[linu30]

My music library structure is as follows:

\music\artist\album\track.flac

"artist" directory contains:

• folder.jpg
  fanart.jpg
  logo.png

"album" directory contains:

• folder.jpg
  cdart.png

As long as the library doesn't have to handle compilation albums, this works perfectly! Every single album/artist has complete artwork! But I have issues with compilations...

Compilations are stored in:

\music\Various Artists\album

"Various Artists" directory contains:

• folder.jpg
  fanart.jpg
  logo.png

So far so good - while scrolling through the albums in the "Various Artists" directory, my selected generic fanart, logo and folder are shown. But when I select an album from this directory, the fanart goes back to skin default and the logo disappears. The album does get the proper folder, as it has a "folder.jpg" along with the tracks, but the fanart and logo are now missing.

It seems albums within the "Various Artists" directory doesn't inherit the artwork from the above directory. Does this have to do with the specific name "Various Artists"? Does XBMC acknowledge that as a compilation directory? Because all the albums and tracks within the directory has "Various Artists" set as their album artist.

Weirdness doesn't end - I found, that if any of the tracks on the compilation is from an artist (simply tagged as artist, not album artist), and that specific artist is present somewhere else in my library, that artist's fanart and logo is shown when highlighting the track. All of a sudden, it seems more like a feature than a bug.

An example:

\music\Various Artists\Top Gun Soundtrack\track1.flac

The above track is tagged with "Various Artists" as album artist and "Kenny Loggins" as artist. Now, since I don't have any Kenny Loggins albums, when I highlight the track, the default fanart shows up, and no logo is present. However, I do happen to have a Blink 182 album in my library, complete with fanart, folder and logo for the band. Now, if I modify the tag of the above track and set "Blink 182" as artist (album artist is still "Various Artists"), XBMC suddenly loads my Blink 182 fanart and logo!


Questions:

Does my ramblings represent an intended feature of XBMC or is it somehow bugged? Are tracks on albums placed in "Various Artists" not supposed to inherit the fanart and logo?

If the above is an intended feature, then how do I go about adding artwork for tracks from artists who are not represented anywhere else in the library? I'll clarify:

For instance, my Blink 182 logo is stored in:

\music\Blink 182\logo.png

So I figured I could just create a Kenny Loggins directory and place my preferred artwork there:

\music\Kenny Loggins\logo.png

Seems logical enough. But no dice. After restoring the track's tag, I'm back to the Kenny Loggins track displaying skin default artwork. Although the path to the Kenny Loggins artwork is in exactly the same structural position as the Blink 182 artwork.

So again, how do I get a track, on a compilation to show, either my selected fanart for various artists, or, preferrably, fanart specific for the actual track artist?



If anyone read all of the above, you are insane, and I thank you for it! More so if you can help me!

[linu30]

Okay! So after some testing, this is what I found out.

Using the example above, I add a folder to the Kenny Loggins artist folder. I name it as any other album. I then add any given .flac or .mp3 to that folder, set the tags of the file to have Kenny Loggins as artist and album artist.

I rescan my library. I now have Kenny Loggins as an artist in my scrollable library along with the previously added artwork, Then when I go to Various Artists > Soundtrack from Top Gun, and select the Kenny Loggins track, the Kenny Loggins artwork is cached and appears!

After this, I remove the fake album from the Kenny Loggins artist folder, he no longer shows up as a standalone artist in my library, but his artwork is still on any track in the library where he is credited as artist.

Unfortunatly, this method isn't any I want to apply to all of my compilations. Is there anyway to accomplish the above without the workaround - Is there anyway to write artwork for an artist to cache without actually having albums from that artist?

