[cw-kid]

Quite like this view! Called Season Banner

Something missing though ?



I did select Season Banners in the settings, perhaps there are none available.

---

OK I asked the question here, be interesting to know the difference.

[Samu-rai]

The easiest way to run the add-on on your whole library is with auto mode. You will need to do this for both your movie and tv collection as it will only do one at a time.

Extrathumbs tends to be a movie thing rather than a TV one. You could create a copy of the extrafanart folder and call it extrathumbs, and it will show the extra fanart there for you.

It looks like I was wrong about the season banner, as you can change that view to show posters or banners. You learn something new and all that!

If you look on the tvdb.com you will be able to check if there are season banners available or not.

[cw-kid]

Extrathumbs tends to be a movie thing rather than a TV one. You could create a copy of the extrafanart folder and call it extrathumbs, and it will show the extra fanart there for you.

OK thanks I am not that bothered about extrathumbs for TV Shows I will just turn the panel off.

It seems I hadn't enabled Use Local Files in the Advanced settings of Artwork Downloader and that is why it was not creating the banners, logos, clearart etc in the movies folder on the server. Its working now for new movies I run Solo Mode on.

However for the ones I was testing with prior to turning this setting on, they are now not re-downloading the images to my server, not sure how to fix that yet.

EDIT: Removing those few titles from the library and adding them back in then running Solo mode on them again its now putting the images in their folders on the server.

Cheers

---

It looks like I was wrong about the season banner, as you can change that view to show posters or banners. You learn something new and all that!

Just tried that, changing that view to Mode: Banner

Doesn't look right though, its using the Season Posters / Covers and making them banner shaped.

[Samu-rai]

You could download the artwork manually for the ones it won't download for, and add them to the movie folders yourself. It shouldn't be to much work if you only have a few.

With the banner view I assume if you don't have any season banners downloaded it will try and use the posters. Hence why it looks crap atm.

[cw-kid]

I will run the auto mode in a bit, now I know what I am doing.

If you find out how to switch views on the remote please let me know!

Thanks again Samu-rai

Regards

Stuart.

---

Sorry one last question there is a option for running in background in the Artwork Downloader settings, its currently turned off. Once I have run auto mode and it has downloaded what is available now, will it just get new artwork as and when more becomes available ?

[Samu-rai]

I'll try and have a look at the remote thing later tonight.

New artwork won't automatically download no. You'll need to periodically run the add-on to get these.

Glad to be of use!

[cw-kid]

I'll try and have a look at the remote thing later tonight.
Glad to be of use!

The other thing I did today was to teach my Harmony universal remote control two new commands. Keyboard button T for toggle subtitles and Keyboard button O for Diagnostic Info. But I wasn't sure what I needed to change on the XBMC PC to get that working.

I had a complete nightmare with RC remote controls and Ubuntu / XBMC, took me ages to get the MCE remote working. I am not using LIRC as when I did I had issues with double commands / presses being sent to the XBMC PC. So I uninstalled LIRC and followed a guide to do everything in kernel for RC remotes. I had to modify the imon and mce keymap files for two of my HTPCs and basically change most of the lines in them to get them working.

RC Remote control is working well now for standard MCE buttons, but I am unable to add any custom buttons.

In Windows 7 I had a great setup with the Harmony remote. For example I could teach the Harmony remote a new keyboard command like Ctrl+Alt+1 or Ctrl+Alt+2, I then used AutoHotKey and that would run in the system tray and I had a AutoHotKey script that would detect Ctrl+Alt+1 from the remote control, the AutoHotKey script could then run any .cmd file. So I setup .cmd files to send http requests to my VeraLite Home Automation system. So a .cmd file might run a http request to turn off a Z-wave light for example.

So on the harmony remote I would have a custom button on the LCD screen to turn off the light and another custom button to turn on the light. I press the button on the remote, it sends a keyboard command to the IR on the PC, AutoHotkey would then detect this and in turn run a .cmd file that contained a command to send a http request to the home automation system to do something.

I could turn any Harmony remote into a Z-wave remote via the HTPC.

Would love to be able to do this in Linux but I wouldn't know where to start, would be happy to get XBMC keyboard shortcuts T and O working LOL.

[scott967]

I just checked in the XVID 2001 and Blu-ray 2010 movie folders on the server and the Artwork Add-on has created new folders called:

extrafanart and extrathumbs they both contain new images. I can't see however that it has downloaded any other new images such as Logos or banners etc.

Although having just said that XBMC is now displaying banners and logos for those two movies I just updated. So the question is where does it store these types of images if not in the movies folder on the WHS server?

Don't hold me to it, but I believe there are basically two categories: artwork XBMC recognizes and artwork it doesn't (must be externally managed by addon and displayed by skin). For XBMC artwork, the source is stored in the library database. That is either a URL to a site with the image, a local image filename (in the source folder) or a media file filename itself (if the art is for example a screenshot as thumb). Whatever the source of the art, the actual image that gets displayed is in the thumbnail cache. For the non-XBMC artwork, the location is a function of the addon and skin. Could be in the media folder or somewhere else (eg I think artwork organizer default puts all art in userdata\addons). I'm not sure if MQ4 needs the local art in a certain location, if you figure this out would like to know.

scott s.
.

