A Few Beginner Questions
#1
So I just installed the latest version of Kodi and have a few questions. I use JRiver but wanted to give Kodi a try. I've been playing around for awhile and just can't figure it out.

1. I'm not getting any Artist thumbnails. I do see thumbnails for the album art but not the artist. In JRiver all my artists are showing thumbnails. Not sure what needs to be done to enable this.

2. Is it possible to edit the music library within Kodi? For some odd reason I have an artist showing up two diff ways, one Sam Roberts and the other Same Roberts Band. In JRiver I can simply select Tag and change that with JRiver.

I guess that's it for now. Any assistance would greatly be appreciated!

D
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#2
Welcome to Kodi.

(2016-12-31, 02:42)danielBmee Wrote: 1. I'm not getting any Artist thumbnails. I do see thumbnails for the album art but not the artist. In JRiver all my artists are showing thumbnails. Not sure what needs to be done to enable this.
You probably need to scrape them (auto scraping on update is disabled by default). From the artists node (list of artists), bring up the context menu ("c" on keyboard) and select "Query information for all". Then Kodi will go online and attempt to retrieve artist info including art. Or perhaps you have the art you want stored locally?

Quote:2. Is it possible to edit the music library within Kodi? For some odd reason I have an artist showing up two diff ways, one Sam Roberts and the other Same Roberts Band. In JRiver I can simply select Tag and change that with JRiver.
No, Kodi does not have an edit facility.

The library content is determined from the music file tags (and then any nfo files or scraped data from online sources). You will have tagged some of your music files with (album) artist = "Same Roberts Band". Looking at the music listed for "Same Roberts Band" should give you a clue what files need the tags edited, then you will need to fix the tags in the music files themselves using tag editing software e.g. Mp3tag or Picard.

The good news is that corrected tagging is portable to any media player, and permanent (unlike the JRiver edit facility that you are used to having).

Kodi has lots of functionality, much of it undocumented, so I hope that you will stick with it and explore the full potential, not be put off by initial differences to JRiver.
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#3
Hi thanks for the help. I tried to "Query information for all" but it doesn't do anything. Does it matter if my music is mostly FLAC? I noticed some were tagged but I think they were the very few that are mp3. Do I need to tag them with an external editor first?

Also, when it does download the artwork, is that stored locally or where my music is stored, for ex a NAS? I'd like to store the thumbnails locally to keep things speedy.
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#4
(2016-12-31, 18:39)danielBmee Wrote: Hi thanks for the help. I tried to "Query information for all" but it doesn't do anything. Does it matter if my music is mostly FLAC? I noticed some were tagged but I think they were the very few that are mp3. Do I need to tag them with an external editor first?

Also, when it does download the artwork, is that stored locally or where my music is stored, for ex a NAS? I'd like to store the thumbnails locally to keep things speedy.

FLAC doesnt matter, but the music must be tagged correctly. I recommend Musicbrainz picard for this.

The artwork is generally stored locally in the Kodi Userdata folder, but can also be stored on the NAS manually or with Add-ons.
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#5
I'm having a horrible time with importing music in Kodi. I went through and tagged all my music via Musicbrainz. I double checked all my music and it looks good. I imported and I'm getting tons of artists I don't have but are somehow attached to the album...I guess. For ex I imported my Beatles files. I made sure Artist and all other Artist fields are The Beatles. When importing I'm getting all sorts of artists such as Billy Preston, George Martin, etc....If I click on the artist it shows me an album and song that is also in the Beatles Library in Kodi.
So under the Beatles, I have Abbey Road, as well under George Martin I have Abbey Road.

If I go to Musicbrainz and check the tags for the songs for Abbey Road, they all see The Beatles....WTH? My library now has hundreds of extra artists...very frustrating!
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#6
Ok, removed the source and reimported without querying info from online. That did the trick and the artist and folders are in the proper order however now I'm not getting any Artist pictures, just the icons. The albums do show the cover art though. I tried hitting "c" on the keyboard and queried info for artists, but that just starting creating multiple artist entries again like I had above. So had to remove the library again.

