Topic: Bizarre artwork situation (Read 5120 times)

songsequencer · « **on:** October 01, 2019, 12:35:20 am »

I chose an album to play today and discovered that it had some random image (from my job, not even music related) for the album cover. How did that happen? So I tried "Remove cover art" so that I could put the proper one in. I got the message, "Do you also want to delete the cover art files from your hard disk?" This message concerned me -- "cover art fileS" -- did they mean all cover art or just this file that I'm trying to delete? First I tried "No," but then the image wouldn't delete. After reviewing the wiki, which wasn't very clear, I guessed that it would probably just be this one, so next I chose "Yes," but the image still wouldn't delete.

Next I tried to figure out where the cover art was stored, and discovered this is a whole labyrinth that I could get lost in. Eventually I found that MC was storing some images in a Library Application Support folder (which I do NOT like at all, especially since my music files are on an external drive shared by multiple users [on the same iMac]). So I went into that Application Support folder to try to delete the artwork from there. I was shocked to find that there are hundreds of random images that have been assigned to my albums! This image from my job was not only on the album I was working on but also on multitudes of other albums. I also found other random images, like a single green line, for album cover art work on multiple albums.

First, how could this even happen? And second, is there a way I can fix this without going through some 3000 albums and deleting the random images one by one (or several by several when multiples appear together)?

Finally, I would like for my album artwork to be with the albums themselves to avoid this kind of mess, but I wasn't sure what was the best way to do it. Again, the wiki was confusing to me. There are three "Audio Mode" options but I don't quite understand them. I'm new to MC; I've been using iTunes, and it appears to me that the images are associated with each song file. I used to also sometimes put a specific image with a specific song within the album (such as 7" single artwork for a song that was released as a single) -- it would nice to be able to do that too in MC. At any rate, I don't want the cover art in some separate place (like the Library Application Support folder!). Then MC won't be creating separate image files for each computer user. It's all such a mess now that I don't know where to begin to clean it all up.

Scobie · « **Reply #1 on:** October 01, 2019, 01:07:01 am »

If you go to Tools -> Options -> File Locations there is a "Cover Art" heading that should tell you where the cover art is stored. There is an option that is "As the same folder as the file" which I think is what you want.

This also gives you the option of storing the cover art in the Tag which works well too.

Once you have stored against the Tag you can use the option to Clean Cover Art Folder. But make sure the images are stored against Tag first.

RoderickGI · « **Reply #2 on:** October 01, 2019, 01:24:17 am »

One way that you can get some "random" image recorded as Cover Art against a whole bunch of audio files is.

1. You are working and copy an image, which stays in the Copy buffer/Clipboard.
2. You are later using MC and select a bunch of files, whether on purpose or not, as you are using Views, Playlists, or Smartlists.
3. For some reason, you try to Paste something somewhere. Your work image is in the copy buffer, MC has a number of selected files, so it pastes the image into those audio files as Cover Art.

I haven't done the above myself, yet, but I have seen it done. Or worked through the issue with others who have done it. For that reason, I always make sure I know exactly what is selected whenever I do a function in MC, and I check the Status Bar at the bottom of Standard View before executing the function.

blgentry · « **Reply #3 on:** October 01, 2019, 05:04:42 pm »

If you change MC to look for artwork in the folders with your music files, and you already have cover art in those folders, and it is named correctly, then MC should pick it up.

In order to make MC look for the art in this new location, first set the option. Then you might need to tell each file to update for the new location. Select an album, then right click > cover art > quick find

I'm not sure if that's necessary or not. If it is, you can easily do this on many albums at once if you'd like. Assuming it works on one album, I would then do it on a few albums at once. Then I would probably do it in batches of 50 albums or so. That shouldn't take too long and it's not such a large chunk that MC would get hung.

Good luck.

Brian.

songsequencer · « **Reply #4 on:** October 05, 2019, 01:33:38 am »

Quote from: Scobie on October 01, 2019, 01:07:01 am

If you go to Tools -> Options -> File Locations there is a "Cover Art" heading that should tell you where the cover art is stored. There is an option that is "As the same folder as the file" which I think is what you want.

This also gives you the option of storing the cover art in the Tag which works well too.

Once you have stored against the Tag you can use the option to Clean Cover Art Folder. But make sure the images are stored against Tag first.

When I go to Tools->Options->File Locations, the Library/Application Support line has "..." which I assume means it is not active. Is that a correct assumption? Yet that folder is full of cover art images. What is checked is "Audio Mode: In the same folder as the file," though I may have checked that box after this artwork mess appeared and I discovered that cover art was going into the Application Support folder.

