transparency! but also tried Confluence. I'll try Nox tonight and see if I can find the manual-per-show option and see if that behaves any differently.

Thx
TRJB

[DruTheFu]

Hey guys.. tried to google and research but had no luck and don't wanna go through 150 pages of forum posts!
Ok heres my question........
Is it possible to change the download location for the artwork downloader addon? I want all the fanart media, logos, disc art etc. stored on my external HD not on my device itself as it only supports 8GB
So I was wondering if its possible to set up a 'Artwork' folder on my external server and have all my artwork downloaded to there from the addon, then thats where Kodi will look to go for all my fanart, logos, etc...as oppose to storing it under kodi->user data->thumbnails
I hope I explained it properly lol jist is I would love to download tons of fan art,logos, disc art etc. for each of my 500+ movies and 80+ tv shows without having it stored on my device itself but to my connected server where it can still be accessed by Kodi.

No

I see that there currently is not an option, but will there be an option to set a remote path (i.e.via NFS) for storing artwork?

Looking at the files stored on my Amazon Fire TV (with only 8 Gb of internal storage ), the 'temp' folder for the AW Downloader is over 2.5Gb and I haven't finished scanning my entire library.

With Kodi compatible devices seemingly getting smaller with internal storage and relying on network storage, this would be a great feature to be able to use.

Thanks

[capfuturo]

@pauly3069 and @DruTheFu You can tackle this issue via a different route. Run some test using a SimLink for the parent folder where artwork is saved and point it to an external/network drive. This would allow you to grow your storage capacity. If you have Windows I can help you with the commands if needed. For Linux, OS X and others you would have to do your homework!

[DruTheFu]

@pauly3069 and @DruTheFu You can tackle this issue via a different route. Run some test using a SimLink for the parent folder where artwork is saved and point it to an external/network drive. This would allow you to grow your storage capacity. If you have Windows I can help you with the commands if needed. For Linux, OS X and others you would have to do your homework!

I'm interested in this feature you mention. Will this have any effect on my shared libraries and info via MySQL, or Path Substitution to the \userdata\Thumbnails I have pointing to my Windows machine? Currently, my Kodi 'sources' are connected through NFS to my Windows 8.1 machine, and MySQL and the path substitutions also point to the same Windows 8.1 machine.

Thanks!

[capfuturo]

@DruTheFu: Your scenario is not just a single machine and therefore requires a bit more of understanding of what do you really need to do and how are you currently doing it.

Symlinks in an exported NFS share are tricky. Kodi would likely undo a symlink it sees via an nfs:// source to its native path. A symlink for a local folder to a mounted folder would work well instead, however you already have a MySQL and path susbtitution in place, so I believe Symlink are neither appropiate nor needed anymore here. When you have several boxes running Kodi, the recommended way is not to share databases but to use a MySQL database and have each XBMC machine refer to that database. You are already doing so, and I don't see how your internal Fire TV storage is being filled up, if you have set a path substitution for your local thumbnails to an external source already. Have you set up the advancedsettings.xml correctly, and placed a copy of this xml along with a copy your sources.xml to the userdata folder on your Fire TV, and basically on every box running Kodi? http://kodi.wiki/view/MySQL/Setting_up_Kodi

I think (not sure) the path for userdata on Fire TV is: /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.kodi.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/

[DruTheFu]

@DruTheFu: Your scenario is not just a single machine and therefore requires a bit more of understanding of what do you really need to do and how are you currently doing it.

Symlinks in an exported NFS share are tricky. Kodi would likely undo a symlink it sees via an nfs:// source to its native path. A symlink for a local folder to a mounted folder would work well instead, however you already have a MySQL and path susbtitution in place, so I believe Symlink are neither appropiate nor needed anymore here. When you have several boxes running Kodi, the recommended way is not to share databases but to use a MySQL database and have each XBMC machine refer to that database. You are already doing so, and I don't see how your internal Fire TV storage is being filled up, if you have set a path substitution for your local thumbnails to an external source already. Have you set up the right xml for this specific substitution?

