Fanart from fanart.jpg (1 Viewer)

[booba5185]

Hello, I'm relatively new to writing skins, but not to computers. I've put together my own skin, well more took things i liked from ever skin here on the site and put it together. I am getting extremely frustrated with subtitles and MKV files in media portal (but thats another thread), so i figured I'd try out XBMC. Well, after ripping out half of my hair, I decided to come back to media portal. The one (and only) thing i liked more about XBMC was the Fanart flexibility. Now in each of my 700 movie folders i have a fanart.jpg, and i would like to port that into media portal under the My videos section. I've just spent 3 hours searching this site for ways on how to do it, and everything i have read tells me how to do it from inside the skin directory. Is there any way (through XML) to tell my skin to show the fanart.jpg in the directory i currently have selected?

Thanks for any and all help

 

[booba5185]

anyone?

 

[Dadeo]

Did you check out the Moving Pictures plugin? I know it downloads fanart automatically (if you configure it to) and I think it can access your existing fanart.jpg files. See this thread https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...es-moving-pictures-handle-local-fanart-57696/ Hope it helps.

 

[booba5185]

Thanks for the Idea, but I've tried it and I really don't like it. I like the normal Videos view, and would like to put this one last customization on it

 

[booba5185]

Can anyone at least point me in the right direction to find an answer or something? is there some type of online reference guide?

 

[2BitSculptor]

It's pretty simple to get fanart from a single local folder (within the skin\media folder) but more of a challenge to get it from anywhere else, especially split up between the several hundred movie folders. Don't think there is an easy way of doing it. It's easy enough to rename all your fanart files to the IMDB number or name of the video and put them in one folder... just time consuming.

I don't think the team has redone the way MP handles fanart specifically, so it becomes pretty memory intensive, loading all the fanart into RAM (If I'm not mistaken). MovingPictures handles fanart differently, as does MPTV-Series, so RAM is used more efficiently.

I decided to forgo fanart use in MyVideos until some kind of a 'Fanart' plugin is created by someone to handle the paths and RAM use for use in MP. And I like using MyVideos over MovingPictures as well. That might change as it matures.

Chuck

 

[booba5185]

I decided to forgo fanart use in MyVideos until some kind of a 'Fanart' plugin is created by someone to handle the paths and RAM use for use in MP. And I like using MyVideos over MovingPictures as well. That might change as it matures.

Chuck

Exactly what I ended up doing, I just used mediaportal config to look up all the info on the movies, re-designed the myvideo.xml file to show the summary, year, director, etc. I changed it to just randomly go through my fanart, changing every 30 seconds. I thought that there may be some XML code that would include #selecteditem or something along those lines to set the fanart up, but i guess not.

 

[2BitSculptor]

Here is the common.myvideo_fanart.xmlthat I have. it will change the fanart each time you select a new item, It used the IMDB number of the selected video. You would have to change the image height and width in the xml to fit your format, and rename your fanart to the IMDB number ... then just use the import tag to add it to your 'myvideoTitles.xml'

I just found it to be just so RAM intensive that I renamed my 'FanArt Video' folder so it wouldn't find anything to show.

It is pretty simple code. I hope it works for you.

Chuck

 

[Pawwlik]

Hello booba5185.

Did you figured out something?

It's sad, that so promising project as MP doesn't have that very simple ability to load a background fanart image stored along with the movie and some simple xml file (or even a txt file only, as well stored there) with the movie details. It's so simple, so nice and clear. And in the first place - it's set forever. You do not need to do nothing after reinstall - you have all set. They would rather mess half a day with their crappy database plugins, changing from build to build. Everyone is obsessed with databases, series and movie plugins here, which will most likely fail with first MP reinstallation (and maybe not, but that's not the point).

There s a simple way to load a background fanart in the myvideos plugin. The only condition is, that the filename must contain the name of the videofile. For example if you have video named MyFilm.avi, the dvd cover thumbnail must be named MyFilm.jpg OR MyFilm.tbn to display good in the image control with
<texture>#selectedthumb</texture> tag. (it's done this way in most skins)

Background fanart MUST be named as MyFilm.jpg.something OR MyFilm.tbn.something. (tbn or jpg depends on the name of the dvd coverart filename, it MUST be the same and the dvd thumbnail MUST be present, or your background will not show up. And of course, you can display it by loading it into the myvideos background image control using
<texture>#selectedthumb.something</texture>.

You may probably use more than one image with the multiimage control, I didn't tried, one is enough for me. I use it with a mod of myvideo.xml from the StreamedMP skin currently.

Until today, I haven't found any method to load a movie text details from an xml or txt or whatever file, and noone here is able to help me with this - probably there's no way. I just think about creating some simple plugin, that returns content of a text file passed as a parameter (let's say #selectedthumb.txt i.e. in our example MyVideo.jpg.txt or MyVideo.tbn.txt) to display it in the myvideo MP section.

 

[kiwijunglist]

While Moving pictures uses a database, it is now becoming fairly independent of scraping the net.

It can be setup to automatically use local folder.jpg as dvdcover, backdrop.jpg as fanart, and use a local .xml file (XBMC format) for all the movie details, completely forgoing any internet scraping. So basically this is doing what you desire, no need to backup a database or anything.