Print

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

[rick.ca]

From time to time questions are asked about how to manage the cover art. What's seen throughout most of the program are thumbnails created from the cover art, not the original cover art image itself. Looking at album thumbnails in an audio view, it's not easy to isolate those of poor quality or see any descriptive data concerning the original image.

The Easy Solution

The technique described here is a little involved, and intended for those having a genuine interest in determining the quality of their cover art and taking steps to improve it. Before getting into that, I would be remiss in not pointing out an easier (but somewhat limited) solution to the problem. That is to to use the tag editing window to display the original cover embedded in the selected file(s). Do so by opening the tag editor and clicking on the small cover thumbnail at the top. The editor window will be filled by the image...



I've set the width of the tree to about 600 pixels—my preferred minimum cover size. Images are resized to fit the window—up to their actual size. As a result, it's quite apparent when an image is significantly less that the size I want. At the same time, anything larger will be sized to fit the window. A tooltip (as illustrated) shows the actual size of the image and it's location.

This works reasonably well for browsing through albums one-at-time and taking action where the quality is unacceptable. There are some significant limitations, however:

• In a large collection with mainly good covers, browsing is not an effective way to find poor ones.
• Even if browsing does work, it's not an effective way to identify covers most in need of improvement (e.g., smallest size, smallest dimensions).
• Even viewing full-size image may not identify more subtle problems (not square, large dimension but small file size).
• If the collection includes a set of album art (i.e., front and back covers, inserts, discs, booklet, etc.) it might be desirable to see those images along with the cover.

The Better Solution

The better and often mentioned solution is to display the files and their actual cover art images in the same view. But how? And how does this help narrow the focus to those needing attention? Yes, it's one of those "easier said than done" things. What's needed is not just the ability to display both in the same view, but to correctly identify which images are those currently being used as covers, to select those requiring attention, match those to audio files, and then display selected albums together with their art (which might include images other than covers).

In brief, the process is as follows:

• Write embedded covers to disk and import them to the library.
• Create a 'Cover Maintenance' Panes view.
• Identify the images just written as covers, and tag them with [Artist] and [Album].
• Use panes to select covers needing attention.
• Select one album (or a manageable few), explicitly selecting [Artist] and [Album] in panes.
• Deselect the pane selections made in step 4—to include the audio files associated with the cover.
• Fix or replace the covers.
• Re-write the embedded covers to disk and update the view.
• Reset Selection and start again.

In more detail...


Backup your Library!


1. Write embedded covers to disk and import them to the library.

For those aware MC saves the covers to disk anyway, this step may seem puzzling. The primary purpose is to distinguish images actually being used as covers from other images that may exist in the cover art locations. When written, the [Date Modified] of these files will provide a basis for identifying them as covers.

• In your primary audio view, select the albums you wish to include.
• Add the search [Track #]=1 to limit the view to one track per album.
• Select All, and then run Save Cover Art to external location specified in Options.
• If you haven't already done so, add your cover art location and image media type to your Auto-Import configuration.
• Run Auto-Import.

2. Create a 'Cover Maintenance' Panes view.

Set the Rules for file display to include both image and audio files. If using location to restrict files, ensure the rules include the location of your cover art folder as specified in Options. Under Advanced, select Filter in both directions.



Following is the expression used to create my 'Select-O-Matic' pane. Tailor this to your own needs, or create your own pane for selecting covers only.

Code: [Select]

If(IsEqual([Media Type], Audio), If(IsEmpty([Image File]), No Cover,
If(IsEqual([Image File], Inside File), , No Cover In File)), );
If(IsEqual([Media Type], Image), Image, Audio);
If(IsEqual([Media Type], Image), If(Compare([Date Modified, 0], >, Math(Now() - 2)), Image New, Image Old), );
If(IsEqual([Media Type], Image), If(IsEqual([Art.Type], cover), Art Cover, Art Other), )&DataType=[List]

Note this is just a list of various conditions producing a selection menu. My version does more things than strictly necessary for the basic task, like selecting files with no embedded covers, images only, audio only, etc. The critical one is the fourth line, which is selecting the images modified in the last two days. These will be the files updated in step 1. You may want to us a shorter time period (e.g., 'Math(Now() - .25))' for images updated in the 6 hours).

For other reasons, I've tagged the same files [Art Type]=[cover] and cleared that value from any other files not just updated. It's redundant in the context of the job at hand.