Just now, I put a check in the box "Also store image in the file's tag," but I'm not really sure what that's supposed to do. Does that mean it store the image in two places? Does that take up a lot of space? If it's stored in the tag, does that mean if my music library is transferred to some other system (i.e. Roon), the cover art would go with it?

Another question: You said "Make sure the images are stored against Tag first." How do I make sure they are indeed stored this way?

songsequencer · « **Reply #5 on:** October 05, 2019, 01:38:52 am »

Quote from: RoderickGI on October 01, 2019, 01:24:17 am

One way that you can get some "random" image recorded as Cover Art against a whole bunch of audio files is.

1. You are working and copy an image, which stays in the Copy buffer/Clipboard.
2. You are later using MC and select a bunch of files, whether on purpose or not, as you are using Views, Playlists, or Smartlists.
3. For some reason, you try to Paste something somewhere. Your work image is in the copy buffer, MC has a number of selected files, so it pastes the image into those audio files as Cover Art.

I haven't done the above myself, yet, but I have seen it done. Or worked through the issue with others who have done it. For that reason, I always make sure I know exactly what is selected whenever I do a function in MC, and I check the Status Bar at the bottom of Standard View before executing the function.

Wow, that is really bad. It seems like MC should not have such behavior. But it makes sense that this is how it could have happened.

I didn't understand this part: "I always make sure I know exactly what is selected whenever I do a function in MC, and I check the Status Bar at the bottom of Standard View before executing the function." In the lower left corner, I see these three things: Check For Updates, Display, and Action Window. Are any of those where you're talking about that I should be looking for something? Or is it on the very bottom, like in the window frame? Right now I have an artist in the top half of the window, and in the bottom half is a list of all that artist's songs, and the frame says "34 files."

songsequencer · « **Reply #6 on:** October 05, 2019, 01:47:23 am »

Quote from: blgentry on October 01, 2019, 05:04:42 pm

If you change MC to look for artwork in the folders with your music files, and you already have cover art in those folders, and it is named correctly, then MC should pick it up.

In order to make MC look for the art in this new location, first set the option. Then you might need to tell each file to update for the new location. Select an album, then right click > cover art > quick find

I'm not sure if that's necessary or not. If it is, you can easily do this on many albums at once if you'd like. Assuming it works on one album, I would then do it on a few albums at once. Then I would probably do it in batches of 50 albums or so. That shouldn't take too long and it's not such a large chunk that MC would get hung.

Good luck.

Brian.

On albums by a particular artist, in the top frame of Standard View where the artist's albums were listed, I did Cover Art-> Quick Find, but nothing happened, except for the last one, though; when I did that, first, in the bottom pane where the songs are listed, the album artwork disappeared momentarily. Then I saw a notice that tags were being changed. Then the album cover reappeared. But I don't understand what just happened. (This one might be a special case -- see my post "Media Center refuses to import an album that previously didn't have permission" to see how what happened here is probably not related to my bizarre artwork situation -- what I'm describing here happened with that album.)

Next I tried this on a few of the albums where my work images were showing as the cover art. Nothing happened. Still work images for cover art.

RoderickGI · « **Reply #7 on:** October 05, 2019, 06:11:40 am »

Quote from: songsequencer on October 05, 2019, 01:38:52 am

Wow, that is really bad. It seems like MC should not have such behavior. But it makes sense that this is how it could have happened.

Actually, it's not that bad. I was misremembering the functionality. You actually have to select "Right-click > Cover Art > Paste From Clipboard (image or URL)" to make it happen. I think I was remembering a time that could happen, but was unintentional and has since been fixed. There were some issues with MC retaining selection of files that weren't visible in the past, and that has been fixed. It could still happen if a shortcut key had been set to Paste From Clipboard, but that isn't set up by default.

I was referring to the status information in the frame.

songsequencer · « **Reply #8 on:** October 13, 2019, 09:17:56 pm »

Starting to attack the bizarre artwork situation, I began with the first item in my list...actually, this one had no artwork. I tried "Get album artwork from internet" but nothing happened. I forget what I did next to try to add the artwork -- I may have copied from another source and tried to paste it in. At any rate, I got that album artwork in there. Then I went to one of the hundreds that have random images. Actually, there were two in a row, and I worked on both of these. I right-clicked, did "Remove Cover Art." When it asked if I also wanted to remove the artwork from my hard disk, I said yes. A few seconds later, that first album cover art that I did (mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph) appeared on both of the albums I just removed the cover art from! I keep choosing "Remove cover art," and the images will disappear for a few seconds, but then that same image keeps appearing on those albums! Before it appears on those albums again, I notice that it suddenly appears on my desktop, like a slow flash, and then it's back in its same stubborn spot in the albums where it shouldn't be.

