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[Media Freak]

I've seen a few posts on here about cover art resizing but not much of attention has been given to the problem. Quite frankly, I need a solution on that matter and I'd be willing to pay for it. I recently had to contact a software programmer through rent-a-coder.com to have a custom software made but he's trying to clean my pocket with the price he is asking... I'm not a coder but I know this feature can't be that hard to code.

Baiscally, Amazon have different cover sizes for its album, nothing is consistent...so when browsing in album views or Theater View, the albums goes from stuff that as small as 160X160 (which I totally don't want) to as high as 500X500...not looking good at all. So, I'm looking to find a way to lock my album size (resolution) to 300x300 (someone else may need a different resolution).

I have a huge project to find covers for about 50,000+ songs in my library. MC has been helpful with the automatic cover finder but alas, it just grabs whatever amazon feeds it and store them in the tags or in a specific folder (if choose to) in either case it's a waist of time trying to go back to these files to extract the covers or to go the folder.jpg and resize then input the new resized covers manually one by one again...it's a pain.

So, has anybody has found a way to keep consistency through their cover size (resolution), if so? what's the best technique they've used or what third party software they know that can do automatic cover resize for mp3 tags.
I'm willing to spend some $$$ to get this either as a plugin or stand alone because it will save me a lot of time.

I've found one that can do that: ImageToMp3 Pro 1.13 from Benware.org but it only does for albums. If I want to do it by single files then I have to do it manually by loading each file and do a search for each.

This is a very needed feature...I hope someone in the community can lead me to a savior.

Thanks 

[KingSparta]

there are many programs that allow you to resize art, and many of them are free.

[scthom]

You would have to have all of your art in one folder.

You could use, e.g. Xnview in batch mode and change them all (resample) to 300 x 300.

[Media Freak]

there are many programs that allow you to resize art, and many of them are free.

Yes, I know... I own ACDsee and Photoshop which are more than capable of resizing but these programs or any other Image Editor program can't access the pictures inside the mp3 tags unless they are extract to a folder then save once more in the tags. (Image Editors can't read the covers that's inside the tag because the files after all are MP3 not JPG; though a tag editor like MC can read and display it).
Since MC does automatic cover search then it would be nice that it save the covers according to a user pre-defined resolution (in my case 300x300) by having an automatic resizing feature.
This is what I'm trying to avoid... the load of work I gotta do manually to enter the cover images with a new resolution in the mp3 files again one by one when MC has already tagged the files. Try doing that with 5,000 files one by one with no batch support and see how time consuming and frustrating it becomes.
In my case, I'm talking about 50,000+ and counting...
The way I'm building my library, is for the pictures to be tagged inside the mp3's and not in a jpg folder or anywhere else. For files that I can't find a cover for, I designed 250 customize covers (300x300) to replace the empty space with. However, for covers from Amazon that are too small or too big in resolution after MC or any other program tags them inside the mp3, then I have no choice then to extract them, make resolution changes and send ithem back in; simply put, this work could be simplified with an automatic resizing feature in MC as a plugin or as a standalone.

Like I said, so far the only program for that (as far as I know) is ImageToMP3Pro from benware.org but it's designed more for Albums and not single files; Cover Art Downloader 1.1 from White-Bolt was also designed for that purpose but the full version of that program can't even be found anymore (something must have happened to the developer)
 
Well, I've literally dedicated the last two weeks looking for an easy way to manage pictures inside tags using Fixtunes, TagRunner, Tag&Rename, Helium, MC, Zortam and a slew of smaller applications but, all stop short of having a bacth function built-in (or plugins) to manipulate the cover size without having to take it off the mp3 file. So, after being frustrated from finding what I'm looking from anybody out there, I just agreed to have Gafcoder from India design the software for me personally. I may release it to the public if other people come to have the need for it as bad as I do.

Thanks for answering.

[escaflo]

I think one of the thing you will need to take note of is that some of the cover art in Amazon may actually look small, but they are the same resolution as the larger size cover art. They just have a white background. I noticed this for most of the smaller than normal cover art that Amazon has. So if using a software to check the jpg, they might be of the same resolution yet display smaller when you go view the cover art in the file itself.

[Media Freak]

NOT REALLY
Tag & Rename (and tons of other programs) actually reads and display the resolution of cover art from Amazon, and a 160x160 is actually a 160x160 (no special work-around required to find this); even right-clicking on the image from the browser and view properties would tell you the exact size of the cover.
Amazon in most cases have more than one size for the same cover by clicking "See larger image and other views"; however, whichever the size in the "larger image" views states then it is what it is.

The white box is a default html Table not a Image Size nor a Canvas.
(You can validate that by simply do this with Firefox: do a cover search, click "See larger image and other views"; now when you right-click inside the white box, you get "view page info" and "view page source" (which reveals in the code that the table width is 635) but if you click on the image that's inside the box itself then you get "save image as", "properties" and so on.)

Cover art grabber programs ignore the white background because it's html and only grabs the picture that's inside of it. if by chance the white background is saved with a cover, it's because the image itself was originally scanned that way and the white background is part of the image as a whole (which are usually covers customers uploaded).

Experience it for yourself because I have.

