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Hi folks. Still new to XBMC (openelec) and just installed ACE today so this may be a dumb question but I can't seem to figure out how to get my Concerts set up. I go to Concerts on the home menu > files > add source and add a SMB share on my server I have specifically setup for concerts, use concertsdb as the scraper, and after I do all that I can navigate through the folder structure to find all my concert videos (as well as everything else - fanart, etc, in those folders) but there's no art or metadata actually being scraped and from the home menu it still shows Concerts as empty. There's even an error message when I go back into Concerts that says "Empty Collection! Add Content in Options: Add Videos" but I don't know that that means exactly. I feel like I've been through all the settings 10 times now and the only thing I can figure out how to do is keep re-adding the same share which it's still not recognizing as a source.
Any help on this? Really loving ACE btw. Very slick and will really be perfect for me once I get this concerts thing figured out. Thanks!
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So a couple of questions for you.
1. The Concertsdb isn't for Frodo from what I've read, there are some api's that it uses that no longer work. That being said, to get artwork and metadata to show up in Frodo using ACE, see my post below this one about Concerts/Music Videos on how to get this to somewhat work.
2. When you added the source location, do you tell XBMC that it is Music Videos, Movies, or TV Shows? It you seleced Music Videos, that is being scraped with theaudiodb scraper, and it is very new, so you probably wont get a lot of your concerts recognized. But they are always lookiing for people to donate time and fill in their database, so you have that option to get your concerts recognized that way.
From everything I've read (which is a ton), Concerts/Music Videos are still very new, with support just starting for them (at least if your thinking like Movies, TV Shows, or Music). In fact it's almost worthless to look at the Wiki regarding Music Videos, since there is literally nothing on the page.
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Hi Powerhouse. Thanks for the reply. I'm telling XBMC that the source location is music videos and I'm selecting Concertsdb as the scraper, not theaudiodb, since I have that option after installing it from a zip I download from the Concertsdb thread here. And I'm sure the problem is not the scraper's compatibility w/Frodo since I get the same "empty collection" message from the home screen if use theaudiodb or if I set up the content as movies and have TMDB as the scraper, and any way I try it selecting Concerts doesn't take me directly to my videos but to the standard list view of my video shares + system and storage folders, videos, add videos, etc. So it's definitely something I'm not understanding about how to configure this to get it to go directly to my content like Movies and TV Shows do. The add videos option it tells me to use only lets me add more sources to that list view. I don't see any option to make it read whatever the content is from the home screen to show me how many concert videos I have, how many unwatched, etc and to pull the Concerts image on the home screen from my fanart like Movies and TV Shows do.
Is it by design of the skin that Concerts is just set up differently or what am I missing?
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I've spent a bit of time organising my concerts. It's been a very manual process, because the scrapers don't seem to pick up very much at all. Basically, I've created a folder for each video within my "Concerts" folder and then added an .nfo file to each sub-folder. I've set up the "Concerts" folder as being for "music videos". This setup seems to work, but as I say, it's very manual.
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You didn't say if your Music Videos (Concerts) were in the correct format (Artist - Song.ext). They all need to be in that format if you are going to add the share as a Music Video share. The problem with this is, the built in scraper for Frodo (regardless of what you are using), is theaudiodb, and if it doesn't find any of your Music Videos (Concerts), you will see nothing listed in Concerts list.
So there are two work a rounds to fix this. The first being that you will have to read my post (listed below), and create .NFO files for each and every one of your Music Videos (Concerts). Try creating just one, and do a scan of your share, which should pick it up. If not, try removing the share and re-adding it.
The second way, is to add the share as a Video share and not as a Music Video (Concert) share. This should work, but your Concerts will now show up in all your Video sections (which I think sucks, but at least it will work).
Believe me, I know this sucks, as I have over 5,000 Music Videos and have created .NFO and copied Fanart, Posters, and Album covers to each folder to get them to show up correctly in Frodo. It has gotten better, however, as theaudiodb has gotten more and more artists added over the last couple of months.
