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[Tim Harvey]

Greetings,

I'm new to Media Center and I did a little searching and reading of the help file, but cannot seem to find the answer to this.

Can Media Center handle album art for an album stored within the same directory of the ablum and called 'folder.jpg'?   This seems to be how most other media players work, but I cant get media center to see any of my album art in this fasion.

Also, it seems like perhaps the help file is out of date for MC 10?  I've read up on a few topics now where the examples dont at all match the menus/dialogs in the current software?

Thanks for any help,

Tim

[adamsp70]

Yes - MC does this very well. All my files are called cover.jpg - but it works the same way.

Once your files are imported into MC, select them all then right-click on one of them and choose:
Image -> Quick Find in File/Cover Art Directory.

It will find all your folder.jpg files and associate them automatically.

[Tim Harvey]

I noticed this feature after my post, but I'm not sure its exactly what I was looking for.  I was hoping that MC would simply just 'look' in the songs directory for an art file automatically.  The 'Find art' feature your talking about finds it, but then it wants to modify tags in the song file.  I have a rather large collection and I have spent a lot of time getting my tags correct.  I'm a little weary of a program that I'm not familiar with yet mass writing to my tags.  I would feel more comfortable if MC was simply updating its database and not touching the tags in the files as there is no garuntee that the tag its creating (ID3v2 I suppose) is in any way standard... its a custom field.

I also noticed that MC's tag reading/writing is extremely slow compared to other programs (ie, Tag&Rename which is what I use for tag editing).

How many places is MC going to try to read/write to tags outside of its original import to database scan?  So far I see it doing so for the album art, and the song ranking.

Thanks,

Tim

[Alex B]

At first, welcome to the forum Tim!

Once your files are imported into MC, select them all then right-click on one of them and choose:
Image -> Quick Find in File/Cover Art Directory.

It will find all your folder.jpg files and associate them automatically.

In my experience, that tool can find images from the cover art folder if they are named in "Artist - Album" style. From file directory it can associate an image if there is only one image file. It doesn't care about the filename. If there are more image files the correct image must be linked manually.

The 'Find art' feature your talking about finds it, but then it wants to modify tags in the song file.  I have a rather large collection and I have spent a lot of time getting my tags correct.  I'm a little weary of a program that I'm not familiar with yet mass writing to my tags.  I would feel more comfortable if MC was simply updating its database and not touching the tags in the files as there is no garuntee that the tag its creating (ID3v2 I suppose) is in any way standard... its a custom field.

It's possible to turn tag writing off totally and keep all information only in the MC library. It's also possible to turn tag writing on/off for most individual library fields including the "Image" tag.

I also noticed that MC's tag reading/writing is extremely slow compared to other programs (ie, Tag&Rename which is what I use for tag editing).

That depends on many factors: hardware, the size of the database, file formats, etc. For example, if you have MP3 files without ID3 v.2.x tags MC creates them by default (it is possible to disable this option too) and that takes some time on the first run. After the files are imported to the library and the first tag changes are written it should be faster.

How many places is MC going to try to read/write to tags outside of its original import to database scan?  So far I see it doing so for the album art, and the song ranking.

As far as I know it only looks for cover art from Internet if that option is selected.

Alex

P.S.
I usually have several cover art images for one album. Front, back, booklet, etc. I have explained my system in this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=22841.0

P.S.2.
Forum member KingSparta has made plug-ins for cover art handling. Check the Third Party Plug-ins, Programs, and Skins forum.

[Tim Harvey]

At first, welcome to the forum Tim!

Thanks, this is a realy cool product and I'm looking forward to making the most out of it!

It's possible to turn tag writing off totally and keep all information only in the MC library. It's also possible to turn tag writing on/off for most individual library fields including the "Image" tag.

I found in Tools/Options/General where to disable tag writing completely, but how would I disable it for certain feilds?  I didn't find anything in the help regarding this.

Great info... thank you!

Tim

[Alex B]

I found in Tools/Options/General where to disable tag writing completely, but how would I disable it for certain feilds? I didn't find anything in the help regarding this.

I don't have MC10 installed just now, but in MC11 it's here:

Tools > Options > Library > Library Fields: (select a field) > Edit.

[Tim Harvey]

I don't have MC10 installed just now, but in MC11 it's here:

Tools > Options > Library > Library Fields: (select a field) > Edit.

Ok, forgive me for asking a possibly stupid question, but isn't the latest release of MC 10.0?  At least that's the one on their download site that I just bought.

 ?

Tim

[modelmaker]

You're absolutely right, Tim, version10 is the latest release, but many people here are adventurous and like to jump in and play with the beta versions.

Their feedback helps make the next version (in this case v11) of Media Center better. Those using the beta version tend to forget that it is beta, because it is quite stable, but there will still be quite a bit of tweaking before the final version of 11 is released later this year some time, (they're still working on the beer dispensing thing).

A discount has always been offered to those who want to upgrade to the next version, (or the beta).

This is the best forum around, there's a lot knowledge and experience here and folks are usually pretty quick to chime in. (and it's  a lot better than getting one of those auto-generated emails from some cold support department).

I'm one of those doesn't get upgrade fever very often, I'm still running version9, and I don't play around with the "fields" so you'l have to wait for someone else to help you with the question.

And as Alex said, welcome to MC and enjoy!