[andydufresne]

I'm confused on how to best approach artwork.

If I use a product such as Ember Media Manager or Media Center Master to download artwork to use with Transparency do I also need to use Artwork Downloader and Artwork Organizer? Or do Artwork Downloader and Artwork Organizer become redundant?

I'm confused which products to use and which ones work best together. In the past I've used MCM, Artwork Downloader and Artwork Organizer but not really sure of what they are all doing and whether I needed them all. Any recommendations on a best approach with all these different tools to gathering posters, thumbnails, backgrounds, fanart, etc. and having it work the best with Transparency?

Thanks!

[PatK]

If you haven't seen yet, XBMC grabs a cover and a background when you scrape/scan in the movie. Third party products or add-ons will sometimes give you more options, but for the most part, I see the same backgrounds and cover art in XBMC as most of these programs get from the same sources. The benefit of using XBMC exclusively is that the images are automagically included in the 'internal' XBMC library... no fuss no muss. I do remember that Ember allows for images from select sources, but when you finally get them.. you still have to go through the scanning scraping procedure, which seems a bit redundant and extra steps and I'm unsure if the 3rd party programs follow the new 'Frodo' naming convention....

Artwork Downloader will make special 'extrafanart & extrathumbs' folders and populate it with a number of images, which some skins support for a rolling slide show of the movie in focus... also logo's and disc art are optionally available (pretty easy to set-up). On the TV side of things, support for season & banner art and a whole bunch of features that escape me at the moment. I do use this software, but caution those with limited CPU, there is a loading penalty.

Artwork Organizer will help you keep TV artwork and Movie artwork separate in slideshows and put artwork optionally in a central folder (as far as I can remember) I suggest you go each add-on's forum and get the final word on this.

[andydufresne]

Thank you PatK. I'm all for making it as simple and straightforward as possible. I think someone once recommended some of these third party products to me and I tried them but wondered if I was really gaining anything above built in scraper capabilities and the two add-ons in question.

Do you know if you need to run Artwork Organizer if you want a slide show of TV Shows/Movies at the home screen in Transparency? I'm assuming you do.

[PatK]

I'm not that familiar with Artwork Organizer, so you'll have to do your own sleuthing in their forum. But I can tell you that XBMC Frodo now has a slideshow screen saver add-on in which you can specify the artwork folder along with a few other parameters. Artwork Organizer could be used in this instance to collect artwork in one folder.

I'd encourage you to grab Artwork Downloader.. and I did note there was a feature for centralizing the artwork downloaded which would be perfect in your case. ( and the quickest way to get graphics up and running.)

If you are using Eden, the slideshow blanker is built in.

[calibos]

I thought this skin supported LogoArt and ClearArt. I have the options sselected on the Skin menu but they don't display in any view of info screen or when I pause a video etc. I switched to Hypbrid Skin and both Logos and Clear Art Display.

What am I doing wrong or what setting am I missing??

Thanks in advance for any advice

[PatK]

Just the List, Media Info, and Thumbnail views don't support logo's... the rest do. I'm not sure T! supports ClearArt, in the movie area at this time; the cover art takes it place...

[ronie]

iirc T! only supports clearart for episodes and shows it only on the video osd during playback.

[calibos]

Showing Thumbnail on the Video OSD during playback for me.

[ronie]

Showing Thumbnail on the Video OSD during playback for me.

i should add it's not enabled by default.
go to 'skin settings > tv shows - enable clearart'

if that doesn't do the trick, i'll need a Debug Log of the issue.