Blurry album thumbnails in WALL view
#1
Hi All -

On OpenElec, and in Aeon Nox 4.1.8, for my Music - I use the "Wall" view and "Show Icon Label" as it seems to work best in that you can view a reasonable selection of albums in one screen. The problem is however that the album covers end up very low res - poor quality - particularly so given it's an UHD / 4K TV.

On larger views they're fine - eg when I press info.

I did some research and did four things:

1. Deleted textures13 file
2. Deleted thumbnails folder
3. Created an advanced settings file

<advancedsettings>
<fanartres>1080</fanartres>
<imageres>1080</imageres>
</advancedsettings>

(i have a new Intel NUC - i5, 8 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD

4. Re-scanned using Universal Album scraper

And they still look crap

Any ideas out there ? Many thanks / Jim
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#2
What resolution is the source artwork? What resolution is the cached artwork (maybe your as.xml has an error and is being ignored)? Is the source artwork remote or local? Remember, crap in, crap out.

You can use the script in my sig to view the urls of the source artwork, and to (force) pre-load the cache if you change artwork resolution settings again in as.xml.

To view the artwork for an album:
Code:
texturecache.py jd albums "abbey road"
which in my case returns:
Code:
[
  {
    "albumid": 25,
    "artist": [
      "The Beatles"
    ],
    "fanart": "image://http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/music/b10bbbfc-cf9e-42e0-be17-e2c3e1d2600d/artistbackground/the-beatles-4ddaaf1a51231.jpg/",
    "label": "Abbey Road",
    "thumbnail": "image://nfs://192.168.0.3/mnt/share/data/Music/MP3/Beatles/Abbey Road/cover.jpg/",
    "title": "Abbey Road"
  }
]

For the thumbnail, view the properties of the source file to determine its resolution (width/height) - mine happens to be local, yours might be remote (http:// etc.)

To find the cached artwork, search using the name of the source artwork file, ie.:
Code:
texturecache.py s "Abbey Road/cover.jpg"
which returns:
Code:
000066|6/6ff4248e.jpg|0500|0500|0017|2014-07-15 12:00:09|2014-07-30 06:13:51|nfs://192.168.0.3/mnt/share/data/Music/MP3/Beatles/Abbey Road/cover.jpg

The cached artwork for this file is "6/6ff4248e.jpg" in my Thumbnails folder. The row above says it's a 500x500px image, but the height/width fields aren't always populated so best to open the file and check its properties to confirm the resolution.

To forcibly re-cache all of your album artwork:
Code:
texturecache.py C albums

If you only want to re-cache thumbnails:
Code:
texturecache.py C albums @cache.artwork=thumbnails

Note that any remote artwork which is no longer accessible (web site offline, artwork deleted etc.) will not be re-cached. If you only want to cache artwork that is not already cached, use "c" instead of "C" in the above commands.
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
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#3
Many thanks Milhouse

And i take your point re crap in crap out.

My artwork is a combination of 1) local (folder.jpg) - where/when i had it available or if not available locally, 2) remote via the Universal Album Scraper - it's probably about 40 - 60 respectively.

Where i have local I typically try and get at least 300 x 300 and where possible 500 x 500 or better.

Questions
--------------

1. When scraped by Universal Music Scraper - what is the typical resolution/quality?
2. What is the optimum resolution/quality - i may just decide to go and download album art for all my music a keep it local - is this a good idea in hgeneral anyway?
3. As mentioned the album art looks way beter when displayed as a larger image - for eg. when i press "Info" - So it's maybe the way XBMC processes the image when displayed very small ("Wall" view and "Show Icon Label") ?

4. Is <fanartres>1080</fanartres>
<imageres>1080</imageres>

good settings to have? ir 1080 on both ? is that a good setting?

Thanks again Millhouse / Jim
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#4
(2014-08-25, 04:28)AU Jim Wrote: 1. When scraped by Universal Music Scraper - what is the typical resolution/quality?

I'm not really sure, to be honest - you could ask in the UMS thread to get a definitive answer.

Much of the remote music artwork in my library is coming from fanart.tv, and a quick look around that site suggests that "Artist Thumb" images (thumbnails in XBMC-parlance) are often 1000x1000, while "Background" images (fanart) are 1920x1080.

UMS may also use other web sites as an artwork/metadata source, and I've no idea what kind of quality is available in this case. The UMS thread would know, though.

(2014-08-25, 04:28)AU Jim Wrote: 2. What is the optimum resolution/quality

That depends, as increasing the resolution of the cached artwork has consequences - more storage, increased processing power, more memory usage.

For these reasons, low power devices often default to really low resolutions when caching artwork. My advice would be to use as high a resolution as your hardware can support, and since your device is a NUC then 1080 for both fanartres and imageres should be fine, though it may cause the UI to be a little more sluggish than when you use lower resolutions.

Note that these two resolution settings have no influence over the quality of the artwork that is found by scrapers such as UMS, they only determine the quality settings of the cached artwork. It is the cached artwork you see on your display, not the original source artwork.

(2014-08-25, 04:28)AU Jim Wrote: - i may just decide to go and download album art for all my music a keep it local - is this a good idea in hgeneral anyway?
Relying on remote artwork is, IMHO, rarely a good idea, given that remote artwork available today may be gone tomorrow, something that becomes much more apparent when sharing a central library (MySQL) as, by the time one or more of your clients come to display the artwork (downloading into their local cache), the remote artwork is quite often gone (deleted, site offline etc.). This leaves the client displaying a blank image, which needs to be replaced in the library (and re-cached on all your clients, if you were to replace it with another remote image!)

