albumart not displayed

[dragonfly]

Doing a bit more testing, I've found out some interesting stuff. First, I need to point out that my directory structure is as follows:

HDD:\Archive\Mp3\Albums\A-Z\Artist - Album (Year)\Artist - Song.mp3

Now, when I'm browsing an album directory in MP, watching the list of files, I right-click one file and press "Find cover art". The search box opens up, gives the result and I press the appropriate cover art. Now, that cover art will show up for each of the files. HOWEVER: When I press the [..] button once and get to the list of albums, the newly downloaded cover art will not show up for the album. No matter what I do, I can never get MP to display the cover art if I've downloaded it from within it's album directory OR if I've downloaded it using the Audioscrobbler plugin.

Now, I *CAN* get the album art to display correctly, *IF* I right-click the ALBUM directory instead of the files within it. That is, if I'm browsing in "HDD:\Archive\Mp3\Albums\C\" for instance, and right click on an album and download its cover art, it won't display at first. But then, I left-click to enter that album and go back again. Now it shows up as it should! This is the only way I've found, except using an already existing folder.jpg which works *sometimes* but not always, to get the album art to display properly.

Note that this persists from Shares view to Artists view. If I've downloaded cover art by right-clicking a song within the album, the album art won't display in Artists view. If I've downloaded it by right-clicking an album in the top directory of albums ("HDD:\Archive\Mp3\Albums\A-Z\"), it will display properly.

Furthermore, I've noticed that if a folder already has a folder.jpg - even if it's loaded or not - or if it has album art, then the "Find cover art" option will do nothing at all.

I'll be happy to test this further, and believe me, if I was any good at programming I'd have downloaded the sources and tried to help out with this long ago.

EDIT: I'd also like to look deeper into why some folder.jpg's display correctly while others don't... I have no idea where to start though.

[rtv]

Originally Posted by dragonfly

it won't display at first. But then, I left-click to enter that album and go back again. Now it shows up as it should! This is the only way I've found, except using an already existing folder.jpg which works *sometimes* but not always, to get the album art to display properly.

That's the "On Demand" option at work It detects missing coverart -> looks whether the dir has a folder.jpg -> creates local thumbs from that.

However iirc the background detection of missing covers does only work in shares mode so far.


Just to clarify: are the covers downloaded by the last.fm grabber never visible for you or just not until you did a rescan?

[dragonfly]

Originally Posted by rtv

Just to clarify: are the covers downloaded by the last.fm grabber never visible for you or just not until you did a rescan?

They're never visible *in the album view*. Covers show up for individual songs, but not for albums. The only way to make cover art appear on albums is to download it from within MP by right-clicking on the album in the Shares view.

EDIT: By the way, I have now confirmed this issue on four separate computers, one of which is a fresh install of SP2. The problem is also present both in the latest SVN versions and in RC3.

[rtv]

Originally Posted by dragonfly

They're never visible *in the album view*. Covers show up for individual songs, but not for albums.

The code looks good - it searches in "thumbs\music\folder" and if that doesn't exist and On Demand Creation is active it will look for a folder.jpg ...

Could you please deactivate "Use folder thumbs" in config->music->database for a quick test?
Then MP should guess the correct album cover by the current selected item's Tag and try to look that up in "thumbs\music\albums"

[dragonfly]

Okay... I tried turning those settings off. I still have the same problem... Now, I tried something else. There are two files in the thumbs directory - one Artist-Album.jpg and one Artist-AlbumL.jpg. I attempted the following:

1. Find an album which only displays cover art for individual files. I chose Chicane - Behind the Sun.
2. Check that the files are present in thumbs dir. Both the small and large files were present, so all good.
3. Download cover art from within MP by right-clicking the album.

Now, the album cover art is displayed properly, as well as the individual songs. The album view uses Chicane-Behind the Sun.jpg while the songs view uses Chicane-Behind the SunL.jpg.

So, now I have an album showing two different images for songs and album respectively. I'm curious as to whether this might be related to the music database?

[rtv]

Originally Posted by dragonfly

Now, the album cover art is displayed properly, as well as the individual songs. The album view uses Chicane-Behind the Sun.jpg while the songs view uses Chicane-Behind the SunL.jpg.

So, now I have an album showing two different images for songs and album respectively. I'm curious as to whether this might be related to the music database?

