[pkscout]

It's there somewhere I can check skin compatibility pk? As I'm still having issues. Now using:

* AS 3.2.1.
* Eminence2Mod 3.0.4

The backdrop is showing the ARTIST SLIDESHOW UPDATE ALERT warning.

Unfortunately, no. There is no definitive list of what skins are using AS, and certainly not one that lists which ones have been updated for AS 3.x.  All I can say is that if you get the upgrade image from AS 3.x, then the skin definitely hasn't been updated.

And just as a reminder, I did post something earlier on what needed to be fixed in the Eminence2Mod.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2933257

[PantsOnFire]

And just as a reminder, I did post something earlier on what needed to be fixed in the Eminence2Mod.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2933257

Hi PK. Sorry, it looked like I ignored your helpful post! I did actually try it out but at the time had only my mobile to edit xml on, I have only a basic txt editor on there included with X-Plore file manager app. And it became unmanageable.

I have a work from home laptop now so bigger screen etc. I shall try it out. Thanks PK.

[PantsOnFire]

Editing the guisettingd.xml file - ok nice idea, I never knew that was possible (to quick swap it selected skin).

-- move folder method:. In times past, I've done this, however, my File Manager UI was also botched and I couldn't see my files if I tried.

Accessing the Xbox one Kodi files remotely seems.. more locked down than in other platforms (correct me if I'm wrong), which restricted me pushing and pulling files to it to an extent. Eg--. Similar but not the same: I have a usb stick in the Xbox, I used it to display backgrounds in the Kodi UI. I was doing a bit of backup to the usb the other day. (Some files I had stored in the userdata folder in my Xbox Kodi) -- and, using the file manager in Kodi, I could create new folders on the stick, but not copy any files to it? I found that strange.


But in any event, it's done now, I've got a new 18.6 install, I've got Eminence2Mod installed.

I've downloaded AS 2.1.5 , but now, bizarrely, it's not even showing up in:
Settings->Player->Music->Visualisation

So now it's even stranger! :-O

That might be down to access rights / ownership permissions of the USB stick being set to the user account you set the stick up with on your PC which the Xbox won't have any clue about, especially if it was done with a "local" account, rather than a Microsoft account. So the Xbox may not have write access. Then again, it might be down to drive partition type / formatting. It is possible to format USB sticks as NTFS drives which will also support advanced NTFS capabilities (including permissions), but I think it's better to keep USB sticks as FAT32 for cross-compatibility (from my own experiences) between differing systems / OS types unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise.

I don't "do" consoles (can't get on with handheld game controllers), so can't advise as to any potential issues on the Xbox, Sorry.



Dan / Gib.  

Solved it.  When using external storage (eg USB stick)  Kodi xbox one seems set up to read media off such storage (eg jpg, mov, mp4, mkv, mp3, mp4  etc), as such it doesn't seem to like non  'media' files to and from the USB storage.    So it won't let you copy any .XML file either.     I renamed the XML  to .MP3  and it copied to the stick fine.    While I investigated other ways to transfer the file, I couldn't not get Kodi Xbox One's SFTP support to work, I wonder if it's not working.

[PantsOnFire]

"pkscout" @

Hi pk,  I'm about to try this again,  managed to get musicvisualisation.xml  off my kodi install, into Notepad++ in windows and edit it as per suggestion.
Un-installed AS 3.x,   and about to delete   settings.xml  file to clear ouy any remnants.
(advice you mentioned in earlier post)

before I go gun-ho deleting too many of these!  which one do you mean?

Thanks!  :-)

[pkscout]

"pkscout" @

Hi pk,  I'm about to try this again,  managed to get musicvisualisation.xml  off my kodi install, into Notepad++ in windows and edit it as per suggestion.
Un-installed AS 3.x,   and about to delete   settings.xml  file to clear ouy any remnants.
(advice you mentioned in earlier post)

before I go gun-ho deleting too many of these!  which one do you mean?