Following is the expression used to create my 'Alerts' pane. Change the parameters to suit your own needs, or add more menu items for selecting the covers you wish to focus on.

Code: [Select]

If(Compare([Height], =, [Width]), , not square);
If(Compare([Width], <, 600), small dimension, );  
If(Compare([Width], >, 1000), large dimension, );
If(Compare([File Size, 0], <, 60000), small size, );
If(Compare([File Size, 0], >, 600000), large size, )&DataType=[List]

The 'Location' pane is optional; the [Artist] and [Album] panes are self-explanatory.


3. Identify the images just written as covers, and tag them with [Artist] and [Album].

When writing the image files, the program names them [Album Artist (auto)] - [Album].jpg. When it imports them, it sets [Name] to [Artist] - [Album]. For a more or less perfect matching of covers to albums, set [Artist] and [Album] using the ListItem() function and [Name]—as illustrated in the screenshot.


4. Use panes to select covers needing attention.



Use the Select-O-Matic, Alerts and optional Location panes to select the covers needing attention. In the screenshot, I've selected a handful of rock album covers with a small file size—suggesting poor quality.


5. Select one album (or a manageable few), explicitly selecting [Artist] and [Album] in panes.



This is subtle but important: Explicitly select the [Artist] and [Album] of the chosen cover in their respective panes. In the screenshot, note how I've selected Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble's Greatest Hits. Now, before doing anything further...


6. Deselect the pane selections made in step 4—to include the audio files associated with the cover.

Do so by clicking on 'All Alerts' and 'All Select-O-Matic' at the top of these respective panes. (If your covers are saved in a separate cover art folder (rather than in the album folder) then you probably don't want to use a 'Location' pane. But if you are, deselect it as well.) As a result, the view will not include all image and audio files tagged with the selected Artist and Album. See the screenshot under step 8.


7. Fix or replace the covers.

The screenshot illustrates one of my favourite sources for covers—AlbumArtExchange. I use a search Link to the site, copy the image URL, and with all tracks selected, choose Paste from Clipboard from the context menu to update the embedded covers (see the screenshot under step 8).



There are, of course, many possible alternatives for what might be done at this point. The existing cover may be fine, but just need resizing, cropping or some other edit that can be done directly in MC. Or the same may be done with an alternate cover image already in the album folder. Even if it was the original source of the poor quality cover you already have, it only takes a few seconds to check Get from Internet again for a better version. Failing all that, Album Art Downloader is a good "brute-force" tool for searching everywhere for a cover. I've added it to my Send To menu for hard cases.


8. Re-write the embedded covers to disk and update the view.

This step is optional, but it may give you a warm and fuzzy feeling to update the external cover image to see the results of your work—that is, the dimensions and file size of your new, humongous, perfectly square cover: Select the cover and choose Update Library (from tags). For a good look and quality-check, double-click the image file to view it.




Note whatever context menu commands are used for steps 7 and 8 will remain easily accessible at the top of your context menu throughout the session.


9. Reset Selection and start again.

When finished with the current album, click Reset Selection on the tab menu, and start again at step 3.

If you've read this far, you might be wondering if all this is worthwhile. Give it a try. It might not be evident from reading this that steps 3 to 6 need only take seconds. Everything you need for addressing the cover issue is then available in the view. It's not shown in the screenshots, but throughout the process I leave the tag window open showing the currently embedded cover (exactly as in the 'Easy Solution'). So whatever advantages there are to doing so remain—essentially, visual confirmation of whatever is going on.

[vagskal]

Thanks for sharing!

Just two small notes: The image action window shows for me the folder.jpg if there is no embedded cover art. The pane view must be set to filter in both directions for the deselction to work.

I am afraid this will not work for me. My [Artist] field contains a list of artist(s) for each track and may not be consistent throughout one album. An option to choose the naming scheme for covers would be useful (I could then select [Album Artist] - [Album]); I guess for VA albums the artist is already set to Multiple Artists. And for most of my flac files I do not have embedded cover art, just a folder.jpg. I am afraid that my folder naming scheme is not consistent enough to use for renaming the images (and I must keep the folder structure intact because other software relies on that for play count).

[locust]

This is great, thank Rick,

so periodically, do I have to select the Image new pane, & import those images in the cover art directory, then run import, to keep it fresh with the cover art for newly imported audio??

