cover not displayed in "Playing now" (1 Viewer)

[mackal]

MediaPortal Version: downloaded about Jan. 20th, 2007 (where do I check this?)
MediaPortal Skin: BlueTwo, Project Mayhem 3
Windows Version: XP SP2
CPU Type: Intel Duo Core 2

I use MP mostly for music playback. The problem I have is that in certain screens the cover art displays, but in others it does not. For example, when using "BlueTwo" skin:
- when selecting music to play (in "Shares"), each directory has the correct mini-thumb
- when I add to playlist such a folder, the album cover again is correctly shown in bottom left of the "Shares" screen
- but when I go to "Now Playing", all I get is a grey square with the crystal figurine with headphones on, not the cover art!

Similar issues when using Project Mayhem 3 skin:
- when selecting music, each directory has correct mini-thumb
- when I select Now Playing, I get either a default pic for no cover art, or the annoying "Keep Last.fm Stats Clean!" blurry pic
- when I go to "Home" of the skin, I get a nice, large size pic of the album art, but there is a black square beside the song name; when I hover over a menu option, the large pic is replaced by a pic related to the menu option, and the small black square then carries the album art

BTW, I have disabled/checked all the options to do with online lookups in "Now Playing", but this doesn't seem to make much difference.

But even the places where the cover art works, after time, it stops working, and I get blank cover art. Is this some caching issue? Is this a known problem? It's too bad, I really like what I see in MP, but this is a terribly annoying problem, ruins the whole presentation.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

By the sounds of it are you using 0.2.2.0 on its own or with a svn (update beta) added.

If using a svn use either of the Blue two skins not PM3 as not upto date.

A lot of work has been done on the music side of MP since 0.2.2.0 stable was released, that includes changes in Thumbnails being displayed incorrectly.

Try a svn from today, link on homepage and follow instructions.

 

[rtv]

also add a log file.

Sounds like bad tagging in some cases. What are your Music Database settings?

 

[mackal]

also add a log file.

Sounds like bad tagging in some cases. What are your Music Database settings?

I am using 2.2.0 stable.

Here is a more narrowed down description of the problem: for some/most albums, the album cover image is not displayed in "Now Playing", but is displayed everywhere else; for a few albums I *DO* get an album picture even in "Now Playing".

I attach a log; to create it I fired up MP in BlueTwo skin, started playing an album 1, went to Now Playing (album 1 happens to have proper album shown here), went back, started playing album 2, went to Now Playing (album 2 does NOT show the album cover in Now Playing).

NOTE: after reading the end of the "Project Mayhem III" thread I resolved some of the issues I had by switching to BASS audio engine (as suggested by another user). But this Now Playing issue remains for me.

Music Database settings: the following are the only options checked:
- Scan albums for Various Artists
- Treat tracks in individual...
- Use folder.jpg to create thumbnails
All other options are unchecked.

Some other options worth mentioning maybe:
General > Thumbnails:
- quality setting set to the middle setting (128+512, default, default, default)
- Music and Picture thumbs are both unchecked, both caches have been flushed

 

[mackal]

After poking around some more, I think you're right, it is something to do with poorly tagged MP3s... I have turned on caching of thumbs and rebuilt the Music DB. Now only music files with incomplete tagging information (e.g., artist unknown) have no cover displayed in Now Playing.

I guess I don't quite understand how MP deals with cover art. I thought that like most other players, a folder.jpg in a directory specifies the cover art for all songs in that directory. To some degree this is what I've seen in most parts of MP, but not in Now Playing. I guess unlike the other cover art displays in MP, Now Playing only consults the thumbnail cache, keyed by artist and title...

Hmm, given that I have a lot of poorly tagged music directories, each with a hand picked folder.jpg, what would be the best settings for me to use for this? Can Now Playing be made to bypass cache and just read folder.jpg directly?

 

[rtv]

if there's a folder.jpg present all you need to do is scanning the DB and of course not "flushing" the cache.

 

[mackal]

if there's a folder.jpg present all you need to do is scanning the DB and of course not "flushing" the cache.

Except that this doesn't seem to work, at least for me, for folders with MP3s which do not have Artist tag filled in (possibly other tags too); I get a blank cover in Now Playing for those, even though there is a folder.jpg in the folder, and I have scanned that directory into the DB. For the record, for those songs MP lists artist as "unknown". I could fill in those tags manually, but for a lot of these I do not even know the original artist (e.g., game soundtracks that I extracted myself); "unknown" is really what I want the tag to say, but I am not sure how MP handles that, and whether it will think all songs by "unknown" are by the same artist...