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the-black-eagle / script.streaming.radio.helper

A python script to help skins cleanly display artist and track details when listening to streaming radio via Kodi
GNU General Public License v3.0
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script.radio.streaming.helper

Because of the way most ICY radio streams are formatted, kodi doesn't display the artist and track info in the same way as when it is playing music from a local library. The artist and track info are both in the track portion and separated by ' - '. This at least has proved to be the case with all the radio streams I listen to. Eventually my OCD got in the way and I had to see if I could do something about it and find a way to make my streaming radio look better.

This script is the result of that.

It runs in the background when kodi is streaming audio, splits the track info into separate artist and track details and sets some window properties so that skins can present the information in the same way as with a track from a local library.

The script supplies the full path to a logo (if found) as a property. If there is no logo in the local music library the script will look in it's own cached logos. If it still does not find one it will attempt to download one from fanart.tv or theaudiodb and cache it for future re-use.

The script also looks up artist thumbs and banners on theaudiodb and caches the URL's for future re-use.

Further, the script attempts to match the currently playing track to an album and year. This is done with a search on theaudiodb. To avoid excessive lookups, track, album and year data is cached by the script and online lookups are performed if the track has not been played before, or the cached data is older than 7 days. Cached data is saved either when the script stops or every 15 minutes when its running. Local art (album covers & CDArt) will be used in preference to online art.

The script attempts to fetch track data as well as artist data if it is available. Track data for the currently playing track is scraped from theaudiodb and lastFM if no details are found on the former.

The script also attempts to find album data (assuming an album name was found) which could include album description, album review, album cover and cdArt (depending on the information available for that album). Data is cached in the same way as artist and track info and is only looked up again after the cache expiry time if some info is missing.

In the event that theaudiodb and lastFM are unavailable for some reason, the script will use any cached data that is available to it, including cached thumbnail, cover, CDArt and banner URL's. Because of Kodi's own thumbnail caching, this means that the thumbs/banners can still be displayed in spite of theaudiodb / lastFM being unavailable.

The script has been updated to work with BBC iPlayer. iPlayer does not transmit artist or track info, however the information is scrobbled to last.fm so we get the artist/track info from there. As there is no 'callback' from last.fm as to when the data changes, the script checks every 5 seconds if the data is coming from last.fm. Provided you know the username of the station scrobbling to last.fm, this should work for any station that does so, not just BBC stations.

All window properties are set for the full screen visualisation window (12006).

Settings

General Settings

The path to the top level of the users music directory.

Use Fanart - whether or not to look up logos online at fanart.tv

use theaudiodb - whether or not to look up logos at theaudiodb

lookup logo/thumb for featured artists - whether or not to try to look up all artists if there is at least one featured artist on the track

delay for thumb/logo/banner rotation - how many seconds to wait before changing the thumb/logo/banner to the next one for tracks with featured artists

Station Names

As streaming radio stations don't name their streams exactly the same as the station name it's possible to set a couple of strings here to change what is displayed in the skin. eg - set 'replace' to 'planetrock' and 'with' to 'Planet Rock' to pretty format the name.

The actual stream will be something like 'http://some-streaming-radio-server/station-related-name.mp3'

NOTE For V18-Leia the actual stream is not available. The stream name will either be the name of the playlist file containing the url to the radio station (EG absolutecr.m3u - containg a URL to Absolute Classic Rock) or the radio station ID if using the rad.io addon (EG 11524 for Planet Rock). In these cases, Station 'x' under the setting Station Names should be set to (EG 11524) and the corresponding pretty name (Replace -) should be set to the name you want to display (in this case Planet Rock)

Without setting any replacement strings, the addon will display 'station-related-name' You can use replace 'station-related-name' with 'Proper Station Name'

This can be done for ten radio stations.

Some radio stations transmit the artist - track information the opposite way around to how the helper expects it (Note that this seems to be a recent change in January 2017). There is a toggle for each radio station you define to switch the order for that particular radio station. (Note that you must have defined a 'pretty name' for the station for this to work). If this is not toggled, the track name and artist name will be reversed and logo and album lookups will not work.