[leepenny]

OK first off your folder set up is correct +1,

Make sure XBMC is showing 'Include artists who appear only on compilations)
Next thing install cdartmanager and run it, it will find all your artists (just make sure 'add all artists to database build or update is checked')

Then set it to build database, (this could take a while depending on how much music you have). It will find all relevant artwork for your various artists and put it in with your other (main) album artists folders. (it will also download extrafanart for your various artists folder) and tell xbmc where to look for those artists

Now one thing I would suggest is changing the various artists fanart to a blank one (so that the extrafanart underneath is shown)
that way when you play any tracks from that artist it falls back to extrafanart on fullscreen now playing.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vnzueqv0qo1nj1x/WWN79YffKb (blank dummy various artist fanart)

Youll find cdart manager finds quite a lot of artists (just make sure they are all named correctly- at the moment there are some issues with certain names as the scraper sites are changing format but no biggie)

What artists arent found will not have their own folder in the music section but i've found they're quite obscure artists (or one hit wonders from the 90's.

After this you'll have to go to your artists in XBMC and manually get artwork for any missing artists (but these will only be in the xbmc database not in your music folder)

If all goes well you should (at least) have some extra artists fanarts and logos to be going on with (remember fanart.tv is getting a lot of images on a daily basis for artists so keep searching cdart manager on a weekly basis)

(I have 1173 Albums with 2741 artists and only have about 10 that arent recognized but can still manually add fanart and thumbs)

(Also out of the 1173 albums 380 are compilations! so you can see it is a possibility to get a lot of artwork with a bit of patience)

PS - Yes I am insane for reading your post but so are you if you read this LOL

[upD8R]

Sorry to wake this old thread

Make sure XBMC is showing 'Include artists who appear only on compilations)
Next thing install cdartmanager and run it, it will find all your artists (just make sure 'add all artists to database build or update is checked')

Running latest version of cdART and Frodo final and I''m not able to find such an option in cdART. Right now it only sees my album artists.
Probably, I'm blind.

Any hint highly appreciated! Thanks.

[bulmandov]

sometimes i cant see images people post.

Chojins most often, but there are other times that somone will post an image and i know its there not a red X or something, but i wont be able to view it.

is this a browser problem, is there some simple thing i need to know?

[giftie]

Sorry to wake this old thread

Make sure XBMC is showing 'Include artists who appear only on compilations)
Next thing install cdartmanager and run it, it will find all your artists (just make sure 'add all artists to database build or update is checked')

Running latest version of cdART and Frodo final and I''m not able to find such an option in cdART. Right now it only sees my album artists.
Probably, I'm blind.

Any hint highly appreciated! Thanks.

The setting is in the Extra Settings category in cdART Manager's settings

[Buzniak]

XBMC goes at it the wrong way, for me anyways. Most of my albums have Various Artists, Ministry of sound and many others like that. For some reason i cant set fan art to specific albums anymore.

My file structure is F:Music/80's/Album name/
----fanart.jpg
----logo.png
----clearart.png
----label.png
----cdart.png

Plus if there's multiple discs,
My file structure is F:Music/80's/Album name/CD1 etc etc with
----fanart.jpg
----logo.png
----clearart.png
----label.png
----cdart.png
in each folder too.

But no art at all; I have cdart but no fanart.

USING Frodo 12.1, AEON MQ4 v3.0

Any suggestions.

THANKS

[kiddykokane]

OK Back to the Future after a couple Years searching for answers and calculating an another micro Galaxy here is a new treat maybe after planet "Krypto" so why not Logos and Extra/Fanart for each Album? example: while listen to my "John Williams" Soundtrack in this case ahwww... "Jaws" i wanna watch maybe Picture from the Movie/Set in my visos (fade Extrafanart),right? -RiGHT! and so why not a "JAWS" Logo ok gotcha! so now we got only this option to put Artist X-tra/Fanart in a folder and a single Logo meh! ...so result is with all my Albums ,right? - RiGHT! now i watch Luke Sky Walker ,The Big white Shark , Batman & Fritz Willy Mixed up with each album by Johnny All i say what we need is Artwork Logos and Extra/Fanart for each Album