FanArt for SageMC - Tutorial & Finding Images

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Well, it is actually a question about both. My above post asked if there was a reson sagemc recognized fanart for one album, but not for another when they appear to have the same info. It also seems to have something to do with album art as well.

Any suggestions on how to best fix my music files? I'll take the time to do it, I just need a reliable utility. How did some of you other guys get your vast collections to show up correctly?

I'm actually right in the middle of doing this.

I think it is a two step process.

1.) fix all the id3 tag data, find album art, attach it to the music file.
2.) find fanart and add it to fanart directory.

If the tag data is wrong it causes all kinds of problems. Right now, i'm still on step 1.

I am using mediamonkey to sort through the music. Mediamonkey will go out and search amazon.com and correct all the tag information as well as download the album art. It's a very long and tedious process but it does work.

Only problem I have with the program is amazon.com does not always have the album art.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Peter_h

I'm actually right in the middle of doing this.

I think it is a two step process.

1.) fix all the id3 tag data, find album art, attach it to the music file.
2.) find fanart and add it to fanart directory.

If the tag data is wrong it causes all kinds of problems. Right now, i'm still on step 1.

I am using mediamonkey to sort through the music. Mediamonkey will go out and search amazon.com and correct all the tag information as well as download the album art. It's a very long and tedious process but it does work.

Only problem I have with the program is amazon.com does not always have the album art.

that is the same thing i am doing. answer me this. why when i update albums that already have album art does sagemc not recognize the album art or pull in the fan art?

example: i have a top 100 rock songs compolation with an aerosmith song in it that fanart works with. i have the exact same song in my aerosmith directory with the exact same tags and no fanart. what gives?

[MeInMaui]

Make sure you are running the latest SageMC pre-release and post a log file (see tips and tricks sticky) here after reproducing your problem.

[ehfortin]

Hi,

I've installed the latest version of SageMC (6.3.8b_11) and FanArt are working pretty well. However, I'm surprised that the context sensitive FanArt is not always working the same way.

For example, if I go in MyTV, if I browse on the recent recording, it is showing the FanArt per title. If I go in RecordedTV, it will work or not, depending on the sort option. Right now, with no filter, if I sort by title, FanArt are not working neither are they with "Grouped". If I put Intelligent Sort, Sort by Date or Sort by Title, it works.

If I changed the filter type, FanArt will, again, work or not but not necessarely for the same sort option. Right now, I just filter by "Movies" and if I'm in Sort by Title, it doesn't work. But it works for Sort by Date and Intelligent Sort.

Is it wanted this way or it is a minor bug? I would love it to work in a consistent way and, basically, to be always active when I'm over a title whatever the filter and sort option could be.

Let me know if I've missed something. Thank you.


ehfortin

[MeInMaui]

You didn't miss anything, I did. Retrofitting this fanart stuff into SageMC is very complex and is still a work in progress. Thanks for the feedback.

Aloha,
Mike

[ehfortin]

Hi,

You didn't miss anything, I did. Retrofitting this fanart stuff into SageMC is very complex and is still a work in progress. Thanks for the feedback.

Well, I hope it is not too hard to fix. I would hate being the reason why you are missing sleep time

SageMC is an amazing piece of work. I didn't really had a look at how plugins are created for Sage but I'm sure it is not trivial because there is not that much plugins that do as much as SageMC.

One thing is sure, I love it and I know it is because of it that I was able to keep SageTV up and running with Extender all over the place. Without it, the WAF was simply not there. Yes, being able to record show was needed but... a simple DVR was enough for my wife. With SageMC and the fact that I've put all her series and imported all the DVD collections on disk and that she can access those from any TV, I finally got the WAF needed.

Thank you very much for you hard work. It is more than appreciated.

ehfortin

[OferL]

Originally Posted by ehfortin

Hi,



Well, I hope it is not too hard to fix. I would hate being the reason why you are missing sleep time

SageMC is an amazing piece of work. I didn't really had a look at how plugins are created for Sage but I'm sure it is not trivial because there is not that much plugins that do as much as SageMC.

One thing is sure, I love it and I know it is because of it that I was able to keep SageTV up and running with Extender all over the place. Without it, the WAF was simply not there. Yes, being able to record show was needed but... a simple DVR was enough for my wife. With SageMC and the fact that I've put all her series and imported all the DVD collections on disk and that she can access those from any TV, I finally got the WAF needed.

Thank you very much for you hard work. It is more than appreciated.

ehfortin

What he said +1

[ehfortin]

Hi,

I had a strange problem this morning. I was adding some movie recording and I got 2 of them that were recognize as series. I then go back SageTV without SageMC and tried the exact same movies and they were handled correctly as movie, not as series. I never had this problem before 6.3.8b_11 (didn't tried 6.3.8b_6). Can it be related to the modifications that are underway?

I just wanted to let you know in case it could be a regression in the code.

ehfortin

[debennett2]

I have no idea what I could be doign wrong. I just downloaded the latest SageTV (Windows XP), the latest STV (b11 I think) and followed the instructions. I have a folder at c:\SageTV Fanart then three subdirectories (TV, Movies, and Music).

I'm assuming this was meant to work with recorded TV? Does it matter what type of file the recording is?

I get absolutely nothing after downloading a few packs that certainly have a good percentage of the recorded show names I have....and, yes, they are spelled properly.

Any ideas where to start?