JimH · « **Reply #9 on:** October 14, 2019, 02:07:01 am »

MC will use image files found in the same folder as the audio files. Is that the problem?

songsequencer · « **Reply #10 on:** October 28, 2019, 10:42:11 pm »

I just want to add here that others are having this problem. Here is a link to a post with a similar problem, and the original poster is not the only one having the issue.
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?action=post;topic=122148.0;last_msg=850050

songsequencer · « **Reply #11 on:** October 28, 2019, 10:47:09 pm »

Today I tried to change the cover art of one of my hundreds of albums whose cover art got overwritten with random images. In this case, the random image had been a long vertical line. When I erased that image and replaced it with the album cover art, it kept the long shape of the line!! MC25 has lost its mind when it comes to cover art.

In my attachments, the first image shows three albums. The two on the left got attacked by the random line image. The one on the far left, I have chosen Remove Cover Art. In the second image, when I put in the correct cover art, instead of it being the proper square shape of an album cover, it kept the same shape of the random line image that overwrote hundreds of my files.

songsequencer · « **Reply #12 on:** October 28, 2019, 10:54:56 pm »

Quote from: JimH on October 14, 2019, 02:07:01 am

MC will use image files found in the same folder as the audio files. Is that the problem?

I checked a number of albums with the random artwork. I went to the folders where the music is -- of all the ones I checked, there is no image there. The music files themselves do not have an image, either.

blgentry · « **Reply #13 on:** October 29, 2019, 06:05:32 am »

What is your procedure for adding or replacing Album Cover Art? Please tell us the menus or hot keys or drag and drop or whatever your exact procedure is.

I've been using MC since MC20 for Mac and have not experienced this problem. It's very unusual, which makes it hard to diagnose. It doesn't help that we have to type our responses to each other and we can't see what each other are doing.

Brian.

songsequencer · « **Reply #14 on:** October 30, 2019, 02:39:08 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on October 29, 2019, 06:05:32 am

What is your procedure for adding or replacing Album Cover Art? Please tell us the menus or hot keys or drag and drop or whatever your exact procedure is.

I've been using MC since MC20 for Mac and have not experienced this problem. It's very unusual, which makes it hard to diagnose. It doesn't help that we have to type our responses to each other and we can't see what each other are doing.

Brian.

Thank you, Brian, for your interest in trying to help me diagnose this. In the example above where I included screenshots, here's the process:
1) In a main window where all the album covers are shown, I chose the album with the offending bogus artwork, right click on the image, and choose "Cover Art-->Remove cover art."
2) I got the pop-up, "Do you also want to permanently delete the cover art files from your hard disk?" I'm not completely sure what this means -- I assume they don't mean *anywhere* on my hard disk, but rather wherever this particular file is stored? At any rate, this is a bogus image, so I chose "Yes."
3) At this point, the blue music note indicating that there is no artwork showed up. However, it had a two-tone color behind it, and the shape was still long.
4) Next, I right-clicked on the image again, and this time chose "Cover Art-->Add From File." I chose the image from a place on my computer where I collect album cover images before adding them to iTunes or MC when they don't show up automatically.
5) I got the pop-up, "Would you like to copy this image to the cover art location you have specified in options?" Not completely sure what this means, but I don't want to do anything different from my normal setup, so I chose "Yes."

These are the steps I took, yet I got the result shown in the second image above, where the image background was long rather than the shape of the image.

Today, in order to document the steps, I did this with another item that had the bogus random line for album artwork. This time, the replaced artwork had a normal background size. So I went back and checked the one I changed that was shown in the image in the previous post. Today the shape was normal -- square.

In Options, here are my settings regarding Cover Art:
Audio mode: In the same folder as the file -- it has a down arrow.
Next line: ... /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/J River/Media Center 25/Cover Art/ <-- This is NOT where I want cover art! I want it stored with the albums!
Next line: ...Clean cover art folder
Next line: The box is checked that says "Also store image in the file's tag." (I'm not completely sure what this means, but I think it means the image stays with the music file. JRiver uses a lot of terminology that I'm not accustomed to and I often don't know what they're talking about.)

blgentry · « **Reply #15 on:** October 30, 2019, 04:45:32 pm »

Quote from: songsequencer on October 30, 2019, 02:39:08 pm

In the example above where I included screenshots, here's the process:
[...]

The process you outlined sounds correct to me.

Quote

5) I got the pop-up, "Would you like to copy this image to the cover art location you have specified in options?" Not completely sure what this means, but I don't want to do anything different from my normal setup, so I chose "Yes."

That question is asking if you want to use the image you specified, "in place" in the same directory where it is... or if you want it copied to the place where you told MC to put cover art images. You said Yes, so MC copied it to the place you specified for cover art images.

