[lithodora]

I am migrating from using MediaBrowser to XBMC and am trying to arrange things just right so that the library can be used over the network on different devices throughout the house. (Putting them raspberry pi's to work final).

Thus so far I have things working fairly well and I am trying to get the little touches working to make it a complete experience. I have tweaked the advancedsettings.xml to use the /trailers/ folder in each movie as the trailer and such little things that have made the transition very easy. Except I can't seem to figure out the local thumbs for actors even after searching and much reading of the wiki...

Currently all actor thumbs are stored in one location. I have created a network share for that location and updated all .nfo files to point to it as well using Media Center Master.

The nfo file contains a bit like this:

Code:

    <actor>
        <name>John Cusack</name>
        <role>Jackson Curtis</role>
        <thumb>\\LITHODORA-PC\People\John Cusack\folder.jpg</thumb>
    </actor>

When viewing the movie info there are no thumbs showing up at all for any actor.
I assume MCM knows what is doing by putting in that <thumb> brace but there is no mention of such a tag in the wiki here: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=NFO_files/Movies
I should also mention that originally when I created the NFO files the thumbs pointed to C:\\Program~wherever they are.jpg. This didn't work either.
My goal was to have all the stuff come from the 'server' so I made it a network share. I didn't work before I did that so that isn't what broke it.
Another thing is I am testing this all out on the computer that is sharing the folder, so I am not having connection issues with the shared folder at any time.


In the wiki entry about Thumbnails (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Thumbnails) it mentions:

Actor thumbnails

You can add actor thumbnails to any movie or TV show by adding an '.actors' folder in the corresponding movie / TV show / Episode directory. You may need to use the command line to create this directory in Windows.
The folder can then contain actor images using the following naming convention:

Videos\path\.actors\actor_name.tbn (spaces replaced with underscores)

That would lead to a lot of duplication and a great deal of work considering I already have these images stored and organized to work from. It also seems that MCM thinks the bit in the NFO file should work so what am I missing?

[Milhouse]

The Pi won't be able to access a path like "\\LITHODORA-PC\..." - that's a UNC and works only with Windows clients, not Linux.

You need to specify an SMB path in the NFO, ie. "smb://LITHODORA-PC/...", which will be accessible to both your Windows and Linux clients.

[lithodora]

The Pi won't be able to access a path like "\\LITHODORA-PC\..." - that's a UNC and works only with Windows clients, not Linux.

You need to specify an SMB path in the NFO, ie. "smb://LITHODORA-PC/...", which will be accessible to both your Windows and Linux clients.

Ok, that is a slight oversight there, but thankfully an easy fix. MCM doesn't seem to want to make the SMB path so I'll just write something to do it for me.

However it still does not resolve this issue that no actor thumbs are showing up at all.

[Milhouse]

However it still does not resolve this issue that no actor thumbs are showing up at all.

Do you mean you have no cast at all, or you do have a list of cast members but showing no artwork?

If the latter it's because your Pi can't access the cast artwork due to the inaccessible UNC path - fix that, re-scrape your library and you should be OK.

[lithodora]

However it still does not resolve this issue that no actor thumbs are showing up at all.

Do you mean you have no cast at all, or you do have a list of cast members but showing no artwork?

If the latter it's because your Pi can't access the cast artwork due to the inaccessible UNC path - fix that, re-scrape your library and you should be OK.

I have no artwork for cast members appearing at all, but as I said for this portion of the test I am actually using XBMC on my Windows PC. The same PC that is the source of the network share.
It should have worked using the windows path on this machine, but did not. The path does resolve to the correct images as well when I test it.

I also have "Download actor thumbnails when adding to library" turned off in the settings as I already have local images available for all actors. Perhaps I misunderstood this function, but as I read it this will download new images for all actors. Am I wrong?

[Milhouse]

I think so - with that option disabled no cast artwork will be loaded into the library, no matter where the art is located.

[lithodora]

Well that seemed to do the trick, I misunderstood what it was going to do after all. The actor thumbs appear to now be coming from the location in the NFO file.

Now to make them all SMB paths instead of UNC for use on the Pi

[Milhouse]

Before you edit your NFOs, you might want to consider using a path substitution (wiki) on the Pi which will translate the \\LITHODORA-PC path to a smb://LITHODORA-PC path. It's not the right solution (using smb paths from the outset is the right solution) but can be useful in a pinch.

[jholvoet]

Hello there,

New to Kodi (coming from MCE+MediaBrowser) and really impressed so far by how powerful it seems to be...

I am sorry to up this very old thread, but I have the very same issue as described here, though the given solution does not work for me.

- Kodi Isengard 15.2 on a windows PC
- Local actor thumbnails stored in an ImagesByName structure (MB3 style with single alphabet letters) on a NAS
- MCM generated NFO files with actors, such as
<actor>
<name>Julie Andrews</name>
<role>Mary Poppins</role>
<thumb>\\MYSERVER\Video\ImagesByName\People\J\Julie Andrews\folder.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
- Substitution path in advancedsettings.xml, to replace \\MYSERVER\Video\ImagesByName\People\ by smb://MYSERVER/video/ImagesByName/People/, just in case (tried without substitution, same thing)
- NFO only (no Kodi scrapers) for my video sources
- "Download actors thumbnails" option unchecked in video settings

=> No actors thumbnails at all (though cast is alright and does come from the nfo files)

If I check "Download actors thumbnails" in video settings and reimport library, actors thumbnails show up but I am sure that they are NOT my local thumbnails, they come from an online source because some thumbs are different... (which seems consistent with the option wording : "download [...] from online databases")

Well I could live with this, downloaded thumbs are fine, but I find this very frustrating not to understand how it works and not to be able to get it working as it should... Or maybe it cannot work as I want ?? I've read a lot about this and still cannot figure out if it is possible.

Where did I go wrong ?

Thanks very much for your help !
Jérôme