Thanks,

[ehfortin]

Hi,

When you say you downloaded SageTV, installed it and put the latest STV (b11), is it implied that you installed SageMC 6.3.8 (full install) before adding the STV b11?

That's what I did. Then, I've created the fanart directory, and followed the instruction (went to "SageMC / Main / Global UI options" then, "Display / Fan Art Backgrounds - Enabled"). Finally, went to "SageMC / Paths" and put the appropriate path under Media Bkgrnd File Path.

Last thing, I created the directories Movies, TV and Music and put the jpg image under the appropriate directory with same name as the show (House.jpg for the House serie) and it worked just fine after that.

If that's what you've done up to now, it should work. If you have extender, you have to repeat the SageMC config on each one. If you have a SageTV client, you need to install SageMC in full and the STV as well and do the config as well.

Hopefully this quick summary will point you to something you may have missed (as I did the first time I tried it).

Let us know.


ehfortin

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Make sure you are running the latest SageMC pre-release and post a log file (see tips and tricks sticky) here after reproducing your problem.

It works now. Thanks. I got a new tag editor and it is fixing everything.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by debennett2

I have no idea what I could be doign wrong. I just downloaded the latest SageTV (Windows XP), the latest STV (b11 I think) and followed the instructions. I have a folder at c:\SageTV Fanart then three subdirectories (TV, Movies, and Music).

I'm assuming this was meant to work with recorded TV? Does it matter what type of file the recording is?

I get absolutely nothing after downloading a few packs that certainly have a good percentage of the recorded show names I have....and, yes, they are spelled properly.

Any ideas where to start?

Thanks,

DId you enable Fanart in the SageMC settings and defined the path where the Fanart is located?

Gerry

[popechild]

On the new b11, I'm having an issue when I try to disable the context sensitive FanArt in the Global UI settings. Mainly, it's not disabling, at least on some screens. It seems to disable it in the guide, but not in My TV, and in Recorded TV, it no longer switches based on the context, but it still shows the background from whatever show I was last on before I disabled it.

Otherwise, it seems to be working pretty nicely on the server when it's enabled. But it's pretty slow on the extender - slow enough that it'll probably prevent me from using it. I don't see myself putting up with a second long delay between almost every move in the menus for very long. Maybe it's because I have a number of networked import drives. Regardless, if you want it to be really useable, I wonder if there's anything that can be done regarding image locations or caching or something to help with the speed?

[Taddeusz]

Yea, I've noticed the context sensitive fanart will only disables in My Videos. It still switches fanart on the main My TV screen.

[panteragstk]

I have a bunch of simpsons, southpark and other tv shows in my videos folder. How would you recomend i name and organize them so fanart works with them?

[jpaddock3000]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I have a bunch of simpsons, southpark and other tv shows in my videos folder. How would you recomend i name and organize them so fanart works with them?

I would have a folder called fanart/TV
then I would have Simpsons.jpg, Southpark.jpg, etc.

You want the image name to be the same name shown in Sage for the name of the show.

Jason

[popechild]

Just tried the newest pre-release. It fixes the problem of not disabling context-sensitive fanart, but it still seems to have a problem. If I start sage with c.s. fanart disabled, it works great. If I enable the c.s. fanart, it works great. But if I disable c.s. fanart after it's previously been enabled, it gets "stuck" on whatever fanart was last shown for that page. So if I was looking at Lost in the guide with Fanart enabled, then I go disable it, when I go back to the guide the Lost fanart is still in the background, regardless of which show I'm looking at. Same thing for My TV and Recorded TV (I think). A reboot of the UI (at least on the server, haven't tried it on the extender yet) fixes the glitch, at least until the next time c.s.f.a. is enabled/disabled again.

EDIT: Just checked extender and it has the same problem. And it does the same thing on the videos pages, not just the tv pages.

[tmiranda]

babgvant - Thank you for a really nice utility. I'm just setting up FanArt and this is a huge time saver.

Two questions:

1. I followed this link but am still unsure of the status regarding "merging" your utility and stuckless'

Originally Posted by babgvant

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&postcount=281

2. Does your utility now scan actual TV recordings or just favorites? An earlier post in this thread indicated you were working on it. I have lots of shows that were "intelligently recorded" that I'd like to get artwork for.

Thanks,

Tom

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

babgvant - Thank you for a really nice utility. I'm just setting up FanArt and this is a huge time saver.

Two questions:

1. I followed this link but am still unsure of the status regarding "merging" your utility and stuckless'

My intent wasn't to merge the two apps, stuckless' implementation has more potential (as it can run to automatically resolve metadata in process with sage). Stuckless indicated that he wasn't going to support a central fanart location so I was going to implement that feature.

I looked at it briefly, but haven't made the time to really get anything done for two reasons:

1) I can't get his tool to resolve files for me
2) The tool is very complex, so it wasn't going to be any easy thing to add

Originally Posted by tmiranda

2. Does your utility now scan actual TV recordings or just favorites? An earlier post in this thread indicated you were working on it. I have lots of shows that were "intelligently recorded" that I'd like to get artwork for.

The latest rev supports this.

[tmiranda]

Thanks for the quick reply. I have the latest version so I should be good to go.

Not your issue but I was a little disappointed that many of the common shows I watch on the History Channel and The Discovery Channel do not have artwork. Maybe it's time to learn Photoshop....