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[eljr]

OK, it's not often it happens but it is totally frustrating when it does.

Is there any trick, advanced feature to apply cover art when the normal ways will not take?

(I just can't tolerate that music note in place of cover art)

[eljr]

bump

[flac.rules]

OK, it's not often it happens but it is totally frustrating when it does.

Is there any trick, advanced feature to apply cover art when the normal ways will not take?

(I just can't tolerate that music note in place of cover art)

What do you mean? You can't find cover art for all your music, and you want suggestions on where to get it?

[eljr]

What do you mean? You can't find cover art for all your music, and you want suggestions on where to get it?

the cover art will not stick.

I place it from a file, it does not appear.

I place it from a URL, it does not appear.

In one case, I got it from the internet option, it took for about 2 seconds than disappeared.

Sometimes I need delete and re-rip a CD and try again and then it takes. In some cases nothing takes.

I have wrestled with this for years on different PC's and different MC versions.

Right I have it down to two albums that will not take but it's frustrating. And I don't think I should need to re-rip as I have so often. 25 times or so.

 

[Vocalpoint]

I place it from a file, it does not appear. I place it from a URL, it does not appear.

In one case, I got it from the internet option, it took for about 2 seconds than disappeared.

Might help to understand what format you are ripping to. And - what are your settings like under

Tools->Settings-File Location->Cover Art

Is there a check on "Also store image in file's tag" ?

VP

[eljr]

Might help to understand what format you are ripping to. And - what are your settings like under

Tools->Settings-File Location->Cover Art

Is there a check on "Also store image in file's tag" ?

VP

ripping to Flac

yes file tag is checked

[Cinelder]

ripping to Flac

yes file tag is checked

I have also been encountering this problem in recent 64-bit builds.  Right click/Cover Art/Add from File or Paste From Clipboard doesn't seem to work.  The only thing that seems to work for me lately is manually dragging the album art work from an open Explorer window into MC's Image tag editor window.  That works fine.

[RoderickGI]

You should never have to re-rip to get Cover Art. In fact, a CD doesn't have Cover Art on it, and MC just looks up the Cover Art when you rip, so it makes no sense to re-rip. Just get MC to re-lookup the Cover Art.

The worst you should have to do is delete the Cover Art from the file or files using the "Remove Cover Art" function, and then re-add it back using any one of the methods. That can sometimes clear issues with Cover Art.

Do we have to guess your other settings in Options > File Location > Cover Art?
If you have them stored in a specified folder, and that isn't on the local drive, tell us about the nature of the storage. NAS? Server? USB Drive?

Check to see if all your thumbnails have been built.
If not, use the "Build missing thumbnails" function to finish them.
In most views you are looking at thumbnails, not the original Cover Art, and sometimes the thumbnails database gets corrupted. That is what deleting the Cover Art as above can sometimes fix, by deleting corruption in the thumbnails database. If that doesn't work you will need to delete the thumbnails database and rebuild it.

Are you using Windows Defender?
Do you have Protect Folders turned on?
Is your Cover Art folder included in the Protected Folders?

[eljr]

I have also been encountering this problem in recent 64-bit builds.  Right click/Cover Art/Add from File or Paste From Clipboard doesn't seem to work.  The only thing that seems to work for me lately is manually dragging the album art work from an open Explorer window into MC's Image tag editor window.  That works fine.

i'll try this, that something I did not know was possible

[eljr]

You should never have to re-rip to get Cover Art. In fact, a CD doesn't have Cover Art on it, and MC just looks up the Cover Art when you rip, so it makes no sense to re-rip. Just get MC to re-lookup the Cover Art.

Already said I tried that with same results.

The worst you should have to do is delete the Cover Art from the file or files using the "Remove Cover Art" function, and then re-add it back using any one of the methods. That can sometimes clear issues with Cover Art.

tried this many times.

Do we have to guess your other settings in Options > File Location > Cover Art?

This was already answered.

If you have them stored in a specified folder, and that isn't on the local drive, tell us about the nature of the storage. NAS? Server? USB Drive?

MC23 and Library, (music folders/files) are on laptop.

Check to see if all your thumbnails have been built.

I do not know what this means.

If not, use the "Build missing thumbnails" function to finish them.
In most views you are looking at thumbnails, not the original Cover Art, and sometimes the thumbnails database gets corrupted. That is what deleting the Cover Art as above can sometimes fix, by deleting corruption in the thumbnails database. If that doesn't work you will need to delete the thumbnails database and rebuild it.

Again, not sure what this means but I have attempted to add cover art from all the add cover art tools in MC23 and have changed the cover art in files to see if it would work and tried adding from different URL's to see if it would work.

Are you using Windows Defender?

Yes

Do you have Protect Folders turned on?

No idea what this is or how to check.

Is your Cover Art folder included in the Protected Folders?

The cover art is in the albums folders, all the folders in one folder, music.
I do not know what Protected Folders are.

