KODi Music Library Chaos - Artist Thumbnails

[M-K]

Hi Everybody,

I'm using KODi on a Raspberry Pi4 (LE9.2.8) and sometimes but mostly for testing purposes only on Windows 10 as well.
There have been always problems regarding the library, causing a lot of work to get it to the point I want to have it.

My structure:
...\B\Beatles,_The
there is folder.jpg that contains a photo of the Beatles. KODi should use this as artist thumbnail.
Sometime it does, sometime not. I have no idea how KODi's algo works in this case. Really no idea! KODi 18.8 & 20.1 behave very similar. No progress.

...\B\Beatles,_The\The_Beatles_1969_-_Abbey_Road
has folder.jpg that contains a photo of the cover. Nice when browsing...

...\B\Beatles,_The\The_Beatles_1969_-_Abbey_Road\2.0
all 2.0 FLAC and folder.jpg that contains a photo of the cover.
...\B\Beatles,_The\The_Beatles_1969_-_Abbey_Road\5.1
all 5.1 FLAC and folder.jpg that contains a photo of the cover.
...and so on.

Summarised:
...\B\Beatles,_The\folder.jpg ...>(Beatles Thumbnail, sometimes recognised, sometime not )
...\B\Beatles,_The\The_Beatles_1969_-_Abbey_Road\folder.jpg ...> (Album Thumbnail, always OK just for browsing)
...\B\Beatles,_The\The_Beatles_1969_-_Abbey_Road\2.0
...\B\Beatles,_The\The_Beatles_1969_-_Abbey_Road\5.1

Tags:
Abbey Road (2.0)
Abbey Road (5.1)
let's me distinguish between the versions. Works for me!

I'm not using _ (underscores) in my tagging.

Selection artist KODi is messing up what it finds on my source drive.
It seems to take the first "folder.jpg" of the first subfolder containing music to use this as thumbnail.

When building my library over the years I've most of the time manually changes the artist's thumbnail
As the library is grown very big over the years it is consuming very much time to do this again after a new
setup. This is required when updating to KODi20 (LE11=LibreELEC 11.01 on Raspberry). Because VNC isn't available
anymore, I can't do this headless remote on another computer.

BTW: Deleting the library from KODi using the Media -> Library -> Clean Library changes nothing. All is the same before.
I've no idea what this is really doing.


Q: I want to update to LE11 but I do not want to edit hundreds of artist thumbnails again. Any working ideas are welcome.

Thank you.

 

[HomerJAU]

You should implement the Artist Information folder to solve your artist image issue.

Read about it on the Kodi forum at top of Music sub forum.

Your music folder requires a separate Artist Information folder and Kodi set to that folder

 

[M-K]

Thank you Garry.

I did create the Artist Information folder, but as a start only all with A and B. And some typos.
Even a rescan on the whole lib nor a Clean library corrects the Artist thumbnails. Those remain incorrect.

The only way seems to remove the complete lib and rebuild it entirely.

 

[mister_eff]

Late reply, but I have this issue as well. My structure isn't as complicated. Basically just:

...\The Beatles\folder.jpg
...\The Beatles\1969-09 - Abbey Road [5.1...]\folder.jpg
...\The Beatles\1969-09 - Abbey Road [5.1...]\Artwork\*.jpg

I don't have an "Artwork" subfolder for every album, but when I do is when the library has problems finding the right thumbnail for the artist. I don't have an answer, just reporting that I have the same issue.

 

[HomerJAU]

Welcome to QQ @mister_eff

The ‘Artwork’ folder will not be seen by Kodi. You can have Artist fanart in the Artist folder, but I’m unsure if album artwork is supported, although I haven’t checked recently.

The Artist thumbnail used by Kodi’s UI is a file named ‘folder.jpg’ in the Artist folder.

 

[HomerJAU]

The only way seems to remove the complete lib and rebuild it entirely.

Apologies @M-K I just saw your post. I was away in the outback in July and August last year.

