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[mlagase]

Cover Art has always been a problem for me as I have been going through many MP3 Managers out there and have finally decided on MC for all of my music needs.

If I can't find it in MC, I use either MediaMonkey or Tag&Rename in that order. I personally like the way MediaMonkey finds cover art from Amazon as they are normally high quality resolutions and they seem to have the most out there.

Now if I do use one of those programs and include the Cover in the file name and also a folder.jpg file, MC never picks up the changes even if I update from tags in the library and using the quick find feature for Images. Does anyone know a way to get this updated in MC without deleting and re-adding it to the library? Is there any logging feature that I can use to troubleshoot this?

One of the things I would like to see improved is the way MC gets cover art from the internet and possibly use Amazon for it's searching capabilities and also allow you to customize the data that is being sent in the search. Sometimes you need to modify the name that MC is sending similar to MediaMonkey to find the correct Cover art as file tags are not always what the search is looking for.

Thanks,

Mike

[KingSparta]

You should always have 3 Fields Filled In "Artist", "Album" And "Name"

If you add or remove anything from them MC may not find the art.

If your artist names are backward Like "Williams, Andy" MC May Not Find It

[Mr ChriZ]

MC also allows you to go into say Amazon,
click copy on an image or hyperlink, then go back to MC
and click Image-> paste on the files missing the art, and MC intelligently goes away
finds it and inserts it.
If you've got just a couple of images missing this
can be extremley quick to do.

I find I need to do this less and less now,
YADB 8 times out of ten will have the cover art I need.

[nedam]

I have been giving cover art a lot of time recently and found several external programs and a script for another media player that have helped a great deal. If there is no issue in mentioning these programs on the MC forum I will certainly post some links.


nedam

[mlagase]

I would be interested in what those programs and scripts are since cover art is on my list of things to do with my 65,000+ media library. It's a very tedious process, but should be well worth the time I put in to this.

I am also running through the Analyze Audio piece now and is taking forever which I would presume is normal since it has to query every single file in the library.

Mike

[nedam]

Mlagase I don't know what the protocol is for mentioning other media players so I will leave the script alone but here are two programs I have used with great success.

http://kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/
Things I like- multiple download sources - ability to specify a minimum size limit on the art (I use this in conjunction with its ability to bulk download and make a first pass looking for larger images and then lowering the image size to fill in the missing covers.) - bulk download.
Things I don't like- it’s slow and from time to time will crash.  I have noticed if I choose twenty or thirty albums instead of several hundred it is less likely to crash.

http://team.thenexusnet.com/nexus/AAA/#download
This program only looks at Amazon (But it does look at all Amazon sites.) never crashes and is very fast.  It will also do a bulk download.  This program looks at your directory structure for artist and album name and will not write to the ID3 tags.  If that is an issue this is not the one to use.

And of course I love MC’s option to download from the Internet. 

Of course after using any of these options I inspect the art to insure it passes muster.

Hope that helps

[mlagase]

Sweet, these do look like great possbilities if MC can't find what I am looking for. The first one is a bit slower, but the interface is much nicer. The second one is fast like you said.

Thanks a bunch for posting these links!!!

Mike

[4BYE]

Hello,

I'm wondering about the following:

Sometimes I'm too lazy to scan my insert and look at Amazon's images.
Sometimes they are 500x500 pixels, but sometimes have lines around them, even white lines at the top and bottom.
Sometimes about 300x300 in a white 500x500 square. And ofcourse images that are not square but f.e. 300x350.

So what do you get with automatic import?
Maybe I'm to picky but  I want 300x300 images without distortion and white borders etc, so 9 out of 10 times I end up with CorelPaint to make my folder.jpg a prefect 300x300.

(For DVD's I use 300x430)


Regards,


Theo

[4BYE]

Another question:

What is the difference in Tag&Rename's File Cover Art and Folder Cover Art?
I guess with File Cover Art you could have multiple images for each song?
Or does it store the image in each file, so you never have to worry about import image files when it's in the file?


Thanks,


Theo

[mlagase]

You are correct, File cover art stores the cover art in the actual file itself and folder cover art normally has a folder.jpg file in the location where your album is.

MC has an option during the import process to automatically import the folder cover art in to the file which is what I have mine set to.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[nedam]

Media Center gives you the option to store the images in the ID3 tag of the "track" or media file on your hard drive or in the album folder as a separate file.  The trade off as I see it is compatibility versus space.  If the image is stored in the tag of the song file there is a copy for each song in the album (One copy stored in each file.) if you put an image file in each album folder there is only one copy per album.  Compared to a song file these images are small so storing them in the tags really doesn't take up much space compared to the song itself and does give you greater compatibility when viewing your songs\albums in other media players.  Having said that I store my images as Folder.jpg in the folder.

The answer to the 500, 300 etc question is that the mass download gives you the first image that matches from the site it is downloading from.  If that image is 200 x 200 that is what you get.  As I mentioned you need to look at each cover to determine if it passes your criteria for album art.

Oh yeah the first program I mention will write the images to the ID3 tag, the second will only save it as a file.


Regards,

Nedam

[tcman41]

My 2cents:

I used to have the cover art in the album folder, it was named artist-album.jpg not folder.jpg, that way if i needed to find something or use it somewhere else i could. I then like most people have gotten into home theater media center applications and mobile devices like ipods etc. At that point i switched from in the folder cover art to in the file cover art, media center does this easily with one click, i then simply did a search for .jpg's in my music folder and then moved them all to another folder for safe keeping in the future.

As far as space considerations go to me its a none issue, hard drive space is pretty cheap nowdays and of course with the cover art being in each individual file no matter what i do with the files, the cover art always goes with them.

I personally download all the cover art either from amazon (300x300) or walmart (500x500) and then resize it if needed in paint shop pro. Once i import the folder into media center i then embed the cover art into the files.

TC 

[4BYE]

I personally download all the cover art either from amazon (300x300) or walmart (500x500) and then resize it if needed in paint shop pro. Once i import the folder into media center i then embed the cover art into the files.

That's what I mean: f.e. Mantram from Steve Roach ( http://www.amazon.com/Mantram-Steve-Roach/dp/B0002VGQO6/sr=11-1/qid=1166552929/ref=sr_11_1/102-1249887-3417759 )

has a 500x500 image but if you take a close look at the pixels you see some borders (one dark/one light that messes up the border when resized to 300x300.
But it's not always like that. That's why I choose manual edited folder.jpg and not automated ones.

BTW I have the option checked for adding folder art to file, but it seems that it's not included in my files. Does it only count for the new imported files. If so what is the best way to add them all to file?

Regards,

Theo

[mlagase]

You know, I couldn't figure out how to get the folder.jpg file directly in to the files without having to use the Add From File option and selecting folder.jpg or whatever the name of the file is.

Deleting it from the library and rescanning appears to work, but that is not the ideal situation.

Also, if you update the cover art in the file using an external program, MC doesn't seem to want to import the new cover art that was added to each file.

There must be an easier way to do this in bulk.

Mike

[tcman41]

Emedding cover art into the mp3 files is easly done.

1. under options / file location make sure that you have "store images in tags also" checked.

2. select all your files that you want to embed cover art into

3. under library tools simply click "update tags from library"

TC 

[4BYE]

TC,

Thanks for your help.
I tried it first with a few files and now it's doing all.


Regards,


Theo