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**pkscout** · (This post was last modified: 2014-02-24, 07:45 by pkscout.)

Artist Slideshow Helper provides a list artist names matched to their hash directory in your Artist Slideshow image directory to make things a little easier to manage. It also allows you to migrate images out of the cache directory into a local directory structure. It can be downloaded from the main XBMC repo.

AS Helper has no GUI, but it will give you some feedback via XBMC notifications.

You MUST go into the settings and set some options or the script won't do anything but complain that you haven't set any options.

For information and instructions for the setting, please see the wiki page.

I've started a separate thread for this to keep issues and discussions about this separate from the main Artist Slideshow discussion.

**scott967** · 2013-12-28, 12:26

Thanks. Seems to work as expected (Frodo 12.2/Win 7/portable mode). So once I migrate to a local folder, I just point AS to that folder with "use local and remote" and I should be good, right?

scott s.
.

**pkscout** · 2013-12-28, 18:53

(2013-12-28, 12:26)scott967 Wrote: Thanks. Seems to work as expected (Frodo 12.2/Win 7/portable mode). So once I migrate to a local folder, I just point AS to that folder with "use local and remote" and I should be good, right?

Sure. Remember that in "local and remote" mode you may still get some images in the old cache location (for artists for which you have no local images), but you can always run the helper again to migrate them.

johnsills1 · 2013-12-29, 02:42

How do you get this add-on to work. I set the appropriate settings and nothing happened.

**pkscout** · 2013-12-29, 03:15

(2013-12-29, 02:42)johnsills1 Wrote: How do you get this add-on to work. I set the appropriate settings and nothing happened.

You have to run it from the programs menu after you set the settings. If that isn't doing anything for you, I'd need to see a debug log.

johnsills1 · 2013-12-29, 03:29

Is there a json command that I can use to run the program add-on? I don't like having the Program Menu visible on the Home Page. I would like to run the program from a remote command. Thanks for helping me get it working.

**pkscout** · 2013-12-29, 03:36

(2013-12-29, 03:29)johnsills1 Wrote: Is there a json command that I can use to run the program add-on? I don't like having the Program Menu visible on the Home Page. I would like to run the program from a remote command. Thanks for helping me get it working.

Try this:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=JSO...ecuteAddon

**pkscout** · (This post was last modified: 2013-12-30, 01:26 by pkscout.)

New BETA available

Version 0.2 is available. The primary fix here is that AS Helper will now ignore artists with slashes in their name. Those artists caused AS Helper to create some odd directory structures, and since you can't have file or folder names with slashes on some platforms, I don't want to try and move them. So they remain hashed and in the cache directory. And this is why we hash artist names by default. Wink

https://github.com/pkscout/script.artist...master.zip

**curtis-r** · (This post was last modified: 2013-12-30, 19:09 by curtis-r.)

Very nice utility.

After a Move, I found my addon_data ArtistSlideshow folder still had 48MB of images, so I was curious if they were artits with slashes, but I could not fild those folder names in the hashed output file. A couple of the names are 0a37f560 and 6a645be6.
v0.2. Gotham alpha

EDIT: Off-topic but any thoughts on making the original add-on, or even the utility change the images to *.jpg?

**pkscout** · 2013-12-30, 19:31

(2013-12-30, 19:08)curtis-r Wrote: Very nice utility.

After a Move, I found my addon_data ArtistSlideshow folder still had 48MB of images, so I was curious if they were artits with slashes, but I could not fild those folder names in the hashed output file. A couple of the names are 0a37f560 and 6a645be6.
v0.2. Gotham alpha

ASH gets a list of artists from XBMC, hashes them, and then matches those against the folders in the cache. So my best bet is that the left over images are from artists no longer in your library.

Quote:EDIT: Off-topic but any thoughts on making the original add-on, or even the utility change the images to *.jpg?

There's no guarantee that the tbn files are all actually jpegs, so renaming them with a new extension that doesn't match their type could cause more problems then it solves. I may look in the future and trying to determine the type of the file and then renaming it, and I'd probably do that in AS itself and run it saw one time migration routine. I'd want to rename the existing cache files before I start using other extensions, or AS would download a fair amount of duplicate data.

**curtis-r** · 2013-12-30, 19:51

(2013-12-30, 19:31)pkscuot Wrote:
(2013-12-30, 19:08)curtis-r Wrote: Very nice utility.

After a Move, I found my addon_data ArtistSlideshow folder still had 48MB of images, so I was curious if they were artits with slashes, but I could not fild those folder names in the hashed output file.
ASH gets a list of artists from XBMC, hashes them, and then matches those against the folders in the cache. So my best bet is that the left over images are from artists no longer in your library.

I bet you're right.

(2013-12-30, 19:31)pkscuot Wrote: There's no guarantee that the tbn files are all actually jpegs, so renaming them with a new extension that doesn't match their type could cause more problems then it solves.

I didn't realize that. I always thought they were jpg's but makes sense they could be other formats or why bother renaming them to *.tbn. I suppose it's not easy to just leave them in the orginal formats, right?

**pkscout** · 2013-12-30, 22:08

(2013-12-30, 19:51)curtis-r Wrote:
(2013-12-30, 19:31)pkscuot Wrote: There's no guarantee that the tbn files are all actually jpegs, so renaming them with a new extension that doesn't match their type could cause more problems then it solves.

I didn't realize that. I always thought they were jpg's but makes sense they could be other formats or why bother renaming them to *.tbn. I suppose it's not easy to just leave them in the orginal formats, right?

Well, it's always easier to do nothing. Big Grin

That said, a number of folks have asked about having the images downloaded and stored with their original extension, so I'm looking into it.

bolter · 2014-02-23, 13:24

Can you have a look at seeing if there is a bug with this add on and the latest Gotham nightly. When I run it, all I get an empty txt file.

**pkscout** · 2014-02-23, 20:08

I don't generally test until a XBMC version reaches beta status and don't have any equipment upon which I can test nightly builds. That said, if you'll post a debug log, I'll take a look at it and see if anything jumps out.

bolter · 2014-02-24, 03:51

(2014-02-23, 20:08)pkscuot Wrote: I don't generally test until a XBMC version reaches beta status and don't have any equipment upon which I can test nightly builds. That said, if you'll post a debug log, I'll take a look at it and see if anything jumps out.

Here is the log file. I don't get any error messages, I just get empty txt files (Which I gather is supposed to be filled with the information I need)

http://pastebin.com/YrNh3ME4