[JimH]

Please read this thread on Windows Defender:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,114101.0.html

[RoderickGI]

This was already answered.

Sweet... Only it wasn't. You only partially answered. But now you have answered the important bit, accidentally, while responding to a Windows Defender question.

MC23 and Library, (music folders/files) are on laptop.

Based on your answers, the "Options > Folder Location > Cover Art > Folder" doesn't really matter, and I shall assume that it is the default anyway.

With a tab open Standard View, on the main menu at the top of MC, go to "Help > System Info...". The "Reporter" will be opened. In the display on the tab, eight lines down, there will be a line that says; "Thumbnails Built:" Does it say 100%?

If it doesn't say 100%, on the main menu at the top of MC, go to  "Tools > Advanced Tools > Build Missing Thumbnails...", answer yes to building the thumbnails. Progress will be shown in the action window at the bottom left.

When building the thumbnails finishes, check what it says in the Action Window. It should just say "Complete" and give a time taken. Now click Refresh on the Reporter tab. Does "Thumbnails Built:" now say 100%?

Close MC and reopen it. Check the "Thumbnails Built:" value again. Still at 100%?

Report results.

[eljr]

Yes, still at 100% after closing and reopening MC23 program. Took 16 minutes.

[eljr]

Tried to add cover art. Same thing. Will not take any from a file but takes it from the get from internet feature until you click on anything then it disappears.

 

[RoderickGI]

Okay, I think that there is a better than 85% chance that your thumbnails database is corrupted. You need to delete and rebuild it.

1. Backup your MC Library.
2. Close Media Center and JRiver Media Server.
3. Navigate to "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 23\Thumbnails" in Windows Explorer.
There will be one or more sub-directories in there with names like "{4F3F17FF-27D8-4413-9D09-A77EDF831ABC}". Each one is a thumbnails database for a MC Library, so if you have three Libraries on that PC, there will be three directories. Copy those directories to another safe location if you like, just so that you can recover if something goes drastically wrong. If you do copying them, remember to delete them later!
4. Delete all sub-directories inside the Thumbnails directory. This will mean that thumbnails will be rebuilt for all MC Libraries if you have more than one.
5. Restart MC.
6. Depending on your settings, MC may start rebuilding thumbnails almost straight away. Check if it is doing so in the Reporter mentioned earlier.
7. If thumbnails haven't started to rebuild, run the "Build Missing Thumbnails..." function manually.
8. Monitor the progress of the thumbnail rebuild. You will need to Refresh the Reporter with the button. When it gets to 100%, check if any are missing by sight and using the "Audio -- Missing Cover Art" SmartList.

9. Finally, try to add any missing Cover Art to files as required. Any method. Does that work now?

[JimH]

Thumbnails don't normally get corrupted.  My money is still on antivirus.

[RoderickGI]

No, they don't normally get corrupted. Quite rare in fact. But I have had it happen once on my MC Client (which is easier to understand) and once on a local Library.

I have helped at least one other person fix their corrupted thumbnail database. I learned the delete thumbnails database trick from someone on the forum as well. So rare, but not unknown.

Given eljr's description, we are down to rare: Either the thumbnails database is corrupt, or the audio file is corrupt so that the Cover Art can't be written into the file, or the file is write protected, or as you suggest, some security software is preventing modifications to the audio file. The symptoms eljr has described are the same as I had, where Cover Art wouldn't stick. Others see the wrong Cover Art appear for a file. The cause, I believe, is that the thumbnail database indexing gets messed up.

Besides, deleting the thumbnails database does no harm. It just takes some time to rebuild them.

[eljr]

Thumbnails don't normally get corrupted.  My money is still on antivirus.

antivirus (JRiver is listed as exception) can cause such an issue with only 2 of 927 album art? The other 927 are fine...

and other than making JRiver an exception, is there anything else to be done regards antivirus? (that is what I understood from your link)

[JimH]

If you think you have found two files that cause a problem, please send us one.  We'll take a look.  A corrupt file could cause a problem.

[eljr]

Okay, I think that there is a better than 85% chance that your thumbnails database is corrupted. You need to delete and rebuild it.

1. Backup your MC Library.
2. Close Media Center and JRiver Media Server.
3. Navigate to "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 23\Thumbnails" in Windows Explorer.
There will be one or more sub-directories in there with names like "{4F3F17FF-27D8-4413-9D09-A77EDF831ABC}". Each one is a thumbnails database for a MC Library, so if you have three Libraries on that PC, there will be three directories. Copy those directories to another safe location if you like, just so that you can recover if something goes drastically wrong. If you do copying them, remember to delete them later!
4. Delete all sub-directories inside the Thumbnails directory. This will mean that thumbnails will be rebuilt for all MC Libraries if you have more than one.
5. Restart MC.
6. Depending on your settings, MC may start rebuilding thumbnails almost straight away. Check if it is doing so in the Reporter mentioned earlier.
7. If thumbnails haven't started to rebuild, run the "Build Missing Thumbnails..." function manually.
8. Monitor the progress of the thumbnail rebuild. You will need to Refresh the Reporter with the button. When it gets to 100%, check if any are missing by sight and using the "Audio -- Missing Cover Art" SmartList.