[MrC]

Great post!

[rick.ca]

Thanks all. It was a long post in my head. I expected it would get shorter as I wrote it, but it seemed to get longer. Hopefully, it's still clear enough for those who want to try it.

Just two small notes: The image action window shows for me the folder.jpg if there is no embedded cover art. The pane view must be set to filter in both directions for the deselction to work.

Thanks. I'll revise as appropriate.

I am afraid this will not work for me...

I tried an experiment by changing my cover art option to folder.jpg, generating some of those, and then importing them. So I can see your problem. Unless matching data can be extracted from the paths, it would seem you're SOL. But the real purpose of my experiment was to see if there were any problems in changing that option. It seems not, so I suggest you try the opposite experiment. Change your cover art option to In the same folder as the file, generate those for a sample of your albums, import them and see how they're named. It could be, despite your [Artist] being a list, the files (and therefore [Name]) will be named consistently, or at least something that allows you to easily make the match.

so periodically, do I have to select the Image new pane, & import those images in the cover art directory, then run import, to keep it fresh with the cover art for newly imported audio??

As stated in Step 1, select the Audio files (one track per album) and run Save Cover Art to external location specified in Options. If the external location specified in Options is the cover art folder (rather than the same folder as the file), then yes, you would import the cover art folder.

How often you do this depends on how frequently you're making relevant changes to cover art. If, for example, your current practice is to get good covers for anything added to the collection, and you intend to only change existing covers using this method, then you could skip this step indefinitely. As a practical matter, given the step only takes a few minutes, I would do it whenever I felt I needed and accurate snapshot of the current state of the covers.

Also, it should be understood the external files will be created according to option setting anyway—perhaps with a delay. But that process won't delete such files previously created when [Artist] or [Album] were tagged differently. And there may be other cover art files in the folder similarly named. This is a way of eliminating any possible confusion created by the existence of other files that are not, for whatever reason, the covers currently in use.

[Alex B]

I didn't have time to properly read though all of it, but it seems great.

In addition to what was already reported (external cover art shows up just fine in the enlarged Image Window), I noticed this:

When writing the image files, the program names them [Artist] - [Album].jpg

- Under the hood MC always uses [Album Artist (auto)] - [Album].jpg when [Artist] - [Album].jpg is selected in the options.

- Mr ChriZ's "script to save cover art size" can import the cover art dimensions to custom "width" and "height" library fields. I have explained how the size can be displayed in a single calculated "kilopixel" field:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=55211.msg375601#msg375601
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52606.msg358739#msg358739
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51556



The files in this screenshot are audio files.

[rick.ca]

Under the hood MC always uses [Album Artist (auto)] - [Album].jpg when [Artist] - [Album].jpg is selected in the options.

Fixed. Thanks.

Mr ChriZ's "script to save cover art size" can import the cover art dimensions to custom "width" and "height" library fields.

I wish I'd paid more attention to this before. I suppose using a third party script seemed like too much effort, but my solution certainly dispels that notion! I tried it—it's easy to implement and doesn't take much longer to run than my Step 1. There is one significant shortcoming, however. It doesn't record the (file) size of the image, which is often the most reliable measure of quality. Do you happen to know why the script doesn't get it? Nevertheless, it's handy having the image dimensions recorded directly in the audio file record.

[MrC]

Some more things to consider:

• The new Auto Import tag assignment allows setting values in tags during import.  So, before importing my cover art, I set the following rules to automatically populate [Artist] and [Album] tags for imported cover art, based upon my music directory structure of Artist/Album (Regex() to the rescue!).  I also set [keyword]=Album Art
  
  Artist:  if(isequal([Media Type],Image), Regex([Filename (path)], /#\\([^\\]+)\\[^\\]+\\?$#/, 1),)
  
  Album: if(isequal([Media Type],Image), Regex([Filename (path)], /#\\([^\\]+)\\?$#/, 1),)
  
  Keywords: if(isequal([Media Type],Image), Album Art,)
  
  The use of [Media Type] in the rules allows discrimination of tag assignment for a given watched import folder where audio / cover art may reside (eg. M:\Music)
  
  
• If the Cover Maintenance view is going into the Audio tree location, be sure to uncheck: Use parent scheme rules for file display in the view.
  
