[fdemey]

Whenever my raspberry is connected to internet, I have thumbnails and info displayed for movies.
However, when the raspberry is not connected to internet, I can only see the info and I get the standard thumb, the one of the theatre seats.

Any idea how I can fix this?

[Milhouse]

Use only local artwork. Or pre-load your local texture cache (see sig) with all your remote artwork while you have an internet connection.

[fdemey]

Sounds like a lot of work for something that seems only normal.
Surely there must be an easier way.

[wgstarks]

Sounds like a lot of work for something that seems only normal.
Surely there must be an easier way.

If all your art is on the Internet then you must have an Internet connection to access it. If you store the art locally on your rpi then you don't need an Internet connection to access it. What is abnormal about that?

[fdemey]

Alright, let me rephrase the question then.
How do I back up those thumbs locally? My pie does it for all the movie info. Why not the thumbs? Some special box I need to tick during a back up?

[wrxtasy]

Its either:
a) When you scraped movies initially cover art was not downloaded possibly due to incorrect configuration of scraper
b) If you did scrape correctly, themoviedb may have been having problems or offline.

Solution:
Connect to the Internet and then go into the System > Settings > Video > Library > Clean Library
then
Video > Files >>> Highlight you Video Share >> Bring up the context Menu (C key) >> Change Content >> Now make sure the "Current Scraper" is set to "The Movie Database" >> OK > Answer Yes to Refresh

otherwise connect to the Internet
Video > Files >>> Highlight you Video Share >> Bring up the context Menu (C key) >> Scan for new Content

As Milhouse has said, it is a strong recommendation to structure your videos and movies folders correctly when first starting out with a XBMC library. That means storing all the metadata locally in individual folders named correctly and including your video files.

A DIY with all the info is in this post:
http://forum.osmc.tv/showthread.php?tid=...#pid110767

[miappa]

Milhous already provided the answer.
When you scrape, XBMC does not download anything except the information where to get it.
It will not download/cache anything until you highlight the movie or episode.

Your solution, just as Milhouse said; local artwork or using Milhouse´s texturecache-script (which I really recommend).

Edit: Of course I am wrong about this, this only applies if you don´t scan your library from Pi and use MySQL. I´ve been using MySQL a long time and forgot how it works without it. But I do remember that I tested this a long time ago and XBMC did not cache everything until it "had to", but most of it was cached.

Edit:
@wrxtasy
You should really add the pre-caching procedure with Milhouse´s texturcache.py script to your "how to". It speeds up your Pi a lot after initial scan.

[wrxtasy]

cheers miappa, that was my next mission in the endless quest for SPEED !

[fdemey]

If xmbc doesn't download anything except where to get info, then how come I do have the summary of each movie in offline mode?
It's just the pictures that aren't stored.

When running xmbc offline on my pc, both the summary and pictures are viewable.


So clearly, my raspbmc is doing something wrong or the configuration is wrong.



@ wrxtasy I always keep my database up to date and cleaned when I added or deleted files so that can't be the problem.

[Milhouse]

@fdemey: Are you using MySQL?

[wrxtasy]

If xmbc doesn't download anything except where to get info, then how come I do have the summary of each movie in offline mode?
It's just the pictures that aren't stored.

Yes I have seen this as well in the past.

As miappa suggested I have just run Milhouse's Texture Cache Maintenance utility:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...ght=period

This really confirms that local networked Metadata storage with correctly named folders for XBMC to scan really is the way to go. Out of 5000 odd media files I only had 28 that did not have their texture thumbnails cached and stored in the XBMC textures database.

fdemey, bite the bullet now and get yourself an easy to use external Media Manager. I use ViMediaManager running on a OSX iMac. I regret not using it sooner, especially once your media library grows. Scrape once only and store externally. The bonus is it makes your media library very portable.

Just do it.

[fdemey]

@Milhouse No idea what MySQL is.

Zero knowledge of coding or script running or database management. I just store every movie file in a separate folder, with date. I clean & rescan the movie list each time a movie is added or deleted. Every single one is scraped correctly. The problem just lies in the saving of the images.

@wrxtasy Thanks for the suggestion but I'm really not going to manually look up images for all 500+ movies with a media manager. If there's no way to have my pie save images like it does with the movie info then I'll just learn to live with it.

[wgstarks]

@Milhouse No idea what MySQL is.

Zero knowledge of coding or script running or database management. I just store every movie file in a separate folder, with date. I clean & rescan the movie list each time a movie is added or deleted. Every single one is scraped correctly. The problem just lies in the saving of the images.

@wrxtasy Thanks for the suggestion but I'm really not going to manually look up images for all 500+ movies with a media manager. If there's no way to have my pie save images like it does with the movie info then I'll just learn to live with it.

Perhaps Artwork Downloader might be a better solution for you. Just navigate to the program addons in whatever skin you are using and select the addon. It'll scan your sources and download whatever art you have enabled in the addon settings (make sure you enable local art as well). All your videos have to be stored in the proper folder structure but sounds like that's the case already. Just have to make sure you have enough storage space on your rpi for the art files. Individually they aren't very big, but they can add up if it's a lot of videos.

[wrxtasy]

@ fdemey - I think you misunderstand what a Media manager does.

Its all automatic man. A good one will look at filenames - build the correct directories and then automatically scrape the metadata - exactly the same as XBMC does.
You run it on an external computer - preferably the same one that you have your external media drives hooked up to. All the metadata is save onto your drives in the same spot as your movies.

The big advantage is SPEED whilst scraping all that artwork. I would never do it on the RPi again. Its too slow.