I only have remote artwork in my music library as I don't really care about music on my test XBMC client (a Raspberry Pi - I use a Squeezebox to listen to music, not XBMC) and only scraped the music library for test purposes. For my movies and tvshows, all the artwork is local, so that I'm not left depending on transient remote artwork.

(2014-08-25, 04:28)AU Jim Wrote: 3. As mentioned the album art looks way beter when displayed as a larger image - for eg. when i press "Info" - So it's maybe the way XBMC processes the image when displayed very small ("Wall" view and "Show Icon Label") ?

That's entirely possible, it all depends on the scaling algorithm being used by your hardware. It could be cheap and nasty, which results in very poor image quality. You'd need to raise that as an issue with the developers (once you've determined that the cached image is actually good/high quality to start with, and is then being trashed when displayed at the smaller size).

(2014-08-25, 04:28)AU Jim Wrote: 4. Is <fanartres>1080</fanartres>
<imageres>1080</imageres>

good settings to have? ir 1080 on both ? is that a good setting?

I use 1080 fanartres and 720 imageres myself (R-Pi 512MB), which means those 1000x1000 artist thumbs are being squished down to 720x720 in my texture cache.

If you want to keep the cached artwork as close to the originals as possible, then 1080 for both fanartres and imageres should do the trick.
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
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#5
Awesome response Millhouse - thanks

Buried today but will get my face back into this tomorrow and report back to you/others here.

I may well bite the bullet and go local with all my album art - massive pia though

When i do get local art i simply google the album and click on "Images" and select the prettiest/largest - is that a good approach ?

Also is there a way to refresh the cache on a single album through the XBMC UI - as i'm less at ease in the unix/putty environment ? I had a pesky album art image displayed- i replaced the file (folder.jpg) deleted the crap out of it and it still persisted. it wasn't until i deleted the thumbnails and or textures folder/file that it eventually displayed correctly - this is when the word "cache" sunk in Smile

Jim
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#6
Not sure where to find decent music artwork other than fanart.tv. UMS experts might know more.

Refreshing the cache is not possible via the GUI. As you have discovered, once an item such as folder.jpg is cached, if you change the contents of folder.jpg you'll still only ever see the previously cached version, until such time as the periodic cache refresh process runs (it may run every 24 hours, or maybe longer) which compares cached items with the source and replaces cached items if the source has changed.

If you don't want to wait 24+ hours, there's the script... you could either delete the cached item (search, option s, followed by delete, option d) or just force a cache update (option C) for the relevant album, artist or song, eg. "C artists 'the beatles' @filter.operator=is" (the @filter.operator=is parameter simply forces the title match to be exact, to avoid re-caching any other artist with a similar name, as the default @filter.operator is "contains").

There are other options that can assist when performing bulk updates. For example, re-caching only artwork that has changed within a specified number of days or since an absolute date/time using the @cache.refresh parameter, so "C albums @cache.refresh=0" would force re-cache any album artwork modified today, @cache.refresh=1 would re-cache artwork modified since yesterday, and @cache.refresh="2014-01-01 12:34:56" would re-cache artwork modified after that date/time.

If you're not sure, just ask (or check the thread in my sig, it's probably been asked already!) Smile
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
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#7
Thanks Milhouse - you've given me plenty to consider.

And I'm increasingly in agreement that local art is the way to go, given degree of control, reduced dependencies and all. So what I'll probably do as the first line of attack is go though album by album and replace all remote with local. And then regroup, see how we're looking then. Phase 2 will dig into the SSH/codes fun.

Appreciate your taking the time /Jim
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#8
Hi Milhouse - so the plot thickens...

I checked a few albums randomly and found several with relatively high res local files - folder.jpg, one approx 1400 x 1400 and another 1650 x 1600. In looking at those images in my view: "Wall" view and "Show Icon Label" there's no discernible difference in quality/resolution/sharpness with images either side of these - both local at 300 x 300.

So even if i do painstakingly go thru these album by album (massive pia) - it wont make any difference to the visual appeal of the view - ie still crap (though i will have consistency (which i like) and reduced dependency on remote sites, which is good.

Incidentally I went to fanart.tv and downloaded a whole suite of images for Coldplay / Mylo Xylo:

Clear logo
Background
CD art
Album cover
Artist thumb
Banner

I've only ever used folder.jpg - So that they are picked up by all the different views, where must these other images be stored and how named ? - the album cover is understood - folder.jpg and stored within the album folder alongside the tracks - but what about the other images ?

Jim
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#9
Not sure about the naming conventions for non-cover art, I'm guessing fanart.jpg for the background but the Wiki probably has it covered. Artwork Downloader may also describe the filenames in its Wiki page.

As for the poor quality images, have you confirmed at what resolution the artwork is being created in your cache?

If it turns out to be cached at high resolution, but still displayed badly when shown at small size, then it's almost certainly the scaler used by your build/hardware combination that is the problem. This could probably be improved, but you'll need to get the attention of a developer familiar with this area of the code.
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
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#10
Understood - Thanks Milhouse
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