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[Alex B]

4. NEW: When removing emtpy folders, folders with only a Thumbs.db or Folder.jpg in them will be considered empty.

I have a problem with this. Thumbs.db is OK to delete, but Folder.jpg is not.

This change forces the user to move folder.jpg manually somewhere before MC creates a new folder for the music files. The user may not remember that before it is too late.

MC doesn't handle the Folder.jpg move automatically unless the image is imported and included in the selection.

A Folder.jpg image file may also be linked to other music or video files that are not in the same folder.

[JimH]

MC will ask if you want to delete the folder (although you can turn off the asking).

Will that work?

[Alex B]

You should not delete user data without an user request. It doesn't matter how the file is named. The user may not remember that the folder contains an important image file.

Thumbs.db is an automatically generated helper file. It is a different thing.

Perhaps it would be OK if the prompt could tell that a Folder.jpg file exists. Then the user could make a decision.

[JimH]

You should not delete user data without an user request.

We'd never do that.  It's argueable whether folder.jpg is user data. 

[Alex B]

On a second thought, I realized that the new system can be quite dangerous.

Lets assume that the user wants to move the complete audio library to a new base folder with the Rename Files From Properties tool. MC will politely ask if the user wants to remove the empty folders. After answering yes all cover art files can be lost.

[JimH]

Don't you think the user should answer "no"?

Isn't it time for bed in Finland?

[KingSparta]

When A folder is deleted:
[X] Remove cover art images
[X] Remove Thumbs.db Files

[Matt]

We'll remove Folder.jpg from the empty folder exclusion list.

I'm starting to think MC should only support cover art stored inside file tags.  It'd make a lot of complexities melt away.

[KingSparta]

com·plex·i·ty (kəm-plĕk'sĭ-tē)

n., pl. -ties.

The quality or condition of being complex.
Something complex: a maze of bureaucratic and legalistic complexities.

to make it simple: [X] del *.*

[Alex B]

It'd make a lot of complexities melt away.

You are not afraid of really big and complex challenges, but I think you sometimes underestimate the complexity of apparently small things like this.

Thanks and good night... (it's soon morning here.)

[mountainfair]

We'll remove Folder.jpg from the empty folder exclusion list.

I'm starting to think MC should only support cover art stored inside file tags.  It'd make a lot of complexities melt away.

Please dont do this!

MUCH better to have the option for album art in separate files, so that when you load to mobile player, you dont have to take the images, and can save space.

Better solution:

When A folder is deleted:
[X] Remove cover art images
[X] Remove Thumbs.db Files

[Matt]

I blame Doof

And if I fully understood all the complexities of something before beginning, I'd be too intimidated to begin anything.

[Jaguu]

And if I fully understood all the complexities of something before beginning, I'd be too intimidated to begin anything.

From my own life experience I think it is better to understand the complexities of a topic (be it in politics, economy, religion, human interaction, software design) beforehand. Once you know the complexities, it is much simpler to find solutions.

I believed for too many years in simplicity. The problem with simplicity is that it produces too many exceptions and trying to get hold of all arising exceptions is quite time consuming and costly.

Life (and programming) is simply not good or bad, black or white etc.
Just one example from my own experience: Deploying 12'000 pc's with 3000 applications in 25 different countries is simply a very complex undertaking. Trying to simplify too much, means running into plenty of difficulties...

And of course it is very important to know the difference, when things are simple or complex

In the case of cover art storing I agree with Matt that storing inside the file is much simpler than outside ( I have all my cover art that way). But then it would make all those users unhappy that want to store more than one file per track!

[Mr ChriZ]

I like kings suggestion.
I personally hate being left with loads of folders full of folder.jpgs!
I understand Alex's concerns however.

[GHammer]

We'd never do that. It's argueable whether folder.jpg is user data.

No, it's user data. Look at all the plugins for finding the cover art. I spend time on getting the tags and cover art I want for my files.

I'm kinda partial to the folder.ini files in the music directories too.

I think there should be a simple Additional File Types box with the move or copy files dialog.
I could put *.ini;*.jpg in it and all those files would be processed along with the media files.
That option would handle any file in the directory, CUE, text, whatever.

But no, don't delete things without letting me know what you're doing.  Answering Yes to removing an empty directory means there are no files in it to me.

[Alex B]

I personally hate being left with loads of folders full of folder.jpgs!

Do you delete complete albums all the time?

I guess you would like to keep the cover art if you were just moving the files.

I import only items that I am likely to keep. Besides, I don't move anything to my main library location before importing the files from a separate rip & import location.

Personally, I don't even use the Folder.jpg system. I think it is better to give the precious cover art images proper names like [Artist] - [Album]. Folder.jpg files cannot be easily identified if ever needed. (For example, I could imagine a situation in which something happens to the file system and a repair tool can rescue the files and filenames, but not the folder structure.)

