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v18 Leia - Guide to setting up Extended Artwork and the Artist Information Folder

This setup is considered an advanced and experimental feature for power users. It is assumed you are familiar with the functions of Kodi and the advancedsettings.xml file.

Artist Information Folder- See Post#2
Extended Artwork- See Post#3
Extra Fanart- See Post#4

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Artist Information Folder
For an explanation of the Artist Information Folder (referred to as AIF), see the wiki page... Artist information folder (wiki)

Setup
Note: The Export options have changed in v18.2

To populate the Artist Information Folder with your Artist sub-folders refer to 3.4 Artist folders only in the Music Import Export wiki page (wiki)

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Extended Artwork
In v17 and prior, Kodi only scraped the Basic Artwork. The use of other add-ons, such as CDArt was required to load Extended Artwork. In v18, Kodi can load both basic and extended artwork without other add-ons.

Basic Artwork consists of:

Artists- fanart, folder
Albums- folder

Extended Artwork consists of:

Artists- banner, clearart, clearlogo, extra fanart, landscape
Albums- back, discart, spine

To use this feature, there are two requirements...

1. advancedsettings.xml
The following tags are required in the advancedsettings.xml file

xml:
<advancedsettings>

	<musiclibrary>

		<artistextraart>

			<arttype>banner</arttype>

			<arttype>clearart</arttype>

			<arttype>clearlogo</arttype>

			<arttype>landscape</arttype>

		</artistextraart>	

		<albumextraart>

			<arttype>back</arttype>

			<arttype>discart</arttype>

			<arttype>spine</arttype>

		</albumextraart>		

	</musiclibrary>

</advancedsettings>

2 Scraper Settings
The default Universal Artist Scraper and Universal Album Scraper have been updated to scrape extended artwork. These settings are disabled by default and need to be enabled in the scraper settings pages as shown.

Universal Artist Scraper


Universal Album Scraper


These settings take effect on new items added to the music library. Existing library entries will not have new artwork scraped.

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Extra Fanart
Extra Fanart was traditionally saved in the extrafanart folder. Additional fanart images were saved to this folder for use as a slideshow by a compatible skin, usually by utilising the Skin Helper Service add-on or the Artist Slideshow add-on. The downside to this method is the skin needs to read the extra fanart directly from the extrafanart folder. This requires hard drives to wake causing delays in the GUI while waiting for the drives to become accessible. Filenames are not important as the skin slideshow simply displayed any image file in the folder.

v18 introduces caching of extra fanart, just like any other artwork in the library. This is the first step and must be considered experimental. The advantages are quicker loading times and fewer wakings of hard disks. It is more difficult for skinners to implement this method.

Only a few skins are currently supporting this method, but more skins will implement this in the future.


There are three requirements to using this method...

1. Compatible Skin
Check with the skinner if this method is used by the skin.


2. advancedsettings.xml
The following tags are required in the advancedsettings.xml file. These are the same tags as used in the Extended Artwork post above, but with the addition of the Extra Fanart.

xml:
<advancedsettings>

	<musiclibrary>

		<artistextraart>

			<arttype>banner</arttype>

			<arttype>clearart</arttype>

			<arttype>clearlogo</arttype>

			<arttype>landscape</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart1</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart2</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart3</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart4</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart5</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart6</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart7</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart8</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart9</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart10</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart11</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart12</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart13</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart14</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart15</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart16</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart17</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart18</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart19</arttype>

			<arttype>fanart20</arttype>

		</artistextraart>	

		<albumextraart>

			<arttype>back</arttype>

			<arttype>discart</arttype>

			<arttype>spine</arttype>

		</albumextraart>		

	</musiclibrary>

</advancedsettings>

3. Saving Extra Fanart
The extra fanart must be saved alongside the other artwork with the following requirements:

1. fanartx is Extra Fanart. As many or as few can be added, but there must be a corresponding whitelist entry in the advancedsettings.xml file as shown above.
2. Do not zero pad the digits, ie use 1 not 01; use 12 not 012
3. The Music Library does not support the use of the Extrafanart folder, as used in the Video Library. It requires the Skin Helper Service add-on or the Artist Slideshow add-on to accomplish this.
4. The Universal Artist Scraper does not download extra fanart. The extra fanart must be manually sourced.

Example Artist folder in the Artist Information Folder with local artwork and nfo file.

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Post#2- Artist information folder has been updated for changes in v18.2