  
• Rick.ca's Alert expression uses a Compare([Height], =, [Width]) to determine if the image is square.  The new Orientation tag indicates this, so you can use: If(IsEqual([Orientation], Square), , not square) as an alternative to the Compare function.
  
  
• I created an expression column in the file list to combine Track #/Disc # or Cover Art:  if(IsEqual([Media Type], Image), [Keywords], [D-T]) where [D-T] is a custom field combining Disc # / Track #.
  
  

   

[rick.ca]

The new Auto Import tag assignment allows setting values in tags during import.  So...

Clever, and a good illustration of the usefulness of the new feature. A warning, however: Unless your folder structure accurately reflects current [Artist] and [Album] values, this will result in difficulties matching the covers to their audio files. I discovered this the hard way. When I first tried my technique, I pretty much ignored the image filename and [Name], and immediately tagged them all using Fill properties from filename... The problem is it works, but not 100%. I forgot about my practice of dropping articles from the [Artist] used in the file path (because the file system doesn't ignore them in sorting). I also sometimes make changes to [Artist] without updating the file path. Those differences caused a lot of frustration because I was not getting the matches I was expecting. I eliminated the issue by simply using [Name] as a reliable source for the current [Artist] and [Album] values.

Rick.ca's Alert expression uses a Compare([Height], =, [Width]) to determine if the image is square.

Yes, I'm funny that way. I also replaced an [Orientation] column with an "Aspect" expression column If(IsEmpty([Width], 1), , FormatNumber(Math([Width] / [Height]), 2)) because the former was useless as a measure of how "not square" an image is. And I'm thinking of replacing my "not square" alert with "tall" and "wide".

[syndromeofadown]

Funny you just posted your guide.
Minutes ago I finished fixing/organizing my album art.
I just spent the last few evening sorting out album art that has been annoying me for years.
All of my albums had album art but it wasn't consistent and many of them were terrible quality.
Some albums had embedded art while others had randomly names jpg's in the albums folder with no image in the tag.
There was also a lot of insert and rear images. I could care less about these and prefer them gone.


I fixed mine as follows:

1) Select all audio and extract folder.jpg from files tag
2) Import all album art into library (all images in audio directory)
3) Create a pane view for the images where thumbnails are grouped by containing folder.
4) Scroll the long list and delete all extra images so that there is only one image per folder.
    (Remove all back and insert images and leave the highest quality front/cover)
5) Sort by file size and replace all images with low size/quality
6) Rename all images to folder.jpg
7) Add folder.jpg to files tag

I did this for over 6000 albums this week. It was boring but well worth it.
Its important to remember not to add the folder.jpg to albums that have unique art for each song.

[locust]

This looks really cool,

Unfortunately I'm not that the stage to deal with al the cover art.. I think I'll do this another time, soon..

This has been a busy week, expression overload for me, I need to take a break. I can't understand any of these expressions at the moment...
My library has had a few drastic changes done to it and I need to take sometime to reflect on it, or I'll forget exactly what I've done....

This thread will be highly useful once the time comes,

thanks Rick, you've got some great ideas..

[rjm]

Very nice work Rick. Lots of useful information here. Thank you.

tips:
If you want small (240x240) consistent high quality music artwork I find allmusic.com (aka allrovi.com) to be really good.
I find the best source for audiobook artwork is http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/books-bestselling-books/379003057/

[rick.ca]

I've encountered a baffling problem. [Edit: Solved. Thanks, marko.] I can no longer add a cover by pasting it's URL from the clipboard. Up until a day or so ago, it worked fine. I've verified a valid URL is on the clipboard, but MC now consistently reports "No image found on clipboard (must be image or URL/filename of image)." It works with a filename, but not a URL. While this would appear to be an issue with MC, it remains when I revert to build 33—and I'm sure it was working when I first used that build.

This is an example of a URL—copied directly from Firefox and pasted here:
http://www.albumartexchange.com/gallery/images/public/fo/foreig-4_09.jpg

Disabling my firewall and real time scanning (McAfee) makes no difference. There have been no Windows updates in the last week.

Is it just me? Can anyone suggest what the problem might be?

[marko]

When I click your link, I get...

ERROR 403
Sorry, access forbidden. If you were following a direct link to an image please note direct linking it not allowed.

Presumably, MC is getting the same page and reporting that there's no image found at the end of the path...

[rick.ca]

I did this for over 6000 albums this week.

