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[JimH]

We're looking for ideas on how we could enrich the current storage and display of cover art.

Think of a CD leaflet.  Multiple images, text, video, and so on.

[Daydream]

One idea would be the Track Info page. I've always thought that was a missed opportunity to show more art. Besides whatever else is being displayed, have the one main, big image displayed (default to the main cover) and the rest of the booklet/images as thumbs, under it. Click on a thumb, it replaces the main big image. Maybe have the images cycle on their own as an added trick. Maybe have some user's choices how/what appears where by default (static cover, animated cover, etc).

Other random thoughts:
- sizing: while the 'cover' image from whatever source is almost always square, nothing else is. The booklets either scanned or digital are never made of square pages. Some adaptive sizing should exist.
- page display: some booklets have art that is spread on 2 pages and intended to be seen as such. Plus anybody who scanned their own booklets probably have done it 2 pages at a time. To think about.
- purposely categorize the art? To know for sure at any given time what is a main cover, what is a booklet page, what is back cover, animated cover, etc? Hardcode the names of media recognized maybe (just throwing darts at the board). If categorized we'd know the order, what effect to apply to what file (say, if every deciding to spin the cdart image while playing), etc.
- I'm throwing my hands in the air if anybody comes and says 'I have all the art for an album in a PDF file'. They exist. Again, to think about.

This is a great topic to explore. Love the ideas you guys come up with while on vacation .

[DangerJP]

Maybe not strictly "cover" related, but improved flexibility on cover art/artwork for categories in MC would be awesome

I refer to a setting that would allow user to chose a specific folder location for artwork assigned to categories.
Example: When a category is defined by an expression, like if(IsEmpty([Artist Sort Name]), [Artist], [Artist Sort Name]), user can specify to look in the folder \Cover Art\Artists to retrieve the artwork for the expression result.

This could work for any categories defined by an expression or a field and be expanded to Genres, Publishers, Countries, etc. (right now the only possibilities are Artist, Album or Composer).
This would help navigation for views based on categories, especially when exported  to JRemote

thx!

[mattlovell]

This would help navigation for views based on categories, especially when exported  to JRemote

On that topic, it would be great if JRemote could forward or share PDF files to other readers on the device (if any are installed).  For booklets, being limited to the small viewing window within JRemote is, well, limiting.  Opening the PDF in an application that permits for full-screen viewing, particularly on an iPad or tablet, would be a nice feature.

Enriching the set of "resources" to which JRemote can provide access (extending to text and rich text files, say) would also be nice, matching whatever one can do on the desktop.  Passing off viewing of such resources to other installed apps might make this more palatable (so that JRemote doesn't need support itself).

  Matt (no, not that one)


 

[dtc]

ID3 tags allow for a front and back cover. That would be an obvious starting point.

A long standing wish list item has been able to add cover art for boxed sets, including separate art for the whole set and for each individual disk.  That would probably need other work to be done for defining boxed sets, but that may be part of enhancing cover art display.

I would recommend not including full booklet content, pdfs, pictures etc. as part of cover art. Although it is very desirable, it seems like that is a separate display element.

[cncb]

We could use the existing "extras" functionality.  Just add some indicator and easy access from the Playing Now display?

[margolbe]

This would be great.  I have been asking for a long time if the now playing screen could incorporate front and back cover art.  Hopefully this new approach could accommodate this.

[newsposter]

Support animated gifs or small multipage PDFs (choose the most efficient format) where each 'image' or frame is one page in a cover art booklet.  Allow for speed of 'play' including pauses, scaling of image, etc.

[Bigguy49]

Using JRMC33.

Can gifs or other animation formats be used as cover art?  It would be kind of neat to animated art IF the cursor is put on the album image OR album is selected for play.

Thanks!

[Awesome Donkey]

I would imagine having multiple GIFs playing at the same time would increase resource usage of MC by a little bit. If it's considered hopefully the default would be to only animate when you mouse over the image instead of having it animate all the time.

Also I'd say using APNG would probably be better than GIF, which generally looks horrible and compressed.

[Bigguy49]

I would imagine having multiple GIFs playing at the same time would increase resource usage of MC by a little bit. If it's considered hopefully the default would be to only animate when you mouse over the image instead of having it animate all the time.

Also I'd say using APNG would probably be better than GIF, which generally looks horrible and compressed.

Just learned about APNGs vs GIFs and it does appear to be a good choice assuming compatibility with MC and ISPs.  Limiting to one at a time makes sense for resource conservation.

[JimH]

We should support as many formats as possible.

[lepa]

image tags already works inside text strings but the formatting is nonexistent. I'm talking about showing band images, album images and such e.g. in the biography text. Also theater view and images don't play well when expanding row (they shrink).

I have done some construction inside theaterview using isplaying() filter where I can embed some images (see screenshot roll of my theater view setup).

