[pkscout]

New Test Version Available on GitHub

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, BACKUP YOUR IMAGE DIRECTORIES BEFORE TESTING THIS VERSION.

v.3.0.0 Beta
- rewrite to use a single image control instead of multi-image control in skin
- reworked settings
- added option to disable extranfanart folder
- added option to control time between slide transitions
- outdated language files removed, so AS is English only for now (sorry)
- removed option to have a pop up displayed when downloading artwork
- AS can now store images and information files in separate directory structure
- updated settings to allow for storing music in Kodi music folder
- AS now deletes empty artist information and artwork folders

This requires skin updates to work. If you aren't able to manually update your skin, it's too early for you to be testing this.

In order to get the support for the new Kodi music artist folder to work, I had to fundamentally change the way AS displays images.  With 3.0.0~beta3, AS now uses a single image control to show artwork and programmatically gets the list of images *and* controls the timing and order of the slideshow.  There are a couple things left to do, but it's far enough long for folks to test as long as they can make changes to their skin.  This weekend I'll be posting something in the skin dev area somewhere to alert skinners to the coming change and help them make changes now that will support both the 2.x and 3.x image display methodology.  Hopefully we can get most skins updated before the final release of AS 3.0.0 so that the transition will be mostly seamless for users.

Skin Updates
I'll show my Estuary update as an example, but if you're using any other skin, you're on your own.  If you're using my Estuary mod, the update pushed out yesterday already has support for both the 2.x and 3.x display mechanisms.

Original Estuary code in MusicVisualization.xml (lines 17 - 32):

xml:


<control type="image">

    <aspectratio>scale</aspectratio>

    <fadetime>400</fadetime>

    <animation effect="fade" start="0" end="100" time="400">WindowOpen</animation>

    <animation effect="fade" start="100" end="0" time="300">WindowClose</animation>

    <texture background="true" colordiffuse="88FFFFFF">$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]</texture>

</control>

<control type="multiimage">

    <aspectratio>scale</aspectratio>

    <timeperimage>10000</timeperimage>

    <randomize>true</randomize>

    <fadetime>600</fadetime>

    <loop>yes</loop>

    <imagepath background="true">$INFO[Window(Visualisation).Property(ArtistSlideshow)]</imagepath>

    <visible>System.HasAddon(script.artistslideshow)</visible>

</control>

To get both 2.x and 3.x support, replace the above with:

xml:


<control type="image">

    <aspectratio>scale</aspectratio>

    <fadetime>400</fadetime>

    <animation effect="fade" start="0" end="100" time="400">WindowOpen</animation>

    <animation effect="fade" start="100" end="0" time="300">WindowClose</animation>

    <texture background="true">$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]</texture>

    <visible>String.IsEmpty(Window(Visualisation).Property(ArtistSlideshow.Image))</visible>

</control>

<control type="image">

    <aspectratio>scale</aspectratio>

    <fadetime>400</fadetime>

    <animation effect="fade" start="0" end="100" time="400">WindowOpen</animation>

    <animation effect="fade" start="100" end="0" time="300">WindowClose</animation>

    <texture background="true">$INFO[Window(Visualisation).Property(ArtistSlideshow.Image)]</texture>

    <visible>!String.IsEmpty(Window(Visualisation).Property(ArtistSlideshow.Image))</visible>

</control>

<control type="multiimage">

    <aspectratio>scale</aspectratio>

    <timeperimage>10000</timeperimage>

    <randomize>true</randomize>

    <fadetime>600</fadetime>

    <loop>yes</loop>

    <imagepath background="true">$INFO[Window(Visualisation).Property(ArtistSlideshow)]</imagepath>

    <visible>!String.IsEmpty(Window(Visualisation).Property(ArtistSlideshow.ArtworkReady)</visible>

</control>

Because this is very experimental and breaks skin support, I'm not pushing this to my beta repo yet.  There are two things yet to complete on my end:

1. I need to put something in place so a user gets some notification that AS has "broken" their skin.
   
2. I still need to write the code to rename existing fanart into the Kodi music artist folder naming convention and move it.  There's a button in the settings to do this on demand, but it doesn't do anything right now.  Note: this will be a one way rename and move with no undo.
   

OK, I think that's it.  If you want to download the new test version, go to:

https://github.com/pkscout/script.artist...ew-version

You'll have to unzip and rename the folder to ensure you have only one version of AS and then either manually copy the folder (I recommend deleting the old AS first) or rezipping it and installing from Kodi's install from zip option.

P.S. now I wish I had done this years ago. Switching to a single image control cut almost 15% of the code from AS that was apparently dealing with nothing more than moving files around and changing directories for the multi-image control.