No.
Well... You
can turn the sidecar support off:
Tools -> Options -> General -> Store tags in external sidecar filesThe reason the Cover Art files are stored next to the source video files is this:
If they are stored in a specified directory, and you have a lot of files, MC can have difficulty making sure the cover art files remain unique. In the past, before this was implemented, we had a TON of file-naming problems which resulted MC overwriting cover art files from older files with those of newer files. This system, as Matt explained in another thread, is a simple way for MC to be able to make sure the files remain unique, prevent it from exceeding Windows path-length restrictions, and allows them to be easily tracked and deleted as the source files are moved or removed.
At the time this was implemented, I suggested that they have another mode where the cover art files would be automatically stored in a specified location, and the file naming would be handled "behind the scenes" similar to how iPhoto or Lightroom manages your photo library (where you don't name them directly, and they use semi-randomly generated names). I guess this was determined to be too much work and too prone to failure or something.
Oh, also, I am getting "tagging errors" in a big dialogue box with a big red "X" every time I shut down Media Center. They all relate to videos, saying the "don't exist" when they do. What's going on here?
I'm not sure. This shouldn't be happening. When you make tag changes to video files, it writes these changes to those sidecar XML files. Sometimes the tagging changes can be things like playing a file (which changes the [Last Played] and [Number of Plays] tags), or it could be initial importing and tagging, or it could be manual tag changes.
If access to one of the XML files is locked (because it is on a read-only volume or because another application has them open, for example), then MC will queue the changes and keep trying until the files are unlocked (you can see the number of tagging changes pending in the bottom status bar). When you close MC, it can no-longer just sit on it, so it displays that dialog to show you the progress until the MC process can be closed.
Unfortunately, if the files are locked or read-only, it'll never complete. This generally shouldn't happen. If it does, and you didn't just apply a whole bunch of tags in a big batch and then close MC before it was finished tagging the files, then something is either broken or weird about your setup, or probably
you are doing something that is causing it.
So, the question you need to answer is this: Why is MC not able to write to its own sidecar XML files? This shouldn't happen in most cases. Are you deleting them OCD style with MC still running? Have you been trying to lock MC out of writing to the disk to prevent the contents from changing (trying to keep the files from being created in the first place)?
I should add... Those sidecar XML files can be very useful. You should consider what they are used for before you just turn the feature off. They are the video-file equivalent of in-file tags. If your MC Library happens to get corrupted, this will allow you to reimport the files and you'll get all of your tags back just as they were without trouble. You can also use them to exchange metadata about the files with other copies of MC that aren't connected to the same library. I really appreciate their functionality.
