User:Karellen/scratchpad
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scratchpad
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Music artwork are images directly related to an Artist and Album scraped into the Music library. The images are, preferably, of high quality, that are displayed when viewing the Album or Artist entry in the library. They may also be used as visualisations while playing music. The Music section in Kodi is able to display up to six types of artwork. This page will describe the different types of artwork available in the Music category of Kodi.
It is important to note the following:
- Artwork is skin dependent. This means that some skins display a small number of artwork types, while other skins will display most of the available artwork types.
- In previous versions of Kodi and in older wiki pages, the term Thumbnails was used to describe Artwork. Kodi has now moved away from referring to thumbnails due to the amount of confusion and concern it caused users.
- The base line for all artwork is the default skin Estuary. By default, Estuary displays the Basic artwork. Estuary can display the Extended artwork via additional add-ons.
- While high resolution images do look impressive on HDTV's it is important to be aware that the increased artwork size can negatively affect low powered hardware.
- See also: Music_library
Requirements
As the Music section of Kodi has many differences to the Video section of Kodi, please read the following to ensure your music and artwork are correctly scraped and displayed.
It is important to understand the fundamental difference between video library operation and the music library operation:
- The video library scraping is based on the file names to get online data. If the video files are incorrectly named, then there are no scraper results, thus no library entry.
- The music library scraping is based on scanning tags embedded in the music files. The library then has enough information to create a minimal library entry.
- Although you may have your music saved in Artist\Album\Song type directory, Kodi ignores this and uses only the filename and the tags in the music files. According to Kodi, there are no album or artist files per se, they are creations of Kodi from the tags.
- Scraping to populate the library is a two step process.
- The first scrape reads the tags embedded in the music files. If there is any embedded artwork, this will also be scraped and cached.
- The second scrape downloads the online artist and album metadata and artwork which is added to the library and cached.
- Scraping of additional artist and album metadata does not happen on library update (including first adding a source) unless "Fetch additional info on update" is enabled. Currently this defaults to disabled, for several reasons:
- It allows you to perform the initial tag scan quickly. In v17 and below, when Fetch additional info on update is enabled, the two scraping steps happen immediately each album and artist is added. This slows down populating the library. It is a background task, but still gives the impression that it is taking a considerable time to populate the library. This may cause users to believe that Kodi has stopped working and leads to many users stopping the scrape prematurely which causes further problems with library corruption. In reality it is slowed down by the online scraping, and not the local tag scrape. This will be changed in v18 where Kodi will perform the initial tag scan then, once complete, will commence the online scrape.
- Bad tagging makes a messy library and then the online scrape compounds errors and makes the library difficult to unscramble. It is far better for the user to perform the initial scan, find and fix the bad tags, then perform the on-line scrape knowing there will be no further errors.
- When scraping failed due to 503 server errors, this means that the initial tag scraping process has been interrupted, and the user had to manually query for all to fill gaps anyway. This is expected to be fixed for v17.4 if released or v18.
This page details the following:
- Adding and removing Sources
- Scan (import) your music collection into the Music Library.
- Troubleshooting common problems See also: Adding_music_to_the_library
Caching
All music artwork is cached. If artwork is scraped from local files, once it is cached, Kodi will not access the local files again. See Cache
Music artwork is cached as part of a multi-tier process. The code which assigns images to files runs and assigns images in the following order:
- Cached Album image
- This is all the embedded album art read by the tag reader and cached using the album name and album artist.
- Cached filename.jpg
- This includes an embedded image cached with the fully qualified name.
- Remote filename.jpg
- This is a filename.jpg on a remote share/folder which is then cached.
- Cached folder.jpg
- This is a folder.jpg which is cached based off the folder path.
- Remote folder.jpg
- This is a folder.jpg on a remote share/folder which is then cached.
- Remote foldername.jpg
- This is a foldername.jpg on a remote share/folder which is then cached.
Basic Music Artwork
The artwork in the Basic section is the minimum artwork displayed by the default skin Estuary with a standard install.
Note the following:
- The following naming schemes apply only to the artwork you have manually sourced and saved. It does not apply to artwork downloaded by the Kodi scraper or any add-on processes.
- To ensure auto-scraping of local artwork, there must be an Artist directory which then contains the Album directories. These album directories contain the individual songs for that album.
- Folder structure is only important if you want to use NFOs or local artwork. The scraper ignores directory names and will only read music tags.
- The folder structure is not too important to Kodi as long as you are not using local artwork or NFO files which currently depends on an artist>album hierarchy and handles compilations, collaborations, non-unique artist names and singles badly.
- It is useful having separate/multiple music sources that separates standard artists and albums from the more complex systems used by classical music, soundtracks, and compilations.
Fanart- Artist
Fanart, also known as Wallpapers, Backdrops or Backgrounds, are images that have, in most cases, been created by fans.
- See also: Fanart on Wikipedia
For Kodi, it means digital images, of high quality, that are used as full screen displays to enhance the user experience. The fanart displays the artist or band.
- See also: FanArt
The image to the right is a typical example of music fanart. It is specifically designed to match the 16:9 ratio of current generation televisions and monitors. This allows the screen to be completely filled by the image.
