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Author Topic: How does MC9.1 detect cover art?  (Read 1737 times)

dpbeatley

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How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« on: January 20, 2004, 02:15:24 pm »

Hi all:
In the process of making sure all my tracks are associated with cover art, I came across this little issue and hopefully some kind person will 'splain.

I store all my art within the file tags (whereever possible) and I have verified that 100% of my tracks do indeed have art stored *inside*. Now, when I import into MC 9.1, I noticed that sometimes it picks up FOLDER.JPG as the cover art and this is stored as the image location in MC's library and at other times the library image filed states it is *inside file*.  I also tried using the library tools to force a library update from tags but this also didn't work.

As a test, I totally *cleaned* the MC library and imported again. This time all the test tracks imported have their image library field filled as *inside file* as it should.

My bottom line question is: "What is the sequence MC uses to find the cover art and how does it determine when to utilitze "folder.jpg?" And how can one *force* an update to the image field? Oh, btw, the Media Center cover art folder is totally *empty* and the folder.jpg image is used by Win Xp for folder thumbnails in windows explorer.

Since I will be importing a *huge* library once I have all my tags consistent, I want to make sure MC uses the internal image if it exists. After this huge tag clean-up, I really don't to clean up MC since there is no way to manually change the image field. Another reason is that the windoes folder image *may not* have anything to do with the album at hand.

Many thanks and Cheers,
dennis
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KingSparta

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2004, 02:29:26 pm »

Quote
How does MC9.1 detect cover art?

Many have asked, none have lived to tell
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dpbeatley

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2004, 03:37:28 pm »

Quote
How does MC9.1 detect cover art?

Many have asked, none have lived to tell

Oh great! So if "they" tell me, they'll have to *kill* me?

Hopefully I make it.

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Griff

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2004, 04:02:54 pm »

Time will tell  ;D
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KingSparta

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2004, 04:08:17 pm »

Quote
Oh great! So if "they" tell me, they'll have to *kill* me?

It will look like an accident
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dpbeatley

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #5 on: January 20, 2004, 04:27:15 pm »

Ok, Now I get it! "they" will bury my rotting corpse under my huge pile of cover art eh?

But seriously now folks, does anyone have a clue as to how this works? Or does MC10 handle tags better?
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KingSparta

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2004, 04:50:59 pm »

Quote
But seriously now folks, does anyone have a clue as to how this works?

seriously, Yes

But I Can't Say.

====================================

Quote
Or does MC10 handle tags better?
What problems are you having?

MC9 And MC10 does not save folder.jpg (it does read it)

but my plug-in does save images as folder.jpg if you turn that option on, and when i last checked it worked well.

if you see no images in the cover art folder MC9\mc10 is saving the image in the file tag.

if you show "Image File" in the file listing you will see a path to the file or "Image In File" or something like that.
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JimH

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #7 on: January 20, 2004, 05:00:30 pm »

Both programs will find any jpg in the folder for the album.
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dpbeatley

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2004, 05:39:17 pm »

Hi all!

I think something got lost in the translation...

My problem is this - all my tracks have their cover art stored internally in the file. I have spent mucho time doing this so I know 100% of the files have an image stored.

Now, on a random basis, when I import into MC, it will use the FOLDER.JPG file and not the image stored internally. Out of say 5,000 tracks maybe less than 5% have the [image] field in MC's library set to FOLDER.JGP and not *in file* as it should. When I tried to determine the cause, I deleted everything out of MC folders that *anything* to do these images, *cleaned* the MC library and re-imported. Now, all is fine with the world.

I just want to know under what circumstances MC will use FOLDER.JPG and *not* the internal image? Again, all tracks have an image stored, so a missing internal image can not be the cause.

Thanks
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Nolonemo

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2004, 05:46:42 pm »

I have seen this too. (I store each album in its own folder and keep a jpg of the cover art in the folder with the mp3s, even though the art is stored in the file.)  I think a simple "update library from tags - always" fixed it.
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dpbeatley

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Re:How does MC9.1 detect cover art?
« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2004, 08:09:52 pm »

That's what I thought but I have yet to see the update lib from tags (either always or if changes detected) change it from FOLDER.JPG to *inside file*. But one thing did occur to me just now - if MC had the image location as the default folder under the Media Center installation directory, then the update lib from tags did switch over to the internally stored image. I am now testing a very clean install of MC (removed everything - even did a manual scan of the win registry and deleted anything concerning MC) - no cover art files anywhere that MC can *see* - just the internally stored images. Probably won't post result til tomorrow - getting late here.

But I would still appreciate a *logic* flow of how it populates the image library field - sorry but I'm a programmer so things like this peak my interest.

Please Jim - a taste of the good life?

Will post results of my test ASAP!

Cheers
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