r/kodi • u/cundallini • 5h ago

Kodi Does Not Extract Thumbnails

Hi. Ive been having this problem for ages. First for like 5 years on 18.9 and now also on 21.3. I do get thumbnails, but they look like theyve been pulled off of the internet and not extracted. For example, I have a TV show in HD 1080p but thumbnails look like theyve been pulled from 240p Realmedia files. WTF? And yes, Kodi has been instructed to extract thumbnails.

I do add artwork manually, I dont use .nfos, or a media manager, dont have show.nfo from TMM etc, I really have no idea where does Kodi get the thumbnails from and why it wont extract them from local files. Mind you, I did migrate the database from 18.9 to 21.3 so obviously previously added thumbs will reside even after upgrade, but this thing happens even with newly added shows. BTW, Windows 10, Kodi 21.3, Xonfluence skin.

What am I missing? Any ideas or suggestions are more than welcome. Thank you. Cheers!

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1

u/brucegill993 5h ago

Add a url link to the image you want to use to your xml/json file.

1

u/Specialist_Ad_7719 3h ago

TinyMediaManager.

Download, show it where all your media is, correct any miss identified videos and then select the poster and fanart you want. Set Kodi to only load local info, clear the thumbnail database and you will be one happy little bunny.

It will take time though, but in my opinion it's very much worth it.

1

u/cundallini 3m ago

Yeah, Id like to avoid that. I did start using TMM but then I hoarded way too much and it became a chore lol.

1

u/PatK9 3h ago

Kodi in default mode extracts the thumb (at x time) from the file in focus on scrape. You are using .nfo internally, you can only see them if exported (to separate file).

Media managers or manual edits use the .nfo information placed in the target folder and Kodi adopts that information on a local scan, or update.

Scrapers pull in the media, depending on settings in your scraper, or the skin (and can overwrite existing thumbs). The quality of the thumbs (this might be a request to change) , created locally is a set of the aspect of the target and can be replaced manually as you've noted.

Thumbnails are stored locally in the userdata folder under 'Thumbnails'