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[ckbeme]

I've not been able to figure out how to correct MC's choice of cover art during auto import. It seems random when MC gets the correct art. I've corrected some tracks but it's a tedious process.
Bigger problem - I ran import on a folder that is constantly updated w/new music. It added 10 songs and did hundreds of updates. Those updates killed me - Every track in that folder now has the same duplicate cover art. I tried the Undo option but I guess that only works for manual updates done in MC.

I hope someone has a quick fix for this. I'm almost ready to give up on MC, as this isn't the first/only problem I've had.

Please send some good news my way - I really want to continue using MC.

Thanks,

Ck

[Matt]

If there's a folder.jpg file sitting next to your music, Media Center will use that as cover art.  This can explain why several files in a folder end up with the same art.

As for cover art lookup, you might be happier disabling cover art retrieval in auto-import (Options > Library & Folders) and instead running the manual tool since it allows you to graphically approve every change.

[Alex B]

Matt's reply is good, but slightly short. I'd like to add that the source file for the wrong cover art picture may be a hidden file (e.g. WMP can hide folder.jpg files) and to access it the Explorer settings may need to be changed.

Inside MC it is possible to find out where to image is coming from by checking the value of the "Image File" library field. If the fied contains only a filename without a directory path the Image is located inside the audio file's folder.

[ckbeme]

If there's a folder.jpg file sitting next to your music, Media Center will use that as cover art.  This can explain why several files in a folder end up with the same art.

As for cover art lookup, you might be happier disabling cover art retrieval in auto-import (Options > Library & Folders) and instead running the manual tool since it allows you to graphically approve every change.

I understand folder.jpg can get picked up for art, but all of these songs had unique cover art (most of it correct) until the Auto Import did an 'update'. That's really frustrating that it 'fixed' all of the cover art.

Doing it manually is going to be quite time consuming. Does anyone know of a method (web site or other) that can be used to get cover art?

Last, How do I make sure this doesn't happen again? Do I just make certain there are no folder.jpg files on my system?

Thanks for the response(s)

[Alex B]

I understand folder.jpg can get picked up for art, but all of these songs had unique cover art (most of it correct) until the Auto Import did an 'update'. That's really frustrating that it 'fixed' all of the cover art.

Your reply doesn't help others to understand what happened.

You said the songs had unique cover art. Did each song have a different image file linked or embedded? Where were these images stored and in which image format? Or were they inside the audio files' tags? If yes, what is the audio files' format?

Were these cover art images visible in MC at some earlier stage or are you speaking about some other program that was capable of displaying the images?

What are your cover art settings in Options > File Location > Cover Art?

Doing it manually is going to be quite time consuming. Does anyone know of a method (web site or other) that can be used to get cover art?

MC has a tool that can display previews of cover art. You can select the best image or decide to not download if a certain album does not have suitable images available. Select the audio files and do: right-click > Cover Art > Get From Internet.

Last, How do I make sure this doesn't happen again? Do I just make certain there are no folder.jpg files on my system?

First we would need to know what happened.

In general, you can disable the "Get Cover Art" setting in the auto-import options and handle those files that do not already have cover art "semi-automatically" with the tool I mentioned.

[ckbeme]

Your reply doesn't help others to understand what happened.

You said the songs had unique cover art. Did each song have a different image file linked or embedded? Where were these images stored and in which image format? Or were they inside the audio files' tags? If yes, what is the audio files' format?

Each song (Album) had a different (unique) image file. I assume the images were embedded, since they showed up in the Tag info for the audio files. When MC did the first import for my existing mp3 files, the cover art was imported with the audio files. The images are .jpg files, my audio files are .mp3 files.

Were these cover art images visible in MC at some earlier stage or are you speaking about some other program that was capable of displaying the images?

The images were visible in MC, the images also displayed in the Tag Window, and the images displayed in the Cover Art option of the Visualization screen.

What are your cover art settings in Options > File Location > Cover Art?

My settings for File Location - Cover Art are 1. In the same folder as the file 2. Also store image in the file's tag

First we would need to know what happened.

My question was How do I prevent the cover art from getting updated (once I am happy with it) What happened? I did Auto Import to pickup some newly download mp3 files. Apparently I downloaded an mp3 file that also included a folder.jpg file. When I ran the import function, several unique image files were replaced by a single (duplicate) image file.

[MusicHawk]

>> Each song (Album) had a different (unique) image file.

Not sure what you mean by "song (Album)" which are two different things. Do you mean several tracks (songs) have the same Album name, and they had different images, and now MC has given them all the same image? If so, that can be "normal" behavior at times. If you change the image of one track, that same image often gets immediately applied to all the tracks that have the same Album name.

Apparently MC is hard-wired to treat a cover art image as belonging to an Album, therefore to all tracks of that Album, rather than to tracks individually. So, changing one track changes all tracks of the same Album.

It's a nice feature in many situations, but unfortunately it's not as controllable as it could be. To me, this "surprise!" change of other Album tracks based on intentionally changing the cover art of just ONE track is aggravating. There's no warning, and it can be time-consuming and difficult to locate the original images and reapply them to the tracks -- and still the risk of the change happening again. In another thread there's a "cover art wish list" discussion with suggestions for more control over this. http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51381.0

This is separate from the Folder.jpg issue. I don't know if it is affected by cover art image location, because I don't store images in my music tracks (bloats them unnecessarily), and instead store all my cover art images in a separate single folder.

[JimH]

MC doesn't replace your cover art unless you tell it to. 

[Alex B]

My settings for File Location - Cover Art are 1. In the same folder as the file 2. Also store image in the file's tag

So you are using the "In the same folder as the file" -- not the other similar one with "as Folder.jpg", correct?. In that case all cover art that was saved by MC should be named as "Artist - Album.jpg". You may actually have backup files in the file folders. Though if MC did originally found an existing image file from the file folder or used an embedded image it probably did not create a new file.

My question was How do I prevent the cover art from getting updated (once I am happy with it) What happened? I did Auto Import to pickup some newly download mp3 files. Apparently I downloaded an mp3 file that also included a folder.jpg file. When I ran the import function, several unique image files were replaced by a single (duplicate) image file.

Normally MC does not update cover art if the "Image File" library field has a value. Have you checked what you have there?

I am still trying understand what happened. Do you keep your albums in separate folders? A new folder.jpg file could affect files if only they are in the same folder, but that should not change older image links unless you are creating a new library from scratch.