[sstavross]

1. Again you can enable/disable this zooming in and out in the skin's settings.

Hello, I need little help with this Add-On

I want to do exactly the opposite of the user you helped, When I enable this addon I see the pictures but they are statics, I want to have them displayed with zoom in/out effect to give a little movement effect to the background, but I can´t find any zoom setting in confluence EDEN Skin settings.

If there is no Zoom effect control in Confluence how can I mode this add-on to have movement (like artic slideshow for screensaver).

Thank you!

Hi!

Just now saw your post... Well, I don't know how to enable zoom in/out in the default confluence EDEN Skin. You need to modify and add some code to the OSD.xml file. But You can install this mod of confluence: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=129733. This has the zoom in/out you want, plus some extras. It is the skin I use everyday, and it is very lite too!

[kiboy6]

Sounds nice. Thanks for the answer. However, how about using the "fallback" folder for when a new artist's photos are in the process of being downloaded? That way, we could create a folder with only one picture in it (be it black, our XBMC background etc.) and have that display, right until the moment when the first image gets downloaded for a new artist? I'd much rather like that, instead of having it display pictures of the previous artist.

I'll have to look into that. It will require another setting in the preferences (which are borderline too confusing anyway), but it is, in theory, doable. I just need to decide if it's something that really *should* be added. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Definitely..I think something like this would be an essential improvement to this addon. This addon is such amazing eye candy but with a slow and/or congested internet connection the wrong artist does get displayed for quite some time sometimes. This significantly reduces the show-offy appeal of the addon. So, anything that could ensure that an incorrect artist is never shown would be an essential improvement in my view....Hetoft's suggestion seems like a very sensible method.

I have another small (I hope !) feature request. XBMC supports multiple artists in ID3 tags. If the two artists are separated by " / " the song will show up in the library under both artists.

However I think that whenever Artist Slideshow tries to get images for such a track it reads the total ARTIST field entry as a single artist. (Ie. It would read Nicki Minaj / Rihanna as a single artist and return no results.) If this behaviour is currently as i think it is would it be possible to change it to return results either for both artists or just the first one?

Thanks so much - love this addon so deeply!

[pkscout]

I have another small (I hope !) feature request. XBMC supports multiple artists in ID3 tags. If the two artists are separated by " / " the song will show up in the library under both artists.

However I think that whenever Artist Slideshow tries to get images for such a track it reads the total ARTIST field entry as a single artist. (Ie. It would read Nicki Minaj / Rihanna as a single artist and return no results.) If this behaviour is currently as i think it is would it be possible to change it to return results either for both artists or just the first one?

I'll take a look. It shouldn't be too hard to at least parse the string and get the first artist, but supporting both artists is probably going to be something of a PITA. So no promises there.

[Martijn]

I have another small (I hope !) feature request. XBMC supports multiple artists in ID3 tags. If the two artists are separated by " / " the song will show up in the library under both artists.

However I think that whenever Artist Slideshow tries to get images for such a track it reads the total ARTIST field entry as a single artist. (Ie. It would read Nicki Minaj / Rihanna as a single artist and return no results.) If this behaviour is currently as i think it is would it be possible to change it to return results either for both artists or just the first one?

I'll take a look. It shouldn't be too hard to at least parse the string and get the first artist, but supporting both artists is probably going to be something of a PITA. So no promises there.

If possible also split on:
ft.
feat.
&

Scrapers also split on this

[pkscout]

If possible also split on:
ft.
feat.
&

OK, the first two don't seem to bad. I'm pretty sure few if any artists have ft. or feat. in their name. But how do I tell the difference between the group Hall & Oates and two separate artists with one named Hall and the other Oates?

[Martijn]

If possible also split on:
ft.
feat.
&

OK, the first two don't seem to bad. I'm pretty sure few if any artists have ft. or feat. in their name. But how do I tell the difference between the group Hall & Oates and two separate artists with one named Hall and the other Oates?

Actually i have a lot of singles that have feat. or ft. in the artist field.

Not sure on how to solve the &
Perhaps just leave that one

[Tommy2012]

Hi Pkscuot

Hope u are well, thx for the excellent add-on. I need ur help please. I am trying to add images to slideshow, so I added extra images to htbackdrops artist and tried to add to slideshow download... But not working, it is showing in htbackdrops (theuns jordaan) but slideshow not downloading it? Is there a specific way of doing or adding it? I have tried to add images to last fm but they not allowing me to although I have done excactly as they asked

Please help

Rgds
Manuel

[pkscout]

Hope u are well, thx for the excellent add-on. I need ur help please. I am trying to add images to slideshow, so I added extra images to htbackdrops artist and tried to add to slideshow download... But not working, it is showing in htbackdrops (theuns jordaan) but slideshow not downloading it? Is there a specific way of doing or adding it? I have tried to add images to last fm but they not allowing me to although I have done excactly as they asked

First, it would be worth a read through the wiki page. It describes all the options and skin requirements. Here are some things you might want to look at:

1- make sure you have a skin that supports Artist Slideshow
2- make sure you have actually selected to download images form htbackdrops.com

To see if images are actually being downloaded, check in userdata/addon_data/script.artistslideshow/ArtistSlideshow. You should see a series of folders with encoded names. In those folders are the images that have been downloaded. I noticed that the Theuns Jordaan images are really small, so also make sure you haven't set the preferences to exclude images smaller than a certain size.

