V1.911 untimeous scraping & updates of nfo and fanart

These may not be categorised as 'bugs' per se, but they do impact on usability and may well be addressed during your multi-thread project.

'Movies' mode:

Selecting a movie in the list has a hit on display speed of the nfo file. I realised after a while that going back to movies that I had selected previously displayed much faster. Until I realised why - sometimes when one selects a movie it appears that a lookup is performed and the nfo file is updated (noted recent time-stamps) I haven't noted anything specific, maybe thumbs links are updated. Perhaps this could only be updated if an 'update' flag is raised?

Opening the Movie Nfo Editor and then closing with the 'Save' option again performs a lookup and scrapes fanart (if of course the fan art is selected) - no real issue here other than I was wanting to do some minor tweaks to the text (I'm a pedantic bastard) and it took a while to close due to this scrape. Perhaps this could be invoked only on pressing an update fanart button?

Not complaining, just food for thought... The program just appears to hang during these procedures.

The reason it takes so long to look up a movie at first is the actor thumbnail. At the moment there is only a link to the actor image hosted on IMDB, this is then downloaded as required to be displayed in the movie viewer, the same is true of actors in TV Shows. The speed is dependant on the speed of IMDB and TVDB, sometimes the delay will be hardly noticeable, sometimes it is very slow, it is especially true of TVDB.

I did request on XBMC forums that they provide a method for local Actor image, but it doesn't look like it is going to happen.

I have come up with a workaround that should work for any actors from IMDB, although it would not be useful for actors on TVDB. It would involve creating an actor folder somewhere on your PC that is shared with XBMC.

The XBMC path would then be entered into the preferences of Media Companion.

Images from IMDB could be saved using the IMDB ID Code for the actor,
eg
The image for Sylvester Stallone, would be saved in the actor folder as "nm0000230.jpg"
This would also mean that each actor would only need to be downloaded once, no matter how many movies they are in.

The path to that image could be entered into the nfo file ie.

Instead of the following,
<actor>
<name>Sylvester Stallone</name>
<role>Rocky Balboa</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTcyMjU5MTU0OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjA2NzYyMQ@@._V1._SX100_SY140_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>

You would have
<actor>
<name>Sylvester Stallone</name>
<role>Rocky Balboa</role>
<thumb>smb://workgroup;username:password@computername/actors/nm0000230.jpg</thumb>
</actor>


I'm not sure if the above would work, in theory at least, it should. If someone wants to test it then please do.