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[Mike Rubin]

I can't be the only one having this problem, but my search failed to show that this topic's been addressed.  Most of the time, I can get cover art to embed in each track of an album by selecting the album itself or all of the tracks and then clicking on "get art from Internet."  I just realized, however, that so doing often results in just the first two tracks of the album getting the art.  I then have to go track by track and download the art one track at a time for the remaining tracks.  Obviously, in a library with thousands of albums, that's pretty tedious.  Am I doing something incorrectly?  If not, is there a workaround?

[JimH]

That shouldn't be happening.

If you open up the tag window and click on the cover, you can right click to copy and then right click to paste to another track or to the entire album.

MC should also eventually fill in the tracks.

Make sure you have the most current build installed.

[Mike Rubin]

That is exactly how I have been doing it all along when the search doesn't find the album art.  When the Internet does find the art, it usually pastes to all tracks in the album.  I am using the current build that was posted a day or two ago.

If this is a matter of allowing "enough time" for Media Center to do its job, I think this may be related to the clear inadequacy of my hardware for the management of a 2tb collection of files from mp3 to iso.  Searches take a very, very long time.  I routinely get the "not responding" dialogue and have thought that things were not happening at all, when it simply was taking hours to do them.  Lots of spontaneous shutdowns, sometimes requiring restores, uninstallations and re-installations due to library corruption.  Trying to run auto-import after a crash resulted in nothing happening, even though I let the auto-import run overnight. Blah, blah, blah.  My computer is seven years old; it might just be time for me to invest in more computing harware.

[Arindelle]

the easiest and fastest way is just to make sure you have selected all the tracks on the album before you "paste" it in. If you do this in a pane view you will never miss any tracks. Why wait for auto updated tagging when you can do it immediately using the shift key -- just my two cents of course. Before you go hunting for artwork select all tracks first then you won't forget ...

[Mike Rubin]

Arindelle, that is precisely what i have been doing to complete the artwork for these partially-completed albums.  However, I'd been under the impression that "get art from the Internet" or "paste art from clipboard" would fill in for the entire album when you have the album highlighted in "recent albums."  When I have imported something and it has not auto-populated the art, I highlight the album and run "get art from the internet." If it works, I save.  If not, I find the image on my own and paste to the album.  I was not aware that I'd only fill in the first track or two rather than all of them. 

[BernhardS]

Here is an older post: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=85002.msg581106#msg581106

I posted the same issue.

[Arindelle]

In my opinion this is by design and is not really a bug or issue for that matter as each record in jriver's "database" is based on individual files. This permits you to post different artwork by track for a mixtape for example.

Also to default to a single file is a good thing. When you want to tag anything you have to make a conscious effort to tag multiple files -- imagine pasting a new album cover to 100 other albums by mistake ....

If you want to do this in one step (although ctrl+a>right click>get art is not a real handicap imo), you should use a category/album type view (without the files showing) and if you select an album it will auto highlight all tracks (or should^^). You can do as Jim suggests of course, but this is really two separate steps.

As for recent albums view - that depends how it was configured -- I can't check this as I have no out-of-the-box views left
(note: there is an issue with some copy/pasting of metadata to list fields (and expression fields with "&Datatype=list" in that you have to have one item entered before pasting -

Its not an "inadequacy of hardware" (although slow networks and computers/NAS will take more time). There is a significant delay done on purpose -- otherwise JRiver would be saturating your network with requests + lots of I/O traffic (look at Devices=>Media Network and you will see whats going on^^). To do 2 terabytes on a slow network adding in this delay takes "the time it takes". Manual autoimport forces the process and takes priority.


O.T.:  As a little aside, I personally think automatic tagging, either from JRiver automatically or even the top external ripping programs, gives usually far from satisfactory results other than the track names (except for maybe the most "popular" media files). Almost all databases from which people pull metadata including images are populated by people like you and me; directly through submissions or indirectly through "scraping" -- so Garbage In/Garbage Out. If there is no artwork, or it is low resolution - find it and submit it. You will be helping others

BTW, it's not just YabbDb, its FreeDB, MusicBrainz, Discogs and even Allmusic and GD3. That doesn't mean it is not a time saver for track titles. Personally I rip my media to a temporary directory, click manually on autoimport, check  the tags and retag if and when necessary.  But thats just me of course

[MrC]

... Lots of spontaneous shutdowns, sometimes requiring restores, uninstallations and re-installations due to library corruption.  Trying to run auto-import after a crash resulted in nothing happening, even though I let the auto-import run overnight. Blah, blah, blah.  My computer is seven years old; it might just be time for me to invest in more computing harware.

You have to get this fixed first...

[Mike Rubin]

You have to get this fixed first...

Will do.  Am shopping for a replacement now.

