[starcraft04]

Hi all,

I have in my mp3 some artists that cannot be found from the scrapers because they are not really famous. How can I add them manually so that I can put myself a thumb and fanart?

The problem is when I try to update it, it gives me a name to write and try to search for it then doesn't find it then look it up again endlessly.

Thanks for your help,

John.

[Hitcher]

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=NFO_files/Music

[Prof Yaffle]

Or add the artist to the database you're using if possible and re-scrape - that way everyone benefits.

[scott967]

Or add the artist to the database you're using if possible and re-scrape - that way everyone benefits.

Unfortunately, at least my experience is that if I try to update musicbrainz (which is what universal scraper goes to) after a couple days the updates get removed with no explanation of why, nor any obvious way to find out. I take it you have to get vetted into the "club" in order to add or edit.

The problem is when I try to update it, it gives me a name to write and try to search for it then doesn't find it then look it up again endlessly.

Yes, I think that's an issue where it works as designed, but I think there should be a requirement that if the artist can't be found by a scraper, the artist info window still is available so you can manually add a thumb and fanart. It also affects the "local info only" scraper option (can't add thumb/fanart by UI).

scott s.
.

[starcraft04]

Hi all,

I have updated some of the artists to musicbrainz and then to theaudiodb and it works fine. It is a bit of a pain though if you only want to get a thumbnail for one artist...

Thanks for all the suggestions,

John.

[Brian B]

Hi, I have the same issue (which sounds like a bug). If I want to associate a picture with an artist I get stuck in an infinite loop where it keeps asking for the artist name even though it has been entered. I have 1000+ artists that aren't recognized and I'm slowly trying to clean them up.

I tried to understand what is being suggested above, but I'm not quite getting it.

Is this something that is fixed in Gotham? It only affects certain artists where the name doesn't seem to be a match in the database. 90% of the artists I am able to click on a d/l picture and it works fine.

Can someone "explain the process like I'm a 5-year old?"

First example: "Anna Macora"

Thanks much,
Brian

[Brian B]

So I found a temporary solution--not sure if it messes anything else up, but it does what I need it to.

Just type in an artist that the database knows, but is empty. "Armed Gang" is one. Then attach the picture as normal. Not sure if this screws anything else up, but it seems to be working.

B.

[scott967]

So I found a temporary solution--not sure if it messes anything else up, but it does what I need it to.

Just type in an artist that the database knows, but is empty. "Armed Gang" is one. Then attach the picture as normal. Not sure if this screws anything else up, but it seems to be working.

That's kind of an inventive work around. Great idea. I have yet to figure out exactly when artist.nfo will be read, but when it is read that works. Another problem is if there is more than one artist associated with a file (artist or album artist), only the first entry of album artist can be added with an nfo file. Your method is required for second, etc artists in the file as far as I can tell.

scott s.
.

[whitebelly]

I used a different workaround, in case anyone is interested.

[scott967]

So I found a temporary solution--not sure if it messes anything else up, but it does what I need it to.

Just type in an artist that the database knows, but is empty. "Armed Gang" is one. Then attach the picture as normal. Not sure if this screws anything else up, but it seems to be working.

OK I tried this. Yes you can assign thumb and fanart, but the name of the artist in the database is changed to "Armed Gang", at least in the case where the artist in question is the second allbum artist (as tagged in the music file). I note in this case the "album_artist" table shows "boolFeatured" as true, so maybe that has something to to with my results (not sure how XBMC sets that "Featured" setting).

Update: Looking at the database, I see that the artist name (strArtist) is changed in the "artist" table, but the original artist name still is in the "album_artist" table (at least in SQLite db) so it is possible to edit the database outside of XBMC to put the right name back in there.


scott s.
.

[Brian B]

So I found a temporary solution--not sure if it messes anything else up, but it does what I need it to.

Just type in an artist that the database knows, but is empty. "Armed Gang" is one. Then attach the picture as normal. Not sure if this screws anything else up, but it seems to be working.

OK I tried this. Yes you can assign thumb and fanart, but the name of the artist in the database is changed to "Armed Gang", at least in the case where the artist in question is the second allbum artist (as tagged in the music file). I note in this case the "album_artist" table shows "boolFeatured" as true, so maybe that has something to to with my results (not sure how XBMC sets that "Featured" setting).

