[Bryan_W]

I've apparently messed up something.
When browsing my music library, all 'various artist' albums are showing me fanart from an artist (specifically 10,000 Maniacs) that I don't even have in my library. Browsing by artists I get the same thing when I get to  the 'Various Artists" entry. I've deleted this particular jpg from everywhere I could find it...music, artwork, and thumbnail folders and have tried (thru 'artwork options menu for various artists) to assign another jpg. - Nothing's worked. Any ideas? Thanks.

[scott967]

I think the best approach is to ensure you have the MusicBrainz artist ID 89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377 assigned to the artist named "various artists" in your tags, or via library import.

scott s.
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[DaveBlake]

The way that v17 and before picks up artist art has weaknesses that can result in this kind of problem, and once it has it in thumb cache it can be hard to eradicate. I have PR on v18 that should avoid this issue in future.

Unfortuneately although I know people have had the same experience I have not got an immediate cure for you to try, but let's see if we can come up with something. Scott's suggestion is interesting, a little biy of SQL would get that set but maybe too hands on for you. I'm thinking you need to clean out the thumbs - both folders and texture database - but be nice not to remove everything. Removing all your various artist compilations by moving the music files from the music source path and cleaning the database. Then retag at least one album so that is has the mbid Scott mentioned. Then add back to the library. That might fix it. Sorry for lack of certainty....

Meanwhile could be interesting to see your music db, if you can upload it somewhere and PM me a link.

[Karellen]

When browsing my music library, all 'various artist' albums are showing me fanart from an artist (specifically 10,000 Maniacs) that I don't even have in my library.

You could change the image following this procedure... http://kodi.wiki/view/Music_artwork#Manu...st_Artwork

EDIT: He already tried that, when he says "and have tried (thru 'artwork options menu for various artists) to assign another jpg. - Nothing's worked." - DB

[Bryan_W]

Sorry to see that it looks like this is not going to be a simple fix.....even I'll admit that it's kind of a minor issue to be wasting time on, but I thought there might just be a "there's known fix for that" kind of solution.
Since I'm probably going to do a complete uninstall/re-install (you'll see why below), the following is mostly just for anyone interested......

1) All items displaying the incorrect background do have the correct "Various Artists MBID" aka - 89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377
2) Not only did I try to manually change to a different jpg, I also tried the "no image" option - neither worked.
3) Had a brief look at both the music db and the textures db - didn't see anything obvious.
4) There's actually "more to the story" that I didn't put in my original post because I didn't want to cloud the issue with unnecessary info......Here's a short version of  what I omitted:

The problem first occurred on my original "Laptop C: drive full install" and I was attempting to get rid of all copies of this particular jpg and never see it again.
I didn't really address the issue at the time because I mostly use Kodi on my tablet and it (even when using the same music source on a NAS) was fine.
Then came the "re-tagging with MusicBrainz project" and I went back to the laptop and a "USB portable version of Kodi".
I initially had no fanart problem on the portable version for weeks while the hard drive version still had the problem.

Then..... call me crazy..... an unexpected crash of the portable version initiated the problem on the USB also.....could be a stupid theory, but Kodi did crash and not long after that the problem popped up.
So, that's why after I tiddy up my tags a bit more I'm probably going to try the re-install just to see what happens.
Thanks for all the suggestions and I'll post back if I resolve the issue.

[DaveBlake]

Got your DB Bryan, I might get something from that thanks. Others have reported similar issues before, but I have never been able to repeat, hence never come up with a repair sequence. In (understandable) frustration users with this issue often start again, and so while I have ideas about the causes they remain unproven.

As I said, I think I have removed the causes with my current changes to v18 (at PR phase), but that is in theory (guessing at the underlaying cause) and still does not make a repair route. I would like to catch Kodi in the act!

I believe it starts with Kodi mis-identifying artist art. It uses an algorithm that looks at where the music by that artist is located and then for an image there. This can go wrong. Once an image is cached removing the original makes no difference, the cached image is used, and pursuading Kodi to change it impossible (as you have experienced). Thumbnail cache management is a little bit of a mystery to me - one more huge piece of Kodi to learn about - so my first step has been to keep the wrong images out of cache in the first place. But if I recognise how to get the cached image to change (without removing the lot) then I will share my knowledge.

[Mike_Doc]

What skin are you using?

[DaveBlake]

Well Bryan I can't give you a fix for your images (yet), and anyway if you are going to build from scratch it won't matter, but looking at your db is interesting.

