Just to followup my most recent findings...
cdART Manager appears to only work when you build a music library directly inside of Kodi, not through the use of a 3rd party addon. That means you have to have the music either ON THE DEVICE, or stored externally but added directly to the library through Kodi. For some reason, cdART Manager would not work no matter how many ways I tried to add music. Using EMBY, I tried using Direct Stream (which should provide a direct link to the file) as well as via the addon (which tells Kodi to play it remotely through EMBY). Neither case worked.
Now, using a directly mapped music library (the music is stored remotely on a home server), I was able to get cdART Manager to scan the library and build a Database. That process took almost 6 hours to complete. I'm not sure what it was doing, but it sure wasn't downloading anything. My server folder structure is identical to the requirements of cdART Manager as indicated on the wiki. /MUSIC/ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACK. I configured cdART Manager to download artwork to the path of /MUSIC/_ARTWORK/. The backup is located at /MUSIC/_ARTWORK/_BACKUP. These new artwork folders were created from within Kodi's filemanager, so I KNOW I have full write permissions to those locations.
After cdART Manager finished building it's database, it went on to start scanning for missing artwork, and (I assume) downloading. After another 4 hours, it was still on Artists starting with "B". So I cancelled the process (which didn't lock up this time) and checked my server to see if it had any new files. It didn't. I checked all my Artists starting with "A" and there were no new arts downloaded. No new files at all in the designated path. I also checked, just in case, the individual Artist folders, and nothing new was there either. Then I thought "Maybe it's storing it locally and then sends it to the final location when it's completed". Nope, I checked on my Kodi device and there were no news files (except for a larger l_cdart database). I checked both addondata folders related to the script.cdartmanager. So I give up. It's not downloading anything, so what is it doing?
I had changed my skin to Estuary, as it is the default for Kodi and the one that is least modified for artworks. I changed back over to my Aeon MQ7 skin, and saw that in fact a lot of stuff had been taking place. A bunch of my albums now had artist artwork, backdrops, banners, etc. So now I'm totally confused. It looks like it WAS doing something after all. But where did it save all this new artwork? It's not on the device, and it's not on the server. Is it embedded with the music files? Is it stored in the cdART Manager database? One thing I did try, after changing the skin, was to go and launch cdART Manager and see if it was working, now that it had a fully built database. I was able to navigate the menus. I tried a test and went into the first menu "Album cdARTs". I chose the first artist, and it brings up a grid of CD images for albums I had. Not the front cover, but the actual disk art. I clicked on the first one, it did some stuff saying it was downloading, and in the bottom right corner of the screen the "Local cdARTS" number changed to 1. Hmm. Tried the other 2 that it listed, and sure enough, it now shows 3. I immediately went over to the server and looked, and there they are! Listed in each album's subfolder as "cdart.png". Ok, progress.. I backed out and doublechecked the settings. It still shows to store the artwork in the "/_ARTWORK/" sub directory. So what gives? I went back into the program and tried the "Artist Fanarts" menu. Downloaded what I thought was a couple for that same artist. Turns out it only downloaded the last one I clicked on. So manual only gets whatever you most recently pick. Interestingly, the "Artist Fanart" downloads to the path of "/MUSIC/_ARTWORK/Artist/" path. So that one seems to work correctly. Maybe cdART Manager is intelligent, and knows to store disk art along with the music files, and saves the artist art in a different folder so it doesn't make multiple copies of it for each album the artist has?
I'm getting close. It's a shame nobody bothered to reply to my post with some feedback or explanations. I don't mind figuring this stuff out, but I hate spending 12 hours doing it. And the end result is I'm still not that much closer than I was. It looks like I've come to this conclusion:
- Music must be added to the Kodi library manually, cannot be added through a 3rd party addon such as EMBY
- AFTER cdART Manager has scanned the Kodi library and built it's own database, you must then use the menu system to scan MANUALLY (this is going to suck with 400 CDs).
- Coverart (folder.jpg) and disk art (cdart.png) seem to save in the same folder as the music files
- Artist art stores in an /artist/ subfolder wherever you configure cdART Manager to put them
- cdART Manager only saves the most recent art you pick. Even though there is a setting to not limit the number of arts.
I've yet to confirm, but I assume all other "artist" type artwork (thumbs, banners, etc) would also be stored in that "artist" subfolder. Still need to test. I'm too tired to mess with it anymore tonight. If anybody has any further thoughts or suggestions to prevent me from doing this all manually, PLEASE REPLY!
PS; each menu item appears to have an "Automatic" entry, but when I clicked on them, they don't work. THAT would be a huge life saver.