In response to Arindelle, though, I have to say that I find it an odd design choice to default to tagging only the first entry of an album so that the user can put other pictures on other tracks. I imagine that not five percent of users would want to have anything other than the actual album cover for any track.  Further, when you highlight the album and tag it for other metadata, all tracks in the album change, which is the logical behavior.  (For example, it would rarely make sense to change the first track's tags from "Keith Jarrett Quartet" to "Keith Jarrett," as would be my preference, and then have to change the rest of the tracks manually, whether you could do that with shift-highlight-then-click or not.)

As it stands now, I have over four thousand tracks to tag manually as only the first few on the album auto-populated.  Ugh.  

[Arindelle]

In response to Arindelle, though, I have to say that I find it an odd design choice to default to tagging only the first entry of an album so that the user can put other pictures on other tracks. I imagine that not five percent of users would want to have anything other than the actual album cover for any track.

I think I was not clear. Every piece of software including Windows itself that does tagging does it on a file by file basis, not on a folder basis. I agree with you that most people use the same album cover for all tracks (I have maybe 50 albums out of over 8000 that use multiple artwork. album art associated to the file as meta data is exactly the same as any other field. This is not a design choice. What is a design choice (I believe ... read IMO), is to not automatically select multiple tracks when in an expanded views (which include tracks) for tagging. There are lots of times (for example soloists on different tracks on a jazz album) when this is optimal and protects you from selecting more tracks than you actually want to retag/Tag. This is what I was referring to.

Further, when you highlight the album and tag it for other metadata, all tracks in the album change, which is the logical behavior.  (For example, it would rarely make sense to change the first track's tags from "Keith Jarrett Quartet" to "Keith Jarrett," as would be my preference, and then have to change the rest of the tracks manually, whether you could do that with shift-highlight-then-click or not.)

This works for art work too. If I select in a view which shows just album covers it will select for tagging all tracks on that album, including the image file (see screen). I believe what is happening for some, is that they have had a pane or expanded view up and have inadvertantly selected only a file. I happen to use pane view for tagging so by habit I just select all tracks. If it was just image files, selecting the album jacket in a "category" type view would be more efficient.

As it stands now, I have over four thousand tracks to tag manually as only the first few on the album auto-populated.  Ugh.  

Don't flip out, all is not lost ... euh, not necessarily. 

Most people would have there directory path set up to something to include  "\Artist\Album\" in the path (or maybe \Composer\Album" but it works the same way. A lot of people would keep the image file in that same directory (as folder.jpg or cover.jpg in each album directory) -- not everyone though and JRiver gives you a choice, but I think its is the default of most. Anyways that's how my system is setup. You can check yours in Options Cover Art Audio Mode. [Note there is also an option to save embedded artwork to this directory automatically just in case

So if you select multiple albums then right click =>Cover Art=>Quick Find In File/Cover Art Directory this will start a batch tag write to the files over multiple albums.

What I would suggest is
- first backup your library.
- Then multiply select a few albums and do the above quick find.

- If this works for you. You can set up a smartlist for all albums (or tracks) without artwork and it should be automatic if you select the entire resulting list (CTRL+A). Right click on quick find. For this smartlist you would create 2 rules: "Media Type is Audio" and  "Image File is Missing". This will be automatic and won't take too much time depending on your processor and maybe your network if on a NAS. I am not sure if this would work for sidecar files, but will work with jpg's.

Hope this helps some  If you have trouble post here again and I'll post a screen shot or two

[Mike Rubin]

Thanks, Arindelle, for such a comprehensive follow-up.  I appreciate it. 

I remain a bit confused about the expected behavior of JRiver.  As I have said, I thought that, if I defaulted to getting art from the Internet for albums or, when clicking on an album's icon, either sought art from the Internet or pasted from the clipboard, all tracks would be tagged with the same art.  Certainly, that's happened often enough in the past, as only 4000 or so of nearly 100,000 tracks managed to populate the art properly.  I'll just have to watch this behavior more closely and make sure that all tracks have gotten the artwork before i move on to doing whatever I otherwise would do next.

As for the 4000 that got no art, it's nearly moot now, as I spent last night adding art from the internet or manually.  I am down to about 500 tracks now, mostly onesies and twosies, many of which come up empty on an internet search so will need manual pasting later on.  I should be done with the project by tonight.

[Arindelle]

Sure no problem! glad to see are all sorted.

Even for 500 tracks (I thought you meant 4000 albums btw ) , its worth using that command if the jpg file is in place already. Would take an i5 PC a minute or two.

[Mike Rubin]

Nah, I don't keep folder.jpg's in the directories.  I prefer to embed in the files themselves, as I stream or copy to other devices that won't necessarily recognize an external file in a folder.  At this point, though, I am close enough to "complete" that I won't be too shook up if I don't get every file that needs artwork up to speed.  Thanks again for your suggestions.