You have quite a few albums with only 1 or 2 tracks. That is fine, Kodi does not mind, but quite unusual (I think, go on everyone tell me you all do it!).  Why is that? You just like a track, so have that an nothing else, or is it your test data?

What probably is signifficant for how your image issue arose is that you in effect mix various artist compilation albums in an artist folder with other albums. For example  ...Albums\John Prine\Beautiful Dreamer The Songs of Stephen Foster\ contains one song "07 John Prine - My Old Kentucky Home.mp3" that is from a compilation album so has album artist "Various Artists", then Albums\John Prine\ has other folders with albums by John Prine.

When v17 (and before) looks to find the artist folder for "Various Artists", it finds the one common to all the tracks with album artist = "Various Artists". In your case, with songs from compilations scattered about, the common folder found is D:LocalStuff, and if a fanart.jpg exists in that folder it will get used as the fanart for "Various Artists".

But that does not explain why you are unable to change it manually to something else.

Perhaps have one more go at setting fan art for Various Artsits from the artist info dialog - note fanart button not refresh.

Might be interesting to see in your Textires13.db file if you would like to post me a link.

[Karellen]

You have quite a few albums with only 1 or 2 tracks. That is fine, Kodi does not mind, but quite unusual (I think, go on everyone tell me you all do it!).  Why is that? You just like a track, so have that an nothing else, or is it your test data?

I do it.

I only save the tracks I like. My reasoning- as this is for MY enjoyment, why do I need to force myself to listen to songs I don't particularly enjoy just to finally arrive at a song that I do enjoy. I have quite a few albums saved with only one or two songs out of the normal 15-20 on the cd. But I don't mix different albums as the OP has done. Each album is always kept separate even if there is only one track.

[scott967]

Well Bryan I can't give you a fix for your images (yet), and anyway if you are going to build from scratch it won't matter, but looking at your db is interesting.

You have quite a few albums with only 1 or 2 tracks. That is fine, Kodi does not mind, but quite unusual (I think, go on everyone tell me you all do it!).  Why is that? You just like a track, so have that an nothing else, or is it your test data?

I will rip audio tracks from music video and use those as "music", mainly for syncing in Other Music Software to devices, but also can access within Kodi.  It's also common in east Asian music to have a "mini-album" or "EP" format that has one or more songs, and then has them again as just instrumental (often labeled as "MR") I guess for use as Karaoke.  These "MR" tracks I don't find useful.

What probably is signifficant for how your image issue arose is that you in effect mix various artist compilation albums in an artist folder with other albums. For example  ...Albums\John Prine\Beautiful Dreamer The Songs of Stephen Foster\ contains one song "07 John Prine - My Old Kentucky Home.mp3" that is from a compilation album so has album artist "Various Artists", then Albums\John Prine\ has other folders with albums by John Prine.

When v17 (and before) looks to find the artist folder for "Various Artists", it finds the one common to all the tracks with album artist = "Various Artists". In your case, with songs from compilations scattered about, the common folder found is D:LocalStuff, and if a fanart.jpg exists in that folder it will get used as the fanart for "Various Artists".

But that does not explain why you are unable to change it manually to something else.

Perhaps have one more go at setting fan art for Various Artsits from the artist info dialog - note fanart button not refresh.

Might be interesting to see in your Textires13.db file if you would like to post me a link.

My experience is with the VA MBID and Uni Artist Scraper, I get URLs for remote art that's appropriate in strFanart.  I have not had trouble on general selecting it in the UI and getting it set in the art table.  But all my "VA" album artist albums are in the first subfolder level of a "Various Artists" folder.

scott s.
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[Bryan_W]

Well........
1) The problem is fixed...... After trying Dave's original suggestions regarding thumbs/textures/moving compilations etc. and having no success, I did a fresh install.

2) While always fun to have the practice, the fresh install was probably NOT the solution. I think (especially after reading Dave's "three levels up" comment in  the Export/Import thread today) the actual underlying cause was due to the fact that instead of deleting the unwanted image, I had only moved it up a few levels from where my "KodiArt folder" is..... as in..... originally the unwanted jpg was in D:Localstuff\Kodiart\Artist\extrafanart and I only moved it to D:Localstuff thinking that Kodi wouldn't look there. Basically, I think I just lucked out by finding (and deleting) it at about the same time I did the fresh install.

As for Dave's subsequent posts/comments regarding my db/music/music location issues.....
1) For simplicity (and perhaps slightly for legal reasons) I'm going to say that the reason for the incomplete albums (1-2 tracks) is that when purchasing music online I don't always want to spend the money for the entire album.