If you continue to have issues, please post a debug log.

[Tommy2012]

Hi Pkscuot

Thx for the reply...

I think I explained myself wrong, everything works 100%, and download all my artist slideshow images from last fm and htbackdrops and works perfectly. I was not happy with the images loaded for a specific artist and uploaded more pics on htbackdrops for this specific artist, but when I update images from htbackdrop then these new added images is not added to my artist slideshow folder for this artist...no matter what I do

My question is why htbackdrop does not allow me to add this to artist slideshow add-on?

Ps: my settings is set to allow all image sizes

Rgds
Manuel

[pkscout]

I think I explained myself wrong, everything works 100%, and download all my artist slideshow images from last fm and htbackdrops and works perfectly. I was not happy with the images loaded for a specific artist and uploaded more pics on htbackdrops for this specific artist, but when I update images from htbackdrop then these new added images is not added to my artist slideshow folder for this artist...no matter what I do

I have seen htbackdrops not provide new images via the API (that's what Artist Slideshow uses to get the images) even if you can find them directly on the web site. In those cases, the problem seemed to resolve itself over the course of a few days. Without a debug log to look at the only thing I can suggest is to wait a couple of days and see what happens.

[Tommy2012]

I think I explained myself wrong, everything works 100%, and download all my artist slideshow images from last fm and htbackdrops and works perfectly. I was not happy with the images loaded for a specific artist and uploaded more pics on htbackdrops for this specific artist, but when I update images from htbackdrop then these new added images is not added to my artist slideshow folder for this artist...no matter what I do

I have seen htbackdrops not provide new images via the API (that's what Artist Slideshow uses to get the images) even if you can find them directly on the web site. In those cases, the problem seemed to resolve itself over the course of a few days. Without a debug log to look at the only thing I can suggest is to wait a couple of days and see what happens.

Thx Pkscuot

Oh ok so it is a problem at least and not me alone lol. Thx for the help and again a great add-on. Keep up the good work

[st graveyard]

Hello all,

I just discovered this little add on and I love it. But I have a question to everyone.

Let me quickly explain my situation.

I have my music dir set up correctly with all the art inside. I'm using CDART Manager for all the art. I'm using the extra fanart downloaded with that tool as my backgrounds in the music section.
Now, regarding "artist slideshow". I like all my artwork on my local drive. There are a lot of very nice pictures downloaded with "Artist Slideshow". I know you can download them to the local drive and put them in the extra fanart folder but the problem is that a lot of the artwork is not usable for fullscreen. It looks perfect as a slideshow when playing music, but not as background.

So my question is, are there other people out there who have the same problem? I know you can just let artist slideshow grab the pics online while playing music and not save them to the drive, but I just like them locally.

IS there perhaps a possibility for artist slideshow to have its own artwork dir per band in the music dir instead of the extra fanart dir? Or is there another solution? Also, can you download art for all your music with artist slideshow without having to play every band in the collection?

And if you use the "'use local artwork first" option, does this mean the add on will not look online for displaying art? Is there a way to ONLY display local artwork?

Thanks for reading,

Grave

[pkscout]

IS there perhaps a possibility for artist slideshow to have its own artwork dir per band in the music dir instead of the extra fanart dir? Or is there another solution? Also, can you download art for all your music with artist slideshow without having to play every band in the collection?

Nope. Artist Slideshow is designed to run when there is actual music playing. Your best bet is to only use CD Art Manager (which you mentioned) to download stuff.

And if you use the "'use local artwork first" option, does this mean the add on will not look online for displaying art? Is there a way to ONLY display local artwork?

If you select use local artwork first and then deselect the options to download artwork from htbackdrops and last.fm that will, in essence, cause Artist Slideshow to use only local images.

[st graveyard]

Ok, thanks for the info.

I know it is not standard, but it would be cool (for me anyway) to be able to make artist slideshow point to another folder name within the music dir structure apart from 'extra fanart'. Although I understand you will not be following the XBMC standard anymore ...

EDIT : I have now switched on the option 'only download 16:9 images'. These are stored to my local drive and the quality is perfect. I'm doing this now for all the bands in my collection :-) A good solution for me. Thanks for this great add on!

[pkscout]

I've got a new version available for testing. For v.1.3.3 I've added notification when downloading the first image for an artist. The default behavior is to fade to black and then put up an XBMC notification that stays on screen for 10 seconds. There is a new option in the advanced settings for you to use your own directory of images to use during that initial download. You need to select Display progress images during first download AND select a Progress images folder for this option to work. If you put only one image in that directory, it would always be shown during the initial download.

I chose to do the notifications this way because it's a great deal easier (and more space efficient) to localize using strings than it is to have a separate image for every localized language. Speaking of which I also updated the Portugese strings. I used Google translate, so no laughing if the Portugese says something it ought not to.

Artist Slideshow v1.3.3 beta (LINK REMOVED - see post further down with new beta link)

I'm still working on the following:

• option to use something other than extrafanart for folder
  
• support for multiple artists in artist name
  
• downloading of album images for discography
  

The first one shouldn't take me too long. I've got an idea on how to merge multiple folders of images when a song has two or more artists, but it really only works well when all the images are already downloaded. I'm trying to work through the logic to get the downloads to get added as they finish. I really haven't looked at the last one at all yet.

I'll probably hold off on an official release until I get at least the first two things on the list done. For now any feedback about the v1.3.3 beta would be appreciated.