My collection is about 1/10th the size, so I'm wondering...Did you have occasion to be updating many albums at once? Normally, if you're having to get replacements one-at-a-time, they may as well be added as you go. But other situations, like bulk re-sizing large numbers of existing images, would call for the bulk updating of albums. I suppose the command for doing so is Quick find in file/cover art directory, which would require Remove cover art (without removing the external file!) be run first. Have I got that right?

Hmmm. I've been fiddling with covers most of which are now of reasonable quality, but may not be perfectly square an/or have an odd dimension. It's tempting just to select all such files, remove the cover art, re-size the external cover art files, and then add them back using Quick find...

No point being wimpy...I just tested that, and it works perfectly! And the Cover Maintenance view is helpful in selecting cover art that warrants a particular edit, then properly matching the audio files. This is so easy, I'm going to have to think about the end result I want. Too many edits will degrade the quality of the images...

[rick.ca]

When I click your link, I get...
Presumably, MC is getting the same page and reporting that there's no image found at the end of the path...

That's it. Thanks. The problem is AlbumArtExchange is blocking direct links. This may have been a recent change—they also recently banned my proxy server. I suppose they have a problem with people mining the entire collection. The problem wasn't apparent to me because any image was first viewed via the website, then any subsequent request was using the browser cache. Only refreshing resulted in the 403.

I suppose I'll just have to copy & paste the image, and watch for any negative impact that may have. I guess that means a bitmap is being re-encoded, with possibly different results than the original. I don't know if that really makes any difference and is something I should be concerned about.

[vagskal]

- Under the hood MC always uses [Album Artist (auto)] - [Album].jpg when [Artist] - [Album].jpg is selected in the options.

I guess I could set the option save as [Artist] - [Album].jpg and then save cover art to external location to get an extra image file in each album folder. Thereafter I could use the filename for setting the Artist/Album Artist and Album fields in MC. Is there a way to rename those files folder.jpg and have the original folder.jpg overwritten? Or I guess I could revert to the option to save as folder.jpg and just use the extra [Artist] - [Album].jpg for display purposes.

Setting the Artist/Album Artist and Album fields in MC in an automated way for other cover art than the front (back, inside, inlay, booklet, CD) will, however, be more of a problem. I wish there was an option in MC to "Expand to Full Folders", like the option to "Expand to Full Albums", that I could use with an all media view to see both the music files and the associated cover art files.

- Mr ChriZ's "script to save cover art size" can import the cover art dimensions to custom "width" and "height" library fields.

Thanks for pointing me to this! The script works and is particularly useful for compilations where I have embedded different (singles) cover art for each music file in the album (and a folder.jpg representing the compilation in itself).

[marko]

That's it. Thanks. The problem is AlbumArtExchange is blocking direct links. This may have been a recent change—they also recently banned my proxy server. I suppose they have a problem with people mining the entire collection. The problem wasn't apparent to me because any image was first viewed via the website, then any subsequent request was using the browser cache. Only refreshing resulted in the 403.

I suppose I'll just have to copy & paste the image, and watch for any negative impact that may have. I guess that means a bitmap is being re-encoded, with possibly different results than the original. I don't know if that really makes any difference and is something I should be concerned about.

Can't you right click the image in the browser and use "Save Image As...", then use "Add from file" from within MC? If you want it that bad, of course
Or have they disabled that too?

-marko

[rick.ca]

Can't you right click the image in the browser and use "Save Image As...", then use "Add from file" from within MC?

Yes, that works, but I may as well just copy & paste the image. I still have some things to learn about how jpeg compression works. It's a bit annoying to look for a replacement of a 500 pixel 50KB image, find a nice looking 800 pixel 400KB image, and then see it saved as a 50KB file. I suppose that might be because they're essentially the same images, one compressed more than the other. But I haven't bothered examining such images to determine if there's a noticeable difference in quality. It's also fun to re-size an image downwards and see the file size increase, and vice versa.

[MrC]

Clever, and a good illustration of the usefulness of the new feature. A warning, however: Unless your folder structure accurately reflects current [Artist] and [Album] values, this will result in difficulties matching the covers to their audio files. I discovered this the hard way.

Thanks for the heads up.  I saw this too - some of my album names or artist folders are a bit different from the Album and Artist properties set.

