Central FanArt Folder Improvments

[evilpenguin]

Forking a little bit from this thread I think we need to add some improvements to the central fanart folder implementation.

First of all, I think we need to make it mandatory for fanart usage. I know people like organizing their media in their own way, but having looked at Mike's code that searches for fanart in the multiple supported formats I personally think its a level of complexity that's completely unnecessary. Especially considering that there are at least three tools available that will do all of the downloading/organizing automagically.

Secondly, I'm proposing a modification the layout. Rather than have the images in the base folder I recommend making a folder for each show so that we can easily store multiple types of fanart.

example:

CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\background.jpg
CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\posters.jpg
CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\banners.jpg
CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\Actors\Ben Browder.jpg
CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\Actors\Claudia Black.jpg

I know there are also season specific banners/posters but after seeing a lot of them I think overall their availability is spotty and the quality of the ones that exist are pretty iffy. Usually its just the normal banner/poster with text poorly photoshopped on top.

Thoughts?

[Arioch5]

I love the idea of a standard layout and I don't even write mods.

However, the current programs that scrape data don't work for sage recordings do they? It's just movies and imported videos?

That being the case I would hate to have to go through all of my tv series creating folders and renaming all of the fanart. If I'm wrong and one of the (mediaScraper,BMT) automated programs works for TV series just let me know which one and I'll happily just reindex my TV in the new format.

[jaminben]

Meh, I didn't see this post until it was too late and after I posted in the other thread. Oh well, its in here now

I agree, seeing as we now have the ability to pull in season/episode specific images using tools such as yours. What we also need is a standard naming policy for all these image types rather than folder.jpg etc.

Pehaps a more relative name could come in the form of what the image is going to be used for. A few examples would be:

Smallville_banner.jpg
Smallville_season_banner.jpg
Smallville_background.jpg
etc.

However this then gets confusing if you were to have more than one season of a particular show. The naming then needs to be different so the images dont clash.

Smallville_S01_banner.jpg
Smallville_S01_season_banner.jpg
Smallville_S01_background.jpg

Maybe the answer is in the fanart folder structure?

\\Central_folder\Smallville\Season_One\
Smallville_banner.jpg
Smallville_season_banner.jpg
Smallville_background.jpg

\\Central_folder\Smallville\Season_Two\

Smallville_banner.jpg
Smallville_season_banner.jpg
Smallville_background.jpg

I don't know, I've been thinking about this for awhile now and whatever solution I think I find, I then find a reason why thats not a good idea after all.

[MeInMaui]

I like the idea of a unified central file structure. However, with the level of complexity EP described, I don't think it is a good idea to code all of the search logic in the STV. It is already a beast that I'd rather not ever look at again.

I think we should try to enlist a java programmer to write a fan art search class to handle all of the heavy lifting. It could easily be put into a separate JAR file and then be utilized by SageMC and any imports for the default STV.

Aloha,
Mike

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I like the idea of a unified central file structure. However, with the level of complexity EP described, I don't think it is a good idea to code all of the search logic in the STV. It is already a beast that I'd rather not ever look at again.

Tell me about it, I've just worked through your code and after several days of looking at it I still dont get it
I did however manage to work out the important bits and can now allow the user to specify a seperate central folder for each image type that EP can grab from his scraper. Its very basic but it does seem to work.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Arioch5

I love the idea of a standard layout and I don't even write mods.

However, the current programs that scrape data don't work for sage recordings do they? It's just movies and imported videos?

That being the case I would hate to have to go through all of my tv series creating folders and renaming all of the fanart. If I'm wrong and one of the (mediaScraper,BMT) automated programs works for TV series just let me know which one and I'll happily just reindex my TV in the new format.

Given a series name and a original airdate mediaScraper will be able to pull down metadata as of the next release.

And you shouldn't have to organize anything by hand, a tool should do it all for you.

Originally Posted by jaminben

Maybe the answer is in the fanart folder structure?

\\Central_folder\Smallville\Season_One\
Smallville_banner.jpg
Smallville_season_banner.jpg
Smallville_background.jpg

I like having a folder for specific seasons. I guess its arbitrary but folders seem cleaner to me than long file names.

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I think we should try to enlist a java programmer to write a fan art search class to handle all of the heavy lifting. It could easily be put into a separate JAR file and then be utilized by SageMC and any imports for the default STV.

Personally, and maybe this is a little extreme, but I'm talking about abandoning searching going forward and only checking a single spot for the file...

if (exists CENTRAL_FANART_FOLDER + "\\" + SERIES_NAME + "\\background.jpg")
if (exists CENTRAL_FANART_FOLDER + "\\" + SERIES_NAME + "\\" + SEASON_NUM + "\\background.jpg")

And if you want in on the cool stuff fanart enables get on board and use one of the tools to organize your fanart, otherwise enjoy the blue background. I don't think its an unreasonable request given that it makes development exponentially easier.

As for the series name, with the improvements Sage is working on for their metadata we should be able to isolate the series name from the episode name for imported videos so this should start working much better than it is now.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

As for the series name, with the improvements Sage is working on for their metadata we should be able to isolate the series name from the episode name for imported videos so this should start working.

Do you have to keep teasing me with that bit of info, you know I'm waiting for it

*checks email again*

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Personally, and maybe this is a little extreme, but I'm talking about abandoning searching going forward and only checking a single spot for the file...

if (exists CENTRAL_FANART_FOLDER + "\\" + SERIES_NAME + "\\background.jpg")
if (exists CENTRAL_FANART_FOLDER + "\\" + SERIES_NAME + "\\" + SEASON_NUM + "\\background.jpg")

Thats not a bad idea, would save alot of hassle, the fanart folder would become very messy though.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Do you have to keep teasing me with that bit of info, you know I'm waiting for it

*checks email again*

Yeah, my bad, I've still gotta test it and give some feedback to Sage.

