[stef.an]

Hi!
First of all thanks everyone for your patience and your help on answering questions here! I've updated the cleanup branch again, just a few hundred changes this time

Apart from a new option to use your personal fanart.tv API key (thanks MhhhxX for the commit) there is once again no new functionality.
If you're brave I'd be happy to hear about all the (new) bugs you find or even the ones you sorely miss! I'll merge this branch into the master soon and if it's accepted by the foundation I'm able to go for some functional updates.

Honestly I kind of underestimated the challenge to get into python. As a object oriented programmer it's pretty hard for me to follow the train of thoughts of an old school python coder. (Uh... sorry for my google english)

Link: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....ee/cleanup

[Steve_uk]

Hi!
First of all thanks everyone for your patience and your help on answering questions here! I've updated the cleanup branch again, just a few hundred changes this time

Apart from a new option to use your personal fanart.tv API key (thanks MhhhxX for the commit) there is once again no new functionality.
If you're brave I'd be happy to hear about all the (new) bugs you find or even the ones you sorely miss! I'll merge this branch into the master soon and if it's accepted by the foundation I'm able to go for some functional updates.

Honestly I kind of underestimated the challenge to get into python. As a object oriented programmer it's pretty hard for me to follow the train of thoughts of an old school python coder. (Uh... sorry for my google english)

Link: https://github.com/stefansielaff/script....ee/cleanup

Hi Stef.an
Sorry to ask again,
But I'm not getting anywhere with my problem (the previous post)
Kodi is just displaying the low res images that are embedded into the mp3's and not the ones from cdarts is there a setting I'm missing
Thanks

[stef.an]

Hi Steve_uk,
unfortunately there are multiple reasons for Kodi to refuse updating the images.
Assuming your skin accepts the folder.jpg in the disc's folder it should be sufficient to do a database update, simple as that - have you tried that? Which skin are you using?

[Steve_uk]

Hi Steve_uk,
unfortunately there are multiple reasons for Kodi to refuse updating the images.
Assuming your skin accepts the folder.jpg in the disc's folder it should be sufficient to do a database update, simple as that - have you tried that? Which skin are you using?

Thanks for the reply
I've tried 3 skins now including default Estuary and still the same I think I did do a database update can't remember exactly but I'll do it again.
I've not actually checked that the folder.jpeg has been added to the discs folder I'm guessing that links them to the artwork that's stored in my separate folder.
It's not a problem I'll figure it out
As long as I now know there's no actual setting I need to change to tell it to use your CdArts artwork
Thanks

[stef.an]

That's the difference between Album and Artist related artwork, the Album artwork (Covers, CDArt) ist always stored in the album's folder because Kodi expects it there. Artist's artwork is stored in the folder structure created by the plugin. So you have to make sure the album's folder is writable and the folder.jpg is stored there. Afther that imho a database update is sufficient to load the new artwork

[gibxxi]

Stefan, could you please add the option to switch between "cdart.png" and "disc.png" file naming for downloaded CD image artwork in cdART Manager?

Some Kodi skins, (Titan included) prefer the moniker "disc.png" for all CD Artwork as a pose to "cdart.png", irrespective of media type, so using cdART Manager can lead to duplicated / inconsistent cd artwork across the library in some instances.

TIA.

[VelvetKevorkian]

Question:

Can i "lock" specific artist folders, so the content won't be changed?
I have some artists where i added fanart myself (e.g. because of a certain line-up) where i don't want cdartmanager to add aditional art.

Is that possbible?

[guandms]

How do i create a folder for multiple artist like this :
"Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Russell Brand & Alec Baldwin"
It's from the soundtrack of "Rock Of Ages"
And the MP3's are edited with Music Brainz....

[gibxxi]

Question:

Can i "lock" specific artist folders, so the content won't be changed?
I have some artists where i added fanart myself (e.g. because of a certain line-up) where i don't want cdartmanager to add aditional art.

Is that possbible?

The short answer is currently, no. cdART Manager will process / add anything to it's own Db that exists in the Kodi 'Music' Db. You can do limited searches for artwork for specific artists, as identified by cdART Manager, skipping those you don't want modified, but in order to avoid overwriting existing artwork, you will probably want to avoid doing automatic global scans of 'all' artists.

The long answer is; the best way to ensure that your custom artwork is not overwritten is to ensure any custom folder.jpgs you have downloaded are 1000*1000 pixels, and any cdart.pngs you have supllied are also of the same resolution. If this happens to be the case, you may be able to 'risk' doing an automatic scan for those categories of artwork, as generally cdART Manager will not replace artwork of this resolution as far as I've experienced, so long as the last cdART Manager Db update was done with said artwork in-place. For fanart, logos, etc, define a custom folder (in cdART Manager) that is not your main music library location, then that will enable you to preserve any fanart / logos / etc. already present in your music library folders you don't want overwritten. These types of artwork are generally only referenced by custom skins, not Kodi itself. Kodi (without taking 3rd-party addons into account) only cares about folder.jpgs and cdart / disc.pngs for music, which is probably why these files are ALWAYS stored with the music.

