2015-11-24, 22:45
Now if we could just get some traction on the recorded TV folders thumbnails i would be a happy camper
2015-12-02, 05:30
I have folder images on 2 shows, and full fan-art backdrop on one of those 2. This is the case only on 1 of my multiple Kodi boxes.
Now these images are wrong. It's not the right image for the show. One has a poster for a foreign show/movie ("Castle"), I can't tell what it is. The other is for "last man standing", that one is some movie with a title that is close to the shows title). My guess is it's a fan-art helper plugin or something that picked them up on a scan and determined it had found a match, but just a guess. It would obviously be nice as most have mentioned to be able to accurately populate the art-work and meta-data the way the other libraries do, but based on the multiple threads I've scanned, it's a limitation currently.
So the question is... Any guesses on what/how those 2 shows were lucky enough to get folder images?
My Kodi version is whatever the current OpenElec version is, and I use the Titan skin.
Thanks,
PL
Now these images are wrong. It's not the right image for the show. One has a poster for a foreign show/movie ("Castle"), I can't tell what it is. The other is for "last man standing", that one is some movie with a title that is close to the shows title). My guess is it's a fan-art helper plugin or something that picked them up on a scan and determined it had found a match, but just a guess. It would obviously be nice as most have mentioned to be able to accurately populate the art-work and meta-data the way the other libraries do, but based on the multiple threads I've scanned, it's a limitation currently.
So the question is... Any guesses on what/how those 2 shows were lucky enough to get folder images?
My Kodi version is whatever the current OpenElec version is, and I use the Titan skin.
Thanks,
PL
2015-12-02, 22:24
ServerWMC is configured to "Group recordings in folders" ... in Kodi in the recorded TV view (list of shows) it's the folder images there that I have some images for. I just looked again to grab the screenshots, and I have 3 shows with images. I would have 4, but I don't have any episodes of "last man standing" at the moment. That's the show that also replaces the backdrop with show fanart (albeit the folder image and fanart were not actually for this show, just something that had a similar title).
Screenshots:
Screenshot1
Screenshot2
Screenshot3
Thanks,
PL
Screenshots:
Screenshot1
Screenshot2
Screenshot3
Thanks,
PL
2015-12-02, 22:58
What do they look like when there is no poster art
2015-12-03, 05:13
Most of the shows, and all of them on my other Kodi boxes just show a picture of a white folder on a black background. It's a generic folder image that's part of the titan skin.
2015-12-03, 05:14
Wow, I am wondering how you got in images on the ones that have it. Perhaps there is some workaround
2015-12-03, 19:49
Try and find "Castle" in the guide and see if the image matches the one for the recording. I currently have some in that situation... wrong recording icon and wrong in the guide (even in WMC). I reset the WMC database and re-downloaded all guide data and it didn't fix the problem. I chalked it up to the new WMC Rovi guide data.
2015-12-04, 20:13
I found out what is populating the images. The Titan skin has a skin-helper-service addon that creates folders for each show/title and tries to grab images for them. There is an option in the PVR recorded-TV view to enable PVR artwork, and tweak some artwork search settings.
I'll have to play with it to see if there is a way to use it to populate the folder images (correctly, and consistently)
I'll have to play with it to see if there is a way to use it to populate the folder images (correctly, and consistently)
2015-12-29, 21:02
OK. Figured it out, for the most part. Everything looks much slicker now, more inline with the rest of the Kodi Libraries
The script that is pulling in show artwork is the skin.helper.service script used by the Titan skin
Based on settings (options menu in Live TV view -- The slide-out menu when you are viewing the list of shows)... The script will try to determine what the show is and pull the artwork for it. The artwork is located in \Userdata\addon_data\script.skin.helper.service\pvrthumbs
With ServerWMC configured to group recordedTV into folders the skin.helper.service sees the folders as "Castle 2", "South Park 12", "Bones 9" --> Where Castle has 2 episodes, South Park has 12, and Bones has 9. Otherwise if there are 9 episodes of "Bones" The Kodi Display will show "Bones (9)", and the skin helper will get rid of the parenthesis.
Initially I tested by pulling all the artwork (manually in many cases) and creating a master folder with just the show title, no # representing the number of episodes. Then I would create a number of folders representing different episode counts. Within those folders there was just a single file "pvrdetails.xml". The skin.helper will recognize and use artwork with typical predefined names, or you can use the xml file to provide additional detail and/or point it to artwork at a different path. That all worked, but I did find a much easier way.
Userdata\addon_data\script.skin.helper.service\settings.xml --> Easier to edit the settings file directly and copy it to the other Kodi systems then it would have been to do it all through the GUI, but the setting is available in the GUI
I modified this line:
So the skin helper will ignore all of the appended suffixes representing the number of episodes and just evaluate the show title itself.... Then all the show folders get artwork, look snazzy etc. Adding the ® is for reruns (as I have it configured), this helps it pull artwork for shows in the guide (which is also an option).
