[1marc1]

Hi team,

I have some questions about artist artwork. I am running Jarvis on Ubuntu and am busy setting up my music library. I have been reading a large number of threads on this subject and have picked up a few best practices along the way from others.

My environment consists of the Ubuntu machine and an RPi3. The RPi3 has a USB disk attached, which holds all music. Both Ubuntu and RPi3 are running version 16.1 with the Aeon-Nox skin. I have setup a MySQL database and Kodi (exact same version on RPi3 and Ubuntu) uses this database. The source for my music is setup to use the smb:// path. The idea is that I will use Kodi on Ubuntu to update the library and Kodi on the RPi3 as a "read-only" device as it will not be connected to the internet.

I use the following configuration of Kodi on Ubuntu:
* Include artists who appear only on compilations = Yes
* Fetch additional information during updates = Yes
* Default provider for album information = Universal Album Scaper
* Default provider for artist information = Universal Artist Scraper
* Prefer online information = No
* Show "All items" entry = Yes
* Update library on startup = No

I use the following configuration of Kodi on the RPi3:
* Include artists who appear only on compilations = Yes
* Fetch additional information during updates = No
* Default provider for album information = Local information only
* Default provider for artist information = Local information only
* Prefer online information = No
* Show "All items" entry = Yes
* Update library on startup = No

I use the following configuration for Picard:
* Picard version 1.3.2
* ID3v2 version 2.4
* Clear existing tags
* Remove ID3 tags from FLAC files
* Remove APEv2 tags from MP3 files

The process I am following to "import" my music into the library is as follows:
* copy an album to the Kodi source directory
* tag the album with Picard
* in Kodi, goto MUSIC, FILES
* scan the music source to the library

This typically works fine. After the scan, I go to MUSIC, ALBUMS and I can see the new album, including the artwork for the album (embedded in the music files). When I go to MUSIC, ARTISTS, I typically get good results: I may need to manually set the artist thumb and fanart.

So, now to my questions:
QUESTION1:
I have an album where all songs are by an artist with the same featured artist. So, every song is tagged as "artist1 feat. artist2". In the artists view, I would initially get the correct fanart and artist thumb. After a while I found that the I was getting the fanart for artist2 with the thumb for artist1. I fixed this up manually, but this seems to come back once in a while. Why is this? Am I doing something wrong?

QUESTION2:
I have another album with multiple artists. The names of the artists will show in the ARTISTS view and most of them do not have a thumb, fanart or info. However, I am getting the same thumb, fanart and info on two different people. For example, when looking at artist3 in my list, you will see the same thumb, fanart, info as for artist4. Despite this, their names are distinctly different.

QUESTION3:
After I have updated the library on Ubuntu, I then export the Music Library to separate files and I copy of the following files/directories from Ubuntu to the appropriate directories in the RPi3:
* .kodi/userdata/Database/ViewModes6.db
* .kodi/userdata/Database/Addons20.db
* .kodi/userdata/Database/Textures13.db
* .kodi/userdata/Thumbnails/
* .kodi/userdata/addon-data/script.skin.helper.service/

The question here is: when I look at the .NFO files that were created, I may find the .NFO file for "artist1" in the artist directory of "artist2". This does not sound right.

QUESTION4:
From reading the forums, I understand that relying on the .NFO files is not all that reliable, due to - for example - artists from compilation albums not showing. Is this something that is to be addressed in a future release?

QUESTION 5:
Is there a better way of doing things? I.e. without using the .NFO files?

QUESTION 6:
I noticed there is a setting for the path to artwork. I am not sure if this is Aeon-Nox specific. I created a directory called "smb://usbdisk/Music_Artwork", in the hope that this directory would be used for all music artwork. For example, that when I do an export of the music library, everything would be dumped there. Unfortunately, this is no the case. I have done extensive searches on the internet to try to find out what this setting is for and how it is used, but I haven't been able to find anything. Is there anyone who can shed some light onto this?

Thanks in advance for providing some further insights.

Marc.