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[baldo]

I have had this issue with all my versions of MC. I am now on MC28.

When I load up new files into MC some files do not have media art associated. I have to go to each file or album and get the files from the Internet. When files are available this works. But sometimes there is no cover art available on the internet (Which is rather odd sometimes as a lot of the albums are  not exactly new).

In those situations I have to go to iTunes, find the album, doa screen shot of the album art, copy and paste it into a clipart/paint file, save it as  a.jpg or png  file in the same folder as the music files, go into MC find the album and the relevant files, get media centre to point to the  .jpg or png file as the cover art file......

Tedious and very time consuming indeed.   Any way to do this either more efficiently or to automate the whole process.

Thanks for any replies and seasons greetings to you all.

[HPBEME]

I deleted all the instructions in my previous post, as I did not notice you said new file.

[HPBEME]

If you right click on the album and select cover art/get from internet, it will search JRiver servers for cover art uploaded by MC user's.  I am not sure if that is what you meant you are already doing when you said "I have to go to each file or album and get the files from the Internet".  If not, you might find this approach to be easier.

That said, the quality of these uploaded image varies dramatically. Some albums will have many images to choose from and may include very large hi-rez 1500 x 1500 px images, while other (most?) albums only include smaller, low-rez images.  I personally have uploaded a 2000+ album art images.  I try to only use images that are 1000 x 1000 or larger, but those can be difficult to find for many albums, especially if obscure.  I have spent more hours than I care to admit running down the best images I can find for a given album, so for all who have benefited by downloading a hi-rez image I uploaded to JRiver's servers... your welcome!

The absolute best sources for music cover art that I have found are:   https://music.apple.com/us/search   and   https://www.albumartexchange.com/ 

The cover art I find in both these locations are typically 1500x1500.  Album Art Exchange is also user uploaded images, and are usually the finest of quality - I will occasionally find a 600X600 image that looks as good as the much larger images. You do have to register which sucks (it is free though), but if you don't, downloaded images will have a large ugly watermark on them and lower resolution to boot.  Also note that you cannot access Album Art Exchange with a VPN active (at least I cannot using SurfShark).

If you download via these sources, file sizes are generally quite large, so you should do a quick file size reduction operation using Photoshop or Paint.net (a free open source image editor).  This will take a file that might start as 1.5mb and reduce by half at least, and usually about a third of the original size.  Depends greatly on the original image itself though. 

If you don't have an image editor (or don't want to download free Paint.net and learn how to use it), you can also just paste the large file as-is onto the album (via right click, paste clipboard image... control+C will NOT work).  After that, "edit"  the image using MC's built-in editor.  You don't have to actually edit anything -  just going into edit mode and then immediately saving and exiting will process the file in such a way that it also dramatically reduces the file size.  Note that if you do it this way, MC only updates the 1st file.  You then have to copy/paste the resized image (again... over the same image) for it to apply to all the tracks for a given album (while pasting images from an external source automatically applies the image to all the tracks right away).

Hopefully all that makes sense and is of some use to you/others.

[blgentry]

When I load up new files into MC some files do not have media art associated. I have to go to each file or album and get the files from the Internet. When files are available this works. But sometimes there is no cover art available on the internet (Which is rather odd sometimes as a lot of the albums are  not exactly new).

I suspect that your metadata is incorrect in some way if these are common albums.  Can you give us a few examples of albums where MC can not find cover art via "get from internet" ?

In those situations I have to go to iTunes, find the album, doa screen shot of the album art, copy and paste it into a clipart/paint file, save it as  a.jpg or png  file in the same folder as the music files, go into MC find the album and the relevant files, get media centre to point to the  .jpg or png file as the cover art file......

Yeah that workflow isn't optimal.  For albums where you really want to look up the cover art from an external source, it's much easier to look them up on a web site, then copy and paste that image into your album in MC.  Do you have the MC link bar at the top that says "amazon, wiki" etc?  Did you know you can customize it?  I have mine set up with links to Google Image search and AlbumArtExchange search.  So, for any song or album I have selected, it will go search those web sites for that album name, in a web browser.  Then I can just copy and paste the art that I find right into MC.  This saves a good bit of time.