How can I get artist photos to show up instead of icons?
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#7
I can't find the folder you indicated for artwork, I have no Kodi Userdata folder that I can see. I can view hidden files and folders so that's not it. There must be a place where it's storing all the artist photos when I select to query all artist info...
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#8
(2017-01-03, 03:02)danielBmee Wrote: I'm having a horrible time with importing music in Kodi. I went through and tagged all my music via Musicbrainz. I double checked all my music and it looks good. I imported and I'm getting tons of artists I don't have but are somehow attached to the album...I guess. For ex I imported my Beatles files. I made sure Artist and all other Artist fields are The Beatles. When importing I'm getting all sorts of artists such as Billy Preston, George Martin, etc....If I click on the artist it shows me an album and song that is also in the Beatles Library in Kodi.
So under the Beatles, I have Abbey Road, as well under George Martin I have Abbey Road.

If I go to Musicbrainz and check the tags for the songs for Abbey Road, they all see The Beatles....WTH? My library now has hundreds of extra artists...very frustrating!

(2017-01-03, 05:05)danielBmee Wrote: Ok, removed the source and reimported without querying info from online. That did the trick and the artist and folders are in the proper order however now I'm not getting any Artist pictures, just the icons. The albums do show the cover art though. I tried hitting "c" on the keyboard and queried info for artists, but that just starting creating multiple artist entries again like I had above. So had to remove the library again.

How can I get artist photos to show up instead of icons?

Assuming you are using kodi 17 (do not know if kodi 16.1 has this option)

Let kodi query online info but be sure to disable this option in kodi settings:

Image

That should do the trick
Moanbag is in da place!
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#9
Actually that doesn't do the trick. I already have that turned off...

I removed my entire library by clicking on it and selected Remove Source. I also ran a Clean Library. Exit and went back in. My Artists are still showing...Exited Kodi again and renamed my library, then went back into Kodi and updated library and cleaned it. Everything is gone.

So, tried importing a single artist folder within my library which has two subfolders which are an album each. When I did so I got a bunch of strange items under Artist. Three artists which show just as a number such as d-010c-4dc4-afcc. Then I also got my artist name showing up twice. With one album showing up twice, once under each artist.

I'm starting to think I should have maybe stayed with JRiver. I've spent 3 whole days working on my music library and can't get it to work...I'll stick with it for a bit more but boy does this seem really difficult...
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#10
I think we're all guessing really until you can turn on debugging, scan something to your library again, and then post the debug log here. I know it's not much consolation but this is a very unusual experience and not typical of a new kodi set up.
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#11
ok, here's the url, https://paste.ubuntu.com/23734466. Is that all I need to do?

Mod edit: URL corrected.
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#12
I think the problem is to do with line 771:

Code:
12:22:06.111 T:4828   DEBUG: Mis-match in song file albumartist tags: 5 mbid 1 name album: Cello Concerto / Sea Pictures Jacqueline du Pré

Dave's the expert on this stuff, but it looks like there are too many MusicBrainz artist IDs when there is only one album artist. Anyway, if I was Columbo that's who I'd be questioning.
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#13
I posted a question in the MB forums. Funny thing is I can't remove any of the MB tags nor clear them out.
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#14
(2017-01-03, 20:00)WelshPaul Wrote: I think the problem is to do with line 771:

Code:
12:22:06.111 T:4828   DEBUG: Mis-match in song file albumartist tags: 5 mbid 1 name album: Cello Concerto / Sea Pictures Jacqueline du Pré

Dave's the expert on this stuff, but it looks like there are too many MusicBrainz artist IDs when there is only one album artist. Anyway, if I was Columbo that's who I'd be questioning.
Yeap Smile

(2017-01-04, 01:43)danielBmee Wrote: I posted a question in the MB forums. Funny thing is I can't remove any of the MB tags nor clear them out.
Huh
Which tag editor are you using? Picard? All tags can be edited or removed even the mbid tags.

But removeal is not the way to go. The solution here is probably to add an ALBUMARTISTS tag. Picard does this but sadly not by default unless a script entry is added. I wish this was highlighted in the user guides.

In Picard Options > Advanced > Scripting add
Code:
$setmulti(albumartists,%_albumartists%)

However I am a little surprized that v17 isn't managing to decipher the albumartist tag e.g. "Elgar; Jacqueline du Pré, Sir John Barbirolli, Dame Janet Baker, London Symphony Orchestra" into 5 names to match the 5 mbids it is finding. I wonder how the files are tagged exactly. Could you possibly upload an example file somewhere and send me the link privately so I could see it?

Sorry that trying Kodi has been such a struggle. If you stick with it, then at least I can try to learn from your experience and see if we can improve things for those that come after.
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A Few Beginner Questions0