Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RD James]

Is there any way to add art to an album without writing it to the file tags?
This is not a common example, but I just added new art to a 221 track compilation and it inflated the file size by a gigabyte.
Is there a way to just have JRiver write folder.jpg files?

[CountryBumkin]

At Tools>Options>File Location>Cover Art, uncheck "also save image in the file's tag".
See if that does what you want.

[RD James]

Does that write folder.jpg files though?
If I'm not embedding it in the tracks, I want to keep a copy of the art next to them.
 
I wonder: might it be possible to tag track #1 only?
That way you should always have a copy of the art that is guaranteed to move with the files.
 
I've lost art too many times before when it's been kept separate from the files, but I also don't want to be inflating my library size by tens of gigabytes.

[ferday]

You can tag just a track with art, just select one track when doing the cover art find.  It won't auto fill the rest.  I have a few albums where the liner notes have a picture for each track and it works fine, just delete the image from the others

If you uncheck save in file, but leave save as folder.jpg, it will do exactly that, although I'm unsure if re-checking has an effect I somehow don't think so as that wouldn't make sense

You could use smaller cover art also...and/or just manually save a jpg in the folder and don't mess with MC for that album

I can't imagine you have too many 200 track comps, I have a couple in that range but certainly uncommon.  I know classical sometimes does those unwieldy 20 disc sets and stuff

[MikeO]

Google a utility called Tag&Rename, it gives you a lot of flexibility of how folder.jpg is added to a file tag or simply to folder

It also allows you to resize folder art to say 500x500 and hence drop the size

I use it in parallel to MC for specific jobs

Mike

[Vocalpoint]

I've lost art too many times before when it's been kept separate from the files, but I also don't want to be inflating my library size by tens of gigabytes.

What size album art are you adding.

My standard 1000x1000 covers average maybe 200-275 kb per image. Maybe 2MB to add that to 10 or 12 files.

VP

[RD James]

Highest resolution and quality available, always.
This one was 5120x5120.

[Vocalpoint]

Highest resolution and quality available, always. This one was 5120x5120.

Wow. Can I ask why so large? I mean I can see having the cover as a master copy if you need to upgrade size at some point but why would need to embed 5120x5120 artwork?

I chose 1000x1000 since it perfectly fills the screen when MC is in Display View (CTRL+3) which we use quite frequently when playing an album. It's a perfect size without making the files unruly in size. I was 600x600 for the longest time but decided it was a tad too small for Display View.

And where would one get 5120x5120 artwork? You must be scanning?

VP

[RD James]

Wow. Can I ask why so large? I mean I can see having the cover as a master copy if you need to upgrade size at some point but why would need to embed 5120x5120 artwork?
I chose 1000x1000 since it perfectly fills the screen when MC is in Display View (CTRL+3) which we use quite frequently when playing an album. It's a perfect size without making the files unruly in size. I was 600x600 for the longest time but decided it was a tad too small for Display View.
And where would one get 5120x5120 artwork? You must be scanning?

Keeping a separate collection of covers is a nuisance to manage, instead of embedding in the file.
I haven't tested it yet, but if I can just tag track 1 and have it apply to the whole album in JRiver, that might work best for me.

5120x5120 just happened to be the best quality artwork that I found on Google Images for that album. Not a scan, just a really good source image.
It is usually not that high resolution, but using only 1000x1000 looks bad on high-res screens.
5K displays (5120x2880) have been available since October 2014, and 8K displays (7680x4320) have been announced for release later this year.

[Vocalpoint]

Keeping a separate collection of covers is a nuisance to manage, instead of embedding in the file.

No problem with that here - but we have an established workflow for all our imaging so I don't really think about it that much.

I haven't tested it yet, but if I can just tag track 1 and have it apply to the whole album in JRiver, that might work best for me.

Tested that long ago - during playback - Track 1 will display artwork and the rest will not. If you do not need the rest showing artwork during playback - that could work for ya.

using only 1000x1000 looks bad on high-res screens.

Looks sweet enough for me on all our high-res screens - but that may be a factor of Photoshop processing on each cover. I work over every cover before it gets to the file.

There will not be any 5K or 8K displays in our future for a long while Good luck with your testing !

VP

[JimH]

I believe that the album art for multiple tracks will be found when only one is added, IF you let MC automatically look up cover art.  Your first track gets added to the JRiver server and MC finds it there to apply it to the other tracks.

[Vocalpoint]

I believe that the album art for multiple tracks will be found when only one is added, IF you let MC automatically look up cover art.  Your first track gets added to the JRiver server and MC finds it there to apply it to the other tracks.

Interesting....

I assume this is not the case if the cover art is embedded in the file with no lookups being asked for?

VP

[JimH]

Check this option:

General > Submit cover art to online database

[Vocalpoint]

Check this option:

General > Submit cover art to online database

If one does this - do I always get my nice 1000x1000 version of the artwork I uploaded - pulled down every time I fire up this specific album or will I get some low-res 234x314 version uploaded by someone else?

VP

[JimH]

You will get the "best" that the system has.  It uses a "voting" algorythm.  It's a combination of size and manual downloads.  Covers that get more downloads rise to the top of the list (for each album) and those that get fewer sink to the bottom or even off the list.

Try it.  The system won't overwrite anything you have.  Try a few manually to get an idea of how it works.

[blgentry]

You can certainly add cover art with the option to "write to file tag" turned off.  This will just associate the file that's in the directory with the files.   If you were really determined, you could then tag the first file in each album with the option to "write to file tag" turned *on*.  That way you'd have the art embedded for that first song, and then associated for the rest of the songs.  It's not exactly elegant, but it would work for these outlying cases where the art is huge and the number of songs is large.  BTW, I tested this and it works.

Just some ideas for you.

Brian.