So, I just changed the Artist and Album columns instead to:

Artist:
   Regex([Filename (path)], /#\\([^\\]+)\\[^\\]+\\?$#/, 1)

Album:
   Regex([Filename (path)], /#\\([^\\]+?)(?: \(?Disc \d+\)?)?\\?$#/, 1)

This picks up anything in the directory that is in the database, so I don't have to worry about tags in the artwork

[rick.ca]

This picks up anything in the directory that is in the database, so I don't have to worry about tags in the artwork

For this and other reasons, I should bite the bullet and rename all my files using the exact [Artist] and [Album]. I've been removing prefixes because I want them sorted that way in the file system. It finally occurred to me, "Why doesn't Directory Opus ignore them?" Well, of course, it does—if configured to do so. 

[vagskal]

I have explained how the size can be displayed in a single calculated "kilopixel" field:

Is it working for you to sort by this kilopixel field (of type number)? If I change album art and run the script again the kilopixel field is correctly recalculated, but the sort order is not changed, i.e. the file that had the lowest value is still on top of the a-z list sorted by the kilopixel field even when the kilopixel value is among the highest in the list after upgrading the cover art and running the script again.

[rick.ca]

Is it working for you to sort by this kilopixel field (of type number)?

It works for me, but aside from whatever that problem is, what is the point of this value? The width or height of a square image will provide the same relative measure—with a value you can understand. I suspect this was intended a measure of the relative size of an image in a set of images with varying dimensions and orientations. It will, for example, tell you 5x7 is larger than a 6x4, while neither the width or height values will. That's not relevant here.

I'm still wondering about indicators of quality. File size might, although it can be small because the original image was (too) highly compressed when saved to JPG, or the image just compressed easily (e.g., because of a uniform background). I'm assuming those with small file size warrant closer scrutiny of quality, but maybe I'm deluding myself. I suppose a 300KB file I'm assuming must be of acceptable quality could be highly compressed and should be 600KB. Many of these images are far removed from the originals (which may not have been the best quality anyway), so there's not going to be anything reliable in the source files (i.e., a downloaded file) indicating how they were compressed.

As a practical matter, I suppose displaying and paying attention to a large image window while checking and updating covers is a good idea. There are, of course, many factors affecting the quality of an image, most of which can only be judged by looking at them. If in doubt, I "play" the image, zooming it (if necessary) to at least the size it would appear in Theatre View's Playing Now. If it looks good then, I'm happy.

With this in mind, I've decided I need a cover rating field to indicate whether I've (sufficiently) checked the quality. It's album-relational, so setting it for the external cover image will show for the audio files as well. It's a five-star type, which I'll intend to use as follows:

• Probably bad (as indicated by size)
• Bad (verified—to be replaced)
• Probably acceptable (as indicated by size)
• Acceptable (verified)
• Good (cannot be improved)

[vagskal]

It works for me, but aside from whatever that problem is, what is the point of this value?

Strange that I seem to be the only one experiencing this. The value is correctly recalculated but the sort order is still based on the old value.

I use the kilopixel for sorting (well I try to) and to search by (where the search is picking up a recalculated value just fine). For me this value is just a relative measure of the size of the cover art.

I'm still wondering about indicators of quality.

I like my cover art huge. Bigger is usually better. Then I just look at the image to spot any issues. When doing covers for singles I use a view with huge thumbnails that reveals the quality of smaller size art real well.

[gottwavo]

I find this interesting and would like to use it. However I have difficulties in building the panes view and all the other stuff. I did get to step of the process but struggle withthe rest. My problem is that I have the images inside the mp3 files. So when I build the view and list Image File I see "inside file". And consequently I can not calculate width and/or height of the image.

Can someone help with a few tips or a little more detailed (beginners) description of the process? Thanks

[MrC]

... I did get to step of the process ...

Which step did you get to?

Where is your cover art stored?  Hint: Its the value set here:

  Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art > Audio mode

[gottwavo]

Thanks for trying to help.

It took a while before I managed to run the script. Nothing for people with no patience. Also the available description are very "cryptic".

The .bat file for the script did not work. So I installed the scripting plug in and added the script. Before running it of course I added the respective fields to the library. Then it worked and all the values for width and height were entered into the library fields. The script stopped at certain files probably because they did not have image files or other problems - but after repeating the script several times and always deleting the "done" files from playing know, I managed to get all the files read.