I think doing a re-scan of your Music Library will resolve that issue, from the Media settings, Music Sources, right-click (or long click) on the Source folder and a context menu pops up, click ‘Scan’ (or something similar) and then the option to do ‘a full scan’. I can’t remember the exact menu item names but that’s close enough to get you through it.

 

[HomerJAU]

@M-K

I just saw an even earlier post when I was away. Have you set a Music Source folder?

 

[mister_eff]

Welcome to QQ @mister_eff

The ‘Artwork’ folder will not be seen by Kodi. You can have Artist fanart in the Artist folder, but I’m unsure if album artwork is supported, although I haven’t checked recently.

The Artist thumbnail used by Kodi’s UI is a file named ‘folder.jpg’ in the Artist folder.

Oops I was unclear with my original post. I know that the "Artwork" subfolder isn't detected by Kodi. I was just saying that some of my albums have that and some don't, and the albums that have that subfolder cause the same issues that the OP is reporting (best as I can tell).

 

[M-K]

@M-K

I just saw an even earlier post when I was away. Have you set a Music Source folder?

Meanwhile I have. A lot of work to do setting this up. Result: It works. It was worth to do it this way.
I have always to keep in mind: Put first a new artist there before rebuilding the lib.

 

[mister_eff]

Meanwhile I have. A lot of work to do setting this up. Result: It works. It was worth to do it this way.
I have always to keep in mind: Put first a new artist there before rebuilding the lib.

What is setting up a music source folder, and did that fix your original issue with artist art and album art getting mixed up?

 

[HomerJAU]

What is setting up a music source folder

https://kodi.wiki/view/Adding_music_to_the_library

 

[CINERAMAX]

Question, Can we use Iso files and sacd iso or I need to convert to mkv and dsf?

 

[HomerJAU]

I know Kodi can play movie ISOs and I believe SACD ISOs, pretty sure. I can test.

I guess you could play ISO from the KodI file browser, as KodI can play ‘files’ they don’t have to be tagged at all if you just want to browse folders and files. But if you want live in that world, just use VLC or similar. You don’t need Kodi at all.

For music ISOs, you would lose much of the UI because ISO files can’t be tagged.

You can add ISOs to the Kodi Movie Library and use the Kodi Movie UI, but again where’s the music metadata? You could fudge it. Maybe someone could get something working but not me. I don’t want ISOs, waste of disc space. I only buy for surround and Atmos mixes nothing else. I never rip the stereo track, unless it’s the only track on an old concert DVD.

You could create MKV or MKA files very quickly for Kodi from your ISO. They are is fully supported. That’s my recommendation for Kodi.

You can cancel your ‘QQ Special Edition Media Player’ orders if you like? Full refund.

Sorry I can’t help further with music ISOs. But unless I see a request to develop something for the many (including me) I don’t want to get involved. And to be frank, you could convert your ISOs faster than I could try to customise Kodi to consume music ISOs. Limited time, help the many, not ‘one-offs’.

 

[CINERAMAX]

Understood. I know exactly how to create MKV's no issue there. Its an Oppo related peculiarity, actually now a Magnetar thing too, Sometimes rather frequently the Magnetar ( as well as all oppo's before it) Play nothing on the MLP track; solution is to skip to the dolby compressed track and switch back to MLP. There was also an Issue with the quadios MKV I forget. But its fine no cancelation required I have been looking for a sub 450$ solution.

 

[HomerJAU]

Yes it seems many BD players expect the AC3 multiplexed stream (within the main TrueHD stream on a BD disc). The rippers separate that out and make two streams.

It is possible to merge them back together to play on BD player that need that, indeed its even possible to just create an AC3 compatibility stream from the only TrueHD stream and merge those two. The AC3 is not identical to the original but who cares, you are doing this to play the TrueHD Atmos stream, right? Not the AC3 5,1 lossy stream.

 

[CINERAMAX]

Oh, I see. Well it won't be an issue now.