Concerns about the Music "Folder.jpg (recommended)" setting (1 Viewer)

drealit

Portal Pro
March 15, 2008
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=MusicDatabase.png


I just had a fairly bad discovery when I realized that the Folder.jpg (recommended) function in the Music Database setup doesn't describe exactly what that function does and how it can be destructive to people who meticulously maintain their music collections. It seems that when this setting is turned on, it writes a 200x200 folder.jpg to where your music is being stored... so for instance an album's folder will be given a folder.jpg holding the album cover. This is all good and dandy provided nothing already exists there, however, I and probably many other users meticulously catalog our collections. I hand pick album artwork that I write to my album folders and, thankfully, embed into the ID3 tags. When this setting is turned on, at least in my case, it seems that it overwrites any previously existing folder.jpg's that may have resided in that folder. So my nice 1400x1400 album artwork gets replaced with a 200x200 less than stellar thumbnail.

For the past few years of using MePo I've always assumed that this setting meant that thumbnail creation (in the ProgramData folder for instance) would be completed using any folder.jpg's found in the album's folder. Obviously this assumption is wrong and I'm sure many other users are misunderstanding it too. There needs to be a better description (at least an 'on mouse over' display box) that describes exactly what this function does... and furthermore it needs to be turned off by default. I was surprised to see that this setting was turned on by default.

I've had over 250+ albums get their folder.jpg's overwritten due to this setting and I am a little frustrated with it. As I said before, thankfully I've also embedded the artwork into the ID3 tags but still this should not have happened in the first place. There must be a better common ground to meet the user friendly needs. I understand why this feature exists, but there needs to be better protection against those who already have their collections setup the way they want them to be.
 

jameson_uk

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  • January 27, 2005
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    There is a mantis entry to sort out music thumbs.

    That said I don't think this option is what is doing the damage. I will dig into the code later.
     

    drealit

    Portal Pro
    March 15, 2008
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    The only other thing I can think of that could possibly be doing it is the fanart downloader but I doubt that's what is happening. I have a friend who has observed the same behavior.
     

    jameson_uk

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    The only other thing I can think of that could possibly be doing it is the fanart downloader but I doubt that's what is happening. I have a friend who has observed the same behavior.

    I think it is actually the dynamic content setting for album thumbs (not at a PC now but will tell you 100% tomorrow)
     

    jameson_uk

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    I have been going through this and I can not see anywhere in the code that will do this.

    I have often seen Windows Media Player do this when you open it but I just can't see where MP is doing this.

    It can (and probably will) create crap quality images but they will be inside the program data folder not the actual folder.jpg stored with your music.

    the dynamic content for "disable internet lookups for cover art" also can mess up the thumbs you see in MP but does not touch any source folders.

    Are you sure this is MP messing up your thumbs?
     

    drealit

    Portal Pro
    March 15, 2008
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    I can't say with 100% certainty but i'm fairly sure about it. I had recently added a few albums and saw the behavior exhibited above but had only played it back with my HTPC. It doesn't get used for anything else. I'm going to experiment a bit and see if I can figure out which option/combinatiom does it.
     

    jameson_uk

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    Just to be 100% sure. This is replacing folder.jpg in the same place as the actual music files?

    Were several other jpgs added at the same time? If you can figure out when this happened (modified date of folder.jpg) and provide logs for that period I might be able to track it down.
     

    drealit

    Portal Pro
    March 15, 2008
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    Unfortunately I had been in the middle of cleaning up my files yesterday (which is how I noticed this)... cleaning as in deleting junk. I asked my friend about his files but his are dated very oddly and seem to be of no use (they're labeled as 2009 for created, 2010 for modified). I'm sure he's formatted since then so it wouldn't be a valid example. Essentially whatever evidence I had was washed away during my furious cleaning session. So far, after I was playing with the settings yesterday I haven't been able to reproduce the behavior so my mind is baffled.

    The only other software that would have touched these mp3's was Winamp on my desktop but I haven't used that in a long while, and Subsonic which I use for streaming to my phone. I just did a quick test and played some newly added material on each platform and no strange thumbs were generated with any of the pieces of software. I'm completely at a loss here, now I have no idea what is causing it lol. My best bet was on MePo originally but since I can't seem to reproduce it anymore I have nothing.
     

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