[longworthdean]

In addition to the above, the album art is all fine, it I assume is embedded in the music file itself. I changed some of the album art as I was doing the musicbrainz tagging. So its all fine, its just the artist artwork and info. Again I can find it by clicking inot each individual artist and hitting "refresh", so I just dont understand why it wont work with the "query all".

[Karellen]

so I just dont understand why it wont work with the "query all".

Because a flag has been added to the database that the items have been scraped already. So trying to "query all" multiple times will have no affect as it is already flagged as scraped.

Three ways to override this...
1. Using Refresh for individual artists
2. Remove your source, clear out your music database and start again
3. (not recommended) remove the flag from the database.

[longworthdean]

so I just dont understand why it wont work with the "query all".

Because a flag has been added to the database that the items have been scraped already. So trying to "query all" multiple times will have no affect as it is already flagged as scraped.

Three ways to override this...
1. Using Refresh for individual artists
2. Remove your source, clear out your music database and start again
3. (not recommended) remove the flag from the database. 

When you say remove your database, do you mean remove the source, then clean the library, then add the source back?? Because I tried that and same result. Or do you mean delete everything in the artist info folder as well as removing the source and cleaning the library?? I am happy to try this again, but I am not sure to what extent it needs to be removed. Simply removing the source, cleaning library and re adding does not make a difference.

[longworthdean]

Would artbeef help with this? I actually would like cycling multiple fanart pics when playing music and after a quick read of it, maybe it will populate the missing artis artwork and info too instead of haivng to do each individual artist?

[DaveBlake]

First @longworthdean please stop the endless full requotes of previous posts, it makes things so hard to read. Simply reply, any one that wants to can read back easily enough.

As @Karellen says "Query for all"  only scrapes additional informatuion and art for those artists that have not been succesfully scraped before. You say that you get artist art when you refresh from the artist info dialog and say no to using the nfo file it finds. This implies that you have created artist.nfo files for every artist. Did you do that knowingly? Did you for some reason export artists before there was any additional info (or art) to export? If that is the case then deleting those artist.nfo files would be a good idea, they are not helping.  Even if you clean out the library and start again, Kodi will find and use those nfo files. It always uses nfo when it finds them (their use has nothing to do with the "prefer online info" setting).

I am guessing that you want the artist scraper to find artist art online, and that you don't already have local artist art you want to use. Is that correct? Also do you have the Universal Artist Scraper installed and enabled, you should by default.

Finally I realised the other day that I had created a batch rescraping facility even when things have already been scraped. It is a 4th option in the list that @Karellen gave - setting the Information Provider settings (or just visiting them) from the context menu when on an artists node, and applying that "change" to all the artists.

Artwork Beef is a powerful addon, but I would get the basic artist art working first rather than drag another variable into the mix.

[longworthdean]

Yes I did the export to the new artist info folder, so every artist now has an nfo file in that folder. Maybe I need to delete that entire folder for now and re-export it after the scrape??
And yes I want the artist scraper to find art online for both the artists that have no art and also replace any local artist artwork that may be there.
Yep universal scraper is the default for both artist and albums.
I tried that option of changing the settings to "all artists" in the "change information provider", didnt do anything.

[DaveBlake]

Delete the artist.nfo files, and if you have nothing of use in there then there is no problem removing the entire artist information folder. It is these nfo files that are causing you the problem.

To get the "Change information provider" context menu to trigger artist rescraping you need to visit the provider settings from there, not just change them to apply to "all artists". Try that again after you have got rid of the nfo files

[Karellen]

Yes I did the export to the new artist info folder, so every artist now has an nfo file in that folder. Maybe I need to delete that entire folder for now and re-export it after the scrape??

No need to delete the folders. Simply perform a search for nfo then delete them all.

and also replace any local artist artwork that may be there.

Kodi cannot do that. You will need to remove your existing local artwork first. Even then, it will not download to the local file system.

I tried that option of changing the settings to "all artists" in the "change information provider", didnt do anything.

Either you have made a mistake when performing the steps, or your music file tags contain only minimal tagging and may not be enough to find artists or you still have nfo files that are blocking the online scrape.

