[docwra]

My opinion is its important to keep standards, otherwise everyone ends up using different naming and the whole ecosystem becomes a mess

Saying that, this is the right approach as it provides extensibility in the future.

[DaveBlake]

Yes Kodi should regulate it's "ecosystem", but not do so by burrying art types so deeply in the code that it is hard to change and needs an expert dev to implement.  I think we all agree on that

On the other hand if an expert user has some personal kind of local art  and can mod a skin enough to show it, there is no reason that configuring Kodi to fetch this local art should be stopped. Best software empowers power users as well as offering a great system out the box for those less skilled or interested.

Avoiding ecosystem chaos is really down to the wider Kodi community of skinners and addon authors working togther with Kodi team members of course. In the main humans do what is easy (we are the lazy ape), so just make the standard we want the easiest thing.

[chrissix666]

And here is a PR that enables Kodi core to pick up any artwork from the local file system. Files need to be named based on the art type used in the library, so "discart.png" or "movie file name-discart.png" not "disc.png"; ditto "characterart.png" and "clearlogo.png". This also doesn't add images from 'extrafanart' / 'extrathumbs' folders to the library like Artwork Beef does (save them to "fanart1.jpg", "fanart2.jpg", etc in the main item folder).

"discart.png" conerning only music arts isn't that so? For movies it was always disc.png or am i wrong?

[wgstarks]

Since AD is no longer being officially supported and it seems will soon be marked as broken I'm looking for a replacement.

So far I’ve only read part way through this thread, but I’ve got a couple of questions.

Does Artwork Beef actually download the artwork now? Saw quite a few older posts that it only linked to online artwork.

From the wiki it appears that Artwork Beef will discontinue scanning for new art on existing video files after some unspecified time period. Is this true? If so is there an option to override this?

[Carnigg]

Does Artwork Beef actually download the artwork now?

Yes it does download the artwork

Is this true? If so is there an option to override this?

Not sure where you read that. Was that in relation to V18? I believe there are efforts to incorporate some of what AB does into Kodi itself.

[rmrector]

@"chrissix" Nope, that is for movies (and music videos). The previously used file names don't always match up with the names stored in the library and used by skins, but doing so simplifies things. Bulk renaming files shouldn't be too hard, though I don't have any instructions handy.

@wgstarks 1. Yes. 2. No, if the option is enabled it will continue to check for artwork updates to existing items.

[wgstarks]

Not sure where you read that. Was that in relation to V18? I believe there are efforts to incorporate some of what AB does into Kodi itself.

Quote from wiki

Over time it will re-process media items still missing artwork, checking for new artwork from web services and the file system. After some time (4-12 months) they will be considered “old” items affected by a couple of actions and settings.

Not sure exactly what “old” refers to? I have many many videos that are more than 4-12 months old but are still missing artwork.

[chrissix666]

@chrissix Nope, that is for movies (and music videos). The previously used file names don't always match up with the names stored in the library and used by skins, but doing so simplifies things. Bulk renaming files shouldn't be too hard, though I don't have any instructions handy.

Is it possible to enlighten us of the "new" used filenames? Then the kodi wiki part with extrafanarts is also old, and Media Companion uses also the wrong naming conventions. I used:

For Movies:

poster.jpg or moviename-poster.jpg
fanart.jpg or moviename-fanart.jpg
banner.jpg
clearart.png
disc.png
folder.jpg
landscape.jpg
logo.png

For TV Shows:

banner.jpg
character.png
clearart.png
fanart.jpg
folder.jpg
landscape.jpg
logo.png
poster.jpg
seasonXX-banner.jpg
seasonXX-poster.jpg
season-all-fanart.jpg
season-speacials-poster.jpg

greetings chris

[wgstarks]

I’m just getting AB installed and configured. It occurs to me that since the demise of Artwork Downloader there is little reason (at least in my mind) to continue to use that naming scheme. Seems to me that many more apps use <title>-<artwork type>.<extension>. If I set AB to use this format what happens with all my existing artwork that doesn’t include a title?

[Karellen]

Then the kodi wiki part with extrafanarts is also old

Why?

[wgstarks]

After running AB for the first time I'm encountering a small issue. I can't get the report to display in kodi.

I can see that two reports were generated in userdata/addon_data/script.artwork.beef. Both at the same time. artwork-report.2018-05-11.txt contains what appears to be a detailed report of what occurred during the run. artwork-report.txt is blank except for the version/info header. I'm wondering if the addon is displaying the wrong report?

Didn't see anything in the debug log but I'm attaching it just the same.

debug log

[rmrector]

Not sure exactly what “old” refers to? I have many many videos that are more than 4-12 months old but are still missing artwork. 

"old" refers to media items that haven't been processed by Artwork Beef in 4-12 months. Not every possible artwork type for every possible media exists on the web services, so many items can still be missing artwork after being processed. They will be processed again in another 4-12 months.
 

Is it possible to enlighten us of the "new" used filenames?

"disc.png" -> "discart.png", "logo.png" -> "clearlogo.png", and "character.png" -> "characterart.png". The new file names should match the art type that skins use to access them, and the file name used when Kodi exports the images. The Kodi wiki has many of them noted. The "moviename-" and "season*-" prefixes work the same for all artwork as they did for "poster" and "fanart". If "folder.jpg" is a copy of the poster, it is probably unnecessary for the Kodi library when you also have the "poster.jpg" image (in the video library, still used for "thumb" / album cover / artist image in the music library).
 

Then the kodi wiki part with extrafanarts is also old

"extrafanart" is still used by many skins, so the wiki is ok. I just prefer adding them to the library (see my rambling here if you are interested in why), and so does Artwork Beef, so my example here in this thread shows how to add them with Kodi's upcoming feature. Edit: though it is about time to detail this alternative in the wiki.
 

Media Companion uses also the wrong naming conventions.

Yup, it uses Artwork Downloader file names, instead of Kodi export file names. Most media managers do, and they will need to be updated. That is currently being discussed in another thread.
 

Seems to me that many more apps use <title>-<artwork type>.<extension>. If I set AB to use this format what
happens with all my existing artwork that doesn’t include a title?

Artwork Beef supports local files with and without the "<title>-" prefix. That option only affects the file name when Artwork Beef downloads and saves the images.
 

I'm wondering if the addon is displaying the wrong report?

The GUI only shows the latest report, and they are limited in size, so you probably got (un)lucky enough that it rolled over right at the end.

[wgstarks]

I'm wondering if the addon is displaying the wrong report?

The GUI only shows the latest report, and they are limited in size, so you probably got (un)lucky enough that it rolled over right at the end.

Does AB keep every report in addon data or just the most recent?

[Karellen]

Edit: though it is about time to detail this alternative in the wiki.

Once v18 is officially released it will be. But a lot of pages will require updating so it may take time to get around to it, especially as I am the only one consistently working on the wiki. This is where I hope other members will chip in...

[rmrector]

Artwork Beef updated to 0.19.0.

New features are a whitelist that applies to local artwork and an option to preload local artwork to Kodi's texture cache.
Run Artwork Beef from program add-ons to remove images from the Kodi library that don't match the whitelist and preload all existing images into the texture cache.

"AB: " is also added to the context menu items so they are easier to tell apart.

 

Does AB keep every report in addon data or just the most recent? 

It keeps the last several.