Thanks for the reply.

From looking in my file system, with my path substitution in place for my "\userdata\Thumbnails", there is no longer a \Thumbnails directory within the "\userdata" directory, instead referencing a NFS share mount on my Windows 8.1 machine. Investigating the file and ditrectory structure on the AFTV and finding where I'm losing valuable storage space, what I did notice is that within the "\userdata\addon_data\script.artwork.downloader\temp" directory, this specific directory is filling up fast, and scanning about half of my video library has produced over 2.57GB of data. I wouldn't really mind this amount of data and correlating storage space requirement if it were saving remotely to my NFS share with plenty of free space, but the very limited amount of storage space on the AFTV will max out all internal storage on the AFTV device.

Looking in the "downloadreport.txt" file, it reads:

Artwork Downloader:
- Time of finish: 04 March 2015 - 22:26
Downloaded:
- Total Artwork: 0
Failed items:
- No failed or missing items found

This doesn't seem right to me, as I have a pretty big collection of video files in my library that have been successfully scraped for info, and seeing that the AD folder houses a fairly large sized "\temp" directory.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the Artwork Downloader addon does not download actual artwork files, but instead downloads/injects the correlating URL for the various artwork types into the local Db, in my case my network attached MySQL implementation. So I would imagine that my MySQL Db would be the file growing in size instead of any Db/directory on the Fire TV itself.

My advancedsettings.xml file is:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <videodatabase>
    <type>mysql</type>
    <host>192.168.79.100</host>
    <port>3306</port>
    <user>kodi</user>
    <pass>kodi</pass>
  </videodatabase>
  <musicdatabase>
    <type>mysql</type>
    <host>192.168.79.100</host>
    <port>3306</port>
    <user>kodi</user>
    <pass>kodi</pass>
  </musicdatabase>
  <videolibrary>
    <importwatchedstate>true</importwatchedstate>
    <importresumepoint>true</importresumepoint>
  </videolibrary>
  <pathsubstitution>
    <substitute>
      <from>/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails/</from>
      <to>nfs://192.168.79.100/AmazonFireTV/Thumbnails/KodiMain/</to>
    </substitute>
  </pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>

With the above config, I would assume that the artwork files and url's would be stored remotely on the NFS share....that is unless I didn't configure something right or am wrong in my assumptions, which wouldn't surprise me at this point .

I'm almost getting to the point of going scorched Earth and starting over from clean install and re-scrapping. That would be drastic measures and a decent amount of time spent....

Any recommendations, comments, and/or constructive criticism welcomed.

Thanks for everyones' time.

[capfuturo]

Looking in the "downloadreport.txt" file, it reads:

Artwork Downloader:
- Time of finish: 04 March 2015 - 22:26
Downloaded:
- Total Artwork: 0
Failed items:
- No failed or missing items found

This doesn't seem right to me, as I have a pretty big collection of video files in my library that have been successfully scraped for info, and seeing that the AD folder houses a fairly large sized "\temp" directory.

If you run it now it will download all available images for the items currently in your library. If you add new material after that, it will only find their artwork online when you run it again one hour after the previous run. This has been the behavior by designed until last time I checked on this. It saves the data for an hour to speed up subsequent executes. So after one hour it will refresh its data.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the Artwork Downloader addon does not download actual artwork files, but instead downloads/injects the correlating URL for the various artwork types into the local Db, in my case my network attached MySQL implementation.

That matches my notes on this, however depends how you have configured the add-on.

So I would imagine that my MySQL Db would be the file growing in size instead of any Db/directory on the Fire TV itself.

