2014-10-10, 03:32
I've searched this thread for every instance of the word "poster" but not found a solution that actually lets me download my chosen poster.jpg. Presumably I would have the same problem with fanart, landscape, banner, etc. I have the local files option enabled and it just downloads the first poster.jpg it finds. However, if I change to say the second or third poster in the list for any video, the old file remains and I'm just using the cached version of the remote file. Not the behavior I was expecting as I have four XBMC... excuse me, Kodi... boxes in the house and I didn't want them all to have to retrieve all those remote images the first time I open the library (especially annoying on Raspbian with thousands of videos). Running AD again (even with "Overwrite all existing..." enabled) does not replace poster.jpg or even download it again. Deleting poster.jpg then running AD again reverts to the first poster in the list and loses the poster I just went and chose! I have tried deleting the local file, changing it in the library, then exiting Kodi, then restarting and running AD with and without the overwrite option. All to no avail. Obviously I can manually download the poster image I want and overwrite the local file, then manually go and choose that local file in the library, but this seems to make the function of locally storing anything but extrafanart/extrathumbs with AD pretty pointless, unless you are okay with the first image found for the other artwork. I don't know how AD sorts which image to use first, but it is different than the default scraper and I generally find the poster images especially are much poorer quality. The second or third in the list is usually the one I want. Am I doing something wrong or is this by design? If by design, might there be an option in the future where if I already have my library setup using the artwork I want, AD will just download those files locally instead and set the database to point to the local rather than remote version of the file? That's what I was expecting this add-on to do when I installed it. Now my library of thousands of videos has crappy (IMHO) posters for about 80% of my titles. Thankfully I keep nightly backups of my mysql database and I just restored it and then disabled the local files option in AD and now just use it for extrafanart.
Seeing how long the Raspbian boxes especially take to load the poster images when browsing the library, I can only imagine what a headache it must be for those with slow Internet connections. That second or two delay is annoying to me and I love how much faster the response is when I use AD to store the images locally. I just wish I could actually pick my own posters and still have them stored locally without going through my entire library. Even an option in AD to make it prefer one source of images over another (to make it behave more like TMDB scraper for example) would be preferable to the current behavior. Though I would rather have an option which just says "download currently chosen artwork" or something. That way if you are happy with the art you have, all you are doing is caching it with the videos rather than having to build an image cache on each machine in the network.
Sorry for the lengthy explanation. For what it does, AD works great. Just wondering if we could get more control over what it picks and how.
Update: Not sure if this matters, but the PC where I'm running AD from is running 13.2 using Aeon Nox 5 skin.
Update 2: Thinking I was doing something wrong I even tried this:
1) Set the poster art I wanted
2) Close Kodi
3) Delete Textures13.db and Thumbnails folder AND the incorrect poster.jpg
4) Start Kodi
5) Open the library to ensure it is still using the poster artwork I actually want
6) Run Artwork Downloader (with or without the overwrite option checked doesn't matter as it shouldn't since there is no poster.jpg to overwrite anyway)
7) Once again, it changed my chosen poster artwork and no matter what I do it will not download anything other than its preferred poster locally
Only solution I can see to use anything other than the first poster artwork is to manually download/save it and choose the local file. Which is something we can do without AD anyway. This is why I'm confused why it even has the option for downloading posters and other artwork (other than Extra Fan Art) since we have absolutely no control over what it downloads from what I can see.
Seeing how long the Raspbian boxes especially take to load the poster images when browsing the library, I can only imagine what a headache it must be for those with slow Internet connections. That second or two delay is annoying to me and I love how much faster the response is when I use AD to store the images locally. I just wish I could actually pick my own posters and still have them stored locally without going through my entire library. Even an option in AD to make it prefer one source of images over another (to make it behave more like TMDB scraper for example) would be preferable to the current behavior. Though I would rather have an option which just says "download currently chosen artwork" or something. That way if you are happy with the art you have, all you are doing is caching it with the videos rather than having to build an image cache on each machine in the network.
Sorry for the lengthy explanation. For what it does, AD works great. Just wondering if we could get more control over what it picks and how.
Update: Not sure if this matters, but the PC where I'm running AD from is running 13.2 using Aeon Nox 5 skin.
Update 2: Thinking I was doing something wrong I even tried this:
1) Set the poster art I wanted
2) Close Kodi
3) Delete Textures13.db and Thumbnails folder AND the incorrect poster.jpg
4) Start Kodi
5) Open the library to ensure it is still using the poster artwork I actually want
6) Run Artwork Downloader (with or without the overwrite option checked doesn't matter as it shouldn't since there is no poster.jpg to overwrite anyway)
7) Once again, it changed my chosen poster artwork and no matter what I do it will not download anything other than its preferred poster locally
Only solution I can see to use anything other than the first poster artwork is to manually download/save it and choose the local file. Which is something we can do without AD anyway. This is why I'm confused why it even has the option for downloading posters and other artwork (other than Extra Fan Art) since we have absolutely no control over what it downloads from what I can see.