Good luck to you.
Brian.

[syndromeofadown]

I have had this issue with all my versions of MC. I am now on MC28.

If your media does not have metadata perfectly added to the tags, then you will have to fix it yourself.

Tedious and very time consuming indeed.

It is, but MC is the best tool for speeding it up.

I have a custom set of views that I use when importing new audio. They are numbered, so I just go through them in steps. Once done, the music is integrated into my library.
Over the last decade these steps have become more detailed and expression filled, so they are not likely very useful to you.

Some basic steps include
1 cleaning folders of junk, then separate by filetype.
2 extract folder.jpg from all audio files, then add folder.jpg to all files, then replace missing or low quality art.
3 clean up artist and albumartist fields
4 remove duplicates.

I use a couple external tag editing tools. Not really because I have to, but more because I have used them for 15 years and just kind of stuck with them.
One of the tools I use is a paid program called perfect tunes - album art. It is a quick way to fix art because it scans your library and gives you dozens of options for replacement art. Much of my art was added long ago so I used the program to replace 200x200 art with 1000x1000 art. There is a very big difference when browsing a library without crummy looking album art. It is still boring and time consuming, but better than doing one at a time. I do not care about the file size of art. I have had no issues using large files other than I think when syncing to handheld with MC it may not transfer a folder.jpg if over 8 MB.

[baldo]

Thanks HPBEME, that is exactly what I am doing.

Its not finding the  cover art that is the issue here. I can get a good enough image from iTunes / Apple music. Its the copy/paste/save/point file to cover art process that is very long winded.

Here are some albums that I use in my MC28 that can not find the cover art.

Find Me (feat. Birdy) [Radio Edit] - Single   Sigma
Cold Heart (PNAU Reminx)  Elton John & Dua Lipa
The Concert of Love (Live in Englewood, New Jersey) Darlene Love
Rock Your Baby: The Hits by George McCrae


What I want to be able to do is for MC to automatically find suitabel cover art and if it cant for me to point to one site where it can look rather than the "internet" because the search is clearly not working if if cant find art on "the internet".

Perhaps if I can tell MC to go to a specific site to find the art that could solve the issue.

Hope that makes sense.

[JimH]

Find Me (feat. Birdy) [Radio Edit] - Single   Sigma
Cold Heart (PNAU Reminx)  Elton John & Dua Lipa
The Concert of Love (Live in Englewood, New Jersey) Darlene Love
Rock Your Baby: The Hits by George McCrae

Those may be incorrect album names.  If so, cover art lookup will fail.

[HPBEME]

Jim is right regarding those examples you provided.

Try renaming those tags by removing any parentheses, square brackets, and words like featuring, remix, radio edit, etc.  That is probably what is causing the search to fail. If you still want to maintain that extra info, copy it into the comment or notes tags. The album, artist, and name tags should be explicit without any extraneous stuff.  And I believe the Album tag must be populated, as the lookup tool is for finding Album cover art, not a single cover art (but I may be wrong about that).

As for automating, MC can search for the cover art on import automatically. Go to Options, Library and Folders, Configure Auto Import to see if the Get Cover Art checkbox is enabled. That said, even if it is already enabled, it still needs reasonable tag info to search on, or it will not find anything.  So you may still have to fix the tags, and then right-click launch Cover Art/get from internet manually afterward.

And you already can tell MC to go to a specific site to find the art - just as Brian described in his post:

Do you have the MC link bar at the top that says "amazon, wiki" etc?  Did you know you can customize it?  I have mine set up with links to Google Image search and AlbumArtExchange search.  So, for any song or album I have selected, it will go search those web sites for that album name, in a web browser.  Then I can just copy and paste the art that I find right into MC.  This saves a good bit of time.

You may have to turn on the links bar if it is not already enabled.  Go to: Options, General, Features, Links Bar (last item is a checkbox)

That said, my Google Image Search on the MC links bar has not worked for some time... not sure if I messed it up myself at some point. And I have never had a link set-up for AlbumArtExchange (I just go to it from my browser via browser bookmark).  I would be lost without the AMG link though, as I use that constantly to retrieve artist bio's and album reviews.  I have tried to copy and modify the working AMG expression to make new links, but I never seem to get the modification right.  Perhaps Brian could post his working expressions so I could copy them?