Required file properties:
Note: The resolution may be increased but ensure the aspect ratio is maintained
| File Type | Aspect Ratio | Resolution- recommended |
| *.jpg or png | 16:9 | 1920x1080 |
Naming and Saving conventions for your own manually sourced artwork:
| Music saved as | File Name | Save name & location example |
| Artist\Album\Songs | fanart.jpg/png | f:\Music\Madonna\fanart.jpg/png |
Artist Image
The Artist Image is also known as Artist Thumb or just Thumb within Kodi, and is saved as folder.jpg within the artist directory. They are high quality images of the artist or band members. The image to the right is displaying the Artist Image using the Infowall view in Estuary.
Required file properties:
Note: The resolution may be increased but ensure the aspect ratio is maintained
| File Type | Aspect Ratio | Resolution- recommended |
| *.jpg or png | 1:1 | 1000x1000 |
Naming and Saving conventions for your own manually sourced artwork:
| Music saved as | File Name | Save name & location example |
| Artist\Album\Songs | folder.jpg/png | f:\Music\Madonna\folder.jpg/png |
Manually Adding Artist Artwork
From within Kodi, you have the ability to manually change the artwork at any time.
Select the Artist whose artwork you would like to add or change. Call up the Artist Information page. As seen in the images below, there are two options titled Get Thumb and Get Fanart. Selecting either of these will present you the options as seen in the second and third images. Once selected, you will then be provided with a list of available artworks at the scraper site, or you can navigate to a local or network location as shown in the following images.
Choose either Get thumb or Get fanart on the Artist Information Page
The browse screen for Get Thumb (Artist Image). Select from Current, Local or Remote (online) sources
The browse screen for Get Fanart. Select from Current, Local or Remote (online) sources
Album Image
The album image is also known as the Album Thumb, Album Cover or as Thumb within Kodi. They are high quality images of the Album cover and each album directory would have its own album Folder image. They are saved as folder.jpg inside the album directory. The image to the right is displaying the album images using the Infowall view in Estuary.
Required file properties:
Note: The resolution may be increased but ensure the aspect ratio is maintained
| File Type | Aspect Ratio | Resolution- recommended |
| *.jpg or png | 1:1 | 1000x1000 |
Naming and Saving conventions for your own manually sourced artwork:
| Music saved as | File Name | Save name & location example |
| Artist\Album\Songs | folder.jpg/png | f:\Music\Madonna\Like A Prayer\folder.jpg/png |
Manually Adding Album Artwork
From within Kodi, you have the ability to manually change the artwork at any time.
Select the Album whose artwork you would like to add or change. Call up the Album Information page. As seen in the images below, select Get Thumb which will present you the options as seen in the second image. You will then be provided with a list of available artworks at the scraper site, or you can navigate to a local or network location as shown in the following images.
Choose Get thumb on the Album Information Page
The browse screen for Get Thumb (Album Image). Select from Current, Local or Remote (online) sources
Source Folder Artwork
The Folder Artwork, also known as Source Folder thumb, can be landscape, portrait or square images that are used to replace the standard folder icons when browsing your music sources in the files section. You will not see this artwork in the Music menu. This image file is saved directly within the Source directory.
To enable the image, navigate to Music>Files in the menu system. Highlight a source and call up the Context Menu. Select Choose Thumbnail. If you have saved the image in the correct location, it will be available to select immediately. If not, you will need to navigate to locate and select it. The image must remain in its original location once selected as it will not be cached. Deleting the image will remove it from view in the folder icon.
You are able to also apply the folder thumb by modifying the \userdata\sources.xml as follows
<source> <name>music</name> <path>xbms://192.168.1.100:1400/Music/</path> <thumbnail>F:\Apps\XBMC\thumbs\shares\thumb.png</thumbnail> </source>
Required file properties:
Note: The resolution may be increased but ensure the aspect ratio is maintained
| File Type | Aspect Ratio | Resolution- recommended |
| *.jpg | 16:9 | 640x360 |
| *.jpg | 1:1.5 | 400x600 |
| *.jpg | 1:1 | 500x500 |
Naming conventions for your own manually sourced artwork:
| Saved movies as | File Name | Save Location |
| Folder Artwork: | folder.jpg | f:\Music\folder.jpg |
| Alternative name: | <foldername>.jpg | f:\Musc\Music.jpg |
-------------------Edited to this point--------------------
Extended Music Artwork
To display the Extended artwork, an add-on will need to be installed to extend the image handling capabilities of Kodi and the skins. Once this is installed, it will insert extra artwork fields which become available to use in the Skins. The add-on can then be used to either automatically scrape the extra artwork or, due to the newly available artwork fields, you can manually search and insert your own local artwork. One example is The Artwork Downloader add-on which can be installed from the official Kodi repository.
- See also: Add-on:Artwork_Downloader
Note the following:
- The following naming schemes apply only to the artwork you have manually sourced and saved. It does not apply to artwork downloaded by the Kodi scraper or any add-on processes.
- To ensure auto-scraping of local artwork, there must be an Artist directory which then contains the Album directories. These album directories contain the individual songs for that album.
