[xbmc17]

If tagged correctly, compilation albums should be tagged with "Artist" as the actual artist and "Album Artist" as Various Artists or something generic like that. When enabling extrafanart, the skin seems to pull a "Various Artists" fanart rather than "Artist", is there any way to change that? Ideally whether it is a compilation or not, you want the extra fanart to be pull as the actual Artist correct?

[ronie]

as far as i know it does not work for compilation albums,
because xbmc passes 'various artists' to the skin as the artist name.

i'm not aware of any workarounds for this.

[xbmc17]

as far as i know it does not work for compilation albums,
because xbmc passes 'various artists' to the skin as the artist name.

i'm not aware of any workarounds for this.

Hmmm, that sounds like an obvious bug then? Kind of ruins the feature if you have compilation albums :/

[xbmc17]

Is there any chance of having this fixed/changed and if so, where would we report it? For extrafanart the proper field is "Artist" rather than "Album Artist" since compilation albums don't get correctly identified.

[ronie]

bugs can be reported on trac:
http://trac.xbmc.org/

[xbmc17]

jmarshall says both are available:

"When playing music, both MusicPlayer.AlbumArtist and MusicPlayer.Artist are available to the skin for the current song. What the skinners chooses to display is up to them. "

[ronie]

ok, please explain thing to me in detail as i think i'm lost a bit :-)

extrafanart is used in several places in T!
- when you're browsing your artists, albums and songs in library and files mode
- when you enable the fanart slideshow while playing music

does any of those work for you?

when you're browing your collection, the skin uses the 'Artist' tag provided by xbmc.

when playing music, we don't care for tags at all, since we can use the path to the song there.

[xbmc17]

ok, please explain thing to me in detail as i think i'm lost a bit :-)

extrafanart is used in several places in T!
- when you're browsing your artists, albums and songs in library and files mode
- when you enable the fanart slideshow while playing music

does any of those work for you?

when you're browing your collection, the skin uses the 'Artist' tag provided by xbmc.

when playing music, we don't care for tags at all, since we can use the path to the song there.

I didn't know extrafanart was used when browsing artists, albums and songs in the library, I'll test that.

I do use the fanart slideshow while playing music and this is where the issue is. For any song that originates from a standard non-compilation album, the artist slideshow works beautifully. If the song originates from a compilation album (where AlbumArtist="Various Artists"), the fanart slideshow pulls extrafanart for "Various Artists" and not the actual Artist of the track. You're saying the extrafanart functionality is not pulling from the ID3 tags but from the path to the song? My path structure is as follows:

Music | Artists | Albums | Songs

In the "Artists" structure above, I could have an artist named "U2" and also an artist named "Various Artists". Inside that "Various Artists" folder would be the compilation Album Title, and then the Songs inside that folder. I think this is pretty standard isn't it?

[ronie]

You're saying the extrafanart functionality is not pulling from the ID3 tags but from the path to the song?

yup :-)

My path structure is as follows:

Music | Artists | Albums | Songs

so, let's say you're playing this song:
Music | Various Artists | Top Hits 2011 | Track01.mp3

then the skin will look for extra fanart in:
Music | Various Artists | extrafanart |

[xbmc17]

yup :-)



so, let's say you're playing this song:
Music | Various Artists | Top Hits 2011 | Track01.mp3

then the skin will look for extra fanart in:
Music | Various Artists | extrafanart |

Thanks for the explanation ronie!

Wouldn't it make more sense to pull the "Artist" ID3 tag though? Say a compilation album features 12 artists. If I played that album from beginning to end I'd like the fanart of each artist to display rather than some generic "Various Artists" fanart. I can't think of any way to alter the folder structure to accommodate this either.

[ronie]

Thanks for the explanation ronie!

Wouldn't it make more sense to pull the "Artist" ID3 tag though? Say a compilation album features 12 artists. If I played that album from beginning to end I'd like the fanart of each artist to display rather than some generic "Various Artists" fanart. I can't think of any way to alter the folder structure to accommodate this either.

both ways have their pros and cons.
neither one will work 100% in all cases.

extrafanart is not natively supported by xbmc, it's a skin 'hack' to make it possible anyway.
those workarounds will never be perfect :-)

i prefer the current way, as it will work out-of-the-box.
if i use the artist tag way, the user would need to set up the path to their music folder first.

[Knopfler]

xbmc17,

I'm pretty sure you can get the functionality you want by using the difference between "artist" and "album artist" within tags and your filenaming.

I use MediaMonkey (which I love) and if you use the "album artist" as "various" to identify the compilation....but name the files directory structure using the "artist" then you will be able to play a compilation with the extrafanart properly updating as each new track and artist is played.

The key is not naming all the tracks under a single "various artists" folder. (The downside is your album is spread across a bunch of different directories if you ever try to actually browse to individual tracks without mediamonkey.)

Hope that makes some sense.

Now if I can just get the extra-fanart-downloader addon to support Music. It looks fantastic for TV/Video...but I confess my xbmc is primarily music-only right now.

[Martijn]

Now if I can just get the extra-fanart-downloader addon to support Music. It looks fantastic for TV/Video...but I confess my xbmc is primarily music-only right now.

That won't happen
Extrafanart Downloader should be marked broken by now (haven't checked it though).

For music you need cdArt manager

[xbmc17]

both ways have their pros and cons.
neither one will work 100% in all cases.

extrafanart is not natively supported by xbmc, it's a skin 'hack' to make it possible anyway.
those workarounds will never be perfect :-)

i prefer the current way, as it will work out-of-the-box.
if i use the artist tag way, the user would need to set up the path to their music folder first.

What are the cons of using the Artist tag of the MP3? If you are using library mode your music should be tagged correctly so what would be the con?

Why would a user need to set the path to their music folder? Why would you need that to read the Artist tag of the currently playing track?

xbmc17,

I'm pretty sure you can get the functionality you want by using the difference between "artist" and "album artist" within tags and your filenaming.

I use MediaMonkey (which I love) and if you use the "album artist" as "various" to identify the compilation....but name the files directory structure using the "artist" then you will be able to play a compilation with the extrafanart properly updating as each new track and artist is played.

The key is not naming all the tracks under a single "various artists" folder. (The downside is your album is spread across a bunch of different directories if you ever try to actually browse to individual tracks without mediamonkey.)

Hope that makes some sense.

Now if I can just get the extra-fanart-downloader addon to support Music. It looks fantastic for TV/Video...but I confess my xbmc is primarily music-only right now.

Thanks for the suggestion, and yes, I agree it would probably work but that's quite a disorganized mess of folders/files to have compilation albums spread out everywhere

[ronie]

What are the cons of using the Artist tag of the MP3? If you are using library mode your music should be tagged correctly so what would be the con?

Why would a user need to set the path to their music folder? Why would you need that to read the Artist tag of the currently playing track?

it's beacause xbmc does not provide the skin with the path to the artist folder where your extrafanart is stored.

so, if i'm gonna use the artist tag, the skin has to construct the path in a way like this:
'user supplied music folder' / 'artist tag' / 'extrafanart'