[pkscout]

I have found in the wiki how to start script.artistslideshow in daemon mode :
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...er_Screens

And your script can be called from another addon :
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...ther_addon

But can I call it directly from the skin ? Or do I have to write an addon/script to call your addon/script ?

I don't think so. When we were working on the original external call mechanism, we tried it with just skin calls, but it never worked right. So if you want to do any integration without a song playing you'll have to write a script to do that integration.

@pkscuot : Your addon (and Ronnie's ) would be just perfect if you could allow this. Is it in the changelog of next version ?

I don't know what other users think about that, but for me, an easy way to make it work all together locally (with homepage slideshow) would be :

- What already exists, that is to say a local folder at artist level called "extrafanart" with fanart.jpg, fanart2.jpg, fanart3.jpg....for artists slideshow.

- A local folder at albums level (or at the same level as extrafanart if it is what you wanted) called "discography" with album, album2.jpg, album3.jpg...for artist's discography pictures

- An easy way to create simple nfos manually for "similar artists" and "bio" information (this would avoid having nfos full of http jpg adresses for pictures). Those nfo's could be placed in the artist or album folders too.

I'm hoping to get all this into the next version, but there may be an interim release to deal with one bug that needs to get addressed sooner rather than later. I'll also look at adding an override for similar artists. Just to warn you, that looks much more complication that the bio and album override.

Because of accented characters, you need to UTF8 encode strings :

Code:

xbmc.executebuiltin('XBMC.Notification("' + __language__(30300).encode("utf8") + '", "' + __language__(30301).encode("utf8") + '", 10000, ' + __addonicon__ + ')')

I'll add that to the bug list and fix it before releasing this with the French strings.

[Lockos]

I'm hoping to get all this into the next version, but there may be an interim release to deal with one bug that needs to get addressed sooner rather than later. I'll also look at adding an override for similar artists. Just to warn you, that looks much more complication that the bio and album override.

Thank you very much

It will be so much simple to have a beautiful music collection after that !

[rolapinou]

Hi all
Double post with one I made on the Skin Thread. Maybe it's more relevant here as I'm not sure it is skin related.

I've been adding all my music from my testing-PC to my HTPC and there's a setting issue I have on that HTPC that I don't have on my testing-PC.

While playing a song and using the visualisation mode (pressing Tab), the "widget" (is the term correct ?) I have - on the top part of the screen - the info about the artist, and flipping, the extra-info form the artist-slideshow script.


and




It works fine, downloading the correct info and images but, after a few seconds, this part disappear.

Here are my settings about music-visualisation :


and Artist-Slideshow settings :


I'm probably missing something obvious as it does not disappear on my testing-PC with quite the same settings.

Thanks for your help

[Greddy2000]

Does pressing "I" help? this should toggle that screen on or off.

One question I have, how do you get the artist info text to show? I just have a blank area between the picture and the playlist. I have "download additional artist info" checked in artist slideshow options. There must be another option to engage somewhere else, but what/where is it?

Thanks

[phil65]

Does pressing "I" help? this should toggle that screen on or off.

One question I have, how do you get the artist info text to show? I just have a blank area between the picture and the playlist. I have "download additional artist info" checked in artist slideshow options. There must be another option to engage somewhere else, but what/where is it?

Thanks

no, it should work out of the box when "download additional artist info" is enabled.

[pkscout]

OK, I've got a new beta for folks to test. It's available here.

v.1.4.1.1
- added ability to override artist bio, albums, and similar artists with local info
- fixed bug when using both local and remote images
- added French localization strings and description (thanks to mikebzh44)
- UTF8 encoded message strings

The local overrides are going to take a little explaining. I was moving right along on the file based album and similar artist override when I ran into a problem. By trying to parse a filename, you are limited to the characters allowed by the file system. My test was an album that had a colon in it (which is not OK on OSX), and I was really unhappy with that compromise. So the final solution uses XML files similar to the ones generated by last.FM, but much simpler (i.e. they only include the necessary elements). I think this balances simplicity with the flexibility to have the full range of characters available.

For bio, similar artists, and albums, override is the default and only behavior. That is, if the necessary files exist in the correct locations, data will be pulled locally. Here's the directory structure:

Code:

root
--<artistname>
----extrafanart
----override
------albums (folder with artist album art)
--------albumname.jpg (any XBMC image type supported)
--------anotheralbumname.jpg
------artistbio.nfo (see below for format)
------artistsalbum.nfo (see below for format)
------artistsimilar.nfo (see below for format)
------similar
--------artistimage.jpg
--------anotherartistimage.jpg

Example artistbio.nfo

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<artist>
    <content>This is Christina Aguilera's bio.