Lets run through the steps again...

Enter your Artist listing, then call up the context menu as shown in image.
Select Change Information Provider...



The very first setting in the new pop-up box, change it from Set for this artist to Set for all artists shown and then select OK



Answer Yes to the next question...



Answer Yes to the next question and the scan or scrape will commence...



Be aware that if you have NFO files, then Kodi will scan the nfo files and not online. If you want online scraping, the NFO files need to be removed.

[scott967]

Hi Scott, thanks for the reply.
I should have mentioned. Yep I followed the wiki getting started pages. I set up an artist info folder as a separate folder. ITs in the "my music" folder, but my song files are in a folder named "All music" and the artsit info folder is named "artist info" so it is separate form the music files. I also did the initial loading into the library as per the instructions NOT having the "prefer online info" unticked. After loading into the library I then set up the artist info folder and exported. 
THEN I ticked the prefer online info and did the second scrape....this is what isn't working.
So going on what you just explained, because I now have an artist info folder the scrape isn't bothering to go online and get extra info because the artist info is populated?? Is that right??
Problem is the artists dont have any thumbnail pics or any actual artist info until I manually refresh them individually one by one per artist??
Log files...I will have to work out how to do that......this is all new to me.

I think maybe where you went astray is that what I do in this situation
1.  Update the library without scraping (uncheck "fetch additional information during updates").  This gets all my tagged files into the database based on MY TAGS (and embedded cover art).
2.  If you have found in the past that scraping normally finds the correct artist and album (for example, if you have artist and album MBIDs in most of your music file tags) go ahead and query all for both the albums and artists.  This should populate the database with online data and art.
3.  AFTER scraping I export to separate files (all types) with the option to "include items that have not been scraped".  Then I can hand-edit the nfo files if needed or place local art in the artist info folder.
4.  Doing a second "query all" will pick up these previously unscraped artists/albums which I have hand-edited.  (If you "query all" BEFORE you edit the nfos then you get the situation you found, where Kodi decides the artist was scraped because it found the nfo, even if that nfo is empty of new data).

Assuming you haven't edited the nfo files, I would just delete them all now, dump your library, and start over.  Or if it's just a few go into the album or artist info dialog for specific ones and refresh them.

Note that the artwork beef addon can help with managing artist and album art.

scott s.
.

[longworthdean]

Yep I think everyone seems to be in agreement that I need to dump the nfo files and that is the cause of the problem (well my fault for exporting them too early). I will give that a go thank you guys.
One question about the artist info folder: Once my library is all up and working, if I were to add a new artist , does that mean I have to export the files to the artist info folder again or does it update itself automatically?
Thanks for all the help guys, outstanding.

[longworthdean]

nd also replace any local artist artwork that may be there.

Kodi cannot do that. You will need to remove your existing local artwork first. Even then, it will not download to the local file system.

So where does it store fanart and images its scrapes online?? I ask this because lets say I were to update my computer and want to have the same images? At least with the artist info folder I can just copy and move it to the new computer....how do I do that (or can I) with the online scraped images and artwork?

[Karellen]

Yep I think everyone seems to be in agreement that I need to dump the nfo files and that is the cause of the problem (well my fault for exporting them too early).

Yes, get rid of them. I think you used the wrong export when you created the folders. You should have used item 3.4... https://kodi.wiki/view/Import-export_lib...lders_only

One question about the artist info folder: Once my library is all up and working, if I were to add a new artist , does that mean I have to export the files to the artist info folder again or does it update itself automatically?

It does not update automatically. The folder will be created when running either of the following Exports:
1. 3.2 To library folders- Will create the folder and, depending on the options you select, will export artwork and nfo files
2. 3.4 Artist folders only Will create an empty Artist folder so you can create your own nfo file and/or artwork to scan into Kodi.

So where does it store fanart and images its scrapes online??

It is stored in the thumbnail cache located in your Userdata (wiki) folder.

Have a look into Artwork Beef add-on which can be setup download images to your local folders... https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=258886

If you are using local artwork then read the wiki page here... https://kodi.wiki/view/Music_artwork

[burcs]

Never mind, I think I got it.