[skeeterfood]

It wouldn't be such a huge task if there was a Cover Art->Extract option that would extract the cover art to the location specified in Tools->Options->File Location->Track Images Location.  Hopefully this would also include an option to simply copy the cover art out of the file, or copy the cover art and remove the internal art.

With that, I think you could:
1) Select all your songs (or just those with cover art inside the files using a smartlist, or even just the first tracks of each album)
2) Create a playlist of the files (helps later)
2) Extract the cover art removing it from the files
3) Import all the cover art into your library (this and the next step aren't really required if you extract it all to a single path)
4) Create a smartlist to filter out cover art that is not the size you require (or just sort based on dimensions column)
5) Search out new cover art for those that are too small
6) Use MC's Resize Image function to resize the cover art that is too big
7) Go to the playlist you saved in step 2
8) Select all the files
9) Cover Art->Quick Find in File / Cover Art Directory (making sure the Store images in tags also option is checked)
10) Delete the extracted cover art if you wish

Still a lot of steps, but WAY better than any method available today...

-John

[KingSparta]

I think one of the thing you will need to take note of is that some of the cover art in Amazon may actually look small, but they are the same resolution as the larger size cover art.

it depends, you can force Amazon To Send You Different Sizes, you can also Tell It To Change The Percent Off (Albums On Sale May Have A % Off On The Image)That May Be On The Images.

Depending On The Command You Give The Amazon Server Will Be what You Get Back, I Played With It Allot A Few Years Ago To See What I Can Get From it.

[escaflo]

I am not too sure. Am I being given the wrong cover art by Amazon?

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Expectations-Various-Artists-Soundtracks/dp/B000002JEP/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/105-4028096-0955668?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1173950097&sr=8-3

Check out the larger image. It is 500x500 pixel but the image itself is definitely smaller than that. Or are you guys talking about some other way of getting image from Amazon that I don't know about? If yes, please let me know how do you all extract image from Amazon.

Cheers,

[Media Freak]

I am not too sure. Am I being given the wrong cover art by Amazon?

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Expectations-Various-Artists-Soundtracks/dp/B000002JEP/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/105-4028096-0955668?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1173950097&sr=8-3

Check out the larger image. It is 500x500 pixel but the image itself is definitely smaller than that. Or are you guys talking about some other way of getting image from Amazon that I don't know about? If yes, please let me know how do you all extract image from Amazon.

Cheers,

Like I said Escaflo, if by chance the white background is saved with a cover, it's because the image itself was originally scanned or posted that way and the white background is part of the image as a whole.

[Mr ChriZ]

Back in October I started work on a plugin for Batch resizing images.
I've just been playing around with it, and had a few brainwaves at the same time.
I really want to complete this plugin, so I'm going to try and get some time on to it
over the weekend.

No promises but it may end up doing what you want.

[Media Freak]

Back in October I started work on a plugin for Batch resizing images.
I've just been playing around with it, and had a few brainwaves at the same time.
I really want to complete this plugin, so I'm going to try and get some time on to it
over the weekend.

No promises but it may end up doing what you want.

Cool, Mr ChriZ; hopefully you get to complete it... I'll be cheering 
I'm glad to see that I wasn't the only one with the need for such a feature.

[Mr ChriZ]

Making some progress
First you select the files....
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9171/batchmanwb2.png

Then you select how you'd like them resized...
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/5077/batchmanscreen2nm9.png

And then you resize them.
Still got a fair way to go, and some more features to put in to simplify a few things.
But images are now being resized.  Not sure if they're making it back into Media Center at the moment, my network shares set to Read Only.
It's Quater past Tomorrow, also known as bedtime!

I'm away for the weekend, so probably won't get any more time
on this for a while.

[Media Freak]

Making some progress
First you select the files....
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9171/batchmanwb2.png

Then you select how you'd like them resized...
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/5077/batchmanscreen2nm9.png

Looking crispy :-).
I'll ride along and wait till you get back to it.

Have a good weekend.

[Media Freak]

Hey Mr ChriZ,
Any progress lately?
Just checkin' in to see how you doin' with the plugin

Cheers,

MF

[Mr ChriZ]

I did some more work on it last week.
It's at the point where it's more or less working.
It scales the cover art, and saves them back to Media Center.

I want to do a bit more testing before destroying anyones libraries however,
and some tidying up.

The first build probably will suffer a few performance issues,
although will still be far quicker than performing rescaling by hand.

I'll resolve these later, one thing I do need thought from people thoough.
Originally the plugin was for resizing photographic images.
This purpose still remains. 

Cover Art works slightly different,
in that at least in my library each Album only has one cover art.
Currently the first build will group by Album, so that when
a cover art is retrieved for an album it doesn't resize it for each individual
track, just once and then saves it back to the album.
Is this likely to cause you issues?
Eventually I'll add options which give greater flexability.

I'm working on this only in the odd hour here and there that I get free,
and we've had a bank holiday weekend with some beutiful weather this week,
so I've been out walking.

Other than that I've also been continually posted around with work,
which have been promising me a laptop for 6 months now, but
as yet no sign of it.

I'll get back to it sooner or later though!
It is the top priority of my spare time projects at the moment!