My Music - need your thoughts on how to improve and enhance (1 Viewer)

[SteveV]

Can you post a directory listing of one of the affected albums?

Thanks - Steve

 

[MJGraf]

First of all: This is a really great work! Keep it up!

I've only got some questions...

Coverart: If I place a correct Cover-File in the thumbs directory, everything works like a charm. If I only place a folder.jpg file in the respective directory, the cover is only displayed in combination with the single songs. If I have the albums in my view, no cover is displayed.

F3 and getting information from the internet:
OK, I had a look into the music database and figured out, that much more information is downloaded than only the cover. This is great, but I'm a little afraid because all my files are tagged absoultely correct (with musicbrainz tagger - a great software...) and I don't want MP to change anythin in my mp3-tags. Does this happen or is the information only stored in the musicdatabase?

Last question is about automatic download of coverart. The downloaded coverart only has a resolution of 128x128. I'd like to have covers with a better resolution. IF I use albumplayer I get at least 256x256 covers and with MS Mediplayer I think the cover-files are even of a better quality. Is this depending on allmusic or can this be changed in any way?

Thank you,

Michael

 

[Aquarius]

Embedded Coverart

Hi all,
and a big hand to Steve for his great job on the music section !

I’m missing some discussion about "embedded coverart". I’ve lots of MP3s with embedded coverart. This is quite nice, as you can play it everywhere and the coverart is always at hand esp. if you do not have/ own the full CD.

So what I understood and observed is that MP extracts the embedded coverart in the music- setup when you select the option. Now, why is this necessary ?
Why does MP not just take the embedded coverart out of the MP3- file for display when the tune is played just like WMP does it ?

This pre- extraction of the pictures and storing them in ‚thumbs‘ grows the MP folder unnecessarily as the pictures are already in the files. Also it violates the paradigma of separating program and data.

For a discussion of pro’s and con’s of embedded coverart, I think it is a matter of personal preference. For full CDs the MP3 grow unnecessary, that's true. But then a rule like "if 'folder.jpg' is found, ignore 'embedded coverart" may apply. Also some people donn‘t like the idea of having „pictures in music“.


Regards
/Gerd

 

[SteveV]

If you want to make the Music section more powerful, take a look at this C# code: http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/msndesktopsearchqueryapi.asp

I don't know if Google Desktop has a similar API, but this could really be a big boost to the Music section (and Pictures and Video should also benefit from a better search). Now I realize that not everyone has MSN/Windows Desktop installed, but MP interfacing "behind the scenes" with such a powerful search engine would outsource a lot of really hard-to-optimize code (WDS and GDS are much much faster than the current MP tag database). This also has the benefit of automatically adding Smart Playlists capabilities to MP.

Thanks for the link--I'll have a look at it.

 

[hwahrmann]

Re: Embedded Coverart

Why does MP not just take the embedded coverart out of the MP3- file for display when the tune is played just like WMP does it ?

Because when browsing through the list of songs, we would see coverart, without touching the file physically.

 

[SteveV]

...Coverart: If I place a correct Cover-File in the thumbs directory, everything works like a charm. If I only place a folder.jpg file in the respective directory, the cover is only displayed in combination with the single songs. If I have the albums in my view, no cover is displayed.

This is something I need to fix.

F3 and getting information from the internet:
OK, I had a look into the music database and figured out, that much more information is downloaded than only the cover. This is great, but I'm a little afraid because all my files are tagged absoultely correct (with musicbrainz tagger - a great software...) and I don't want MP to change anythin in my mp3-tags. Does this happen or is the information only stored in the musicdatabase?

The data is only saved to the music db so no need to worry about your tags being changed.

Last question is about automatic download of coverart. The downloaded coverart only has a resolution of 128x128. I'd like to have covers with a better resolution. IF I use albumplayer I get at least 256x256 covers and with MS Mediplayer I think the cover-files are even of a better quality. Is this depending on allmusic or can this be changed in any way?

There are actually 2 ways to get coverart. The first is to use "Find coverart" which retrieves the images from Amazon. Amazon provides up to 3 different image sizes typically; 300x300 to 500x500, 160x160, and 75x75. Unfortunately, not all albums have all 3 cover art images. We do however, use the largest image available.

The second way to get cover art is from "Show album info" which uses AllMusic.com. AllMusic seems to provide images that are typically 200x200.

Steve

 

[SteveV]

Re: Embedded Coverart

Why does MP not just take the embedded coverart out of the MP3- file for display when the tune is played just like WMP does it ?

Because when browsing through the list of songs, we would see coverart, without touching the file physically.

Exactly. Extracting the image tag is time consuming--why do it more than once?

 

[mzemina]

If you want to make the Music section more powerful, take a look at this C# code: http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/msndesktopsearchqueryapi.asp

I don't know if Google Desktop has a similar API, but this could really be a big boost to the Music section (and Pictures and Video should also benefit from a better search). Now I realize that not everyone has MSN/Windows Desktop installed, but MP interfacing "behind the scenes" with such a powerful search engine would outsource a lot of really hard-to-optimize code (WDS and GDS are much much faster than the current MP tag database). This also has the benefit of automatically adding Smart Playlists capabilities to MP.

The screenshot is shown below for this project mentioned:

My question - how would the user interface work if as a user you only had a remote control, or only a keyboard. It seems like this user interface can only be used if you have a mouse. If someone comes up with an easy approach when the user only has a remote control I would like to listen.

Mike

 

[SteveV]

It wouldn't. It's an example of the data that can be accessed using WDS. We'd need to build an MP friendly UI. Basically, what you're getting with WDS is the indexing of the music tags (documents, pictures, email, etc) which allows for very fast lookups.

What I don't know at this point is whether all music file formats are supported or only WMP friendly formats. Also, not sure if you can index remote shares and/or access the the WMP database for remote shares. Need to do a little more reading but it looks interesting.

Here's a little light reading: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx

 

[MJGraf]

Thanks for the quick reply Steve!

I apparently always used "show album info", because I just pressed F3.

But I'm too stupid to find out how to use "Find coverart". Is there a shortcut? Any hint appreciated...