I think that one of biggest culprit for displaying more art is the lack of grouped views like artist view, album view, series view where you can see things which concern that group. e.g in artist view you could see bios, band images, member images, album images etc.
I have also in past experimented with dummy series and season description items but that requires little too much manual work and navigation will always be cumbersome as it is not how MC is designed to be used 

[margolbe]

I'm curious as to what peoples' thought are regarding the look of the screen with the ability to add additional cover art.  Will there be two panes, where you could choose which image appears in each pane?  Will there be quadrants, where you could place an image in each quadrant (though this may look rather busy).  Will you be able to click on the image and then be given a choice as to which image to display?  I am no design genius but am interested in thoughts about this.

[JimH]

We could just use our current image display capabilities.  That would you let you set the size and start slideshows, etc.

[DangerJP]

image tags already works inside text strings but the formatting is nonexistent. I'm talking about showing band images, album images and such e.g. in the biography text. Also theater view and images don't play well when expanding row (they shrink).

I have done some construction inside theaterview using isplaying() filter where I can embed some images (see screenshot roll of my theater view setup).

I think that one of biggest culprit for displaying more art is the lack of grouped views like artist view, album view, series view where you can see things which concern that group. e.g in artist view you could see bios, band images, member images, album images etc.
I have also in past experimented with dummy series and season description items but that requires little too much manual work and navigation will always be cumbersome as it is not how MC is designed to be used 

+1
This could open the door to so much more regarding images within MC!
IMHO, this could be the next great development for audio and its associated metadata, but I assume the amount of work required would be huge...

[zybex]

This post addresses the storage/handling of the metadata files, not how they should be presented on screen.

Given that:
- an audio/video file can have a set of extras (covers, leaflet, PDFs, trailers, GIFs...)
- an album can have a different set of extras
- an episode season can also have a different set of extras; the TV Show itself too (though that can be Season -1)
- a file can have multiple extras of the same type (multiple covers, trailers, etc)

I don't think it's reasonable to store all this inside each file's tag block; Video files won't even support that as it's not a good idea to modify a multi-GB file just to change some tag. This leaves 3 options:
1. extras stored as separate files next to each Media/Parent file (can get messy)
2. extras stores as separate files in some pre-defined folder (as is currently done for Season covers, but would need to be more organized)
3. extras as regular files imported to the DB and then manually/automatically associated with their parent file. A separate DB can also be considered (like the "removed" DB)

Option 3 seems to me the most flexible. The physical files could be anywhere on disk (default: next to their parent?). A user could have a separate folder for these and auto-import them as usual, tagging them as "extras". Covers and other data already in the file's tag would be extracted and imported as Extras too.

This requires some new fields:
[isExtra] - tag a file as Extra, to be used on Smartlists and Views to exclude them (an option can also be added to exclude them by default)
[Extra Type] - Cover|Banner|Leaflet|Trailer|Other|... [isExtra] field could be just =not(isEmpty([Extra Type]))
[Extra IDs] - stores a list of Keys/IDs to link to the extra(s) for any given file. The order of the IDs determines the presentation order
[Album Extras] - similar to [Extra IDs] but relational (per Album) - should also work for multi-track Audiobooks?
[Series Extras] - similar to [Extra IDs] but relational (per Series)

Some though is needed on how to handle the current covers (should they be imported to the new system?) and what to do when extras are added (should an imported 'cover' be written to the audio file tag?)

[margolbe]

mp3 tag allows you to potentially store many different cover types in the tag itself (please see attachment).

[zybex]

But not video files.
For Audio, MC could have an option to write all covers to the file. On Import, they would all be imported as Extras automatically.
Each Extra file could also be marked as "write to media tag".

[margolbe]

We could just use our current image display capabilities.  That would you let you set the size and start slideshows, etc.

Jim

Given that the current image display capabilities appear to allow only one image at a time, how would this work if you wanted to display multiple images.

[dtc]

Some though is needed on how to handle the current covers (should they be imported to the new system?) and what to do when extras are added (should an imported 'cover' be written to the audio file tag?)

As I said before, I would suggest keeping "actual" cover art (front, back, box covers, etc.) separate from all these other elements. They only need a few tags and a simple display system and the tagging system is already in place for them in ID3.

Once you get into all the other elements it can become a lot more complicated, especially the grouping and display.  I would not want actual cover art caught up in all of that. Actual cover art could be a part of the new group, but it should also stand on its own.

Managing and displaying all these other elements would be nice. I just do not want it to unduly complicate the basic cover art functions.

[JimH]

Given that the current image display capabilities appear to allow only one image at a time, how would this work if you wanted to display multiple images.

Right click a set of images and choose Preview.  There are probably other ways.

[margolbe]

Right click a set of images and choose Preview.  There are probably other ways.

Hi Jim,

I notice this is version 33.0.57, which is obviously a future version.  Will this or a beta be released soon?

[JimH]

That feature has been there for many years.

Beta builds move the main board regularly.

[margolbe]

That feature has been there for many years.

Beta builds move the main board regularly.

I've never seen this feature.  How do you access it?

[JimH]

Select images, right click, preview