[cw-kid]

I just checked in the XVID 2001 and Blu-ray 2010 movie folders on the server and the Artwork Add-on has created new folders called:

extrafanart and extrathumbs they both contain new images. I can't see however that it has downloaded any other new images such as Logos or banners etc.

Although having just said that XBMC is now displaying banners and logos for those two movies I just updated. So the question is where does it store these types of images if not in the movies folder on the WHS server?

Don't hold me to it, but I believe there are basically two categories: artwork XBMC recognizes and artwork it doesn't (must be externally managed by addon and displayed by skin). For XBMC artwork, the source is stored in the library database. That is either a URL to a site with the image, a local image filename (in the source folder) or a media file filename itself (if the art is for example a screenshot as thumb). Whatever the source of the art, the actual image that gets displayed is in the thumbnail cache. For the non-XBMC artwork, the location is a function of the addon and skin. Could be in the media folder or somewhere else (eg I think artwork organizer default puts all art in userdata\addons). I'm not sure if MQ4 needs the local art in a certain location, if you figure this out would like to know.

scott s.
.

I hadn't enabled the option in Artwork Downloader to Use Local Files, so I think initially it was just pointing to the images directly on the fanart.tv and thetvdb.com websites. I then enabled the option Use Local Files and I had to remove those titles I was testing Solo Mode with from the XBMC library and add them back in, I then ran Solo mode on them again and then the images like banner, logo, clearart started being stored in the Movies / TV Shows folder on my server. If the system then caches those images from the server locally in to the thumbnail folders on the HTPCs hard drive I am unsure? I would presume so.

Code:

xbmc@xbmc01:~/.xbmc/downloads$ ./texturecache.py jd movies "2010 The Year We Make Contact"
[
{
"movieid": 296,
"title": "2010 The Year We make Contact",
"art": {
"fanart": "image://smb://WHS/Movies/Blu-ray/2010 The Year We make Contact/fanart.jpg/",
"banner": "image://http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/movies/4437/moviebanner/2010-the-year-we-make-contact-5052497c3dee2.jpg/",
"thumb": "image://smb://WHS/Movies/Blu-ray/2010 The Year We make Contact/2010 The Year We make Contact.tbn/",
"clearlogo": "image://http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/movies/4437/movielogo/2010-the-year-we-make-contact-50369aa0444f1.png/"
},
"label": "2010 The Year We make Contact"
}
]

I used a script and it displayed the output above you can see the banner and clearlogo were pointing to the fanart.tv website, where as my fanart and thumb were pointing to my server.

If I run that query again now you can see that they are all pointing to my server for the images

Code:

xbmc@xbmc01:~/.xbmc/downloads$ ./texturecache.py jd movies "2010 The Year We Make Contact"
[
  {
    "movieid": 2009,
    "title": "2010 The Year We make Contact",
    "art": {
      "fanart": "image://smb://WHS/Movies/Blu-ray/2010 The Year We make Contact/fanart.jpg/",
      "banner": "image://smb://WHS/Movies/Blu-ray/2010 The Year We make Contact/banner.jpg/",
      "thumb": "image://smb://WHS/Movies/Blu-ray/2010 The Year We make Contact/2010 The Year We make Contact.tbn/",
      "clearlogo": "image://smb://WHS/Movies/Blu-ray/2010 The Year We make Contact/logo.png/"
    },
    "label": "2010 The Year We make Contact"
  }
]

I think the extra artwork for Movies and TV Shows in MQ4 looks fantastic, the only problem with it all however is that missing artwork is going to spoil these views that use them!

[Samu-rai]

XBMC does indeed catch your artwork on the local host HD. You can do a force refresh of this at any time by deleting the textures13.db.

Missing artwork can be an issue for some of the rarer titles, but you can submit requests on fanart.tv and others, and I and others will do our best to fulfil these for you.

[cw-kid]

It seems very slow the Auto Mode, I set it going at about 8am this morning its now 1pm and its only at 24% on my movie collection. I have a 60 odd meg fibre connection so the Internet connection is good. I just hope it completes without any issues.

Thanks

[Samu-rai]

How large is your collection? Is it downloading now or still searching for the artwork?

[cw-kid]

How large is your collection? Is it downloading now or still searching for the artwork?

Its downloading now currently on 33% I have about BLANK movie titles.

[Samu-rai]

That still seams along time for that many titles. Oh well, It's much less effort and time then having to do it all manually, and at least you will have done it all. After that it scanning your new ones will take seconds!

[scott967]

I then ran Solo mode on them again and then the images like banner, logo, clearart started being stored in the Movies / TV Shows folder on my server. If the system then caches those images from the server locally in to the thumbnail folders on the HTPCs hard drive I am unsure? I would presume so.

You can look in the Textures13.db texture table. cachedurl gives the file name in the Thumbnail folder. I believe they are all cached as jpg unless you set dds in advancedsettings.xml. (I use SQLite Manager extension in Firefox to look at the databases.)

scott s.
.