My advancedsettings.xml file is:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <videodatabase>
    <type>mysql</type>
    <host>192.168.79.100</host>
    <port>3306</port>
    <user>kodi</user>
    <pass>kodi</pass>
  </videodatabase>
  <musicdatabase>
    <type>mysql</type>
    <host>192.168.79.100</host>
    <port>3306</port>
    <user>kodi</user>
    <pass>kodi</pass>
  </musicdatabase>
  <videolibrary>
    <importwatchedstate>true</importwatchedstate>
    <importresumepoint>true</importresumepoint>
  </videolibrary>
  <pathsubstitution>
    <substitute>
      <from>/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails/</from>
      <to>nfs://192.168.79.100/AmazonFireTV/Thumbnails/KodiMain/</to>
    </substitute>
  </pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>

With the above config, I would assume that the artwork files and url's would be stored remotely on the NFS share....that is unless I didn't configure something right or am wrong in my assumptions, which wouldn't surprise me at this point

Can you test using instead:

Code:

<substitute>
   <from>special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/</from>
   <to>/media/usb0/Thumbnails/</to> (or something like this)
</substitute>

... and test the substitution to a USB dongle plugged to Fire TV. This will tell you if the AdvancedSettings.xml is doing its job for the substitution part of the work. If the resulting files are there and not empty, then you will know there is an issue with regards to the Thumbnail folder on the Share, and sensibly will be able to narrow down the issue. It may be a password issue (passwords.xml), or that you are running different versions of Kodi on every box. If you don't see the library from your devices then it means incompatible database versions; if this is the case, do not set sources and scrape on the box, otherwise you will certainly create a new library in MySQL; no good. So, check to be using compatible Kodi versions. Place the same advanced settings on each device (of course only put the path substitution part on the advancesettings located in the Fire TV, not your HTPC.

I also would like to remind you that you are effectively using MySQL, and that is one thing. The other is to use path substitution to allow you to deal with increasing storage need on your Fire TV, and that is a per-device solution. So if you had two units of Fire TVs, then you will create path substitutions for each one of them referring to different Thumbnail folders located somewhere on your shares, but not to the main thumbnail folder on your main Kodi installation. Some may say it works for them but I tell my friend this isn't designed for sharing, since you will only get a corrupted Thumbnail Database. You share the sources, your videos, your music... Thumbnails is a per-device business. Otherwise each device will enter in a kind of tail-chasing rewriting of thumbnails previously written by another device. Does it make sense?

If after all this your thumbnails aren't being placed by the add-on when using path substitution in the USB dongle then, comment out the path substitution part of the advancedsettings.xml in your Fire TV installation, restart the box and try again; some users have reported not being able to use certain add-ons with path substitution and it isn't something that can be fixed. Should you fall in this category, then you can do symlinks of the temp and thumnail folders to a local USB dongle with abundant space plugged to Fire TV in order to relief the internal storage, or perhaps you can try test if mounting a network folder in place for the Thumbnail and Temp local temp folders in the Fire TV works.

Get back with some news when you can! Good luck.

[DruTheFu]

@capfuturo - thanks for those suggestions, I'll give them a try in the next few days as soon as some free time presents itself.

Having NFS based sources, I'll have to do some research into associated passwords, as I thought NFS differs from SMB in that it does not pass passwords. Time for me to get my sleuth on.

Do you happen to have an idea as to why the \temp directory for this Addon is filling up so much? I thought this addon doesn't actually download images (unless I enable the local files setting)? Are there any negative consequences for deleting the files in the \temp directory? Can path substitution be applied for this addon's directory or sub directories?



Thanks (again)

[Glorious1]

It does download files, unless you have checked the option to use only local files.

[capfuturo]

Do you happen to have an idea as to why the \temp directory for this Addon is filling up so much? I thought this addon doesn't actually download images (unless I enable the local files setting)? Are there any negative consequences for deleting the files in the \temp directory? Can path substitution be applied for this addon's directory or sub directories?

Thanks (again)

You got your answer for the download part from Glorious1. Regarding the Temp folder, I am quite sure it won't work with path substitution. Local Temp folders can't be normally directed to shares, however Symlinks is a viable option here. I strongly encourage you to get rid of the paths substitutions in order to get Artwork Downloader working. It is a general add-on issue, not just isolated to this one.

[DruTheFu]

Up in post #2227, you mention you can lend a hand in some Windows commands for this Simlink option. I'm open to giving this a try, just lead the way.