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[MusicHawk]

Trying to use the changed cover art "Get from Internet" system (12.0.475)...

I use the "cover art missing" smartlist, manually select all the tracks, then select "Get from Internet". MC tries to locate cover art for 20 albums. Then it stops and prompts me to "Save cover art and continue".

My "cover art missing" smartlist has 29,442 tracks (not sure how many albums this represents). I'm running the new cover art lookup on this entire list, hoping the improved lookup mechanism and possible online updates will find some new covers.

Two problems:

+ Even when it doesn't find any cover art, it stops and waits for my response. When nothing was found, could it just continue to the next batch of albums? Is the idea that this periodic prompt provides a "nevermind, stop looking" point?

+ "Get from Internet" seems to process 20 albums at a time, then waits for my response. So far, after a hundred-plus lookups, it hasn't found any new covers. But even if it had, at 20 at a time, each batch taking a few minutes, how will I ever get through all 29,442 tracks?

The old system did the entire process in the background without prompts, whatever the outcome. I realize the new system is a nice way to handle multiple-found covers, and should be fine when ripping or importing a few new tracks a time.

But shouldn't there still be a large-batch no-prompt mode, perhaps invoked via a checkbox. Ideally, it would not stop until the entire list is processed, just as before. A nice enhancement would then list the albums that have multiple cover choices for user decision.

[Alex B]

Here is is one of my recent replies from the New Cover Art System thread. To my surprise it didn't provoke any discussion. Maybe it will be better noticed here.

12.0.473 (4/9/2008)

2. Changed: The "Get Cover Art" dialog works in batches of albums when doing large lookups

This fixed the memory usage problem, but it does not allow to do a completely unattempted initial cover art lookup.

I'd like to suggest the following. Display first a dialog window like this (before starting the internet connection):


[radio button]   Automatic lookup

Media Center will try to find cover art for all selected files automatically. No user interaction is needed.
This mode is good for initial lookups when several hundred or more cover art images are looked up.
[radio button]   Interactive lookup

Media Center will show thumbnail images and let you choose if more than one cover art image is available. This mode will allow to preserve and automatically submit existing cover art if it is found better than the available on-line images. This is a batch mode. Cover art is handled in batches of 20 images. After each saved batch Media Center will automatically query for the next batch if more than 20 albums are selected for the lookup.
[radio button]   Custom lookup for single cover art images

This is a manual mode. You can type any Artist and Album names and the tool will use these in the search instead of the library tags. A found and saved cover art file will still be saved using your library information, not the custom search string. When one of the displayed images is selected and saved your library information for this image is added to the on-line database. This option is for trying different tags without the need to actually retag your audio files.

Artist:  [  type the artist name here                                                                             ]
Album: [  type the album name here                                                                            ]
                                                                    [continue]      [cancel]


The automatic option would work like the old system. It would download the cover art images one by one without displaying any additional windows. It would use the "best image" mode.

The interactive lookup would be what we have now.

The custom lookup would display the results of the first query in a window like this:



If a query didn't find anything useful, the user would always be able to try different tags until one image is selected or the lookup is cancelled.

[JimH]

The load was too heavy for our server.  We will probably tune this up again in the future.  Larger batches, etc.

In your case, MusicHawk, the covers could have been more than one GB to download all at once.

[Alex B]

The load was too heavy for our server.

That's understandable. I suppose the redesigned system is quite popular. However, I meant that the unattended mode would create a new simple query and dowload task for each cover art file separately (or only for a few images at a time) and not generate any thumbnails. You could easily add short wait states between the individual queries if needed. I think this would actually lessen the server usage when compared to a situation in which the user always clicks the save button immediately after the next batch of thumbnails is displayed.

I wonder if Auto-Importer does some automatic load balancing when it downloads cover art. MusicHawk could do the following:

Create and export a playlist of the files that don't have cover art. Let Auto-Importer import only the playlist (no other files) to a new library and automatically add cover art. After running it overnight (or so) use the "Quick Find..." tool for adding the downloaded cover art to the regular library.

[MusicHawk]

Thanks for the comments and ideas.

It seems that the "heavy" problem could be handled by throttling the background, unattended lookups however you wish, as Alex B suggests.

The basic need is for "unattended", just as was available earlier, separate from modes to manually choose "best".

Maybe use the new system but provide a "no prompts" mode that saves the first image found, or an option to auto-continue after each batch after waiting 30 seconds for user action.