[hit_ny]

Lets assume that the user wants to move the complete audio library to a new base folder with the Rename Files From Properties tool. MC will politely ask if the user wants to remove the empty folders. After answering yes all cover art files can be lost.

This is the main reason i drag folders around in the tree, rename files from properties is inadequate. I prefer *NOT* to store images in files, pointers to them is better.

[tcman41]

How about the ability to delete albums that contain artist-album.jpg images, when i delete full albums out of my library the empty folders are not be deleted even though i have that option set.

I love MC11, but this snafu has hurt more than any other problem, it really screws with trying to keep everything on a one-to-one basis and nice and neat.

Thanks
TC   ?

[Alex B]

How about the ability to delete albums that contain artist-album.jpg images, when i delete full albums out of my library the empty folders are not be deleted even though i have that option set.

I love MC11, but this snafu has hurt more than any other problem, it really screws with trying to keep everything on a one-to-one basis and nice and neat.

As a matter of fact, this has not been a problem for me since image handling was added to MC. If you want MC to handle your image files why don't you let it do that then? The database is quite capable of handling various file types. Just run an import for the image files and when doing file tasks use a view scheme that shows the image files as well.

[Matt]

How about the ability to delete albums that contain artist-album.jpg images, when i delete full albums out of my library the empty folders are not be deleted even though i have that option set.

I love MC11, but this snafu has hurt more than any other problem, it really screws with trying to keep everything on a one-to-one basis and nice and neat.

Thanks
TC   ?

This would be fixed by keeping cover art in a single folder or in the tags.  MC supports both of those options.

Alex's solution would also work.

[Doof]

I blame Doof

And if I fully understood all the complexities of something before beginning, I'd be too intimidated to begin anything.

Don't blame me! I only asked about Thumbs.db.  I was just as shocked to see that you decided to take folder.jpg along with it.

Would it be overly difficult to, when MC detects that folder.jpg is the only thing left in a folder, to prompt the user for what to do with it? Either remove it, or move it to where the other files in that folder went to? Although I guess then, you have to ask what happens if the files in that folder wound up in multiple locations...

It is a tricky issue... Unless you wanted to actually create a new "Album" entity that could include multiple file types, and treat that entity as an object, rather than individual files, there's no good answer. I think the only real compromise is to make sure all of your folder.jpg files are imported into MC so you can be sure they go with the rest of the files.

[JimH]

We're going to change this.  folder.jpg will be honored as a respectable file in the next version.

[Mr ChriZ]

Do you delete complete albums all the time?

I tend to move stuff using the MC move/rename tools.  However as my musics 95% APE,
I keep all cover art in the tags.

When I remember I usually set the folder.jpg to be placed in a junk file folder so I can regularily
purge it, but it's something I often forget to set up.

Edit:
I'd just like an option not to make a folder.jpg really!

[Doof]

This would be fixed by keeping cover art in a single folder or in the tags.  MC supports both of those options.

Alex's solution would also work.

But then you lose that cool ability of XP to show the folders as the album cover art!!!

Here's what I do. Import the folder.jpg into the library along with the audio files. Give it the same Artist and Album tags as the audio files, and then create a mixed-media view scheme that I use whenever I want to do any file moving using the rename files tool. That way, I know the coverart goes with the rest of the album. Since you've tagged the folder.jpg file with the Artist and Album you're protected in those file recovery cases like Mr ChriZ mentioned. You may not be able to tell what it is based on the filename, but MC will be able to figure it out once they're re-imported.

[tcman41]

You guys are killing me, there are certain pitfalls with all three ways of working with thumbnails.

I used to have all my cover art in the one cover art folder but every time i had to redo my library (computer crashes, don't ask) i would then reimport all my music but about 20% of the cover art wouldn't show up because the names don't match exactly (to lazy to correct it all).

So finally yesterday i went and moved all my cover art to individual folders to get around the above problem. However in either instance the album fodlers are not deleted properly and then it really screws things up.

I just don't like art in the file tag, my preference.

I don't care about windows explorer thumbnails and i don't see how letting mc11 display the cover art as images as helping anything.

All i want is when i delete and full in album in MC11 that it deletes the entire album, folder and cover art. If thats to hard to have happen then i guess i will just have to manually delete the album first on my hard drive and then perhaps update library or something.

I am not trying to cause trouble, i just don't understand why multiple options are being given to do things yet i am being told to do something only one way.

Any comments are welcome.
Thanks
TC

[Doof]

Well, you don't have to have MC display the cover art anywhere. Just give the cover art it's own genre or something and then filter that genre out of your view schemes. Then just have one view scheme that does show it so you can still have MC do things with it if you want.

[Mr ChriZ]

I just don't like art in the file tag, my preference.

If you're using lossless compression like APE, it means you're already setting aside around 30 MB's
for your tracks already so an extra 300k or so doesn't make much difference.

If on the other hand you go for size and you're using super lossy MP3 to place on your portable q-pod with each track taking up under 2 megs it is probably is less desirable. 

Everyone does things different thats what I like about MC, configurability!(is that a word?)

[tcman41]

So apparently if one keeps artist-album.jpg in the individual folders the delete album from hard drive doesn't work.

In the next version if one has folder.jpg in individual folders then the delete album from hard drive doesn't work.

You all ready recommended that all cover art in one cover art folder method, but i know that doesn't work for delete album from hard drive either, hasn't worked for a long time.

So from what i see that only way to have a album completely deleted from hard drive is to have the album art in the individual track tags, is this correct?

If the above statement is correct, what is the easiest way to get my artist-album.jpg in each album folder to be attached to the individual song tags? and how long would it take to do about 12,000 songs?

TC 

[Doof]

So apparently if one keeps artist-album.jpg in the individual folders the delete album from hard drive doesn't work.

In the next version if one has folder.jpg in individual folders then the delete album from hard drive doesn't work.

You all ready recommended that all cover art in one cover art folder method, but i know that doesn't work for delete album from hard drive either, hasn't worked for a long time.

So from what i see that only way to have a album completely deleted from hard drive is to have the album art in the individual track tags, is this correct?

If the above statement is correct, what is the easiest way to get my artist-album.jpg in each album folder to be attached to the individual song tags? and how long would it take to do about 12,000 songs?

TC 

Well, if you do this...

Here's what I do. Import the folder.jpg into the library along with the audio files. Give it the same Artist and Album tags as the audio files, and then create a mixed-media view scheme that I use whenever I want to do any file moving using the rename files tool. That way, I know the coverart goes with the rest of the album.

Then you could just use that view scheme to delete your albums and MC should clean everything up nicely.

But to just add the images to your tags, you go to Tools->Options->File Locations and check the box labeled "Store images in tags also".

[hit_ny]

Never stored art in one place but individual folders..dragged albums to move folders, never lost album art, just deleted folders (when reqd) from the tree in MC, which effectively removes it from MC & XP..all working for long time now.

[tcman41]

Thanks for all the help, i have a solution that works for me.

I am going to keep the artist-album.jpg art in each individual album folder.

When deleting albums from media center the album folder with cover art will still be left behind but i now have a easy way to find them.

The album folders with only cover art will be vastly smaller than the album folders with mp3's, windows explorer doesn't list folder size but it can. now just list albums by folder size and delete all the ones that only show 25kb image files, case closed.

How to get folder size to show up in windows explorer?, download this add and then right click the column headers in windows explorer and choose folder size to display.

windows explorer folder size add here: http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

TC

[tcman41]

even easier method than listed previously, in windows explorer just go to your albums folder, have details view selected, right click on the column header and choose to display file count column.

Now just look at your albums, anything that has 1 file in it can be deleted.

TC 

[KingSparta]

Don't blame me! I only asked about Thumbs.db.

On the TV Show "Cops" they always ask who started it, then whoever it is they put in jail.

Spread em

[Alex B]

No one has mentioned yet that MC shows all disk files in Drives & Devices.

Whenever you need to get rid of an album, just right-click one of the offending files and select Locate > On Disk (inside Media Center). There you can delete everything.  

[tcman41]

ok, great it shows all the contents of the folder, but how does that delete the folder?, not seeing it.

TC

[Alex B]

There you can delete everything.

Some options:

- select the folder on the tree, press delete/shift+delete or right-click > delete/delete while pressing shift. The shift option doesn't use Recycle Bin. Also, the top menu has Edit > Delete.
- or select the files and delete/shift-delete

EDIT

It seems that the folder is automatically selected, so just press delete or shift+delete.

[tcman41]

I give up, i see a million ways to delete files and art but not one single way yet that physically deletes the folder from windows, just not seeing it.

Until i find it i am going to continue simply by right clicking on the album and delete. Then in windows explorer with file count column turned on to identify the folders with only one file in them, delete the physical folder and cover art that are left behind from the first process.

My ulcer is kicking in so i have to stop now, lol

TC 

[Alex B]

Right-click > Locate > On Disk (inside Media Center) > shift+delete

- deletes the folder completely and keeps the library up-to-date. (Naturally MC confirms the deletion first.)

[glynor]

I know it's probably just me, but I'd like .DS_Store added to the "fake files list" along with Thumbs.db.  Those of us who occasionally look at our media drives with a Mac have these files spread all over the filesystem, and I have tons of empty folders with only those two files inside.