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Hi Powerhouse. Thanks again for the help. The naming format I'm using for both the folders and video files (1 per folder) is Artist - Title (year), ex:
Talking Heads Stop Making Sense (1984)
Talking Heads Stop Making Sense (1984).mkv
U2 Go Home Live From Slane Castle (2003)
U2 Go Home Liver From Slane Castle (2003).mkv
I have a few others titled this way that TMDB will scrape along with all my other movies if they are in that share and Concertsdb uses TMDB as its source too so I'm not sure why the same thing won't scrape in the Concerts section (and as I said I've tried scraping with the audiodb too and get the same thing with that). Besides, my experience with both movies and TV shows that don't scrape is that they simply don't appear in my titles or I'll get an empty folder. This is different. Here I get the file / folder list view which I can follow to all my content on this share, including concert videos that I know shouldn't be scraping because I havent' added them to TMDB yet (ex. performances on shows like Austin City Limits recorded from TV).
So anyway I don't think it has anything to do with the scraper or with how I'm formatting the file and folder names. It's that XBMC is letting me add my Concerts share as a video source but won't recognize at THE source (default source) for music videos like it seemed to do automatically when I added my Movies and TV Shows shares as sources for those.
Personally I don't want to bother with .NFO files. I only have about 12-15 concert videos currently so I think if I can't figure it out I'll just keep the dumb file list view I have and not even bother trying to scrape it. It's just annoying that the capability is clearly there and for some reason I'm not able to tap into it.
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You are actually doing it wrong (again sorry I didn't make Frodo and TheaudioDB), but for you, to use Music Videos (Concerts), you have to rename your stuff to...
Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense.mkv
U2 - Go Home Live From Slane Castle.mkv
There are lots of limitations currently with Music Videos (Concerts), such as songs that are numbers don't work (Bowling for Soup - 1985.mpg), or Artists that have dashes in the name (Blink-182 - All the small things.avi). you would actually have to look at the logs to see which artists don't work, and then compare them to TheAudioDB.com listing for that artist to see how hey have the song. Lots of examples under this thread...http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=136105
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Okay, well when I get home I'll try that format but if the problem was only that the files aren't scraping then I still don't understand why Concerts takes me to a file list view instead of to a blank screen or to a view where my concert video folders are there but are empty (ie. what I see when my movies or tv shows don't scrape).
Does audiodb allow you to add your own videos to its database or add alternate titles to videos that aren't scraping correctly? That's the entire reason I wanted to use concertsdb as a scraper because of the ability to add my own videos recorded from TV to TMDB and have them scrape as music videos. If audiodb doesn't allow that then I'm not interested in using it and would rather just stick with the dumb file list since that way I can still play all my concert videos at least even if I'm not getting all the art and metadata that should come with them.
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For my part, I manage all music videos in MediaMonkey 4. I have them all in mp4 containers. I do this so I can have embedded tags (like in MP3 or FLAC files). Not required, but it makes my management easier. All my MVs are set up in Artist - Album folder structure. Now I do have one problem, in that XBMC doesn't know about (song) Artist vs Album Artist but it isn't a show stopper. In MediaMonkey I can very easily (now after getting things set up) punch out an nfo file for every new MV. So I don't care about the scrapers. (I had things set up with the last.fm scraper, though that's been removed I guess.)
I can store the album cover in the mp4 file, and MediaMonkey has a function to extract it and save as folder.jpg. A bigger problem is the fanart and artist art. I find I pretty much need to set it manually in XBMC, though I think if there is a matching artist in the music db it will pull art from there (again, I don't rely on scrapers for anything).
The problem I have is it seems there is no way to set album cover art for MV in library view (XBMC problem I think, not ACE related).
What I don't like for ACE, is that when playing an MV, the info <i> and OSD <m> displays have title but not artist. I did a hack to get that. But if you <tab> out of full screen so that the MV is playing in an overlay, I can't figure out what ACE file controls that so I can add the Artist name.
scott s.
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acemt
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OK guys, this concert thing has gotten me baffled. They scrape fine with the Movie database scraper. All show up in my movies library great with Fanart, etc. I want them to be only in my CONCERT library. Is there not a way to change Kodi to allow me to scrape with the MOVIE database and have that under CONCERTS? Every time I switch to music Video under SET CONTENT, it scrapes with the AUdioDB.com which doesn't work very well. There has got to be a way to do this. Thanks