Quote

Today, in order to document the steps, I did this with another item that had the bogus random line for album artwork. This time, the replaced artwork had a normal background size. So I went back and checked the one I changed that was shown in the image in the previous post. Today the shape was normal -- square.

It sounds like the process is working correctly. I saw your screen shot, so I know it was a weird shape before. But now it's fixed. Perhaps refreshing the view, or restarting MC fixed this. Hard for me to say. It's not all that normal to change cover art from relatively square to very long or vice versa. This might be a bug that the shape stays around until some kind of refresh. I'm just guessing.

The good news is that it is now working correctly.

Quote

In Options, here are my settings regarding Cover Art:
Audio mode: In the same folder as the file -- it has a down arrow.
Next line: ... /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/J River/Media Center 25/Cover Art/ <-- This is NOT where I want cover art! I want it stored with the albums!

That location will not be used. Because on the line above, you have specified "in the same folder as the file". So it will copy your cover art into the folder with the music file that you are updating. You should be able to check that this is true: GO to the folder with the songs you just updated. You should see an image file there with the name of the album. It should be the image that you added earlier.

Quote

Next line: The box is checked that says "Also store image in the file's tag." (I'm not completely sure what this means, but I think it means the image stays with the music file. JRiver uses a lot of terminology that I'm not accustomed to and I often don't know what they're talking about.)

This setting tells MC to *also* put the cover art inside your music files. For FLAC and other types that support it, this embeds the image inside the music file. So one file has both the music and the cover art. That way you can't lose the cover art. Because it's inside the music file!

In your setup, MC will do both things:
1. Copy your cover art to the folder with the music file.
2. Embed the cover art inside the music file if the file type supports it.

I think you're well covered here. Your setup is very similar to mine and mine works pretty much flawlessly from a cover art perspective. I approve.

Brian.

songsequencer · « **Reply #16 on:** October 31, 2019, 02:17:46 am »

Okay, at least for now changes are properly taking place. I still have the situation where hundreds of albums have incorrect album cover art, or rather, random images that are not album cover art at all. I found the hard disk location of these: They are in Library/Application Support/J River/Media Center 25/Albums/Cover Art. One group of these that all have the same image have a Created and Modified time beginning at 2:58 AM and ending at 3:34 AM...in other words, as you go down the list, the time gradually gets later.

KeithW posted the same problem: "Anyway, for this week's event, what I can see in the cover art folder is that the problem image exists as a jpg 263 times, each with a different, but correct, filename that reflects the album. What I can also tell is that the changes appear to have been made in alphabetical order (artist-album) - that is, when I sort the files by date/time last modified, the files appear in alphabetical order (as attached). When I sort the tracks in MY by date modified, the batch of tracks is in MC, the filenames also are in strict alphabetical order, starting from the drive name where each is stored.

There's also an apparent time lag - the changes in art work run from 12.47pm through 3.10pm; in MC the changes started at 3.11pm and ran through to 4.10pm."
(Found at https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?action=post;topic=122148.0;last_msg=850050)

I have attached an image of ONE of my incidents of this. This has happened multiple times with different random images. I hope MC 25 does not do this again because it's going to take a long time to repair all of these.

songsequencer · « **Reply #17 on:** January 07, 2020, 08:08:13 pm »

Before doing anything in Media Center (but it was open), I had copied some cells from a spreadsheet and pasted them elsewhere in the spreadsheet. After I stopped working on the spreadsheet, I started browsing through Media Center. There was one of those albums with bogus artwork (images unrelated to music, as described in my original post in this thread). So, using right click, I chose “Remove Cover Art” first. Next, in Cover Art I chose “Get From Internet.” There were no internet cover art options for my album, so I clicked Cancel. Lo and behold, I had new album artwork — the cells I had previously copied on my spreadsheet!

One more detail: When I was in "Get from Internet," that spreadsheet-cell-copy was an image showing, but I didn't recognize it at the time; I was just thinking, "That image has nothing to do with the album." That shouldn't even be in there to begin with. But when I chose nothing and clicked Cancel, it should not be populating my album's cover art.

JimH · « **Reply #18 on:** January 07, 2020, 08:25:01 pm »

Could you update to 25.0.128?

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,123652.0.html

songsequencer · « **Reply #19 on:** January 07, 2020, 08:49:45 pm »

Quote from: JimH on January 07, 2020, 08:25:01 pm

Could you update to 25.0.128?

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,123652.0.html

I was on .114 -- I have just updated to .128.

Now stacks don't work in Genres. If I double click a stack in Artists, it will open as it should. In Genres, stacks won't open. I was trying to go into stacks to fix album artwork, but I can't get into them. When I hover over them, the images from the stack flash as normal, but double-clicking doesn't open the stack.

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