Thanks!  :-)

userdata/addon_data/script.artistslidehshow/settings.xml

[HeresJohnny]

I love this add-on but I'm having intermittent problems. I use CoreELEC as my frontend to connect Kodi to my music collection over the network. The machine where music and the Artist Information folder is stored is a windows 10 computer. Every now and then, Artist Slideshow chokes and then keeps displaying art for the same artist until I reboot. Log shows an error like this:

Code:

2020-04-02 23:51:54.866 T:3145724800 ERROR: EXCEPTION Thrown (PythonToCppException) : -->Python callback/script returned the following error<--
- NOTE: IGNORING THIS CAN LEAD TO MEMORY LEAKS!
Error Type: <type 'exceptions.OSError'>
Error Contents: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'smb://192.168.1.185/Q/_Artist_Info/Level 42/information/lastfmartistbio.nfo'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/default.py", line 9, in <module>
slideshow.Start()
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/resources/lib/artistslideshow.py", line 288, in Start
self._use_correct_artwork()
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/resources/lib/artistslideshow.py", line 1210, in _use_correct_artwork
self._get_artistinfo()
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/resources/lib/artistslideshow.py", line 520, in _get_artistinfo
self.BIOGRAPHY = self._get_artistbio()
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/resources/lib/artistslideshow.py", line 459, in _get_artistbio
bio, loglines = self.BIOPLUGINS['objs'][plugin_name[1]].getBio( bio_params )
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/resources/plugins/lastfm.py", line 89, in getBio
xmldata = _xmltree.fromstring( py2_encode( self._get_data( filepath, cachefilepath, url_params ) ) )
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/resources/plugins/lastfm.py", line 182, in _get_data
if self._update_cache( filepath, cachefilepath ):
File "/storage/.kodi/addons/script.artistslideshow/resources/plugins/lastfm.py", line 208, in _update_cache
if time.time() - os.path.getmtime( filepath ) < self._get_cache_time( cachefilepath ):
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/genericpath.py", line 62, in getmtime
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'smb://192.168.1.185/Q/_Artist_Info/Level 42/information/lastfmartistbio.nfo'
-->End of Python script error report<--


The network access is via SMB, permissions are those of an admin user on the windows machine. Correct access data is saved in password.xml.

Now, I've had a look at this specific file the log entry is complaining about. It does exist and was written or changed on 2020-04-02 23:28. I'm unsure why the log complains about the file not existing. Is it possible that Kodi or your add-on attempted to write/change the file the same time it was accessed while playback happened? In that case I guess it would have been locked.

Additional configuration info, Add-on "Storage" is configured to
Store artist images in => Kodi artist information folder
Store artist information in => Custom location
- Custom location => Path to Kodi information folder

If that configuration is invalid because of potential lockups it should probably say so in the config screen. Thanks for looking into it!

[pkscout]

I love this add-on but I'm having intermittent problems. I use CoreELEC as my frontend to connect Kodi to my music collection over the network. The machine where music and the Artist Information folder is stored is a windows 10 computer. Every now and then, Artist Slideshow chokes and then keeps displaying art for the same artist until I reboot. Log shows an error like this:
 

As a general rule, please don't post log snippets.  They are very often not helpful.  You got lucky this time, and I think I was able to find the problem without the proper logs.  3.2.2~beta1 is available in my beta repo (Kodi 18 only, if you're using Kodi 19 nightlies, this version will show as older than your current version).  If you need to download my beta repo, there is information on the AS wiki page (link it my sig).

If you just want the problem to go away for now without updating to the beta, disable Last FM as a source for artist bios, artist albums, and similar artists.

[HeresJohnny]

As a general rule, please don't post log snippets.  They are very often not helpful.  You got lucky this time

And also, as a general rule, I think programmer and bug reporter should appreciate each other. I put half an hour of work into hunting for and compiling info... so, you're welcome and thank you for the fix.

[PantsOnFire]

Hi pk, thanks for all your help trying to help me resolve AS with Emincence2Mod.

Just wanted to say thanks reallyy for your time..
Unfortunately I wasn't able to fix it following the steps you suggested. I even tried uninstalling Kodi completely and going from scratch again.

I found the lines in the XML you mentioned, replaced as suggested, but the result was: a black background at fullscreen mode (music playing). I kind of threw my hands up a bit at this point. Your add-on is great though and it takes a lot of focus, skill and care to make something which works across different variations so I hope others are benefiting, I'm sure they are, from your work.

I might come back to it another day :-)

I basically think we are all living in such visual world these days that eye information is always what the typical mind is in search for. -are not all mostly visual creatures after all?

Thanks again.

