Topic: Cover Art Question (Read 11112 times)

Sicter · « **on:** August 02, 2004, 06:53:57 pm »

Hi,
I was wondering if there is an option to activate slideshow for all cover art images of current song playing. I would like to have that especially in 'Theater View'
I just started evaluating MC and I like a lot so far, but really miss this feature.

kaiynne · « **Reply #1 on:** August 02, 2004, 08:29:25 pm »

I am not sure that I understand you perfectly, but I think you want to show multiple images for a single cd in theatre view? Or is it that you want all cover art you have to appear in the slideshow? I can't imagine you would want that because it seems slightly confusing to me as to which song goes with which cover, but maybe I am wrong. In any case if that is what you are looking for I believe you could import all of your cover art images and then set up a slide show with them.

I don't know that you are able to associate multiple images with a single cd, but I might be wrong, you might be able to create a custom field for that possibly.

Maybe someone who is using mc11 can be more help as they seem to be working on some image related stuff in that release.

Sicter · « **Reply #2 on:** August 03, 2004, 05:10:39 am »

No, not all images, just the relevant ones.
You see I have 2-3 images in every folder(album) . I would like to slideshow them during playback of a song from that folder(album) .

Can I do this in MC?

Alex B · « **Reply #3 on:** August 03, 2004, 06:28:31 am »

Yes, I do that all the time. Just import your images to MC and tag them with at least the Album tag. You can see them together with your music files e.g. if you go to Media Library and search for the album name. You can also go to Tree -> Media Library -> Advanced -> Hard disk location -> album folder.

Include your image files when you send album files to Playing Now. MC will show the images in a slideshow.

You can also make album playlists with images and music.

Sicter · « **Reply #4 on:** August 03, 2004, 11:14:23 am »

Alex, thanx for replying

I'm not really sure if I understood you right. I dont want to manually tag all the cover art in my folders. I just want MC to slideshow the image files from the very same folder that current song is playing.
I usually have a folder.jpg and a blablabla.jpg (usually back cover) image in my folders.
MC should 'see' these images and just slideshow these.
Please bear with me, I'm new to MC and if somebody has a solution to this explain to me like I'm a 4 year old.
Thanx

Sicter · « **Reply #5 on:** August 05, 2004, 07:36:50 pm »

OK, I'm gonna give it another try with this question before my trial version dies out on me. If it can be done I'm buying a copy.
Anybody?

xen-uno · « **Reply #6 on:** August 05, 2004, 08:21:46 pm »

If they are not associated with the music files (by virtue of embedding or path), then they will not SlideShow on artist change...but it's almost impossible for that to happen. Here's why...when u import your tracks, MC looks in the dir for any images and automatically attaches them (via a image file path tag). I don't know what happens when you have multiple images in one dir...past experience with MJ has been that it "attaches" the 1st one it finds (as coverart). Will it cycle through multiple images in a directory?...I doubt it...not without creating some sort of image playlist that would have to be manually started. This is a real gray area for me...someone may know better.

10^-27

Alex B · « **Reply #7 on:** August 05, 2004, 08:25:59 pm »

Well, I'll try to explain better:

MC has native support for single image file, which is linked to a music file or placed inside the file's tag area. Actually that is not an album image but a track image. MC can find it automatically if certain conditions exist. Instead you can manually link one image file to a single track or to several tracks (e.g. to all tracks in one album).

MC has also native support for importing image files to the media library, e.g. your digital camera images. You can tag them as you like. With MC you can show image files in slideshows when playing music files. I use that capacity for playing and showing my albums.

I want to have my albums complete in MC, including music, cover art and printed information. Usually I scan several images: front, back, booklet, inlay, CD 1, CD 2, etc. I make them at least 800 pixels wide. If there is small printed text I make them bigger. So all text can be read if/when enlarged (you can pause the slideshow and enlarge an image). I also make a smaller version of the front cover, which is used as a usual track image. I store all images in the album folder.

I import those image files to MC and tag them. Because they have the same album tag as the music files the images become part of the album in the MC library. I can see them together in the All Media view. I can search for the album name and I get a list of the music files and the image files. If I send them all to Playing Now, MC displays a slide show during the album playback. I can also make playlists of them (incl. music & images).

I have not found tagging them too awkward. Importing and tagging the image files takes only some seconds. For example, you could do that just before listening to each album. Listening to an album takes usually at least 40 minutes.

Here is an example of the files included in one of my albums:

Here is an example of the album images:

The file named "Bonnie Tyler - Silhuette In Red.jpg" (labelled as "Front") is the standard cover art image, which is associated with the music files. It is used when I play single tracks in various artists playlists.

When I play the whole album with images I don't usually include that small image in the playlist because the cover is included in the "Booklet 1" image. In this case the booklet spreads are 1600 pixels wide.

Alex B · « **Reply #8 on:** August 05, 2004, 09:00:37 pm »

Quote from: Sicter on August 02, 2004, 06:53:57 pm

I was wondering if there is an option to activate slideshow for all cover art images of current song playing. I would like to have that especially in 'Theater View'
I just started evaluating MC and I like a lot so far, but really miss this feature.

