[noncom]

Hi all

Sorry, I have searched for the answer to this, but can't find it.

I'm trying to set up Fanart for my music collection in XBMC 13.2 but have run into a problem with really some really obscure albums where neither the artist nor the album itself are recognised by the Scrapers.

For example - an album called "Dead Parrot Society" which is a compilation album of British comedy. I've tagged the mp3s with Artist and Album Artist set to "Dead Parrot Society". This then appears in my Artists list in Library view.

But I can't add Fanart to it. If I call up the "Artist Information" option, it Searches for "Dead Parrot Society" and never finds it. If I Cancel the search it takes me back to Library view, so I can't Manually Add Fanart.

I tried changing the "Album Artist" tags to "Various Artists". Now I can manually set FanArt for "Various Artists" but I don't really want this album filed like that - I would like to define a unique Artist for it.

Thing is, I've got some other albums which can't possibly be known to the scrapers (because they're unique compilations) for which I DO have Fanart, so it's obviously possible, or was in an earlier version perhaps

Any help please?

[scott967]

The problem is you can't add artwork to an artist unless it has been "scraped", which in the database is shown by the "lastScraped" attribute. There are a couple of ways to fix, one is to simply use an SQL tool to populate that attribute for all artists with a date. But if you don't want to mess with your database another way is to use the music-library-import music database function. To do this create a file around this template:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<musicdb>
   <artist>
        <name>Dead Parrot Society</name>
        <musicBrainzArtistID></musicBrainzArtistID>
        <genre></genre>
        <style></style>
        <mood></mood>
        <yearsactive></yearsactive>
        <instruments></instruments>
        <born></born>
        <formed></formed>
        <biography></biography>
        <died></died>
        <disbanded></disbanded>
        <path></path>
        <album>
            <title></title>
            <year></year>
        </album>
        <art></art>
    </artist>
</musicdb>

You could of course add more detail as desired, and you can add as many

Code:

<artist>
...
</artist>

blocks as desired. Save your file and then use the music database import feature which will ask you to navigate to that file, select it, and then it will add the info to your database, setting the "lastScraped" field so now you can get into the artist info screen. Or you could add the following elements:

Code:

<thumb></thumb>
<fanart>
    <thumb></thumb>
</fanart>

into your artist block, and place the full path and filename for your artist poster and artist fanart inside the thumb /thumb and then you won't have to search for the artwork from the artist info screen.

Also note that albums have "thumbs" which normally would be a cover image. They don't have "fanart". Artists have "fanart".

scott s.
.

[noncom]

Hi Scott

Thanks for your detailed answer. Messing about directly with an SQL database is way above my knowledge level, unfortunately.

I will try your second suggestion of using the Music Database Import function - presumably I create the file above in something like Notepad? What format should the file be saved in, for XBMC to be able to import it? .xml?

That said, I find it rather strange that a product like XBMC which is so mature and feature packed in so many ways still relies on such clunky methods to work around what appears to me to be an obvious and common problem. I know it's Open Source and coded by volunteers, to whom I'm very grateful for giving their expertise freely for our benefit, but surely these are the kind of problems that will put off a huge number of potential users. I'm reasonably computer literate (although I don't write code), but this sort of "manual labour" to get a program working properly seems like it shouldn't be necessary in this day and age...... How difficult would it be for someone to code an error trap so that if the Scraper finds nothing, it brings up a dialogue box allowing you to enter the information manually within XBMC itself. Wouldn't that be a lot more user friendly?

Thanks

[kyungrak]

Hi Scott

Thanks for your detailed answer. Messing about directly with an SQL database is way above my knowledge level, unfortunately.

I will try your second suggestion of using the Music Database Import function - presumably I create the file above in something like Notepad? What format should the file be saved in, for XBMC to be able to import it? .xml?

That said, I find it rather strange that a product like XBMC which is so mature and feature packed in so many ways still relies on such clunky methods to work around what appears to me to be an obvious and common problem. I know it's Open Source and coded by volunteers, to whom I'm very grateful for giving their expertise freely for our benefit, but surely these are the kind of problems that will put off a huge number of potential users. I'm reasonably computer literate (although I don't write code), but this sort of "manual labour" to get a program working properly seems like it shouldn't be necessary in this day and age...... How difficult would it be for someone to code an error trap so that if the Scraper finds nothing, it brings up a dialogue box allowing you to enter the information manually within XBMC itself. Wouldn't that be a lot more user friendly?