Specifying an alternate folder for other types of downloaded artwork will allow you to cherrypick what you want to keep, and move it to the library folder(s) when using automatic scans, which will certainly be quicker on a large library than manually downloading artwork for individual artists one at a time. This will require some manual legwork on your part though, whichever way you decide to get around this limitation.

[gibxxi]

How do i create a folder for multiple artist like this :
"Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Russell Brand & Alec Baldwin"
It's from the soundtrack of "Rock Of Ages"
And the MP3's are edited with Music Brainz....

My experience with MB-Picard would suggest that any album that consists of more than two defined album / track artitsts, will generally fall under the 'Various Artists' Album artist type. There are some forum posts on the MusicBrainz Picard forums with regards custom naming strings, try searching the forums there for examples that may provide what you are looking for. However, be advised that any custom naming scheme defined in Picard will affect any albums thus processed with that naming string defined, obviously. So if this is a single-use scenario, it may pay to copy/paste to a seperate text file, the default string value as it exists, and any modified variant, so that the two can be switched by copying / pasting the required one into Picard's settings as required.

Also bear in mind that because of the way Kodi organises it's music Library, any custom groupings of 'album artist' will become seperate entries in Kodi's file browser tree to the individual artists themselves, and may also affect how the 'album' itself is displayed in standard library views. My advice would be to keep it simple. Even if the album Artist field for said album is 'Various Artists', as long as Picard has tagged the correct values for 'Track artist' you can still search against the individual 'track artists' in Kodi, while not being able to search for the 'album artists' grouped in the manner which you want.

[Thony]

Is it possible to link a missing artist/album to an existing MBID without changing the artist/album?

Example:
I have "[Artist], The". In the menu I go to Advanced - Modify Addon Database - Edit Artist - Change MBID. I select [Artist], Then choose select manually. I search for The [Artist], which is found. After selecting the result, not only is the MBID filled but also is the artist changed to the found artist (The Artist). Now it seems there is no link with the naming in the library.

The same with albums like [Album] deluxe where just [Album] can be found.

[Busta Uppa]

Hello all! I'm a new user of CDart Manager and I'm trying to make sure I'm getting the setup right. I set my music folder path, opened up CDAM, and used the "Update Database" function (under "Modify addon database"). I believe I did this correctly, because I saw it run through the names of my artists/albums in several different phases.

Now at this point, the database has apparently been built, but I still see no number counts at the bottom of the window ("Local Artists:_" ; "Local Discs:__" ; "Local cdARTs:__"). Navigating the menu and selecting items under "Album cdARTs", "Artist ClearLOGOs", etc. doesn't seem to do anything. Is there some other step I should be doing next?

I want to make my next move carefully, as I have a rather large library and the database took a while to build. Last thing I'd want to do is exit prematurely and have to start over, if there was actually just one simple step I had to do to complete the process.

I should add - I had originally tried this procedure under the Aeon Madnox skin. I hit a similar wall where the database appeared to have been built, but I couldn't tell if it had actually done anything afterwards. Based on some posts in this thread I started over in Confluence last night.

Thanks for any insight you can offer, and thanks to the author for putting time into such a great utility!

[stef.an]

Hi Busta Uppa, everything you describe sounds pretty good.
I've pushed a huge update recently so mabye you've encountered a bug... could you take a look at the logfiles and maybe upload your log to pastebin so I could take a look at it?

[stef.an]

Some Kodi skins, (Titan included) prefer the moniker "disc.png" for all CD Artwork as a pose to "cdart.png", irrespective of media type, so using cdART Manager can lead to duplicated / inconsistent cd artwork across the library in some instances.

Hi gibxxi, I've tried Titan and it seems to use the cdart.png from my folders - not sure if they changed that in the skin or if there's something "wrong" with my tests. Not sure what to do with the existing files though, it feels like all existing disc/cdart files should be renamed when changing that option.

[Busta Uppa]

Hi Busta Uppa, everything you describe sounds pretty good.
I've pushed a huge update recently so mabye you've encountered a bug... could you take a look at the logfiles and maybe upload your log to pastebin so I could take a look at it?

Here's the log: https://pastebin.com/4LfLexuV (I cut out some lines to fit it on pastebin, such as the repeating MBID lookups, and a number of notes about my display/sound devices that repeated for whatever reason)

Thank you very much stef.an, appreciate you looking into it! Heh this is my first time getting nitty-gritty with a logfile... morbidly curious as to what other issues may be revealed

Oh and not sure if the logfile makes this info clear, but I am running Krypton and obtained CDart Manager from the main repository. Thanks again.

EDIT: Saw this video posted earlier in the thread https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQuIm7nSp1k
It's based on an older version of CDaM, but from watching it I gather that I'm supposed to select the artwork type after building the database, and select "Automatic Download."
When I click this "Automatic Download" option I get no response, however in the video a dialog immediately pops up with a progress bar as the add-on downloads the appropriate artwork.
Just adding this info to provide insight as to where in the process I am hitting a wall. Although based on my logfile, I may be working with a litany of greater issues, so I'll await expert feedback on this one before I draw any conclusions!