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[novice2]

The cover art on my primary pc is good. the cover art on a secondary pc running against a backup copy of music library is not in synch with primary. How do i get the cover art in synch?

[RoderickGI]

You are using a Backup from the Primary PC restored to your Secondary PC?
You are not using the MC Media Server functionality?
This is not a good idea, and is fraught with difficulties. Both PCs would need to be set up identically to find all your media, with the same paths to media and so on.

Cover Art is not backed up with a MC backup. If it is stored next to the media, and all paths are the same, and you use a backup from the Primary, restored to the Secondary, then the Secondary should find the Cover Art.

However, if the Cover Art is stored in the directory defined in Options, which is separate to the media file locations, then the Secondary PC also needs access to that Cover Art location. If you are using the default location, that would be under the User directory structure on the Primary PC, and would not be available to the Secondary PC, due to Windows permissions.

So, if none of the above helps, describe exactly what you have set up, and how you are using MC on the two PCs. Include all your Cover Art settings in Options.

[novice2]

This is starting to help.

So I now realize the cover art is stored in the default location which is not what I want at all. If I change the location how do I point everything so the music library will keep the relationships correct? That is, how do I "move" the cover art to the location I want while keeping those relationships between art and music?

[Lewin]

I'm also running two independent PC's, each with the full music library. Library updates are made on the first PC; the HD on the second PC is kept synchronized as a backup. Never had any problems.

All meta data (cover art, artist data, etc.) is embedded in the FLAC-files. In addition, each album folder has a Folder.jpg cover art copy.

This way no cover art needs to be stored in MC. If a music file is copied or moved, the meta data just travels with it. If I convert files to AAC or MP3 for a mobile device, the meta data is retained (I guess).

[novice2]

I have about 2000 CDs of music. The cover art was stored in the default location as I was not aware of how that worked. At this stage how would I move the cover art to other location(s) and yet maintain the association between the cover art and the associated music?

[RoderickGI]

I think you should be able to just copy the existing Cover Art directory to a new location of your choice, and the change the directory in the MC Options. then close and restart MC of course.

I can't check it right now, but I am pretty sure that the audio Cover Art is just linked using the file name, which matches the audio file name, when you store Cover Art in a separate directory instead of next to the file.

Anyway, you should be able to try that and see if it works. Back up your MC library first, and don't delete the original Cover Art directory until you have confirmed it is working the way you want.

[novice2]

Thanks. This has all been helpful and instructive.

I determined that all the cover art is in the folder with the related albums. This is good as the art is also found in every copy of the music library.

In order to insure that the good cover art is not overlayed (as it appears it was in a couple of cases) what is the exact setting I need to shut off in order to keep MC from acting on its own?

[blgentry]

The relevant option is:

Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art > Audio mode

Set that to "same folder as the file" and it should work as you expect, keeping cover art "next to" the song files themselves.  If you are using FLAC or another format that supports embedded art, you should make sure the embed option is set also:

Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art > also store image in the file's tag > (checked)

Brian.

[RoderickGI]

Brian has covered the settings you need to know about.

On this;

In order to insure that the good cover art is not overlayed (as it appears it was in a couple of cases) what is the exact setting I need to shut off in order to keep MC from acting on its own?

If it appears that a Cover Art image has been overridden with some other image, it may be that there is already a Cover Art image inside the file. I'm pretty sure Cover Art stored inside an audio file always overrides Cover Art stored in an image file in the same directory as the audio file, or in the Cover Art directory defined in Options.

Anyway, to check which Cover Art is being used for any particular audio file, just highlight the audio file and display the tags using the Action Windows (bottom left corner). The tag [Image File] will either say "Inside File" or will have a file name if the file is in the same folder as the audio file. If the Cover Art is in the folder defined in Options, I believe the [Image File] tag will have the full path and file name, but I don't have any examples in my setup to check.

[novice2]

Thanks much. THis sounds like a good direction to investigate.