I then used a smartlist to select all #1 tracks from all albums and now could sort by value on width. I added the "Album Art Downloader" software to "send to ..." and could quickly update the worst cover art. However with my 13,000 albums and 1,400 of them with not so good covers it's quite a job that takes some time.

Questions:

• Can I have the files read from an other location but playing now e.g directly from the smart list selection?
• Is there a faster way to update the cover art?

Can I have the files read from an other location but "playing now" e.g. directly from the selection of the smart list?

[rick.ca]

I then used a smartlist to select all #1 tracks from all albums and now could sort by value on width.

Given the number of albums you have, this might be the most practical means of targeting poor quality covers. But bear in mind dimensions aren't always an accurate measure of quality for compressed image files. Dimension is independent of the resolution at which an image is created, and even if there were a reasonable correlation when it was created, it may have been re-sized. Nevertheless, this will probably work for you if you do something like assume everything less than 500 pixels is poor, and visually check all those from 500 to 600 pixels.

Can I have the files read from an other location but playing now e.g directly from the smart list selection?

I don't think so, but why does it matter?

Is there a faster way to update the cover art?

The fastest way, of course, is to use Get from Internet. Even if that's where the existing image came from, it's possible a better quality image has been uploaded since. For reasonably popular albums, you'll find a good quality cover using a link to AlbumArtExchange.com. Album Art Downloader's ability to search multiple sites is useful for more obscure albums where the first two sources are likely to fail.

Check Options > General > Online Metadata > Submit cover art changes to online database so others can benefit from your work. It's also a convenient form of backup for your own covers.

[tcman41]

I embed all the tags and covers into my tunes first with album art downloader and mp3tag and then import into j.river

All that other stuff kind of seems like overkill to me.

TC 

[gottwavo]

The fastest way, of course, is to use Get from Internet.

I do that sometimes but alwys discover that MC does not have any image of what I am looking for or bad ones. Album Art Downloader is the best source in my mind. Muv Under Cover ist second and has a nice user interface. Mostly I look up the covers in Album Art Downloader and copy them from ther eto paste in MC. That's relatively fast.

Yes, it's clear that images with the ssame width could be different in quality ...

But as said: anything below 300 is difficult and anything below 500 might be improved. However there are many old albums around where you doon't find larger covers.

I am submitting all my cover sto the internet, but I have recognized in the past, when I try to get them back I don't see them ... Someone probably did not like my images.

[rick.ca]

All that other stuff kind of seems like overkill to me.

As stated in the introduction, this topic is for those who want to improve their existing cover art (obtained by whatever means). What it comes down to is how you feel about the 10 to 20% poorest quality covers in your collection. If you don't mind them being crap, then doing anything about it is a waste of time. If you prefer all be of good quality, then it requires some effort to identify those needing replacement.

Someone probably did not like my images.

I doubt any human is passing judgment on your images. Maybe the system doesn't keep them if they're deemed to be very similar to or poorer quality than what's already there. I've tried to upgrade all my covers to a minimum of 600 pixels and 100 Kb. Spot checking, I can't find any that aren't included in the online database.

[javidan]

Am I allowed to cut and past Rick's uberview into the wiki?

As a non-advanced user, these guides really show why J River is beyond so many other media apps I have tried but the accessibility is so tough. I will never see myself creating these scripts/views without these posts.

[MrC]

Am I allowed to cut and past Rick's uberview into the wiki?

As a non-advanced user, these guides really show why J River is beyond so many other media apps I have tried but the accessibility is so tough. I will never see myself creating these scripts/views without these posts.

Suggestion - instead, create the general topic (eg. Managing Cover Art), give a quick introductory overview, and reference the thread.  Otherwise, you'll have two competing, inconsistent reference areas, each updated by different people.  There are some Cover Art articles extant - perhaps ensuring the right ones reference your new article will help discovery.

[rick.ca]

Am I allowed to cut and past Rick's uberview into the wiki?

None of my posts are copyrighted.

But MrC's suggestion makes sense. I often think a good way for a new user to contribute would be to keep track of the helpful posts/topics they find on a particular subject. Then, once they feel they've learned it, post a review of how they did so, with references to the sources they used. As a new user, you're best qualified to comment on how to learn something, what to read first, things you found you needed to learn before understanding the subject, etc. These things can be very difficult for an experienced user to recall. Such a post will also draw comments from other users about different approaches for different interests, additional tips, the impact of program changes since the original topics, etc.