Update: Looking at the database, I see that the artist name (strArtist) is changed in the "artist" table, but the original artist name still is in the "album_artist" table (at least in SQLite db) so it is possible to edit the database outside of XBMC to put the right name back in there.


scott s.
.

I'm sorry, but what is the implication of what you are saying happening? I have been tagging through my artists (~6500) slowly and the ones that are stuck on an infinite loop I've been using the method described above.

I took one look at whitebelly's method and didn't get past the first paragraph. It may be a great solution, but I don't want to have to go into a software program and start changing files (especially when something as simple as tagging an artist picture is concerned).

Can you elaborate on possible problems?

When you say second artist you mean as an example "Marvin Gaye / Tammi Terrell" is in either the artist or album artist field and Tammi Terrell is the 2nd artist? Could you just reverse the order?

What about situations with multiple artists in the artist column like the above, but with "Various Artists" in the Album Artist tab? Does that make any difference?

I guess I'm not sure what you are saying...

Thanks for helping someone not nearly as knowledgeable!

Brian

[whitebelly]

I took one look at whitebelly's method and didn't get past the first paragraph.

Hah, it is a bit messy of a process, but I don't change any files in XBMC.

A very simplified version, for a particular artist, is to create a text file called musicdb.xml with the following included (or you can put more that one artist in if you like)

<musicdb>
<artist>
<name>Leon Redbone</name>
</artist>
</musicdb>

Replace special characters (&) and (') with &amp; and &apos ----> ("Little Charlie & The Nightcats" becomes "Little Charlie &amp; The Nightcats")

Then import this file from "import music library" in settings. Once you do this, you can navigate to that artist name, and when you select Artist Information you will get to the GUI that allows you to manually add art rather than get stuck in the keyboard GUI.

Also, if you wanted to add other artist info, such as BIO information, you could add that tag in the text file as well and write whatever text you wanted.

[scott967]

I took one look at whitebelly's method and didn't get past the first paragraph.

Hah, it is a bit messy of a process, but I don't change any files in XBMC.

A very simplified version, for a particular artist, is to create a text file called musicdb.xml with the following included (or you can put more that one artist in if you like)

<musicdb>
<artist>
<name>Leon Redbone</name>
</artist>
</musicdb>

Replace special characters (&) and (') with &amp; and &apos ----> ("Little Charlie & The Nightcats" becomes "Little Charlie &amp; The Nightcats")

Then import this file from "import music library" in settings. Once you do this, you can navigate to that artist name, and when you select Artist Information you will get to the GUI that allows you to manually add art rather than get stuck in the keyboard GUI.

Also, if you wanted to add other artist info, such as BIO information, you could add that tag in the text file as well and write whatever text you wanted.

Testing shows this works well. Thanks for the tip. I can't believe how much time I wasted trying to get artist.nfo to work.

One thing looking through the debug log there seems to be no indication that the musicdb.xml file is successfully read.

scott s.
.

[whitebelly]

Glad that worked. I used this approach because I don't have an ARTIST/ALBUM/ folder structure, so I could not use artist.nfo even if I wanted to. In my perfect world, all dependencies on folder structure would be abolished.

[Brian B]

I took one look at whitebelly's method and didn't get past the first paragraph.

Hah, it is a bit messy of a process, but I don't change any files in XBMC.

A very simplified version, for a particular artist, is to create a text file called musicdb.xml with the following included (or you can put more that one artist in if you like)

<musicdb>
<artist>
<name>Leon Redbone</name>
</artist>
</musicdb>

Replace special characters (&) and (') with &amp; and &apos ----> ("Little Charlie & The Nightcats" becomes "Little Charlie &amp; The Nightcats")

Then import this file from "import music library" in settings. Once you do this, you can navigate to that artist name, and when you select Artist Information you will get to the GUI that allows you to manually add art rather than get stuck in the keyboard GUI.

Also, if you wanted to add other artist info, such as BIO information, you could add that tag in the text file as well and write whatever text you wanted.

Thanks for the clarification--I'll give this a try when I get home.

But, based on what I've been doing so far is there any particular problem with it? Scott? I don't know how to figure out which ones have been incorrectly tagged up to this point...

B.