Topic: G-Force Gold w/MC10 & Cover Art Problems. (Read 4243 times)

lpr · « **on:** April 15, 2004, 09:40:40 pm »

Hello,

Anybody having difficulty displaying their albums covers in full resolution in MC10 w/G-Force Gold?

I know this function works great on my Desktop PC (P4+Nvidia), but It's not working on my HTPC (AMD+ATI 9800Pro) running Powerstrip.

The visuals are in full resolution on the HTPC but the albums covers are in low res, B&W and squeezed to the left.

I've re-installed the ATI drivers, MC and G-Force Gold twice and it's still not displaying the cover art at their right resolution.

Am I the only one with this sickness?

Thanks for your time.
lpr

gpvillamil · « **Reply #1 on:** April 15, 2004, 11:25:11 pm »

I am using G-Force Gold with an ATI 9800 Pro, and it works fine.

Perhaps the bit depth is set too low?

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #2 on:** April 16, 2004, 01:21:01 am »

Just curious...how do you actually get G-Force to display the cover art in the first place?

I've had GF Gold for a week or so, and all my coverart is stored as "Folder.jpg" in the respective artist/album dorectory.

Any ideas?

Thanks

gpvillamil · « **Reply #3 on:** April 16, 2004, 01:44:24 am »

Anytime the track info is displayed the cover art comes up. This happens when tracks change or when you press "T".

It uses the cover art that MC passes to it, so if you have cover art in MC, G-Force will use it. No further configuration is necessary.

lpr · « **Reply #4 on:** April 16, 2004, 06:30:47 am »

Hello gpvillamil,

When I push SHIFT-M, I get two messages:

New depth: 8 (Not recommenended-- colors will not appear correctly)
New depth: 32 (Not recommended)

It doesn't seem to affect anything.

Take care,
lpr

gpvillamil · « **Reply #5 on:** April 16, 2004, 06:52:00 am »

G-Force ignores the resolution setting from inside the plugin. Instead, use right-click, Configure Display and choose a resolution & depth from there.

lpr · « **Reply #6 on:** April 16, 2004, 07:52:26 am »

Hello,

I guess resolution and depth is not the issue here, because I'm in full res. The only thing that I thought could affect this was my custom Powerstrip resolution which I de-activated and the problem is still there.

Thanks for the help.
lpr

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #7 on:** April 16, 2004, 05:54:12 pm »

The album cover art does not appear if you are playing your music via MC client from a Media Server...bummer...

lpr · « **Reply #8 on:** April 16, 2004, 07:59:59 pm »

Hey,

You know what? My albums are being played from a shared folders via a network to my HTPC, but are being seen as local drives when played from my desktop pc. Maybe this as something to do with it, even if I don't see how.

Take care,
lpr

Bryan · « **Reply #9 on:** April 17, 2004, 10:39:34 pm »

Quote from: LunchmeatVoom on April 16, 2004, 05:54:12 pm

The album cover art does not appear if you are playing your music via MC client from a Media Server...bummer...

I'm seeing the same problem.. Happens for some other visualizations as well. I've reported this at least twice now and since I didn't get a response I thought I may be the only one encountering the problem. I wish this would get fixed.

Bryan

Magicland · « **Reply #10 on:** April 17, 2004, 10:55:38 pm »

I've just noticed this happening tonight. I'm sure I've seen it show cover art in the past, but tonight it isn't. All my cover art is stored in the tag info, so it shouldn't be an issue of it not being available. The cover art shows in MC (10.0.116, but isn't showing in G-Force). The mp3 files are kept on a network drive, but I'm not using MC as a server/client. As I said, I've seen the covers before, perhaps 10.0.116 isn't feeding G-Force the cover information, and previous versions were?

Upon further investigation, it appears to NOT be network releated. Cover art for some albums isn't showing up even when the files are local. It doesn't happen to all files, just some. Some albums display cover art, some don't, they all have it. The other plugins which display cover art all seem to be working fine, so it looks like its a g-force issue.

Bryan · « **Reply #11 on:** April 18, 2004, 12:09:16 am »

The problem I am seeing is specifically with a client connecting to media server. If I copy the database locally it works. I have all my cover art embedded in APE files.

I retract the suggestiong it doesn't work with other visualizations. It appears to work now for everything except G-Force.

Bryan

Magicland · « **Reply #12 on:** April 19, 2004, 10:22:31 pm »

I've no idea what's going on. One file which displays the cover art, doesn't seem to have the cover art embedded in it. Another file from the same album DOES have the cover art, but G-Force doesn't display it. Yet another file WITH the cover art embedded, displays it just fine. I've contacted Andy, and he said to sent him an example of the file which isn't displaying the cover art, but I'm so confused at the moment I don't know what to send him, or if the problem is actually back in MC's court...

lpr · « **Reply #13 on:** April 19, 2004, 11:50:28 pm »

I've also contacted Andy about my inital problem. On my part, I'm not using embedded covert art. I have a single "cover.jpg" in every album folders. It works great on one of my systems, but not on the second one.

Later.
lpr

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #14 on:** April 20, 2004, 12:27:34 am »

I also have the cover art in each album folder, but mine are called "Folder.jpg". If they're called Folder.jpg, then Windows Explorer shows the folders with the cover art in "Thumbnail" view, which I think is nice.

Magicland, I thought I saw something hereabouts which talked about files with the wrong extension being a problem. ie. you have a file which is a GIF file, but it has an extension of ".jpg"...maybe that's the prob...

lpr · « **Reply #15 on:** April 20, 2004, 07:58:15 am »

Hello,

I sure my covers are all .jpg, I made sure of that when I tried the demo of MusicLobby which only supports .jpg.

