plugin.image.iphoto

Imports Apple iPhoto and Aperture libraries into XBMC. Creates Events, Albums, Faces, Places, Keywords, and Ratings listings.

Screenshots

iPhoto plugin for XBMC

This plugin imports an iPhoto or Aperture library into XBMC. After importing, you will see categories that correspond with their application counterparts:

Your photo library can reside locally (on the machine on which you run XBMC) or can be located on a network share.

Installation

This addon is available in the main XBMC addon repository. You should install it from within XBMC.

There are no beta versions available at this time.

Configuration

The plugin needs to know where your AlbumData.xml file is. If you haven't explicitly pointed iPhoto to a non-standard library location, the default of "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library" should work fine. Otherwise, please enter in the correct path in the plugin's settings dialog.

Note that there is no default path if you're using Aperture. You will need to specify the path to the library that contains the ApertureData.xml. Aperture can support multiple libraries, but this plugin currently only supports one.

ALSO NOTE: Aperture will ONLY generate the required ApertureData.xml if you have enabled "Share previews with iLife and iWork" in Preferences->Previews.

The iPhoto plugin can also be configured to ignore certain album types. It is currently hard-coded to ignore albums of type "Book" and "Selected Event Album," but you can choose to ignore also:

All of these album types are ignored by default.

If you select "Auto update library", the plugin will compare the modification time of your Library's XML file with its current database and update the database automatically on start. This is disabled by default, but is probably what you want after testing the plugin.

You can also choose the view style for albums if you're using select skins. In Confluence, you may set this to "Image Wrap" or "Pic Thumbs". In Metropolis, you may set this to "Galary Fanart" or "Picture Grid". In all skins, if you choose "Default," it will preserve whatever view mode you have chosen in XBMC for each album; otherwise, it will force the view style to the one selected here.

Referenced and Managed Libraries

iPhoto and Aperture give you the option of managing your photos for you, by placing a copy of them within the library itself, or referencing your originals, leaving them in their original location on the filesystem.

If your library is managed, you will select "Managed Library" in the plugin settings (this is the default).

If your library is referenced and you are running XBMC on the same machine that you use iPhoto or Aperture, you may also select "Managed Library".

If your library is referenced and resides on a share over the network, you need to tell the plugin how to access the originals. If on the machine you use iPhoto or Aperture your originals are accessed via, for instance, "/Volumes/Media/Pictures", they may not be mounted at the same point on the machine on which you run XBMC. If this is the case, you will need to configure the "Local root path to masters" and "Rewrite root path as" options.

About Places support

If the plugin is configured to support the Places feature of iPhoto or Aperture, it will parse the latitude/longitude pairs in the library and look up the corresponding addresses using Google.

If Google reports one or more businesses near the coordinates, the plugin will use the name of the nearest business for the address to show in the Places category. Otherwise, the street address will be used. In both cases, the post code and country identifier are appended to the result.

The Places feature can also download map images to display while you're browsing the Places category. Normally, you won't need to do anything to get this feature, besides enabling it in the plugin configuration. But, if you import your library many times within one day, Google may block you from retrieving map images. If you receive a map image with a red X over it, the plugin won't re-download the map until you clear the map image caches. You can do so by selecting "Remove cached maps" from the context menu of the Places category.

Translations

If you'd like to help translate this plugin to another language, see our project on Transifex.

Known Issues

Assistance

If you need help getting the plugin to work, please visit this thread on the XBMC forums.

When asking for help or reporting a potential bug, please be prepared to post your debug log from XBMC and, if you don't mind, your AlbumData.xml from your iPhoto library or ApertureData.xml from an Aperture library. Remember to remove any private information from all files before posting them.

For directions on how to get your XBMC log file: