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Author Topic: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???  (Read 2525 times)

olarte

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Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« on: April 09, 2006, 09:58:46 am »

Hi,

Everybody raves about Sparta's Cover Art, but I can't seem to get the hang of it.

I finally figured that I had to drag files to playing now... and looked around the interface but I can't figure out how to do whole albums easily and fast.

IT seems to be very slow, hit or miss, and I simply can't figure it out.

Am I missing something?

Also, I can't save folder.jpg on each directory like you can with MC...

With MC, I simply add the image file field, so I can tell what does not have art in the files.... then I use the image find on the internet, if that does not work, I keep amazon.com open and cut and past into the album.

I don't have to move anything to playing now, it creates folder.jpg and does it for the whole album at once.

Does somebody have step by step instructions for the cover art plugin?

Can it save folder.jpg?

Thanks in advance

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KingSparta

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2006, 10:36:33 am »

Quote
I finally figured that I had to drag files to playing now... and looked around the interface but I can't figure out how to do whole albums easily and fast.
It works on one file at a time, put all files in playing now go to the plug-in and hit the batch button, then go to sleep

Quote
IT seems to be very slow, hit or miss, and I simply can't figure it out.
not sure what your talking about

Quote
Am I missing something?
maybe

Quote
Also, I can't save folder.jpg on each directory like you can with MC...
it reads your mc11.1 setup and will save the way you have it setup in MC11

Quote
With MC, I simply add the image file field, so I can tell what does not have art in the files.... then I use the image find on the internet, if that does not work, I keep amazon.com open and cut and past into the album.

I don't have to move anything to playing now, it creates folder.jpg and does it for the whole album at once.

Does somebody have step by step instructions for the cover art plugin?

your making this more complex than it is


Quote
Can it save folder.jpg?

yes
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MrC

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #2 on: April 14, 2006, 10:02:53 am »

I tried it.  Not my cup of tea.  Seems more like an advertisement revenue generation scheme than a quest to build an up-to-par UI with proper integration into MC.
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Mr ChriZ

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #3 on: April 14, 2006, 10:54:43 am »

I tried it.  Not my cup of tea.  Seems more like an advertisement revenue generation scheme than a quest to build an up-to-par UI with proper integration into MC.

Bear in mind that KingSparta's plugins are provided free
of charge, and he has put a lot of time in to them, and his servers  that
they connect to.  If having a few adverts to balance out the development
costs are not appreciated, I'm sure he's more than willing to accept donations!
The SDK is also open to anyone to make there own plugins.  ;)

KingSparta

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #4 on: April 14, 2006, 11:24:56 am »

Quote
I tried it.  Not my cup of tea.  Seems more like an advertisement revenue generation scheme

all my plug-ins are free, and most of my websites are free.

You can't please some people, I guess

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jgreen

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #5 on: April 14, 2006, 12:39:01 pm »

Another pat on the back for the King.  I was confused by the interface at first, too, but once I figured one out, they all felt familiar.  It's true, his GUI is different from MC, but it is a plugin.  And the fact that it doesn't have to conform to the hosting software GUI points to the power of the MC architecture, IMO.

Thanks to the spartaman I have lyrics and cover art for my collection.  I would NEVER have done individual searches for this stuff.  I'm hoping in the future he starts an "Artist Art" database (shameless/brazen request).
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KingSparta

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #6 on: April 14, 2006, 12:42:02 pm »

As far as the interface goes

it uses MC's SDK, and some ActiveX controls

The user interface is layed out on tabs to allow for users with smaller screen res

I see no problems with the plug-ins

if someone does they can give me constructive feedback of what should be changed, and how.

Quote
I'm hoping in the future he starts an "Artist Art" database (shameless/brazen request).

What would that be?

I am not sure what your talking about.
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jgreen

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #7 on: April 14, 2006, 01:04:50 pm »

King, I think your interfaces are perfectly appropriate.  IMO, they are oriented to the "power user".  The first time I tried it (I am the opposite of a power user), I couldn't find the "Go" button.  But once I figured that out, they all worked the same, and I was a happy camper.  I say "thank you" again for your great plugins.

"Artist Art", as I see it, is non-album related photography of the artist--head shots, I think.  I have a lot of collection CDs (pure hits of the 70s, or whatever), where the cover art is interesting but tells me nothing about the artist.  Particularly in the case of one-hit wonders, I'd rather have a head shot than album graphics.

There's a lot of this stuff available, some surprisingly high quality.  If you were to collect that, I think you'd have the next new thing.

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KingSparta

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #8 on: April 14, 2006, 01:58:14 pm »

the problem with this is MC does not allow for Multi Images, Also The DSK Does not support it.

It can be done for MP3's and I could cram the images in there, I think you can have 256 images in a mp3). the problem is you would never see them in MC, and (and i am not sure but) MC11 may acually remove any image more than the base image.

I am not sure why this is limited in MC.
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Marra

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Re: Help: How do you use Sparta's Cover Art Plugin???
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2006, 03:32:53 pm »

Here's another pat on the back of the King for his great plug-ins.
I also would like to see an "Artist Art" plug-in.  I am currently developing a Track Info template and one aspect is a screen shot of artist details which would be greatly enhanced by at least one  picture of the artist next to bios etc.  Currently this is all stored outside MC and accessed by one common file name in an "Artist" directory.  Adding these images at the moment is a tedious cut/paste/rename process that I think could be easily automated (and that's from a computer brickhead)
-search artist images (including minimum size requirement)
-display artist images with dimensions
-user selects image(s)
-saved to user defined directory/name
-go to next artist (processed on artist not each MC file).
Please King...

Still looking at simple accessing of more than one image per artist through Track Info (like a slide show - ideas appreciated)  Also thought about using a new MC comma delimited field listing full file paths of all external images but how do I easily populate this field?  Perhaps that could be automated as part of the above process.

This then could be the start of thumbnails for genres, album, artist (any field) for meta view scheme as suggested by Nick Harambee.

(Sorry for jumping off track but thought the timing here was right)
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