[pkscout]

I found the lines in the XML you mentioned, replaced as suggested, but the result was: a black background at fullscreen mode (music playing). I kind of threw my hands up a bit at this point. Your add-on is great though and it takes a lot of focus, skill and care to make something which works across different variations so I hope others are benefiting, I'm sure they are, from your work.

That probably means the resulting XML file was invalid. I didn't actually test the update, I just looked through the skin code.  There might be something in the debug log that would identify where the XML isn't valid, but you're honestly probably better off getting help with the mod from the folks using/maintaining it.

[Busta Uppa]

First off, thanks to pkscout and everyone who contributes to make Kodi an amazing platform!!!

I have a question pertaining to the musicvisualisation.xml file.  I have Artist Slideshow mostly working, the only issue is that the background images aren't animating (they animate fine if other bg modes are used).  I imagine a simple .xml edit might do the trick, but I wouldn't know where to start.

What would the protocol be here... is it appropriate for me to attach my musicvisualisation.xml, or should I post an excerpt of the code?  If there are some universal tips that could help me out, I'm all ears for those too!

[pkscout]

First off, thanks to pkscout and everyone who contributes to make Kodi an amazing platform!!!

I have a question pertaining to the musicvisualisation.xml file.  I have Artist Slideshow mostly working, the only issue is that the background images aren't animating (they animate fine if other bg modes are used).  I imagine a simple .xml edit might do the trick, but I wouldn't know where to start.

What would the protocol be here... is it appropriate for me to attach my musicvisualisation.xml, or should I post an excerpt of the code?  If there are some universal tips that could help me out, I'm all ears for those too!

I'm not much a skinner, so anything more than getting the images to fade in and out is probably more than I can help with, and I'm not sure what you mean by "animate."  The general guidance is to post something in the support thread for the skin you are using.  If you're building your own skin (or moding an existing one), there is also a thread in the skin helper section of the skin development area that has more detailed suggestions on how to integrate AS into a skin.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=349082

[Busta Uppa]

First off, thanks to pkscout and everyone who contributes to make Kodi an amazing platform!!!

I have a question pertaining to the musicvisualisation.xml file.  I have Artist Slideshow mostly working, the only issue is that the background images aren't animating (they animate fine if other bg modes are used).  I imagine a simple .xml edit might do the trick, but I wouldn't know where to start.

What would the protocol be here... is it appropriate for me to attach my musicvisualisation.xml, or should I post an excerpt of the code?  If there are some universal tips that could help me out, I'm all ears for those too!

I'm not much a skinner, so anything more than getting the images to fade in and out is probably more than I can help with, and I'm not sure what you mean by "animate."  The general guidance is to post something in the support thread for the skin you are using.  If you're building your own skin (or moding an existing one), there is also a thread in the skin helper section of the skin development area that has more detailed suggestions on how to integrate AS into a skin.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=349082 

Understood, upon some further thought this must actually be a skin issue.  Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

[RobinTW]

Hi @pkscout 

Is there a way to re-activate AS in Kodi after AS crashes?  I don't like MusicBrainz's tags for Artists which are composers and not performers.  So I usually manually change the tags, which sometimes leads to AS crash.  Now I have to reboot Kodi to get it running again. 
Also, can AS display Artist Bio info in Kodi?  I know bio info is downloaded.  Many thanks.

[pkscout]

Hi @pkscout 

Is there a way to re-activate AS in Kodi after AS crashes?  I don't like MusicBrainz's tags for Artists which are composers and not performers.  So I usually manually change the tags, which sometimes leads to AS crash.  Now I have to reboot Kodi to get it running again. 
Also, can AS display Artist Bio info in Kodi?  I know bio info is downloaded.  Many thanks.

AS sets a variable in the skin to tell it that's it's running, and if AS crashes, that variable never gets unset.  I think the only way to reset it is to restart Kodi.  I've done some research before on how to run some code when a Python script crashes, but I either don't understand how that might work or it's just beyond me.  I may poke at that again.

AS, as you noted, does provide the bio, but it's up to the skin whether and how to display it.  If you're using the default Estuary, the answer is no, it does not display the bio.  If you use my Estuary mod, there is an option in the skin settings to enable the bio on the OSD screen when you're playing music.

BTW, if AS is crashing, I can't imagine why changing the MBID is a music file would cause that, and I'd like to take a look at that.  If it's consistently crashing with certain songs, then you could enable debug logging both in Kodi and AS and then get a debug log I could review.