Season poster art is ignored

[gurg1e]

Describe the bug
TV shows that have different artwork for each season are shown with just the main artwork, rather than the different posters for different seasons.

To Reproduce

1. Go to season list for show that has different artwork for each season (eg Seinfeld)
2. Compare the poster artwork for each season
3. Note that it doesn't change - it's just the main artwork for the show

Expected behavior
The poster artwork for each season should be displayed when viewing the seasons for that show.

System (please complete the following information):

• OS: Libreelec 9.2.3
• Jellyfin Version: 10.6.0
• Kodi Version: 18.7.1
• Addon Version: 0.5.8
• Playback Mode: Add-On

[mcarlton00]

Do you have different season artwork in the Jellyfin server? Season images work fine here on a fresh sync. It's worth noting that season text won't work, as upstream Kodi doesn't have that ability at this time. But provided your Jellyfin server has different season images, they should be getting synced down

[gurg1e]

Hey sorry this might be an issue with my skin. I will review and close this if its the case.

[mcarlton00]

Things seem to be fine, I'm going to go ahead and close this. If it's still an issue feel free to reopen

[amitkeret]

Sorry to be re-opening this issue...
I am having the same problem on JF 10.7.2 where season posters are not shown.

As you can see in the image below, when viewing the series in Jellyfin-web all is good.
On Kodi, there's essentially a reverse-image of @mcarlton00's earlier screenshot: only the main series poster is displayed, under the "All seasons" heading. All other season posters are missing and replaced by the default folder icon.

Jellyfin web

Kodi (default skin)

System

• OS: LibreELEC 9.2.6
• Jellyfin Version: 10.7.2
• Kodi Version: 18.9.0
• Addon Version: 0.7.1+py2
• Playback Mode: Native

[mcarlton00]

What image type are your season images? Mine are all set to primary and they load with no issues.

[amitkeret]

Yup, they are all set to "Primary"...

I can confirm this happens on a fresh install of Kodi.
This time tested with Kodi 18.9 on Windows 10.

any thoughts?

[amitkeret]

@mcarlton00 do you think this issue should be re-opened?

[mcarlton00]

We can re-open it, but if I can't replicate it, I can't fix it. And for all of my series and testing across different devices and versions (and multiple servers) it's working fine here.

At this point, I can only assume that this is related to #505 and that the way we handle images could use some revamping, but that's a non-insignificant amount of work if I'm not sure it's the problem (again, can't replicate/confirm that it's an issue here).

The bulk of the work is that we have to do a database migration and effectively change every single synced item. As you can imagine, that's not exactly a quick process and needs some thought put into the code behind it.

[amitkeret]

Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Is there any more information I can supply about my setup, other than what's already mentioned, that would help replicate the bug/environment on your end?

[mcarlton00]

Unfortunately not. The image loading is currently handled by Kodi's internal renderers. And for some reason it seems to work for some images but not others. If my guess is correct, then it's something in Kodi's internal systems that doesn't like certain servers/URLs, which doesn't make any sense at all. In most cases you can take those URLs directly from the database and stick them in your browser and they load fine, so it's a rather infuriating issue overall.

[amitkeret]

something in Kodi's internal systems that doesn't like certain servers/URLs

@mcarlton00 are you running Jellyfin and Kodi on same/separate machine/s?

My setup:

1. RPi 3 running LibreELEC 9.2.6 with Kodi 18.9
2. RPi 3 running OpenMediaVault (OMV) 5.6.22 with Jellyfin 10.7.7 in a docker container
   Media is stored on external USB HDD connected to OMV. The Jellyfin container has direct access to these HDDs

Checking the background-image tags in Kodi's web interface:

• for series poster (after URL-decoding twice) is http://[Kodi IP:port]/image/image://http://[Jellyfin IP:port]/Items/[hash]/Images/Primary/0?Format=original&Tag=[hash]/
• ...while for season poster it's http://[Kodi IP:port]/images/thumbnail_default.png

So it seems to me like the problem is with Jellyfin not reporting the season poster to Kodi.
Hope this can help replicate the issue.

[nothing2obvi]

I have this same issue. Running Kodi 19.4 on an Android TV and Jellyfin 10.8.8 on a Mac Mini via Docker.

The issue seems to be on/off. On most series on Kodi, I see all the season posters reflected from Jellyfin. However, there are a few series (especially those with many seasons) where maybe 8/20 of the Jellyfin season posters will show. The other 12/20 are just the main poster for the series.

On Kodi I've tried to select Manage > Choose Art > Poster > Browse > Item Folder > it leads me to folders of each season, and when I select the season I want (which is displaying the poster I want to choose, btw), thinking I can select that poster, it leads me instead into a folder of all the thumbnails from that season's episodes.

If there's a workaround, I'd love to know. Thanks!

[nothing2obvi]

I have noticed that this only seems to happen for shows in which I have the episodes in season folders, and only the seasons that have their own folders do not get season posters on Kodi. For example, I have Survivor S01-S44, but I only have S01-S43 in season folders because S44 is still airing.

Example:
Season 43's path = /TV Shows/Survivor/Season 43
Season 44's path = /TV Shows/Survivor

On Kodi, S44 has the correct season poster and its custom name, reflected from Jellyfin Web UI. However, S01-S43 just have the main series poster.

This same pattern happens for another show, Australian Survivor, in which S03-S09 are in season folders but S10 is not because it is still airing. S10 has the correct season poster and its custom name while S03-S09 do not.

There may be a connection to #433 here.

Lastly, for another show, The Amazing Race, S01-S34 are all in season folders because they're all complete. None of these seasons have a season poster on Kodi; they just have the main series poster.

[nothing2obvi]

I was able to solve this problem by doing two things, though I don't know if you have to do both:

1. On Jellyfin, use "Edit Metadata" to change season numbers from blank to their actual number. Lock the metadata. If the metadata doesn't stick, manually edit the NFO files using these guidelines, remembering to lock the metadata.
2. In the show's folder (in my case /TV Shows/Survivor), add the season posters named like "season01-poster.jpg" and note that for specials, use "season-specials-poster.jpg"

I then selected "Repair Libraries" on Kodi and the seasons now show with their custom names and the correct season posters.

I got this solution from #433.