Where is that feature you miss? Is it some Winamp plugin? Does it change all images in the slideshow when a new track from a different folder starts playing?

Sicter · « **Reply #9 on:** August 05, 2004, 10:20:31 pm »

Thank you Alex, thats what I call a response

Let me answer that last question first. Yes, I miss that feature from a winamp plugin called ShowCover. It is kinda outdated and rusty but it does the job it was made for: to display and slide all pics from the same folder current song playing 'comes from'.

I had some time to play with MC and I understand what you're saying. Now I realize that if I select all the files from an album (folder), including the images, MC will slide those. But when a song from another folder kicks in, it just continues sliding those previous images. You dont want Metallicas cover art displayed with Aretha Franklin playing in the background, right?

I see your point and realize that the best way around this is to tag those image files, its just that I don't have time to tag all those images I already have. Come to think of it, maybe there are applications that could do this dirty work with just a few klicks. I'll have to investigate that further.

xen-uno, thanks for the response. Yes, those folder.jpg images I have in my folders do display alright and are recognized as cover art as default by just importing them, but I want those back covers displayed as well.

thanks guys, if you come up with something, I'm all ears

modelmaker · « **Reply #10 on:** August 05, 2004, 11:55:07 pm »

I would also like to see JRiver implement something like winamp's ShowCover. With everything that MC can do, I feel the ability to show mulitiple images of cover art is sorely lacking.

It's probably been asked before, but could a plugin be designed to do this? Please!

Listening to: 'You Dance' from 'eastmountainsouth' by 'eastmountainsouth' on Media Center 9.0

jleerigby · « **Reply #11 on:** August 06, 2004, 04:43:11 am »

Quote

I see your point and realize that the best way around this is to tag those image files, its just that I don't have time to tag all those images I already have. Come to think of it, maybe there are applications that could do this dirty work with just a few klicks. I'll have to investigate that further.

I was thinking of doing something similar. I have all my cover art stored in the artist\album folder as folder.jpg and otehrs like back.jpg. All MP3s are tagged with the cover art location of folder.jpg but none of the jpegs are imported into the library. I thought about doing a search in windows for *.jpg in my music library directory and then adding all files to Playing Now. Then I would use Right click> Library Tools>Fill Properties from file name and get MC to fill the artist and album name by looking at the directory structure. MC should do this but I couldn't get it to work. If it did work you could import and tag all your jpegs in seconds - well minutes.

Alex B · « **Reply #12 on:** August 27, 2004, 02:49:34 pm »

Bump

Maybe it is best to bump this thread and my long explanation about using multiple cover art images. I am not sure if anybody looked at those links I posted in the Cover Art store inside or out? thread and I don't want to steal that thread by pasting from here.

Basically what I mean is that an album in my music library has not only the 15 songs, it has often 15 songs and 7 images. To some albums I have also downloaded press pictures from the record company's or artist's website so I can have a very nice slideshow when listening to the album. Usually I use TV out for displaying the images.

Alex B · « **Reply #13 on:** August 27, 2004, 03:42:33 pm »

Quote from: JLee on August 06, 2004, 04:43:11 am

... Then I would use Right click> Library Tools>Fill Properties from file name and get MC to fill the artist and album name by looking at the directory structure. MC should do this but I couldn't get it to work. ...

Did you ever get it working? I just tried it and I found seven folder.jpg files in my library. (Don't ask where did they come - I don't know). Anyway I did exactly what you described and MC filled the artist and album tags. What if you accidentally used the wrong command: "Rename Files From Properties"? (I did that first...)

TXgary · « **Reply #14 on:** August 29, 2004, 09:03:12 pm »

Some of my cover art is inside the file and some is stored in the cover art director. How do I move it all inside the file and always have it sored inside on new songs added?

NaTeDoGG · « **Reply #15 on:** September 02, 2004, 06:43:25 pm »

I would also love to be able to point a track to a directory of images and have it show those after it shows the track's main image. Can this be done in a plugin? I'm a developer. Can someone point me in the right direction about how to go about it?

NaTeDoGG · « **Reply #16 on:** September 03, 2004, 02:30:02 am »

I created a track info plugin that automatically shows a slideshow of images. Look here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=23381

scharby · « **Reply #17 on:** November 10, 2004, 02:02:43 pm »

Alex B.

I'm trying to follow your guide and achieve same result.

From 'Media', I select album & add to 'Playing Now'. I'm in 'Cover Art' mode. My three .jpgs happen to be first, they all display through then it's on the .mp3s. I want the three jpg's to cycle, while the album plays.

I seem to have got it to work as desired once by accident, but can't seem to do it when I want.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? ver 11.0.117

Alex B · « **Reply #18 on:** November 10, 2004, 02:36:13 pm »

I usually use the all media mode and go to the MC tree > advanced > Hard Disk Location. Then I just right-click the album name (=same as the folder name in my case) and select "Play".

The same goes if you make a playlist of the album files (audio files & images). Just select "Play" for the playlist.

scharby · « **Reply #19 on:** November 10, 2004, 02:44:05 pm »

Alex B.

Worked fine. Thanks

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Author Topic: Cover Art Question (Read 11112 times)

jleerigby