Yes - depending on the view MP will try to use the high-quality thumb wherever possible.

No - this just means that the AMG lookup does not correctly generate both thumbs and cache them.

Originally Posted by dragonfly

2. Check that the files are present in thumbs dir.

It's very important that you check the thumbs\music\folder dir (use preview pics)

[dragonfly]

Originally Posted by rtv

Yes - depending on the view MP will try to use the high-quality thumb wherever possible.

Apparently, I forgot about the thumb in Thumbs\Music\Folder.
Now, I cleared the entire thumb cache and started Mediaportal. Then I went into Shares and checked - MP now automatically displays album art (from folder.jpg) for Chicane - Behind the Sun. I check the Thumbs\Music\Folder - there are thumbs called 3046124073.jpg and 3046124073L.jpg, corresponding to the album art. Then I click the album in MP to see the files - no art is shown for the files. I check \Thumbs\Music\Albums - no files there. I try to play one of the songs, I enter and exit the folder and restart MP a few times - nothing. I change from Shares to Album view and repeat the procedure - nothing.

Originally Posted by rtv

No - this just means that the AMG lookup does not correctly generate both thumbs and cache them.

But the same thing happens when I'm using the Audioscrobbler plugin, and when importing from a folder.jpg. It's not restricted to the internal art lookup app. From what I can tell, it seems that MP correctly caches one of the thumb sets, either the one in Folder\ or the one in Albums\ but never both, depending on what method I'm using to import them:

* Auto-importing from folder.jpg - creates jpgs in Thumbs\Music\Folder\ - displays only for albums and folders.

* Importing from within MP by right-clicking a *song* and choosing "Show album\artist info" ("Find cover art" doesn't work with songs, only with folders, for some reason) - creates a jpg ("small" version) in Thumbs\Music\Albums. Fiddling with views and layout does not produce a "large" version of the jpg.

* Importing from within MP by right-clicking an *album folder* and choosing "Find cover art" - creates jpgs in \Thumbs\Music\Folder *and* a "small" jpg in \Albums\ - displays for both album, folder and songs. (This seems to work sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't. Haven't been able to figure out when it works and when it doesn't yet.) However, downloading a new cover art the same way only replaces the one in \Folder\ and the new art only displays for albums or folders: Songs still have the old art.

* Importing from Audioscrobbler plugin - creates jpgs in \Albums\ (both sizes) - only displays for individual songs, never for albums/folders. Fiddling around with changing views, layout etc does nothing.

* Importing with "Find cover art" for an album which already has art showing for its songs but not for its album/folder - creates jpgs in \Folder\, does not replace the old jpgs already present in \Albums\.

I've replicated this behaviour on three different PC's, all with distinctly different hardware and running both the latest SVN snapshots and the original RC3. I've tried fiddling with Configuration settings for thumbs, turning stuff on and off and while it might change some things, this basic behaviour never changes.

Originally Posted by rtv

It's very important that you check the thumbs\music\folder dir (use preview pics)

Yep, thanks for pointing that out.

Note that I've deliberately used different cover art for folders and files (there are often several variants available to download) so that I could keep track if any were replaced or not. This is how I know which files have been replaced and which ones have not.

EDIT: Clarified some stuff.

[rtv]

Originally Posted by dragonfly

But the same thing happens when I'm using the Audioscrobbler plugin, and when importing from a folder.jpg. It's not restricted to the internal art lookup app. From what I can tell, it seems that MP correctly caches one of the thumb sets, either the one in Folder\ or the one in Albums\ but never both, depending on what method I'm using to import them:

The Folder cache is the one that counts and the one that will be autocreated. For the best experience you should also allow MP to build missing folder.jpg files in your shares from maybe existing album thumbs. This will be a process that happens in the background though and will therefore only being realized when you enter a folder the next time.

Originally Posted by dragonfly

* Auto-importing from folder.jpg - creates jpgs in Thumbs\Music\Folder\ - displays only for albums and folders.

Somewhere below you stated that this doesn't work usually!?

Originally Posted by dragonfly

* Importing from within MP by right-clicking a *song* and choosing "Show album\artist info" ("Find cover art" doesn't work with songs, only with folders, for some reason) - creates a jpg ("small" version) in Thumbs\Music\Albums. Fiddling with views and layout does not produce a "large" version of the jpg.