This is stuff about Christina.
    </content>
</artist>

Example artistsalbum.nfo

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<topalbums>
    <album>
        <name>Keeps Gettin' Better: A Decade of Hits</name>
        <image>Keeps Gettin' Better - A Decade of Hits.jpg</image>
    </album>
</topalbums>

Example artistsimilar.nfo

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<similarartists>
    <artist>
        <name>Katy Perry</name>
        <image>katy_perry.jpg</image>
    </artist>
</similarartists>

Let me know what you think and/or if you find anything isn't working as expected.

[Hetoft]

What a pleasant surprise to begin the day with!

Just gave it a quick spin, everything seems to be working fine - even the problem with both local and remote images. Great, thanks!

Did you by any chance look into the issue with Spotimc?

[frozenimage]

I was having a problem with this add-on, but this beta seemed to have solved most of the issue. Thanks guys, you make XBMC a little better.
Jed.

[pkscout]

Did you by any chance look into the issue with Spotimc?

Not yet. It's on my list for today. I saw someone else is having problems with Artist Slideshow working with the Radio plugin, so I'm beginning to think I accidentally broke something during one of the last updates. The good news is that Radio is free, so I have something I can test with now.

[pkscout]

What I did this time was to open XBMC, let it initialize everything properly, enter Spotimc, selecting "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan and going to the "Now Playing" screen, where Artist Slideshow is supposed to be. However, the background is just all black. I let it play for 1 minute just to make sure that it wasn't loading any pictures.

I then quit Spotimc, went into my local music library, played a random song with Jack Johnson, went to Now Playing and let the slideshow begin. I then stopped the track, went back into Spotimc and played the same Bob Dylan track. Now all of a sudden, the slideshow works as it's supposed to. So, you HAVE to play a local track first before entering Spotimc in order for the Artist Slideshow to work.

OK, I finally looked through the log. From what I can tell in the first instance the skin never runs Artist Slideshow. I think the skin means to start Artist Slideshow at startup in daemon mode and so doesn't call it when you go to full screen from Spotify. If you go to your local library first, I see Artist Slideshow is run in daemon mode and then keeps running when you go to Spotify. I noticed an error that might be causing this.

On line 1251 of the log I see this:

Code:

ERROR: unmatched parentheses in IsEmpty(Window(Home).Property(ArtistSlideShowLoaded)

Sure enough, there is a close parentheses missing in that statement. Without looking at the actual skin xml file, my bet is that the error is causing the skin to think Artist Slideshow isn't installed, which causes the skin to not try and load it. So, I hate to do this, but I'm going ask you to pass this one to the skin developer. If that's you, then at least it will be a short conversation.

[pkscout]

New beta available here.

v.1.4.1.2
- updated featured artist parsing to support radio streams
- updated featured artist parsing to support calls from external scripts
- updated the notifications logic when downloading images
- added notification if no images downloaded
- added notification when all downloads complete

A few notes on the updates.

I'm trying something different with the download notifications. It's apparently not possible to have a notification window persist, but I did find a way to kind of stack notifications so that (at least in Confluence) the notification window appears to persist. That is, I create a new notification before the old one expires, and that way the notification window about downloading images doesn't go away until the downloads are done (well, most of the time anyway). Then you will get a final notification that either all images were downloaded or that no images were downloaded. I'm hoping other skins stack notifications the same way. If you're using something other than Confluence, please let me know if you have undesirable UI output from this. If you override the download notification with your own image, you won't see any of this.

EDIT: As pointed out below, this kind of violates the spirit of the XBMC GUI, so I've gone back to a single, non-persistent notification when downloads start and then a notification at the end with success or failure.

I also got annoyed when an artist that has no local or remote images kept giving me the notifications, so I've set it so that after the first attempt, an artist with no images will only show notifications once a month. Artist Slideshow will always try and download images (if you're allowing downloading of images), it just won't show the notification every time.

@Wanilton @mikebzh44 All the dialog strings changed. I stuck English ones into the language files. If you could send me updates I'll add them before this ships.

If you are using an external script to call Artist Slideshow (XSqueeze is the only one I know of doing this), you can now pass in the title of the song playing as well. That allows Artist Slideshow to parse that for a featured artist (i.e. Song Name (feat. Artist). That brings external applications into feature parity with local music. See below for the updated code. I'll update the wiki when this actually ships.