9. Finally, try to add any missing Cover Art to files as required. Any method. Does that work now?

First and most important, thanks for the help. You took ownership of my issue and laid out a very easy to follow template, specifically for my issue, to follow.

----------------

Alright, I became intimidated by this latest post. I live in dread fear of JRiver not being put back together properly.

sooo

What I did was simple. As has SOMETIMES worked in the past, I deleted the album (from hard drive and library) that would not take cover art and re-ripped it.  When I did, all the tags I had set were there and guess what? So was the cover art!
I did not have to do anything. The art I had told to be there so many times, in so many ways, just appeared.

I only have one CD left with no cover art... for now. That has old cover art when I rip it. When I try to update the cover art, it will not take the new art and the old art will no longer appear.

As I said, this happens too often but likely less than 35 times out of 1,000 rips. ... Much of my collection does not come with cover art automatically, it's not "popular" stuff. Less know classical.

Again, my sincere appreciation.

I am hoping to  finally tag my music in "boxed sets".... I had tried at one point to create a "boxed set tag" but never got it to work. I might try again, hopefully you are around.

Have a great day.

[RoderickGI]

G'Day eljr.

I guess it can be pretty intimidating deleting bits of MC and trusting it will rebuild itself. Just so you know, I did do this to one of my local (on local hard disk) libraries before posting. It has just 1056 files in it, but it rebuilt all thumbnails within two minutes, just by me scrolling around MC. It was too quick for me even to need to run the  "Build Missing Thumbnails..." function! Basically, as soon as I looked at a view, the thumbnails were built. I will note that the rebuilding wasn't reported in the Reporter using that method, but I believe it would be for larger libraries when the "Build Missing Thumbnails..." function is run.

My experience is that it is a reliable and repeatable process.

Never mind, you have your Cover Art now.

You may be interested to know that when you insert a CD into an optical drive with MC running it looks up metadata in the JRiver online database, YADB, using the Album version of that database, which is pretty good and often finds CDs. (There is also a YADB Track database which isn't so good at finding individual tracks.) If it doesn't find it in the YADB database it looks up freedb online. This metadata (Artist, Album, Track names, etc.) is saved in a CD database within the MC Library and is shown to you before you rip the CD. That is what enables you to edit the metadata before running the rip processes. Even if you don't actually rip the CD, that metadata is stored in MC. When you delete the Album from MC, that metadata and any modifications you made to it are still stored in MC.

Also, when you delete an Album from MC that has been ripped or imported, all its metadata is stored in a "Removed" database in the MC Library.

So when you re-rip or re-import that deleted Album, MC has four databases it can retrieve metadata from; the two Online databases, the CD database, and the Removed database. (If you re-import just tracks it only uses the YADB Track database.) I believe that the original metadata already stored in the MC is used instead of looking up the online databases, and I think the Removed database gets precedence over the CD database. I haven't exhaustively tested that, but it is consistent with my observations and what others have said.

You can set up Views to look at what is in the CD and Removed databases, and you can edit records in there to correct them, or delete records if they are wrong and you want MC to refresh its data from the online databases. I have been able to add Cover Art to the CD database for CDs that I have never ripped! Neat.

So, this CD that unexpectedly got its Cover Art back without any intervention from you probably had Cover Art already stored in your Cover Art directory, and the metadata MC already had about the CD probably pointed to that Cover Art, which was likely stored in the directory defined on "Options > File Location > Cover Art > Folder". Or MC could just have looked up the Cover Art on the Last.fm site or elsewhere using the metadata it already had.

That final CD that has no Cover Art, and for which the art disappears when you try to update it? That old art would just be a thumbnail in the thumbnails database, with no corresponding Cover Art file. That is why it disappears. You effectively break the link to the thumbnail by trying to replace the Cover Art associated with the CD. If you have tried to add any new Cover Art and it hasn't taken, you could look in the Cover Art directory for it, and if it is there, a right-click and "Cover Art > Quick Find In File / Cover Art Directory" may find it. I think this is a symptom of the thumbnail database indexing being slightly corrupted, which my procedure was intended to fix.

With "boxed sets" I'm no expert as I haven't had to do it yet. At least not with CDs. It isn't supported in a standard way in MC, so there are a few different approaches I have seen threads discussing. If you find some threads about it, and see how people approached it, then work out how you want to do it, I'm sure MC can be made to accommodate your requirements. The main issue is to work out what you want MC to do.


Thanks for the positive feedback. Understanding how Cover Art works has been one of my "things" in MC.