Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DrPhatteus]

A little background:
I have a bunch of live recordings and in each folder I have a text file with info about the recording. Since we can import text files into MC, I can see these files when I browse my library- great! I built a little text file viewer so when I "play" one of these text files in theater view, I can read about the recording, and then press a button on my remote and the viewer disappears.

However, many times MC will display the little notepad icon as album art. I might have several jpegs for covers in a folder, but MC rotates through them (or something) and sometimes instead of one of the jpegs, it shows a (large, distorted) windows icon image. Here's a screenshot of normal view...  The same problem happens in theater view.
http://www.shoey.com/jrmc.jpg

I would prefer not to have to go through hundreds of folders and manually assign an image to the text files - if that's even possible.

Is there a better way to handle this? A global setting were I can turn of the display of icons for files?

[JimH]

You need to find the album that has that image associated with it and then try to learn why it's there.   Exactly what is the file?  What else is in the folder.

In our Wiki (link above), search for "cover art" to read how it works.

One problem with cover art is the folder.jpg file that Windows creates.  MC will use it if no other art is present.

[Alex B]

MC's automatic cover art features are not usable with documents.

You can either link the cover art files manually with your text files (yes, it is possible) or if you don't want a graphical representation don't use Theater View. Use Standard View in panes & file list mode without grouping and remove the art icon column.

I have lots of album & artist related documents in my library, but I use separate views for browsing them together with the other album files. I have kept my Audio views "audio only".

[DrPhatteus]

Thanks for the info guys... i did take a look at the Wiki, but I think i may need some additional guidance here.

The contents of a folder might look something like this:

Track01.mp3
Track02.mp3
...
Track15.mp3
cover.jpg
some_info.txt

And I have 100's of folders like this. I have imported the text files into my library as well. When viewing artists or albums I want it to use cover.jpg and NOT the default system icon for the txt file. I am thinking there must be either:

1) A means of turning off file icons for cover art
or
2) a means of batch processing the text files in my library to inherit the jpg in the same physical folder
or
3) a means of batch processing the text files to remove the associated icon/image.

Suppose I were to create a library view that only contained all my text files... could I then remove the associated icon/image from these library items?

[Alex B]

I am afraid that there is no way to remove the OS default icon from text files. You can only use a view that doesn't show icons at all.

Also, I don't think MC has a built-in way to mass link cover art with your txt files.

Here is a way to do it outside MC, but you need to find an external tool that can batch process the file modifcations:

1) Create a list of the txt files (a playlist, a view with a restrictive rule or just load the files to Playing Now) and export the list as a simple .m3u playlist.

Here is an example of an exported .m3u list:

H:\Rip\Dido - Life For Rent\a sample text file.txt
H:\Rip\Doina Klezmer - Nomada\another sample text file.txt
 

2) Change the .m3u file to this format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<MPL Version="2.0" Title="text folder">
<Item>
<Field Name="Filename">H:\Rip\Dido - Life For Rent\a sample text file.txt</Field>
<Field Name="Image File">folder.jpg</Field>
</Item>
<Item>
<Field Name="Filename">H:\Rip\Doina Klezmer - Nomada\another sample text file.txt</Field>
<Field Name="Image File">folder.jpg</Field>
</Item>
</MPL>
 

3) Save the resulting file as an mpl playlist (.mpl) and import it by using the "File > Import..." command. It will add cover art links to the listed txt files (assuming each folder contains a folder.jpg file).

[Alex B]

Probably there are more clever ways, but I have sometimes used MS Excel and Word for batch processing MPL files. I once explained the system in this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40963

(...mostly in this reply: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40963.msg279717#msg279717
... and this: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40963.msg280105#msg280105)

[DrPhatteus]

 

That will work, thanks ya'll!

I'll do a little VB scripting or something to pour through the folders and pick up the relevant paths & image names... then output some XML.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[Alex B]

I don't know if Mr ChriZ's Scripting Plugin can be used in this particular case, but it may be of interest to you:

Mr ChriZ's Scripting Plugin:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=38693

Sample scripts:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=33020

A recent application for adding cover art dimension info to the database:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51556

[DrPhatteus]

I wrote a quick C# app that looks through all subfolders and looks for folder.jpg (or another image if no folder.jpg found) - then creates an MPL<item> for each text file and writes to an MPL file. I imported the MPL file and it works perfectly!

Thank you very much for the info. Thanks also for the add'l scripting links- I bet I could translate my code into an MC script; I'll have to look further into that.