Code:

def runArtistSlideshow(self):
    #startup artistslideshow
    xbmcgui.Window(xbmcgui.getCurrentWindowId()).setProperty("ArtistSlideshow.ExternalCall", "True")
    #assumes addon is using suggested infolabel name of CURRENTARTIST and CURRENTTITLE
    artistslideshow = "RunScript(script.artistslideshow,windowid=%s&artistfield=%s&titlefield=%s)" % (xbmcgui.getCurrentWindowId(), "CURRENTARTIST", "CURRENTTITLE")
    xbmc.executebuiltin(artistslideshow)

self.thread = threading.Thread(target=self.runArtistSlideshow)
self.thread.setDaemon(True)
self.thread.start()

[mikebzh44]

Here the french translation for new strings :

Code:

<!-- Dialog Text -->
    <string id="30300">Téléchargement</string>
    <string id="30301">Téléchargement des images de l'artiste</string>
    <string id="30302">Aucun téléchargement</string>
    <string id="30303">Aucune image pour cet artiste</string>    
    <string id="30304">Téléchargement terminé</string>
    <string id="30305">Toutes les images de l'artiste sont téléchargées</string>

For external script, I'm writing a new one for downloading images and informations (similar artists, ...). For now, script is called when I display Artist information. Everthing is working when no song is currently playing. But if I start playing a song from U2 for example and I display information for Coldplay, my script didn't work, nothing appens until I stop the current song, so Artist Slideshow is called. I must go deeper in debugging.

Getting new thread for artistslideshow is not enought ?

Thanks.

[bossanova808]

Hey pkscout

Ok I am trying this version out via XSqueeze.

1. Gotta say, and no disrespect, but I find the persistent notifications not a great idea at all. Nothing else in XBMC does this and I find it weird looking (it looks like a hang) and intrusive...it means that any other notifications will struggle to get in front, right? My vote on this behaviour would be a big no...

2. I don't see any logging of the current title like you do the current artist - would be handy to see this so I can confirm it's being passed in ok?

3. I am still not getting bios at least some of the time. Did you get a chance to look at the logs I emailed? Maybe I am just not waiting long enough - does it do the bio at the beginning (it seemed so in the past) - or has this changed?

Cheers mate, other than that whining looks all good to me.

[pkscout]

For external script, I'm writing a new one for downloading images and informations (similar artists, ...). For now, script is called when I display Artist information. Everthing is working when no song is currently playing. But if I start playing a song from U2 for example and I display information for Coldplay, my script didn't work, nothing appens until I stop the current song, so Artist Slideshow is called. I must go deeper in debugging.

I don't think you can have two instances of Artist Slideshow running. I remember trying to have multiple instances running when we first started this external call thing, and it never worked. The only way I can think to get around this is to have your script check and see if AS is running. If it is you have to kill it, then start it again with your call, then kill that one, and then start it up again. That feels like a huge kludge, but then I think in your instance we're pushing AS well past its intended use.

---

1. Gotta say, and no disrespect, but I find the persistent notifications not a great idea at all. Nothing else in XBMC does this and I find it weird looking (it looks like a hang) and intrusive...it means that any other notifications will struggle to get in front, right? My vote on this behaviour would be a big no...

Oh fine, be that way. I went back to a single notification on download start with one at the end. I updated the post above indicating I went back to the old behavior so nobody gets confused about this conversation. It was an interesting programming experiment if nothing else, and it only required changing one line of code to get the old behavior back. If enough folks say they really like the persistent notification, I'll probably just add it as an option (and default it to off).

2. I don't see any logging of the current title like you do the current artist - would be handy to see this so I can confirm it's being passed in ok?

Added (I think). Just re-download from the link above.

3. I am still not getting bios at least some of the time. Did you get a chance to look at the logs I emailed? Maybe I am just not waiting long enough - does it do the bio at the beginning (it seemed so in the past) - or has this changed?

I could never find anything any those logs that told me why you wouldn't be getting bios. So I ignored the problem and hoped it would go away. I double checked, and the bio is, in theory, downloaded and the skin properties updated after the first image is completely downloaded. If there is nothing to download, it does it right after it figures out there is nothing to download. If there are existing images it downloads it before starting to download any other images. Finally, if there are local images it downloads the artist bio after setting the display directory.

[Wanilton]

@pkscuot, latest translation - Portuguese (Brazil), download here:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/25170804/Artist...trings.xml

Thanks again,

Wanilton