Print

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

[durufle]

Hello folks,

Tried to find a solution reading past threads but couldn't... I'm trying to figure out why some of my albums are missing cover art when every folder has a folder.jpg present

I would say over half of my albums do not have covers!

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

[down4jazz]

If you click on the image file does it open up?

[durufle]

On a title that is not showing the cover art, if I go to Tools > Cover Art > View (first file), it shows up.  But for some reason it won't display in the main views... weird!

[durufle]

If I click on an album and then go Tools > Locate > On Disk, there is clearly a folder.jpg file in the correct format present.

Why some work and others don't is beyond me!

[JimH]

What type of files do you have?

[durufle]

Library is all FLAC, with a folder.jpg in each folder.  In multi-disc sets, a copy of folder.jpg is placed in each sub-folder (for each disc).

[jimmy neutron]

Are you manually adding the cover art to the folder or letting MC search and save it? And if you are manually adding it, make sure that when you save the picture you save it as "folder" only, and not "folder.jpg". The extension .jpg, .png, or whatever is automatically created. If you save it as "folder.jpg" then it will actually be saved as "folder.jpg.jpg" and this will not work. Normally I always go over any CD I import and add the cover art myself because MC doesn't always download the highest resolution file on first shot. I'll always go over it manually and find the highest resolution picture and then choose that image to save. Also, if the folder that contains your ripped music has other artwork in it, even labled diffetently like "frontcover" or "cover", this will also cause MC to freak out on trying to choose an image. Like I said, delete any and everything in the CD folder except for the FLAC files, then do a search for cover art and save it. After that MC will have only one image file in the folder to use.

Jimmy

[durufle]

A little bit of background... all music is stored on my Synology NAS.  I simply specify the folder and run auto-import.  It's set as a "watched folder" so anything I add eventually shows up in MC.

I rip and tag outside of MC on another PC in fact.  Could it have anything to do with the music share being read only?  I'd rather not have MC writing new files to my music folders.

[jimmy neutron]

If you rip using another program then chances are it is also downloading and tagging cover art, as well as MC "re-building" tags. Look in one of your music folders. I'll bet you'll find a couple different pictures in there like ".folder.jpg" or "folder.jpg", or "cover.jpg", etc. If you do then just delete - manually - the pictures you don't want, then rename the single leftover picture as "folder", without the quotes and without any .jpg extension. I would just delete ALL pictures and use MC to manually search for new art. Do a search for each album by right clicking on the album in cover view, and then select the highest resolution cover it returns. Remember, the goal is to not have ANY pictures in your music folders BEFORE MC tags it or else MC will get confused once it tries to "re-build missing thimbnails". Once MC adds thhe art it won't try to add it again as it will remember it already did it for those folders.

[durufle]

This sounds backwards to me.

I manually put a folder.jpg in each folder so that it is portable.  There are no duplicates and I'm very consistent.  I did this in the past for Squeezebox setups so its very clean.  I'd like MC to simply use this file.  There may be cases where art is embedded, but I'd like the folder.jpg to take precedent.

I don't want MC writing anything into my flac files.

[JimH]

... rename the single leftover picture as "folder", without the quotes and without any .jpg extension.

MC supports folder.jpg, not folder.  Your Explorer may be set to not display the file extension.

[durufle]

Also, another weird thing... the same collection on a portable drive at my office (also using MC 16) covers all show up.....

[jimmy neutron]

You can tell MC to not auto tag from within the config options screen. Next thing i noticed is you said you "I manually put a folder.jpg in each folder so that it is portable.  There are no duplicates and I'm very consistent.  I did this in the past for Squeezebox setups so its very clean.  I'd like MC to simply use this file.  There may be cases where art is embedded, but I'd like the folder.jpg to take precedent". If you tagged a picture as "folder.jpg" then it will NOT show up because MC will finish off the extension with an additional .jpg and your picture will look like this: "folder.jpg.jpg". You need to make sure that the picture is simply labled as "folder" and nothing else, so that when MC finishes off the extension it will look like "folder.jpg" and it will be recognized as the picture you want showing for cover art. If the music has already been tagged with a cover art that you do not want you can still tell MC to show your cover art "folder" by manually right clicking on an album in "COVER VIEW", then "tag from file", then browse to the folder with your art picture and select it. MC will now show only that art for the album. There are other ways to achieve this but this is the way I like to do it because I have total control of what goes where. If you manually select the art like this then MC will always show that art every time. Squeexbox may have a different way of looking for cover art than MC does. But MC is pretty simple as well. You just tell it where the art is and that's that.

Jimmy

[durufle]

In Windows, when I disable the option "Hide extensions for known file types", all the files show the extension as it should (not doubled up).  To verify this, I checked out some of the albums where cover art IS showing up and they are named in the same fashion.

I also enabled read/write on the music folder -- still nothing.  I have hundreds and hundreds of albums there is no way I am going to go in and manually "find" cover art for each album.  Thats why I put the folder.jpg in each folder to begin with.

The fact that the same library works on my machine at work (also MC 16) is even more aggravating.... ARRGGHHH

Any other suggestions?  How is it that some work and some don't?

[JimH]

Set up a test library on your local disk.  You wouldn't think a NAS could be a factor, but we've seen some pretty strange things.

[durufle]

Will do.  On a somewhat related note, how long should it take from the time I drop a new folder on my music share to the time it shows up in MC?

[Alex B]

Have you actually set the cover art naming & location option to "folder.jpg"?

Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art > In the same folder as the file (as Folder.jpg)

The default naming rule & location is not "folder.jpg" and even though MC is supposed to automatically use "folder.jpg" if no other cover art image is found, setting this option would make "folder.jpg" work more reliably.

You can also uncheck the "Also store the image in the file's tag" option. I have not tested this, but I guess this option (if enabled) may be a part of the problem. MC might be trying to embed the found cover art image. You have set the audio files to be "read-only" and when cover art tagging fails MC might not revert to use externally linked "folder.jpg".

In general, the current cover art status for each audio file is displayed in the "Image File" library field. (You can add this field to "Action Window > Tag" or as a column to a list view.)

I did some quick testing and I was able to reproduce the problem when MC was set to use the default cover art location options (In a specified folder + Also store image in the file's tag) and the audio files were on a "NAS" network share (= a USB memory stick plugged into my wireless router). The problem disappeared when I set MC to use "folder.jpg" and also when I imported the same audio files from a local hard drive even without changing the cover art location options.

In any case you can try to fix the problem by doing: select the files > right-click > Cover Art > Quick Find In File / Cover Art Directory.

EDIT

During the past few years I have posted many cover art related replies. I don't know if any of them apply to this particular issue, but you can find a bunch of links here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59513.msg449291#msg449291

[durufle]

Bingo... this solved it!  I somehow missed the option and also assumed that everything was set correctly as some albums show art while the others did not.

Thanks a bunch!