Install my dev repository to get updates delivered to you automatically. After the repo is installed, Artwork Beef can be installed from “Program add-ons”. It can also be installed with this single zip file, but you will have to download each new version yourself. Do not install Artwork Beef from GitHub source unless you know you need to and have read the README.
Artwork Helper can be installed with this single installable zip, but it’s only necessary if a skin depends on it.
Inclusion in the official Kodi repo isn’t likely for now, some of this functionality may make its way into Leia so it will probably see some feature churn before long.
Install it, and configure it to your liking. It is designed to run after library updates with the add-on settings “Automatically add artwork for new videos” and “Automatically add artwork for new music”.
Artwork Beef must process all items in your library, and will do so automatically the first time it runs. If configured as above, it will scan new media items as they are added to Kodi’s library, and over time (4-8 months) it will re-process existing media items still missing artwork, checking for new artwork from web services and the file system. If the option “only identify local files” is enabled it will check for new local artwork files monthly.
You can also run it from Program add-ons to trigger the automatic process for new or all items, or items old enough to need an update; a currently running process can also be canceled here. Some other actions are available here. To operate on a single media item, open the context menu on that item, then under “Manage…” there are options “AB: Add missing artwork” which processes the single item like the automatic process, checking for new local files and searching the web services for any missing art; and “AB: Select artwork…” to manually select new artwork.
Episode fanart requires using a scraper that grabs the TheTVDB ID for each episode, like the standard TheTVDB scraper and The Movie Database TV show scraper, or an NFO manager that does the same. You must enable adding episode fanart manually for each series through the add-on settings, as they add a bundle of new API calls to The Movie Database and just aren’t available for many series.
It generates a report of changes to userdata/addon_data/script.artwork.beef/artwork-report.txt.