Now Playing artwork missing

[CDogg2000 3]

Since using kodi and emby together since kodi v19 I believe, I've noticed that when playing Movies or TV Shows, if I want to view information about the episode or movie, no information nor artwork is shown, just a faded area at the bottom where it would normally show outside of emby.  When paused I only see the show or movie logo artwork.  All information and artwork is available when not playing anything though.  Like hitting "i" with a movie selected.  Seems to only go missing when watching the actual video.

While tinkering around I enabled path substitution and while most movies and shows don't play, the one's that do WILL show artwork and info about the show or movie while playing.  I've been trying to go the route of getting things to work with path substitution to no avail.  I looked around the wiki and QA for this plugin but it doesn't really explain the "path substitution" well.  I know it's kept in the "advancedsettings.xml" file but I can't understand why it has an address of 127.0.0.1:54271, or something like that, why artwork in the now playing screen now works while most moves and shows won't play.  I've tried changing the "127.0.0.1:54271" to something real but I must still be doing something wrong.

When starting the addon from scratch using path substitution, all my movies and shows may show up as they should or nothing will show up at all.  If they do show up, none of them are playable.  If add the libraries in from scratch without path substitution, all works well BUT no artwork nor text when watching something.  If I change it to path substitution and do nothing else, some shows and movies WILL play and WILL show everything while playing when hitting "i" or the show information button.

This is a super little thing, I know, but we love the artwork and sometimes want to see information while playing a show.

Anyone able to steer me in the right direction?

Somethings to know...
Emby sits behind an Apache reverse proxy with SSL, everything/everyone connects via Apache to Emby.
Emby is configured to understand that encryption/SSL is handled by a reverse proxy.
Emby web works perfectly through Apache whether at home or remote.
Emby has NO intranet/internet access.
All android and apple devices work fine with their respective client apps.

Edited May 13, 2024 by CDogg2000

[quickmic 1703]

Quote

I looked around the wiki and QA for this plugin but it doesn't really explain the "path substitution" well.

The path substitution is workaround for a Kodi limitation extracting images/pictures from video streams. It's addressing the bookmark/chapter images extraction.

Kodi extracts bookmarks/chapter images "on the fly". It's not like "regular" artwork which are (usually) located as an image file or comes from a scraper. "Regular" images are stored in Kodi's database as a record.

For chapter/bookmark images it's different. They are extracted directly for the video file/stream and not stored in Kodi's video/music database. Therefore I cannot sync them directly into the database.

The problem is, Kodi disables image extraction for HTTP streams even technically possible. This is hardcoded in Kodi's sourcecode and cannot be adjusted in the settings.

The path substitution tricks Kodi believing it's a local file so the image extraction will be processed.

How it works:

A video stream from Emby server is a regular http URL (piped through the plugins "webserver").

It looks like http://127.0.0.1:54342/video_stream_info_parameters and is stored in Kodi's database.

The internal webserver receives this stream request and redirects it to the actual Emby server's video feed. http://192.168.0.207/emby_video_stream_parameters.

This would be detected by Kodi as a HTTP stream and disables image extraction.

The path substitution however replaces the "http://127.0.0.1:54342/" with a "fake" folder.

The video feed links are now replaced with "/emby_addon_mode/" in Kodi's database. The record looks like that:

/emby_addon_mode/video_stream_info_parameters

Now it's from Kodi's perspective a local file and the advancedsettings.xml parameter turns it back to the actual link replacing the "fake" folder

        <substitute>
            <from>/emby_addon_mode/</from>
            <to>http://127.0.0.1:57342/|redirect-limit=1000</to>
        </substitute>

There is some extra magic involved but I skipped that to keep it easier to explain.

In the end, I'm actually using a Kodi bug in my favor. Kodi should detect the stream type after path substitution if they would do it properly.

 

...Not sure why you have port "54271" in your settings. this seems to be wrong.

Edited May 14, 2024 by quickmic

[quickmic 1703]

I need a kodi debug log for review, please send it to me via PM.

[CDogg2000 3]

I think I have it fixed.  Your explanation as to what path substitution does and used for really helped.  I reset your addon then renamed my advancedsettings.xml to .old and let your addon repopulate it and now we're good!  I've noticed throughout all this that if advancedsettings.xml already exists, whether path substitution is enabled or not, it doesn't populate any information into it.  Thank you VERY much for clearing this up for me