2) Prior to this whole "MusicBrainz re-tagging project", I did have MOST of my "Various Artists" releases as subfolders of a folder I named "Compilations". I use the word most because I'll admit that in some of the "incomplete album" cases it just seemed easier to "lie to Kodi" about the albumartist and whether or not it was really a release with different artists.
I'm not sure if that was the case with the cited Stephen Foster/John Prine example but I know that with some of my 1-2 track compilation albums that originally were in the proper VA folder, I did decide to make them a subfolder of the actual artist even if they had the VA MBID.  Basically just an experiment, my thinking was, "If the newly tagged track now has albumartist tag of VA along with the proper MBID and an artist tag of actual performer along with his/her proper MBID  let me see if Kodi cares if I put the album with the rest of 'their' albums."

Now, with that all said.....
Since it seems that the general consensus is that I should abort my experiment and have everything with an albumartist of "Various Artists" and MBID of 89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377 as a separate subfolder of the VA folder, I'm now questioning my entire plan for my library structure.
My plan was to divide my collection between Classical and "everything else". My reasoning for this was to perhaps make node/playlist creation easier. To accomplish this my hierarchy would be - Music\Classical\Artist and Music\Modern\Artist. Since both divisions would have their own VA releases, would I be creating problems by having a Various Artists folder for each "branch"? Should I not divide into Classical/Modern and just have an "All my Music"\Artists structure? Or go the other way and have three "branches" ....Classical\Modern\Various Artists, where the Various Artists branch would contain all compilations regardless of "type"?

Thanks again for all the input and your "reading time".

[scott967]

But you still should be able to change the current fanart to any local or scraped (remote) image in the artist music information dialog for "various artists".  Though VA does have some special handling in that the display name is localized.

scott s.
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[DaveBlake]

Assuming my work is eventually approved v18 will handle all this better.
But let's discuss v17 and music file structure

Now, with that all said.....
Since it seems that the general consensus is that I should abort my experiment and have everything with an albumartist of "Various Artists" and MBID of 89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377 as a separate subfolder of the VA folder, I'm now questioning my entire plan for my library structure.
My plan was to divide my collection between Classical and "everything else". My reasoning for this was to perhaps make node/playlist creation easier. To accomplish this my hierarchy would be - Music\Classical\Artist and Music\Modern\Artist. Since both divisions would have their own VA releases, would I be creating problems by having a Various Artists folder for each "branch"? Should I not divide into Classical/Modern and just have an "All my Music"\Artists structure? Or go the other way and have three "branches" ....Classical\Modern\Various Artists, where the Various Artists branch would contain all compilations regardless of "type"?

As I heard back from others having part albums is fairly normal, and Kodi does not mind at all. As you know it is fussy about manually edited tags and mbid tags matching up consistently - if you edit names then you need to edit mbids to match.

The issues with folder structure all relate to locating local art work (and nfo files). lf you do not have local art then the folder structure could be completely flat, or mixed (impractical form a human viewpoint, but Kodi would handle it). But Kodi v17 and below can look for art anywhere common to the music source paths.

Also if you have "Fetch info on update" enabled then the processing of various artist compilations before individual artists can also result in jumbled art. Hence one reason why I recommend in v17 and below leaving that setting disabled, and using "Query for all " from artists and albums nodes to fetch art and info after the library is fully populated.

My advise would be this:
a) Yes separate Classical from pop, have them as separate musc sources too.
b) Have as many compilation folders as you like, but don't leave random art where Kodi might find it.
c) Leave "Fetch info on update" disabled.

Classical music often has more than one album artist e.g. composer, conductor, orchestra (the Musicbrainz entries vary, but the sytle guidelines advise this way), so attempts to have local art will have mixed success. I organise my Classical music albums under composer, with the mixed one under a "Various Composers" folder, but I avoid having folder.jpg files anywhere except within the album folders alongside the music.

As I said v18 should be better at this.

[Bryan_W]

@ Scott - Get your point.  Can't explain why the fanart wouldn't change... it wasn't for the lack of trying.


@Dave - Thanks for the tips/advise. At present I believe that my artwork storage structure for the most part meets with Kodi's approval. It does contain duplicates of the folder.jpg's that are in my music storage and haven't noticed any problems but I can batch renamed or remove them just to make sure.

As for v18 improvements, I still intend to maintain a portable test version but this after this weird fanart issue I'm a little hesitant to try either a krypton portable or a leia version..... Not to worry though, after this latest problem is a distant memory I'll try to bork everything up again.