[kittmaster]

I'm not sure if this is a Skin related issue or general issue regarding the source vs. presentation. The issue is in my RV trailer setup vs my NAS setup described below:

Using Movies for example, discart.png & clearlogo.png, on my FireTV Stick in my living room from my NAS, the source uses NFS with the Madnox skin for Matrix 19.4....the default for a movie selection is "Show information"...so when you click a movie...all the info shows up, RT, metacritic, plot, actors....etc.....including the Discart  spinning in. This is the expected behavior.

I have a similar setup on a FireTV Stick in my RV trailer including Matrix 19.4, Madnox skin.....however, the source is a TP-Link router with a USB drive attached. The protocol to see the folder/files (which are copied mirrors from my NAS in terms of folder structure, artwork, everything......NAS is the master, folders/files are copied to the USB drive and taken to the RV trailer) via the TP-Link is FTP.

Everything "works" on the RV setup "almost" exactly like the NAS........minus the Discart.png showing up. I also don't see the "clearlogo" show up when I click left/right/up/down through the movie selection.

I can't imagine the skin is the issue since the setups/installation on both FireTV sticks are done identically......so it leads me to believe there is a problem using FTP to access the files?

SMB and NFS don't appear to be supported via the Router leaving only FTP to access the files.....uPNP is a disaster since it doesn't seem to display outside of a list (or am I missing something)? 

Can anyone provide any insight? 

Seems trivial, but I would like the same experience when I'm traveling as I do when I'm at home.

Thanks,
Chris

[kittmaster]

Actually I was able to sort this out.

You guys need to change the minimum search chars from 4 to 3....I tried searching for FTP and the website said no way. I used Google like: site:forum.kodi.tv FTP 

and got lucky and found this thread below:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2454398

Since I already have an advancedsettings.xml file, I added the FTP tags in shown below:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<ftp>
  <remotethumbs>true</remotethumbs>
</ftp>
</advancedsettings>

and voila, all my artwork started showing up. The only thing it doesn't do is "spin in" the disc, but it does fade in and that is more than acceptable knowing that the skin isn't the issue.

Why don't you guys document ALL of these settings or make them an option? I love Kodi, but man the thing is very disjointed.

Hope this helps someone who used FTP as the access protocol to stream their content.

Best,
Chris

[kittmaster]

As an update, this did help solve "some" of my issues, but there is still some oddities I can't seem to sort out.

For whatever reason, I can't get "clearlogo" to show on any movie or TV Show.. it is only displaying the movie title and tagline when you browse the libray in poster mode portrait.

What I find strange is when you pause the file during playback, the "clearart" shows up.

Also when in the information screen, none of the actors can be seen image wise, their placeholders, name, text...all present, no images.

So those are 2 things I can't seem to sort out via FTP.

Under NFS at home, it works correctly everywhere, so this is clearly something about FTP, either blocking, a delimiter issue... I can't sort it out.

Anyone have a thought on what could be the issue?

Thanks.

[kittmaster]

I'm still looking to find a solution for this, anything have any random thoughts on where to look?

[izprtxqkft]

yes, source type determines artwork but youve already found the advanced setting remotethumbs - this likely made most of it work

"internet" file system types (which includes ftp) are treated differently from network file system types, which would be nfs/smb

yes, skin affects artwork but if both of your setups are the same but the one accessing a network filesystem shows more artwork then it would be a fault with ftp

if neither have cast pictures then they were not scraped

if your fire stick is the only device accessing the usb perhaps an otg cable could be used

also, you didnt specify which tplink router you have but i found these instructions for setting one up to serve the usb via smb - https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/732


in general ftp isnt going to be as good as nfs or smb

[kittmaster]

Thanks for the detailed answer, it kind of confirms what I am seeing.

The router I'm using is a TP-Link Archer A7.

At first I couldn't figure out how to figure out how to get SMB to work on the FireTV stick, in that, when I selected "Windows SMB" it would never show anything on the FireTV stick yet on my laptop, \\TP-Share has always worked... then I realized that I could manually add it in... it was a WTF moment for me.... so I moved away from FTP. So now my paths look like:

Code:


    <video>
        <default pathversion="1"></default>
        <source>
            <name>Movies</name>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://TP-Share/Movies</path>
            <allowsharing>true</allowsharing>
        </source>
        <source>
            <name>TV_Shows</name>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://TP-Share/TV_Shows</path>
            <allowsharing>true</allowsharing>
        </source>
        <source>
            <name>Music_Videos</name>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://TP-Share/Music_Videos</path>
            <allowsharing>true</allowsharing>
        </source>        
    </video>


Now all 3 of my media sources are being pulled by SMB. But what is odd is that the some of the behavior is still the same.

So let me state:

1. I use Media Companion for all my media to NFO to import into Kodi and use refresh in the skin to bring in all new media (Works 100% flawless since day 1, no question here).
   
2. I am using the Madnox skin. Any artwork that is missing, I create it and use the filters to ensure all artwork is accounted for in Movies and TV Shows.
   