Later.
lpr

Bryan · « **Reply #16 on:** April 20, 2004, 09:57:59 am »

In addition to having my cover art embedded in the file, I also have two files in each folder, one named cover.jpg, and the other named artist - album.jpg to match the songs titles. MC can use the latter to "quickfind" cover art, and I have some other software that uses the cover.jpg file. Windows Explorer also works with cover.jpg just like it does with folder.jpg.

For some reason, related to the media server/client relationship, G-Force isn't finding the cover images to display.

Bryan

Magicland · « **Reply #17 on:** April 20, 2004, 03:05:02 pm »

Quote from: LunchmeatVoom on April 20, 2004, 12:27:34 am

I also have the cover art in each album folder, but mine are called "Folder.jpg". If they're called Folder.jpg, then Windows Explorer shows the folders with the cover art in "Thumbnail" view, which I think is nice.

Magicland, I thought I saw something hereabouts which talked about files with the wrong extension being a problem. ie. you have a file which is a GIF file, but it has an extension of ".jpg"...maybe that's the prob...

Shouldn't be an extension problem, as I don't have any graphics files, the images are embedded in the .mp3 files. I'm not sure if an MP3 file can store graphics data in different formats (I'll check on this), but pasting the images (from both working and non-working files) into photoshop shows them all to be 24 bit rgb, rather than 8 bit indexed such as in a GIF. I've sent off a non-working mp3 file to Andy, maybe he can figure out what's going on. MC's visualizations have no problem displaying the images.

lpr · « **Reply #18 on:** April 20, 2004, 10:54:37 pm »

Someone suggested on the G-Force forum to install Quicktime, well guess what? Quicktime was not installed on my problematic machine.

Now it works. I no longer have distorted cover art!

Hope this helps.
lpr

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #19 on:** April 21, 2004, 12:10:42 am »

I also posted a message on the G-Force forums...

Magicland · « **Reply #20 on:** April 21, 2004, 04:19:36 pm »

Quote from: lpr on April 20, 2004, 10:54:37 pm

Someone suggested on the G-Force forum to install Quicktime, well guess what? Quicktime was not installed on my problematic machine.

Now it works. I no longer have distorted cover art!

Hope this helps.
lpr

Glad you found a solution. I hope there's one for those of us with no desire to have quicktime on their computer. I've no use for quicktime, I don't like quicktime, and no desire for quicktime and its blatant hijacking of graphics formats without asking.

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #21 on:** April 21, 2004, 04:34:37 pm »

Here here, MagicLand...

Indeed, Quicktime is a smelly piece of software IMO...

Bryan · « **Reply #22 on:** April 21, 2004, 04:39:06 pm »

Quote from: Magicland on April 21, 2004, 04:19:36 pm

Glad you found a solution. I hope there's one for those of us with no desire to have quicktime on their computer. I've no use for quicktime, I don't like quicktime, and no desire for quicktime and its blatant hijacking of graphics formats without asking.

Amen! I equate Quicktime to Real Audio.. enuf said..

I think we're talking two different problems though.. Glad LPR got his distorted cover art fixed but there's still the problem of it not working on a client to Media Server...

Magicland · « **Reply #23 on:** April 21, 2004, 06:47:21 pm »

Did a bit of rooting around, and came across a "quicktime alternative" http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/finalbuilds.htm. I'm not sure if it's a hacked version of the quicktime codecs, or the quicktime codecs packaged without the quicktime player, or what, but it scanned clean with Norton AV 2004, and didn't set off any of my spyware alarms, and now my cover art is appearing on both the machine the files are located on, and the one accessing that one via the network. Of course, I'm not using MC's server/client, so any problems there I can't vouch for whether or not it fixes them.

Tiberius · « **Reply #24 on:** April 21, 2004, 07:49:52 pm »

Installing Quicktime fixed the distorted cover art here too.

Magicland · « **Reply #25 on:** April 21, 2004, 09:58:02 pm »

Okay, while some form of quicktime seems to solve the problem for some, Andy's come out with a fix in an updated version of G-Force (to be released shortly). Here's the message he sent me:

Quote

Good news.. Thanks for sending this file—it made me find the problem...

Please do me a big favor, since I’m so strapped for time these days.... Please go on to the JRiver forums where users are reporting this problem and share that you’ve worked with me and that I’ve found the problem. I’ll issue a new version (2.6.2) in a couple days that fixes all the cover art problems... (you can just post a copy of this message—that will do it). Tell everyone thanks for being patient with this problem...

Thanks,
Andy

Please note, I'm not sure if this will solve the server/client problem as well, but I suppose we'll see in a few days.

lpr · « **Reply #26 on:** April 21, 2004, 11:25:10 pm »

I got a similar email saying that it will be fixed on 2.6.2

Thanks Andy.

Magicland · « **Reply #27 on:** April 22, 2004, 01:22:08 am »

It shouldn't be long before the new version is released, as it just includes an updated .dll file which is already done (and working, as I can confirm). I'd imagine that as soon as he gets a chance to package up the new version and get it posted (he did mention that he's rather busy at the moment), it should be available. After doing the "quicktime" thing, I was experiencing a "hitch" in the G-force visualizations between songs. At the end of one song, the visualization would lock up, and then start again once the next song started playing. With the new .dll, that doesn't happen, it just transitions smoothly through (displaying the album cover and info, of course). I tell you, I wish all software manufacturers were as responsive as Andy (and JRiver, of course).

I just noticed on the G-Force site that he's also trying to get the documentation updated for the 2.6.2 release, so it might not be "immediate", but it shouldn't be long...

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Author Topic: G-Force Gold w/MC10 & Cover Art Problems. (Read 4243 times)