[pkscout]

NEW BETA AVAILABLE

v.1.5.9.4
- fixed crash when logging strange objects
- fixed attempts to copy temp file over existing file

https://github.com/pkscout/script.artist...master.zip

The second bug may have resulted in a large number of files in the AS temp directory. If you have run any of the betas from 1.5.9.1 to 1.5.9.3, you might want to check in your userdata/addon_data/script.artistslideshow/temp directory and delete all those files. They won't do any real harm, but they are taking up space for no reason.

[cw-kid]

Hi

Has anyone else noticed? I no longer seem to get album cover artwork displayed in the Discography section when viewing an artists information (Aeon MQ5). I just get the default black square with the music note on it. This was working previously at some point.

Thanks

[curtis-r]

Last night I was playing music w/ MQ5, Gotham 11, AS 1.5.9.4 & I'm nearly positive all was working fine. Regardless, AS is only for fanart, not album art.

[cw-kid]

Hi

I was under the impression that AS also provided the album covers for the discography feature, maybe not then?
This is how Beach Boys looks with the missing cover images and they just show a music note etc.



Question: am I correct in thinking that AS won't create an extrafanart sub-folder under the artists folder if one is not there already? (On your NAS / FileServer).

I just added a new artist in to my music library and played it in XBMC. AS did display one fanart image OK (Cache locally on HTPC) Looking on Fanart.tv there is only one fanart image available so looks to be correct.

I then updated CDArtManager database and downloaded all new fanart images for album artists, this then created the extrafanart sub-folder under this new artist.
I then played this artist again and then this time AS did its thing and created the _exclusions.nfo file and added one .JPG image called 9e9edceb.jpg.

Just wondered if this is expected behaviour and that AS won't actually create the extrafanart sub-folder as CDArtManager does.

Thanks.

[pkscout]

I was under the impression that AS also provided the album covers for the discography feature, maybe not then?
This is how Beach Boys looks with the missing cover images and they just show a music note etc.

AS provides URLs to album images, but it's up to the skin as to whether those are used. AS gets those URLs from one of two places, either theaudiodb.com or last.fm. It is possible that when last.fm shutdown the ability to request artist images it also shutdown the ability to get album artwork too. So if the album art isn't on theaudiodb.com, then AS may not be able to provide that URL.

[/quote]
Question: am I correct in thinking that AS won't create an extrafanart sub-folder under the artists folder if one is not there already? (On your NAS / FileServer).

I just added a new artist in to my music library and played it in XBMC. AS did display one fanart image OK (Cache locally on HTPC) Looking on Fanart.tv there is only one fanart image available so looks to be correct.

I then updated CDArtManager database and downloaded all new fanart images for album artists, this then created the extrafanart sub-folder under this new artist.
I then played this artist again and then this time AS did its thing and created the _exclusions.nfo file and added one .JPG image called 9e9edceb.jpg.

Just wondered if this is expected behaviour and that AS won't actually create the extrafanart sub-folder as CDArtManager does.
[/quote]

You are correct. AS will not create the extrafanart directory for an artist. It will ADD to an existing one. So if there is no local artist match, AS will download the artwork to the cache in the addon_data folder. You can migrate images out of your cache into a local directory using Artist Slideshow Helper. That will even create new artist directories for you if you want.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add...how_Helper

I haven't added the documentation to the wiki yet, but it is in the read me that you get when you download the addon.

[cw-kid]

Pkscuot

Thanks for the explanation.

Any idea when Last.fm shutdown the ability to request artist images? And possibly album cover images also.

Looking closer some artists like A-Ha for example are still showing album covers in the discography section. But other artists like Abba are not showing any.

But looking on TheAudioDB.com here for Abba and the album called "The Visitors", there is an album cover present. But when viewing the artist Abba in my XBMC there is no cover showing for this album.



I tried to reload the artist Abba but that makes no difference.

Thanks.

EDIT: I have just added two album cover images on to TheAudioDB.com website for the artist iamamiwhoami
One of the albums I had to add called "Bounty" as it wasn't present.

Currently when viewing the artist information page in XBMC for this artist it is only showing one album, the one that was already present on TheAudioDB.com called "Kin" with no album cover image showing as yet. Reloading the artist hasn't made the second album I just added "Bounty" appear either.



Thanks

[pkscout]

Any idea when Last.fm shutdown the ability to request artist images? And possibly album cover images also.

Seems like the artist images was a few months ago. That was right about the time I added support for fanart.tv and theaudiodb.com.

Looking closer some artists like A-Ha for example are still showing album covers in the discography section. But other artists like Abba are not showing any.

But looking on TheAudioDB.com here for Abba and the album called "The Visitors", there is an album cover present. But when viewing the artist Abba in my XBMC there is no cover showing for this album.

I tried to reload the artist Abba but that makes no difference.