Edit: Sweet, didn't even notice my 2000th post Do I get SageTVaholic @ 2500?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I like the idea of a unified central file structure. However, with the level of complexity EP described, I don't think it is a good idea to code all of the search logic in the STV. It is already a beast that I'd rather not ever look at again.

I think we should try to enlist a java programmer to write a fan art search class to handle all of the heavy lifting. It could easily be put into a separate JAR file and then be utilized by SageMC and any imports for the default STV.

Aloha,
Mike

I'd be willing to write a quick and simple Java api for abstracting the Fanart and making it easier and more consistent for STV code to utilize the Fanart.

I was thinking about something like,

sagex_fanart_GetFanart(MediaFile|Airing|Show)

A single Api call can do all the work of finding the appropriate .jpg to return and it simplifies the STV code for each plugin that wants to access fanart (centralized or not).

This api would be a single jar with no dependencies and not tied to BMT directly (although BMT would certainly use it).

I could also add other fanart api calls as needed.

What do you think?

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by stuckless

What do you think?

That would be awesome

Originally Posted by stuckless

I could also add other fanart api calls as needed.

You mean like season specific cover art/banners? That would be even more awesome

[stuckless]

i'll put together a simple library and get some feedback...

I think that it could certainly support season specific cover art/banners, etc, but more importantly, it could be smart enough to pull banners/coverart from other seasons, if the one being requested didn't exist. (probably optional)

I think that moving all that logic to java and then allowing all plugin developers to utilize one source for getting fanart makes sense... when there's bugs... we only need to fix it in one place.

I think that initially it would work with the existing SageMC defined locations, but later we could have it work a more structured environment that EP is outlining... and the best part, is that you wouldn't have to change the STV if we changed the fanart locations

[evilpenguin]

Well, we'd want at least one function call per image type.

getBackground(MediaFile|Airing|Show)
getBanner(MediaFile|Airing|Show)
getPoster(MediaFile|Airing|Show)
getSeason???(#,MediaFile|Airing|Show)

And if nothing is found for the getSeason???() call, have it just default to the non-season version of the image.

Also, I don't see a need to mess with episode thumbnails, they can always just be placed next to the original video and named accordingly.

[jaminben]

Ok, I'm going to throw something out there which is proberly over the top but none the less I would really like to see in SageMC. I don't know how it should work but I'll try and explain how I think it could work.

So what I'm after is a way of choosing the fan art background to use from within SageMC and more specifically the screen its going to be used on. I figured using the scraper we could pull in all the backgrounds which are available for a specific show like Star Wars.
This would be triggered on demand by the user and the downloaded images would be stored in a temp folder. The user could then scroll threw all the available backgrounds and select one.
Once a new background has been selected the images stored in the temp folder would get deleted. This could also be expanded upon to take advantage of all the other images available. I've made a s rough mock-up of what the background menu could look like using studio. I know its not impossible to do but no doubt would take a lot of time and effort. But here's hoping it gets someones attention

Anyway its just an idea

[evilpenguin]

That'd be pretty doable.

All you'd need to do is expand on my folder implementation and add a folder for each type of fanart

CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\background\someBackground.jpg
CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\background\someBackground_thumb.jpg
CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\background\anotherBackground.jpg
CentralFanArtPath\TV\Farscape\background\anotherBackground_thumb.jpg

And then have another call that returns an array of background paths

ARRAY getAllBackground(MediaFile|Airing|Show)
ARRAY getAllBackgroundThumbs(MediaFile|Airing|Show)

[stuckless]

One other thing to consider is that maybe, once the finalized "central" folder has been implemented, maybe you account for having multiple banners, posters, and backgrounds. Then, still using the same "GetBackground(Mediafile)" call, it could be optionally configured to return a random background/banner, etc.

EDIT: I see EP beat me to the punch

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

That'd be pretty doable.

I personally would like to see something like this, but is it a good idea or complete waste of time and effort? Do you think people would use it or would it be "this is cool" for the first three backgrounds then get forgotten about?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by stuckless

One other thing to consider is that maybe, once the finalized "central" folder has been implemented, maybe you account for having multiple banners, posters, and backgrounds. Then, still using the same "GetBackground(Mediafile)" call, it could be optionally configured to return a random background/banner, etc.

I thought about that, but then you have to consider that some of the fanart you get from the internet is pretty bad. I don't want every time I go into a videos details screen to be a game of Russian Roulette for my eyes

[stuckless]

That's where randomizing the backgrounds can be a plus.... the user doesn't really need to set a static background, but rather they get a potentially different one each time they go into the media file.

EP, i see you point as well Maybe randomizing backdrops could be bad... especially if you have kids

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by stuckless

it could be optionally configured to return a random background/banner, etc.

Or have it slide in/out like the default UI does on user inactivity for show images. Very cool effect which I've tried to copy but failed miserably.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by stuckless

That's where randomizing the backgrounds can be a plus.... the user doesn't really need to set a static background, but rather they get a potentially different one each time they go into the media file.

EP, i see you point as well Maybe randomizing backdrops could be bad... especially if you have kids

Perhaps a combo: have it download everything, have random as an option, but also be able to delete images from the STV. That way you could still get everything automatically but easily be able to weed out the crap images with the remote.