Reason for it to only work on folders: Imagine you've got a bunch of mixed songs in one single directory. The lookup would create a folder.jpg which would be displayed for ALL of them.

If added some fixes so the "Large" version will be produced as well with next SVN build

Originally Posted by dragonfly

* Importing from within MP by right-clicking an *album folder* and choosing "Find cover art" - creates jpgs in \Thumbs\Music\Folder *and* a "small" jpg in \Albums\ - displays for both album, folder and songs. (This seems to work sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't. Haven't been able to figure out when it works and when it doesn't yet.) However, downloading a new cover art the same way only replaces the one in \Folder\ and the new art only displays for albums or folders: Songs still have the old art.

Reason for old art: <covernameL> is used for displaying if available.
Reason for sometimes: not yet browsed that file 2 times to see the background created thumb.

Bot are fixed now as well - since you do an active selection for a specific cover it was safe to generate all needed thumbs AND cache them to the folder dir as well in one single attempt.

Originally Posted by dragonfly

* Importing from Audioscrobbler plugin - creates jpgs in \Albums\ (both sizes) - only displays for individual songs, never for albums/folders. Fiddling around with changing views, layout etc does nothing.

The audioscrobbler plugin does only use Artist-Album. It doesn't care about filenames, folders, etc. So if you did not have the matching folder.jpg in your shares you have to:
1. Allow MP to build those from these new album thumbs
2. Scan the collection again
3. Or browse these locations two times to: allow step 1, build thumb cache (On-Demand-Option active)

Originally Posted by dragonfly

* Importing with "Find cover art" for an album which already has art showing for its songs but not for its album/folder - creates jpgs in \Folder\, does not replace the old jpgs already present in \Albums\.

In fact it did - but only for the small thumbs as well therefore you won't have noticed the difference in MP.
This was basically the same as above and should be fixed as well.

[dragonfly]

Wow, thanks for your incredibly long answer, and for your patience with me. I'm sure you have better things to do than teach some noob the inner workings of Mediaportal, so I appreciate that.

I'm going to look more into it tomorrow and see what I can work out. I only need to comment on one thing before I hit the sack:

Originally Posted by rtv

Reason for it to only work on folders: Imagine you've got a bunch of mixed songs in one single directory. The lookup would create a folder.jpg which would be displayed for ALL of them.

This has been bugging me slightly: It's not possible to do art lookup for *albums* (in Album view, for instance), only for folders (in Shares view). Why is that? Wouldn't it be smarter to have the art associated with the album tag in the database instead of the folder that the files are in, seeing as how many people seem to not sort their music by album folders? That would make this whole issue a non-problem, since the art would then be associated with database entries and not with the actual files.

Illustration:

Some files are bunched together with others in an \Mp3\ directory. Now, there are files from different albums in this directory, so using a folder.jpg won't work, like you indicated in your post. What if we instead were to use Mediaportal's music database, where the album name of the file is fetched from the id3-tag (I'm guessing), and simply associate all files with that album name with a certain album art in the database? Then, of course, you could still have separate art for folders simply by reading folder.jpg and displaying it in Shares view. Also, you could import album art into Mediaportal from the Artists view, or Albums view, or whatever you want. Right now it's only possible to download cover art from within Mediaportal for *folders*, but if folders aren't always albums, then the idea of restricting downloading of album art to folders strikes me as odd.

Of course, this might be what has been intended, but it certainly doesn't seem to be working, for me at least.

If I've misunderstood the general idea somewhere, I'm sorry and I apologise. It's certainly not my intention to step on any programmer's toes here, I'm just trying to work out what the problem I'm having with this is, really.

Thanks for the fixes you talked about! It's great that you're so quick to respond to the user base. Again, I wish I was more skilled as a programmer so I could help out myself. As it stands, I can only do my best to help out by testing. I'll make sure to update my MP version tomorrow then.

For now, I'm off to bed. Cheers!

[Hardcell]

Hi,

I am having the exact same problem as Jean-Marc had only now with RC1 of MediaPortal. Is this a known issue? So the album art is correctly downloaded with the audioscrobbler plugin (in the thumbs\Music\Albums folder). Artist image is showing in the artist view, in the album view no image is showing but in the songs view the album image is showing correctly.

Anyone?