Anyway... hope this helps.

[blgentry]

Perhaps Brian could post his working expressions so I could copy them?

Sure.  Here are the two I mentioned:

Google Image search:

Code: [Select]

http:////images.google.com//images?q=Hexify([Album Artist (auto)] [Album])AlbumArtExchange search:

Code: [Select]

https:////www.albumartexchange.com//covers?q=Hexify([Album])
I should probably modify the AAE search to also include the Album Artist auto field.  Sometimes it finds the right thing.  Other times I have to include the artist (manually, after the fact) to get the right lookup.

To be 100% honest, my rate of adding albums has slowed WAY down and I haven't used these links in quite a while.  This thread was a good reminder to start using them again.

Brian.

[HPBEME]

Copied and working!  Thanks Brian. 

Someday I am going to spend time getting a better grasp on expressions.  Mainly I just copy something that is close and modify it by trial and error to see if I can refashion them for my purposes, but that is not terribly efficient.

[zybex]

You can also simply copy an image or image-URL from a browser into the clipboard (right-click, 'Copy Image' or 'Copy Image Address' on Chrome), then on MC do right-click -> CoverArt -> Paste from Clipboard. No need to save it anywhere, MC will save it to the file folder automatically.

Some sites make it hard to copy an image into the clipboard (by overlaying a transparent layer). You can work around this too, using the Inspector to get the direct image URL.

[JimH]

You can also simply copy an image or image-URL from a browser into the clipboard (right-click, 'Copy Image' or 'Copy Image Address' on Chrome), then on MC do right-click -> CoverArt -> Paste from Clipboard. No need to save it anywhere, MC will save it to the file folder automatically.

You can also paste onto the image tag in the tag window by clicking on the image tag.

[JimH]

MC's cover art function and the database that provides the images are clever about it.

Often there are multiple images in our database for an album or track.  When you choose one of them manually, you're "voting" for it.  These votes are tracked and the images most often selected rise to the top, and the ones that are less frequently selected eventually fall off the bottom of the list. 

If you let MC get the images automatically, you benefit from all that voting.  You automatically get the most frequently selected image.

It has worked this way for more than a decade, thanks to gateley's work.  Thanks, John!

[blgentry]

You can also simply copy an image or image-URL from a browser into the clipboard (right-click, 'Copy Image' or 'Copy Image Address' on Chrome), then on MC do right-click -> CoverArt -> Paste from Clipboard. No need to save it anywhere, MC will save it to the file folder automatically.

I was in this thread because I wanted to say this.  The OP seemed to be indicating that he was saving the file to his hard drive and then having to navigate to that file to add it to MC.  What you posted above is the easy way, which is how I do it.

Your advice and posts are consistently top notch.  Nice job!

Brian.

[zybex]

Thanks Brian, Merry Christmas

[Outlaw Audio]

And you already can tell MC to go to a specific site to find the art - just as Brian described in his post: You may have to turn on the links bar if it is not already enabled.  Go to: Options, General, Features, Links Bar (last item is a checkbox)

That said, my Google Image Search on the MC links bar has not worked for some time... not sure if I messed it up myself at some point. And I have never had a link set-up for AlbumArtExchange (I just go to it from my browser via browser bookmark).  I would be lost without the AMG link though, as I use that constantly to retrieve artist bio's and album reviews.  I have tried to copy and modify the working AMG expression to make new links, but I never seem to get the modification right.  Perhaps Brian could post his working expressions so I could copy them?

Anyway... hope this helps.

Try this link.  Its been my go to for some time now

Code: [Select]

<Link version="1.2">
<Item Name="Name">AlbumArt Exchange</Item>
<Item Name="Action">1</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">https:////www.albumartexchange.com//</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">https:////www.albumartexchange.com//covers?q=replace( removecharacters([Album],.:,0),/ ,+)&amp;fltr=ALL&amp;sort=TITLE&amp;status=&amp;size=1001%2B</Item>
<Item Name="Filter"/>
</Link>