3. I use "Local Information Only" as the scraper as Media Companion does ALL of my required scraping needs and I have started working with that particular group as a dev on the program. I have used "Local Information Only" prior to that also as I am a believer in scrape once and have it all local, permanently and transfer it as needed. This also prevents my Airstream Kodi from "downloading" actors files while remote and wasting precious wireless bandwidth.
   
4. File roots from Home NAS are equal to Airstream FireTV Stick Router USB Drive.
   
5. Files folders are copied from the NAS folder and pasted to the Router USB Drive in the EXACT same structure keeping the paths aligned.
   
6. Home setup > Synology NAS > FireTV cube > Samsung TV (HDMI)  >> Fixed IP for NAS, NFS, Madnox skin.
   
7. Airstream setup > USB drive > TP-Link Router > Samsung TV (HDMI) >> Fixed IP for Router, SMB, Madnox skin (exact settings as Home) Path Substitution for Home IP to Airstream IP.
   
8. All media fully operational on Home system, 0 misses, 0 errors, 100% operational.
   
9. Now FTP >> SMB active --> Airstream system, actors are now restored, clearlogo still missing, skin shows title & tagline instead (this is the divergent behavior).
   
10. The last "goal" is to sort out how to get "clearlogos" to work via SMB and then this would be a closed topic.
    

An interesting point:

When you are in the information screen of the movie and you click on the artwork button (where you can change/select other artwork local or remote), when I navigate down to clearlogo, in local, it actually "sees" the local art there, if I click and select it... it fills in the small box as if it is selected... when I navigate away to say "ok" or "cancel" the box reverts back to a blank box...like it magically can't load it... it's really strange. So it's not like it can't access or see it.... but it seems like anything non NFS causes these oddities.

If I had my way, I'd find a router that supports NFS USB drives... being in a trailer, it has to operate on 12V so I can power it off the batteries when the trailer isn't plugged into shore power.

I am an Senior electrical engineer and debug firmware all the time in C, C++, Assembly... I've yet to find a way to "debug" skins in Kodi, because then I could just single step and sort this out myself. I saw a way to turn on the debug option and it shows it as text at the top of the screen, but that doesn't do anything to tell me where in the code that things are occurring so I can find the fetching or the core calls to bring the data in. If there are any tips here, I'm all ears.

Anyway, thanks for the response, hopefully this response might provide some information that could let you know what I may be missing.

Best,
Chris

[izprtxqkft]

excellent getting smb working, there should be no operational difference between nfs and smb

i dont have an answer to the clearlogo problem like "go here do this" but since you are a developer i could attempt some pointing to get you closer

disclaimer: since im not on team-kodi this is going to be experience based to the best of my knowledge


i believe the artwork is loaded here - https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master....cpp#L3518

you can see on line 3558 where the remotethumbs in advanced settings comes in to play, this set of if conditions is why artwork is not available for specific streams - and also why it should be working for smb/nfs



on the topic of trying to debug on a fireos device, i did a writeup a while ago to enable debug logs, this is a separate operation from setting it in kodi and both need to be done

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=371987

your log should show a multiple lines containing DEBUG to know its on


with that on, you should be able to attempt to load a clearlogo the manual way like you stated you tried and then see it in the kodi log if it errors out, possible if it doesnt but not sure if it reports success

being on a tv, you might find the kodi log viewer useful as it has an http feature where you can watch the log live from your pc - https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Log_Viewer_for_Kodi



you may also find some value in checking the database directly with sqlitebrowser or some other tool to ensure that the art has been loaded correctly as expected

in MyVideos(XXX).db, table Art - column type will have thumb/poster/clearlogo/landscape/etc, the url column will have its location

media_id should correlate to table movie as idMovie or tvshow as idShow, potentially it might also be an episode thumb which would be episodes as idEpisode


hopefully with some of this you can:
mov ax,1
ret

[kittmaster]

.....mov ax,1
ret

LOL... perfect.

[kittmaster]

For the love of Pete, I was able to sort it out. I found it in the .xml files after search a bit for a specific pattern of screen, text, and a switch that I using to troubleshoot. Then out of no where, I was using my home PC and sure enough...I found it, buried in the menu system, there is a key stroke sequence to pull the menus from the left side, then there are multiple options, well, following the rabbit, it was in the view "Logo" that was turned off. You don't see any change until you context out of the menu for the update to occur. And it should probably be renamed to "ClearLogo" for clarity.

So being on SMB, with that setting matching the rest, I now have my clearlogo operational and the world is set right back on it's feet...... for me anyway...

I will give FTP a try to see if it stops there or not, but either way, I'll be reverting to SMB, will report back.

[scott967]

As far as skin debugging, don't know any easy way.  There have been some browser apps in the past that could show all Kodi built-in infolabels, so you could confirm that something like listitem.art(clearlogo) exists at run time.  I just use a custom overlay dialog bound to a key that I manually add info labels and bools to for checking.  Because of the use of include macros and skin variables, it can be difficult to find what xml skin file contains the applicable code.  Notepad++or VSCode or the like can help some, but nothing makes it real efficient IMO. 

scott s.
.