Thanks

Or... you could also consider that all the work put into scrapers, program and databases benefits everyone, and thus you can have all the nice infos on your screen effortless. Then when you stumble upon a movie, artist, album that has never been referenced in these databases, you could in turn contribute to the community by updating these databases.

[noncom]

Hi again

Just to say, I have managed to get the Database Import function to work correctly, so I can create entries for these obscure albums. Many thanks.

Still think it should be a Feature Request though for next version to get Kodi to do it in a more slick manner :-)

Andy

---

Hi Kyungrak

Sorry, I didn't see your post until I'd written my previous one..... I wasn't ignoring you.

It's a fair point you make, with regard to this album at least. If I knew how to upload the info/artwork for this Artist/Album I would happily do so.

My point still stands though with regard to a) compilations of tracks that I've made myself b) unique live recordings

In those instances, no-one else in the world could possibly have them, so what would be the point of uploading information about them? All I would need is an easier way of getting the data into XBMC.

[kyungrak]

You should have a look on Musicbrainz and AudioDB websites. All you need is to register if you want to contribute.

Else can't you just use nfo for artists or albums (just asking, never tried actually)?

[noncom]

Thanks, I'll have a look at those sites.

And if I understand your last sentence correctly, then no, it doesn't seem to work. Pressing "Artist Information" for an artist unknown to the scraper brings up an endless loop of "Searching", and if you Cancel out of it, you are returned to the Artist List and can't access the Information page for that artist.

[kyungrak]

I meant using nfo files (artist.nfo and album.nfo) you place in artist and album folders.

[noncom]

Ah, OK, thanks I wasn't aware of that option. Again, though, it's not exactly User Friendly :-)

[scott967]

You should have a look on Musicbrainz and AudioDB websites. All you need is to register if you want to contribute.

Else can't you just use nfo for artists or albums (just asking, never tried actually)?

You can use artist/album.nfo but then you have to re-scrape to have them read.

You can register at Musicbrainz, but my experience is the site will reject all your edits. The only time I got a human response was once I pointed out that two artists were in fact one and the same. They still wanted to argue if A should be merged into B, or B into A. I just wanted a consistent MBID so I didn't get two artists in my XBMC database. This was after having wasted a lot of time studying their style guides and what-not to be a "good netizen". AFAIK, to edit at AudioDB you first need a valid MBID, so no point unless you get by the Musicbrainz great wall.

scott s.
.

[sialivi]

I've never had any edits rejected. As long as you've provided a good source for the information it should get accepted, even though it sometimes takes a bit of time.

[noncom]

It's great that these sites exist, although for some reason XBMC fails to assign Fanart to a large proportion of the Artists in my collection, even when there are pictures available when you click through to Artist Information and see what's been scraped. I have a music App on my phone (PlayerPro) which found Artist pictures for virtually everything automatically, so it's obviously possible.

But I guess my point is that if XBMC / Kodi wants to move to become more mainstream and less of a niche (dare I say geek?) product, things like this put off a very large number of potential users. Again, I'm not a coder so I could be wrong, but it seems like it wouldn't be difficult at all to add an option to the Menu within XBMC called something like "Edit Artist Information". This could bring up a form with all the fields there to be filled in within the GUI, rather than expecting people to mess about with finding a template .xml or .nfo file, filling it in, saving it, and getting XBMC to import it.

[whitebelly]

It's great that these sites exist, although for some reason XBMC fails to assign Fanart to a large proportion of the Artists in my collection, even when there are pictures available when you click through to Artist Information and see what's been scraped.

I have seen this behavior as well and it is quite confusing because it seems to happen only part of the time. After scraping, an artist that is recognized and scraped, no fanart shows unless I go to the artist info page and select one of the fanart choices that were returned from the scrape. Maybe it is because there are more than one and it forces you to choose first? I would prefer it just auto select one and let me change later if I desire.

I agree with the suggested EDIT ARTIST INFO feature. It would be nice to have. FYI, If you use the import approach described above for the just the artist bio and text, you can then use the ARTIST INFO GUI in XBMC to select local thumb and fanart.

[noncom]

How do we submit a Feature Request?

[whitebelly]

There is a FEATURE SUGGESTIONS thread in the forum (in the DEVELOPMENT section), you can submit something there. I think this edit capability has been requested in the past, so you may want to do a quick search and resurrect that thread of you find it, but don't kill yourself searching, creating a new one is just fine.