[ExTechOp]

I've set up MySQL so that I have a common database for all my separate Kodi installations. However, if I've understood the wiki correctly, each Kodi instance will still need the artwork (posters, backgrounds, actor images, thumbnails, all that) and there just is no way to share it from one central location. Apparently, each time you scan in a movie or a tv episode, it will poop the artwork files into its local installation directory.
This state of affairs is quite unsatisfactory (I have an Android TV where the installation has gotten so huge nothing can be upgraded, at all), and I'm surprised nobody seems to have done any work to rectify this. Please?

[izprtxqkft]

those of us on low storage devices reroute thumbnails to a usb drive or to a nas with path substitution

https://kodi.wiki/view/Path_substitution

then as long as you put your artwork in your media folders alongside your media your clients will use less than 1gb for kodi (likely 1/4 of that in reality)

https://kodi.wiki/view/Artwork_types

-----

another option is a centralized server but that does not resolve thumbnails, i use jellyfin which does all the work of file sharing, scraping and artwork storage - kodi is left to do what it does best which is display and playback

[jbinkley60]

There are a number of centralized sharing solutions which host all artwork and some, like the one I use, that also allow you to set the artwork size that is served to the clients to manage capacity on the clients.   It would seem like centralized artwork hosting is a nice feature addition for folks who are using the MySQL sharing option.


Thanks,

Jeff

[ExTechOp]

those of us on low storage devices reroute thumbnails to a usb drive or to a nas with path substitution
https://kodi.wiki/view/Path_substitution

I've read it, and this in part was why I made my request for creating a proper artwork sharing setup:

Sharing the Thumbnails folder with Path Substitution is prone to problems, primarily because the Texture Cache consists of two interlinked data stores - the Thumbnails folder and the SQLite database Textures13.db. Sharing the SQLite Textures13.db between multiple clients is not supported under any circumstances due to the liklehood of database corruption.

 

another option is a centralized server but that does not resolve thumbnails, i use jellyfin which does all the work of file sharing, scraping and artwork storage - kodi is left to do what it does best which is display and playback

Thanks, after briefly checking out Jellyfin it does seem like a working solution: a "Youtube clone" where I can watch all my files with a minimal setup. Does anyone care to comment on how involved setting it up in practice is?

[izprtxqkft]

Does anyone care to comment on how involved setting it up in practice is?

probably no worse than setting up kodi imo

installation - https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation

add your libraries, set their content and scrapers, normal stuff - https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/libraries

install the kodi addon - https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/kodi

import the jellyfin library to kodi


do take note this does not replace thumbnails caching in kodi, it will still do it's caching but from the jellyfin server not from tmdb/other