For stations that scrobble to last.fm, there is now a setting to get the information from there. Turning this on for a station will disble the 'reverse artist/track info' option as it makes no sense in this situation, and enables a text field for entry of the username of the station on last.fm EG, for BBC Radio 2, the username would be bbcradio2.

Strings to remove

The script can (optionally) remove any extra info that may be added to the stream information by a radio station. E.G. A radio station may add 'Top 40 hits' on the end of the artist and track information. This can be removed by setting a removal string of 'Top 40'. This would remove everything from the start of that string to the end of the line. Three strings can be set for removal, the first one that matches will be used. All strings are case sensitive and can include leading and trailing spaces.

Artist Substitution

Sometimes the name of an artist (as set by a radio station) doesn't correspond to an actual artist name on the AudioDB. You can make the helper change the name of an artist by using =. This setting is called Replace artist - . You should enter the name of an artist (as supplied by the radio station) followed by = followed by the name you want to change it to. Artists are separated by a comma (,).

EG ELO=Electric light orchestra, Florence & The Machine=Florence + The Machine,E.L.O.=Electric Light Orchestra

All artist names and substitutions are CaSe sensitive and space aware. As long as you follow the format 'radio-station-artist-name'='tadb_artist-name','radio-station-name'='tadb-artist-name' you can substitute as many 'radio-station-names' as you need to.

Window properties set by the script

srh.Stationname - String. Name of the radio station (optionally 'prettied up' in the addon settings)

srh.Artist - string. Contains name of artist.

srh.Track - string. Contains track name.

srh.Logopath - String. Fully qualified path to any logo found.

srh.Album - String. Title of an album the track is on, if found

srh.Year - String. Year of srh.album, if found

srh.Artist.Thumb - String. Fully qualified URL to an artist thumbnail on theaudiodb

srh.Artist.Banner - String. Fully qualified URL to an artist banner on theaudiodb

srh.MBIDS - String. Contains comma separated MBID's for either display or for modded script.artistslideshow to use

srh.TrackInfo - String. Contains any track information found on TADB or last.fm for the current track

srh. RealCDArt - string. Contains a path to a) local CDArt if it exists, else b) path to online CDArt (if found), else empty string

srh.AlbumDescription - String. Contains the album description if found, else empty string

srh.AlbumReview - string. Contains the album review if found, else empty string

srh.RecordLabel - String. Contains the name of the record label the album was released on (if found)

Window properties can be used as follows -

To display the artist name as parsed by the script when streaming
<control type="label">
    <label>$INFO[Window(12006).Property(srh.Artist)]</label>
    <scroll>true</scroll>
    <visible>Player.IsInternetStream</visible>
</control>
Similarly, to display the track name
<control type="label">
    <label>$INFO[Window(12006).Property(srh.Track)]</label>
    <scroll>true</scroll>
    <scrollout>false</scrollout>
    <visible>Player.IsInternetStream</visible>
</control>
Displaying a logo
<control type="image">
    <left>0</left>
    <top>-90</top>
    <width>400</width>
    <height>155</height>
    <texture>$INFO[Window.(12006).Property(srh.Logopath)]</texture>
    <fadetime>300</fadetime>
    <aspectratio align="left">keep</aspectratio>
    <animation effect="fade" end="100" condition="true">Conditional</animation>
    <visible>Player.IsInternetStream+StringCompare(Window.(12006).Property(srh.Haslogo),Control.GetLabel(9998))</visible>
</control>

In the above, label id 9998 is an invisible label with the text set to 'true'

The script is started by adding the following line to MusicVisualisation.xml

<onload>RunScript(script.radio.streaming.helper)</onload>

This means the script is started when entering the full screen music visualisation window. It will continue to run as long as kodi is playing audio however it only sets any window properties or downloads logos if the audio is an internet stream. The script exits when kodi stops playing audio.