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[JustinChase]

This might be hard to explain, but, here goes...

When I highlight the album name in the artist / album View scheme, and point to cover art in the Action Window, I can see the cover art for 90% of the albums that have it (some are still missing).  However, there are about 20 or 30 albums that say inside file(s) where teh cover art should be displayed.  If I highlight the individual tracks, then I can see the cover art fine, on every track.  But If I just highlight the album name, no picture.  Again, only on a few albums.  I know the cover art is there, and I beleive it is all stored in the same place (c:\program Files\J River\Media Center\Data\Cover Art).  If I just browse to that folder in Explorer, I can see all the covers fine.

I guess it doesn't really matter, but it is quite wierd.  Anyone wanna take a stab at this one?

thanks

[KingSparta]

But If I just highlight the album name

what are you talking about

you must highlight the track

[JustinChase]

Actually not.

If you just select the Audio button, MC takes you to the default view scheme, which has 3 windows across the top, Genre, Artist, Album.  If you highlight one of the albums in the third window, labeled Album, the lower window will display all of the tracks in that album.  None of the tracks will be selected, however.  If you navigate the action window to File Properties, Image, it will display the artwork.  In my case only about 90% of the time.  For some albums, nothing shows up except the words 'inside file(s)'.  If you then highlight a track, the image shows up.

I have been digging around into this a little more, and it seems that the albums that do display have the image in the folder c:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\Data\Cover Art.  More research is needed to confirm this though.  All of these files are properly labeled to match the format of my music filenames i.e. ...\music\Artist - Album.  I, however, did not put the images here.  I think they were put here by MC when looking up the cover art, or by King Sparta's Cover Art finder.

Some of the covers I had to look up elsewhere, and are stored in a different directory.  How can I get MC to automatically move them into the directory above, and rename them with the same format as the rest?

I could just do it myself, manually, but I still have a couple hundred albums to rip, and I don't want to have any more work than necessary?

King Sparta, if I include anything that does have artwork and run your plug in, will the art upload to your server, then run it again, and it will put it back in the right place for me?

[KingSparta]

Images From My Plug-In Do Not Come From My Server.

That Will Come in The Future I Think.

If you have a Link to an image in the dbase and it does not show up in Media Center.

Load The Image Into A Text Editor The First Few Chrs Will Tell you If It Is A Gif Picture Or Not. If It Is And Has An Extender Of .jpg then thats why.

Media Center does not check to see if the correct extender is on the image.

once you correct the extender (if it is wrong) then re-attach the new file name to the file again it should show up.

[JustinChase]

The pictures in question are actually .tif images (thanks for the tip on how to verify, I did not know that  )

I have done some more verification, and some of the images that don't show up in album view are in the c:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\Data\Cover Art directory, which is where most of the images are, including the ones that do show up in Album view.

It seems like just re-pointing the album art to the actual file in the directory above works.  However, i'm home again and the actual files ore on my work server.  I just upgraded the server and must have jacked up the remote VPN settings, because i can't connect right now.  Even with this, it seems to let me reconnect the tag with the pic and it is now showing up correctly.

I actually did find one file that's actually a .gif, wierd  .  Any good software to charge it to a .jpg, or maybe i'll just find another pic?

Still trying to figure out how these few got messed up in the first place, and how to automate the reassociation process before ripping the rest of my music.

[lalittle]

If you highlight one of the albums in the third window, labeled Album, the lower window will display all of the tracks in that album.  None of the tracks will be selected, however.  If you navigate the action window to File Properties, Image, it will display the artwork.

This is NOT the way it works on my system.  The "Image" window of the AW continues to say "inside file(s)" until I actually select a SINGLE song.  Selecting multiple songs makes the "Image" window go back to saying "Inside file(s)."  In other words, the ONLY way to get it to display the image is to select a single song.

Larry  

[JustinChase]

Try this...

Highlight only the album, no songs, and right click where the image should be, and select 'Add from file...', it will bring up a navigation window, navigate to the directory where your cover art is stored, and select the right cover for that album.  It will then display the cover without having to select a file first.  At least that's how it worked for me.

Now, what differnece does any of this make?  I don't know.  But, it makes verifying that all of the songs on an album have the correct artwork much easier than having to go through every single file.  Just arrow down in the album window, and you can tell right away.

Again, about 10% of my files did not display this way, but most did.  Still confused.

[lalittle]

Do you use the "store cover art inside file when possible" option?  I'm using this option, but I'm thinking that you have this unchecked, which would explain the difference in beharvior.

Larry

[JustinChase]

I have it checked.  I don't know if it's working though.

Did you try what I described?  I'm curious if it worked for you too?

[lalittle]

I tried what you described above, but it didn't change anything.  The cover art still only shows up when selecting files.  When I FIRST assign the cover art to the "album" as you describe, it shows up in the window even though no songs are selected.  As soon as I highlight another selection and then reselect the album, however, it goes back to saying "inside file(s)."

Larry

[Deivit]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall having read someone (Matt?) explaining that this behaviour is by design.

When cover art is stored inside the file and multiple tracks are selected, the action window shows the message "inside files" instead of showing the cover art image. This is to avoid problems because, with art inside the file itself, MC does not have a way to know that the image is the same for all the selected files as it does when the image points to a file location.  

However, it works fine when you see your tracks in the pane, having the detail view set to "album thumbnails". This is probably because what MC does is grouping logically the files by album tittle and showing the cover art of the first file of the list. I'm not at home now and have never tried to put different images to some of the tracks of an album and see how it does behave when in album thumbnail view, but I guess it'll show the cover of the first on the list.

[lalittle]

That makes sense.  I guess the only way to do this would be for MC to look at the cover art for every file in any given list that was displayed, and only display the art if they all matched.  Since this would obviously slow down current systems too much, it makes sense to do it the way it currently does.

Larry