- If using the Artwork Downloader add-on, it is important to note the following
- The add-on has the option to use local artwork (if correctly named and saved) or online artwork. This can be selected in the settings page of the add-on
- If you have more than one episode in a single directory, the add-on will scrape the online and also the local artwork if correctly named and saved.
- Using the Kodi scraper will not download extended artwork. The artwork downloader is required to be run after the Kodi scrape process. i.e. you are performing two scrapes.
Banner
Also known as Wide Banner Icons. The image to the right shows the Banner view. They are images that normally contain recognisable characters or moments in the show. The banner image normally displays the movie logo which is of a size that is clearly legible. There should be no written advertising of Actors, Studios etc.
- See also: Wide_banner_icons
Required file properties:
Note: The resolution may be increased but ensure the aspect ratio is maintained
| File Type | Aspect Ratio | Resolution- recommended |
| *.jpg or png | 1:0.185 | 1000x185 |
Naming and Saving conventions for your own manually sourced artwork:
The naming convention for Season banner is season01-banner.jpg where 01 is the season number and season-all-banner.jpg for the All season poster and season-specials-banner.jpg for the Specials season
| Saved TV Show Episodes as | File Name | Save Location and example |
| BluRay & DVD Structure:
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banner.jpg/png
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f:\TVShows\Dominion\banner.jpg/png
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| One episode per directory in the TV Show:
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banner.jpg/png
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f:\TVShows\Dominion\banner.jpg/png
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| All episodes in TV Show directory: | banner.jpg/png | f:\TVShows\Dominion\banner.jpg/png |
Logo
This is the basic tv show logo or name on a transparent background. The logo uses the distinctive font of the tv show and is uncluttered by images from the show or actors. The transparent background allows it to be overlayed on other images or video with minimal impact.
The image on the right is displaying the tv show listing using the Logo view in the Aeon Nox skin.
Required file properties:
Note: The resolution may be increased but ensure the aspect ratio is maintained
| File Type | Aspect Ratio | Resolution- recommended |
| *.png | 1:0.388 | 400x155 |
Naming and Saving conventions for your own manually sourced artwork:
| Saved movies as | File Name | Save Location and example |
| BluRay & DVD Structure:
|
clearlogo.png
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f:\TVShows\Dominion\clearlogo.png
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| One episode per directory in the TV Show:
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clearlogo.png
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f:\TVShows\Dominion\clearlogo.png
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| All episodes in TV Show directory: | clearlogo.png | f:\TVShows\Dominion\clearlogo.png |
CD Art
Character Art, also known simply as Character, is an image of the main or prominent character in a tv show. It uses a transparent background in a similar fashion to Clear Logo and Clear Art. There are very few skins that display this artwork.
The image to the right displays the Clear Logo and Character Art in the top right corner.
Required file properties:
Note: The resolution may be increased but ensure the aspect ratio is maintained
| File Type | Aspect Ratio | Resolution- recommended |
| *.png | 16:9 | 800x310 |
Naming and Saving conventions for your own manually sourced artwork:
| Saved movies as | File Name | Save Location and example |
| BluRay & DVD Structure:
|
characterart.png
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f:\TVShows\Dominion\characterart.png
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| One episode per directory in the TV Show:
|
characterart.png
|
f:\TVShows\Dominion\characterart.png
|
| All episodes in TV Show directory: | characterart.png | f:\TVShows\Dominion\characterart.png |
Skin Dependent & Other Artwork
The following artwork requires a skin that supports that type of artwork.
- See also: skin
- See also: Add-on Search
Extra fanart
Extra fanart is reliant on a supporting skin and have exactly the same properties as the standard Fanart.
It is possible to download and save additional high quality Fanart which the skin can display, usually in a slideshow.
- See also: Extra_Fanart
Embedded Artwork
As of v17, Kodi supports embedded album art in files with ID3 tags, WMA tags and MP4 tags only. It does not support embedded album art in APE, Ogg or FLAC tags currently.
Compilation Albums
Took this last. The other big question is what to do with music that has more than one artist? All classical music is like that - composer, conductor, orchestra, soloist - although you would probably put albums under a composer folder, But you get collaborations in other genres e.g. B.B.King & Eric Clapton "Driving With The King". Also what to do when you have different artists with the same name e.g. John Williams conductor and composer of film music verses John Williams classical guitar player? In truth the folder structure is not too important to Kodi as long as you are not using local artwork or NFO files which currently depends on a artist>album hierarchy and handles compilations, collaborations, non-unique artist names and singles badly. Something on my long list to improve.
So that all said for now DarkHelmet's suggestions for compilations and soundtracks are good for ensuring that Kodi finds any local artist artwork etc. Personally I would put all the singles under the artist folder, but it depends how many you have and how you like to order your data. I would also put collaborations under a separate folder or folders too, knowing that Kodi can't cope with artwork or NFO for them. Also after using Kodi for a while I discovered the usefulness of having separate/multiple music sources. I started with my top level folder as the only source, as the initial post describes, but now organise my files so that my classical music, soundtracks, and compilations are all separate sources to the main (pop) music.
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