We need to do a few things here to try and figure this out:

1- confirm with the skin author that (s)he is actually using the AS data for the discography.
2- assuming the answer is yes, find an artist not showing the discography and go look in the ArtistInformation directory in userdata/addon_data/script.artistslideshow/ArtistSlideshow. Those directories are all hash names. If you download AS Helper, there is an option to generate a hash list of all the artists in your library so that you can easily find them.
3- look for a file called theaudiodbartistsalbums.nfo (or lastfmartistbio.nfo if AS couldn't find anything on theaudiodb) and open it. Somewhere in that XML will be URLs for thumbnails. In the case of theaudiodbartistsalbums.nfo you're looking for strAlbumThumb.
4- Copy the URL out of the .nfo file and paste it into your browser to make sure it's working.
5- Rinse and repeat for other artists.

If you get back valid images from your browser, then the issue is with XBMC or the skin. AS doesn't render or download the album art. It just provides the URL.

[cw-kid]

OK I will check all of that out and report back, I also just edited my last post above and added in a bit more information.

Cheers

[pkscout]

OK I will check all of that out and report back, I also just edited my last post above and added in a bit more information.

Cheers

One more thing I forgot. To keep the number of calls to the outside providers down, AS only updates cache files every couple of weeks. So if you immediately want updated information, you need to delete the particular cache file (or the entire cache folder in ArtistInformation).

[cw-kid]

OK some progress, it seems with the ABBA example, that I have not played the artist ABBA recently or at least not since I must have wiped out the AS cache or something (which I haven't done recently). Anyway's I just played ABBA now and now all the album covers in the discography have just appeared OK.

So this presumably means that you must have played the artist first before any album cover images will appear in the discography area for that artist ?

If I stop playing ABBA and play the other newly added artist "iamamiwhoami" again and then look at her information page in XBMC it still looks like the screen shot above i.e. no album covers showing and one album missing.

Do these discography album covers get cached locally?

Many Thanks

---

OK I will check all of that out and report back, I also just edited my last post above and added in a bit more information.

Cheers

One more thing I forgot. To keep the number of calls to the outside providers down, AS only updates cache files every couple of weeks. So if you immediately want updated information, you need to delete the particular cache file (or the entire cache folder in ArtistInformation).

OK that might explain why the images are not yet appearing for the new artist iamamiwhoami. Let me install the AS Helper add-on if I can I will have a look.

[pkscout]

So this presumably means that you must have played the artist first before any album cover images will appear in the discography area for that artist ?

Yes. AS acts only when music is playing and only for the song playing at the moment. It's not meant to be a download manager (like Artwork Downloader). It's more of a just-in-time download for the thing playing right then.

[cw-kid]

OK that worked! I found the cache folder df6f483d under:

/storage/.xbmc/userdata/addon_data/script.artistslideshow/ArtistInformation

I deleted this folder and now when I play this new artist "iamamiwhoami" and view her discography its showing both the albums this time and they now both have album covers.

So its clearly reading this from TheAudioDB.com as I just added those cover images on there.

So there seems to be two things to remember with this, 1. AS only updates every couple of weeks and 2. You have to play an artist first before any album cover images will appear in their discography.

Least AS Helper now makers it much easier to find the artists hash folders etc.

Cheers

[ktjensen]

Works great on android OUYA platform with gotham. Also works terrific with the PANDORA addon as every song change the artist image changes. This is awesome.

[pkscout]

NEW BETA AVAILABLE

This beta doesn't introduce any new features, but I've completely rewritten the code that does the download of all the data. So if you try this and have problems, please let me know. It's working fine on my Mac and Windows test setups, but with a change like this, some additional testing would definitely be helpful.

v.1.5.9.5
- switched to using requests module and new commonlib for URL handling
- updated xlogger commonlib

https://github.com/pkscout/script.artistslideshow

[pngaudioguy]

NEW BETA AVAILABLE

This beta doesn't introduce any new features, but I've completely rewritten the code that does the download of all the data. So if you try this and have problems, please let me know. It's working fine on my Mac and Windows test setups, but with a change like this, some additional testing would definitely be helpful.

v.1.5.9.5
- switched to using requests module and new commonlib for URL handling
- updated xlogger commonlib

https://github.com/pkscout/script.artistslideshow

Registered for the forum to say that I love your script!

I'd be happy to download and install 1.5.9.5 to help test - I'm running a fairly non-standard config so might be useful. Started from a Debian netinst and selected the sid track, currently on xbmc 13 alpha from the deb-multimedia repository. Your version 1.5.9 that's in the standard XBMC repo works just fine on my system, but it will be interesting to run some tests since I've got my data stored on my network server and mounted as a CIFS system to eliminate clogging up the SSD. So far, the AS Helper utility has nailed it every time, though at this point they're all stored as hashed .tbn files, and as expected I have to run the helper after I play an artist for the first time after which new photos get thrown on the network share as desired.

Which leads to my one question, that I believe is actually not related to your script but perhaps you'll know. Apparently all the images your script downloads are also getting stored in my /home/user/.xbmc/userdata/Thumbnails folder. The hashes that XBMC uses are slightly different, and the folder structure is completely useless - seriously?!? a hex based root folder structure from 0-f? Uh, good luck finding a picture that is miscategorized! Anyway, the question is - do you (or any of the others on here) know how to keep XBMC from stashing an extra copy of the artwork that's getting downloaded? I really only need to store one copy...

Anyway - thanks again for the awesome script. Time to go download the beta and see if I can upset the wife with yet another computer related evening. Haha.