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[nickharambee]

hi

i have recently upgraded to MC10 and can't get any cover art.  when i am in playing now and have the cover window open i have nothing showing (i am connected to the internet on broadband).  do i need to install a specific plug-in for this (e.g. kingsparta's cover art finder) or should this work straight away?

thanks

nick

[jleerigby]

The cover art window only shows art that you have tagged against your files.  So you need to add the cover art to each album.  There are various ways to do it:

1.  Find the art yourself and put it on the clipboard then right click the files> Image> Copy from clipboard.

2.  Use King's cover art finder.  I recommend that you select the option to store art as 'folder.jpg' in the album folder and within MC deselect 'Image> Store inside files if possible'.

3.  Right click> Image> download from internet.

4.  Find the correct album cover and put the .jpg (named folder.jpg) in the same directory as the album then right click> Image> Quick find in file / covert art directory.

Over the years I've used combinations of all of these.  Obviously 2 & 3 will save a lot of time but you are not guaranteed to get the correct album covers.  I use option 4.  It takes longer but I want my library and database to be as near perfect as possible.

[nickharambee]

thanks jlee,

what would i do without you?

nick

[nickharambee]

i am trying to work out the best way of storing/using my cover art.  i often have more than one image for a given album which i have stored on my hard drive.  it seems that method 4 above only works if you have one image in a given album file.  having said this, i can use the 'add from file' feature to select a specific image

however, i often move my music into different folders, e.g. from 'temporary music' to 'permanent collection' and when i use the 'rename files from properties' function to do this, the images don't travel with the audio files.

of course i could physically move album folders and use the 'import media' function inMC to update my media library but this seems a bit long winded

alternatively i could have a separate folder for all of my cover art, which is what i have at present.  but if i decided at some stage to move this folder, all of the links in MC to cover images would not work anymore.

i hope this is clear.  any suggestions for the best way to proceed would be appreciated

thanks

nick

[jleerigby]

You can tell MC to store cover art in it's own cover art folder.  Check in tools options as there is a facility to specify where the cover art directory should be.

By the way if you have more than one image in a folder and use the 'quick find...' thing it will use folder.jpg if one exists with that name.

I know that renaming files is an issue and I think it would be nice if MC had an option that would move images whenever albums are renamed.  I don't rename files all that often after they've been tagged and imported but when I do I always remember to move the cover art manually.  I just do 'locate on disk external' before and after the rename to quickly open the explorer windows I need and drag and drop the images.

[nickharambee]

if i put all of my cover art in the MC 'cover art' folder, or alternatively point MC to a 'cover art' folder on my hard drive, how is MC able to locate a specific image for a given album (using the 'quick find' feature)?  is there a specific format for naming cover art so that MC can locate it in a folder with thousands of other images!  and if i change the location of my cover art folder (e.g. by moving it onto an external hard drive), and point MC to this new location,  providing i don't change the file name, will all of my cover art still come up as before in MC (i.e. without having to specify the location of each individual image again)

thanks

nick

[nickharambee]

ok, so i have explored this a little further.

for MC to find the right image in a 'cover art' folder, the image should be called '[artist] - [album]'.  this only works for albums by a single artist though.  i have been unable to find a way to associate an image with all the tracks in a compilation.  i have tried various ways of replacing [artist], such as 'various artists'/ 'various'/ 'assorted' and blank, and haven't been able to do this yet.  does anyone have any ideas about this?

also, when i changed the location of my 'cover art' file on my harddrive, and pointed MC to this new location, MC didn't automatically remember/show the cover art.  but, provided the images are named correctly, it seems fairly easy/quick to do another 'quick find' for all tracks in the media library to get the links back to the images

i hope this makes sense!

nick

[Chris Shaw]

also, when i changed the location of my 'cover art' file on my harddrive, and pointed MC to this new location, MC didn't automatically remember/show the cover art.  but, provided the images are named correctly, it seems fairly easy/quick to do another 'quick find' for all tracks in the media library to get the links back to the images

KingSparta has very kindly written a plugin for just this situation. It's called ReplaceMaster and it allows you to find and replace "C:\old disk\Cover Art\" with "D:\new huge disk\Cover Art\" etc.

It's at http://www.spartasoft.com but his site seems to be very slow today so I can't give you the direct link.

[nickharambee]

It's called ReplaceMaster and it allows you to find and replace "C:\old disk\Cover Art\" with "D:\new huge disk\Cover Art\" etc.

so what exactly is the procedure here?  would i have to copy my cover art folder to the new location, and before deleting the original cover art folder run 'replace master'?

and what about specifying the cover art folder in MC under tools/options.  do i simply change the location that MC points to?  is changing this location only relevant to new searches for cover art using the 'quick find' feature?

thanks

nick

[nickharambee]

ok, so i think i am getting there.

i have worked out that if i move my cover art to a new location i can then use 'replace master' to specify the old location and the new location, and i don't actually need the original cover art folder to exist on my system as MC is just updating the link to the image(s).

so, from this i presume that once i have transferred all of my existing cover art to it's new location, i then enter this location as the default cover art folder in MC for the purposes of finding new cover art that i put in there.

i'd be grateful if someone could confirm if i have got this right.

finally, any ideas on the format for naming image files of compilations so that when i do a 'quick find' for the cover art of a compilation i will get the right cover art for all tracks on this compilation in one go?

thanks

nick

[nickharambee]

having thought about it some more i realised that now that i know that i can change the location of my cover art folder and then use 'replace master' to have MC point to this new location, it is just as easy to use the 'add from file' function to make sure that all my albums have the right image as it is to rename the files that i want MC to look for (using 'quick find'), so i think i've got this one sorted,

thanks

nick