The one thing I haven't got working completely is the artwork for episodes. I've tried having the show title - prefix (show title - episode title) from serverWMC, but it's still hit or miss. For some it uses the correct show thumb, for others it uses a thumb to an unrelated show/movie, and for others it uses the thumb WMC pulls (actual image grab from the video). I think if it finds nothing it reverts to using the grab from the video, if it *thinks* it found a match it will use the thumb for the show it thinks matches. When it's wrong it seems it uses the same thumb for all episodes for the show. I believe it sees the episodes and show folders as one flat directory so it's not automatically correlating any particular episode with the show it's from. adding the show title prefix, didn't seem to help, but if it bothered me enough I could build a script to build the xml file for all the episode folders based on the prefix. Possible, I'm sure, but it doesn't bother me enough. Just happy to get all the Show folders/artwork working.
So with the Titan Skin and the skin.helper.service, it's now possible to get artwork for PVR show folders.
The script that is pulling in show artwork is the skin.helper.service script used by the Titan skin
Based on settings (options menu in Live TV view -- The slide-out menu when you are viewing the list of shows)... The script will try to determine what the show is and pull the artwork for it. The artwork is located in \Userdata\addon_data\script.skin.helper.service\pvrthumbs
With ServerWMC configured to group recordedTV into folders the skin.helper.service sees the folders as "Castle 2", "South Park 12", "Bones 9" --> Where Castle has 2 episodes, South Park has 12, and Bones has 9. Otherwise if there are 9 episodes of "Bones" The Kodi Display will show "Bones (9)", and the skin helper will get rid of the parenthesis.
Initially I tested by pulling all the artwork (manually in many cases) and creating a master folder with just the show title, no # representing the number of episodes. Then I would create a number of folders representing different episode counts. Within those folders there was just a single file "pvrdetails.xml". The skin.helper will recognize and use artwork with typical predefined names, or you can use the xml file to provide additional detail and/or point it to artwork at a different path. That all worked, but I did find a much easier way.
Userdata\addon_data\script.skin.helper.service\settings.xml --> Easier to edit the settings file directly and copy it to the other Kodi systems then it would have been to do it all through the GUI, but the setting is available in the GUI
I modified this line:
Code:
<setting id="stripwords" value=":;(1);(2);(3);(4);(5); .... (99);(R)" />So the skin helper will ignore all of the appended suffixes representing the number of episodes and just evaluate the show title itself.... Then all the show folders get artwork, look snazzy etc. Adding the ® is for reruns (as I have it configured), this helps it pull artwork for shows in the guide (which is also an option).
The one thing I haven't got working completely is the artwork for episodes. I've tried having the show title - prefix (show title - episode title) from serverWMC, but it's still hit or miss. For some it uses the correct show thumb, for others it uses a thumb to an unrelated show/movie, and for others it uses the thumb WMC pulls (actual image grab from the video). I think if it finds nothing it reverts to using the grab from the video, if it *thinks* it found a match it will use the thumb for the show it thinks matches. When it's wrong it seems it uses the same thumb for all episodes for the show. I believe it sees the episodes and show folders as one flat directory so it's not automatically correlating any particular episode with the show it's from. adding the show title prefix, didn't seem to help, but if it bothered me enough I could build a script to build the xml file for all the episode folders based on the prefix. Possible, I'm sure, but it doesn't bother me enough. Just happy to get all the Show folders/artwork working.
So with the Titan Skin and the skin.helper.service, it's now possible to get artwork for PVR show folders.
2015-12-29, 21:12
Wow! That is awesome, can you post since screenshots? Currently I am using the artic zephyr skin. I am wondering if just enabling the add-on and configuring as you have described will get it to work in other skins.
Any chance you can switch skins to say confluence and see if the art shows up aswell
Any chance you can switch skins to say confluence and see if the art shows up aswell
2015-12-29, 21:43
So I found the skin helper service and saw the PVR thumbnails section and noticed it said it was disabled because the skin didn't support it
2015-12-30, 06:53
I installed the Titan skin and like you said I got artwork for some recorded shows folders. I didn't make the mod that you mentioned to ignore appended number of recordings, however it appears that if the skin makes user of this skin helper add-on that out is possible to get thumbnails for shows as you have proved.
Wondering how I can modify the skin I use (Arctic: Zephyr) to use the skin helper. I am a complete noob when it comes to skinning.
Wondering how I can modify the skin I use (Arctic: Zephyr) to use the skin helper. I am a complete noob when it comes to skinning.
