Small Music coverart not visible (1 Viewer)

[martinofyre]

Hello, my first post on MP since discovering it in December2010 .

Firstly I like to say MP is great, I have tried so many different media handling softwares and MP is the first one that just worked straight out of the tin, well done!

XBMC I found to have wierd library structures, WMP just doesnt work, no config options and ignores any settings you make. I purchased J River Media Center, utter tosh, again didn't do what is said on the tin, buttons and scripts that didnt work all over it. I could go on...

All I wanted was software that looked in 3 folders I have setup; Movies, Music, Pictures and display whats there! How hard is that!

So first hurdle overcome, well done MP! On to my questions:

1 Having learnt from using mptagthat that there are different size cover art pictures stored against my music albums (really how many should there be! some of my albums now have 4 or 5 pictures (all the same but different sizes) attached.) I realised there could be something I have done wrong as only 2 out of all the albums show a small cover art image in the list view of albums. If you go into each album then the cover art is shown correctly. I have checked the 2 album / images details that work but cannot see any difference to the rest? Can anyone advise? This problem is the same in the default MP display and streamedmp plugin. (It occurs to me that surely one large coverart image 500X500 could be used and scaled rather than storing various different sizes of one image?)

I have been through the whole music library one by one with mptagthat to try and get all the correct tags and coverarts set up.
(In an attempt to "give back to the community" for any newbies out there I would offer this advice, when using mptagthat firstly rename the files, then lookup from internet, imo the quickest way to re tag music (is there a batch option? I couldnt find one).

2 I am trying to understand the relationship between the standard MP display and the various plugins and skins. Is a plugin like moving pictures meant to be selected from the plugin menu every time you start MP or is there an option in the config to make it default? kind of a like when you apply a skin.

Apart from that it all works pretty well for now, remarkably intuitive.

Edit, My system specs / setup arent appearing in my post...MP1.1.2.0 , streamedmp skin, moving pictures plugin, windows 7.

Thanks

Here are some pictures to assist explaining question 1

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/8897/mp1ad.jpg
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/285/mp2a.jpg

Thanks again

 

[jameson_uk]

1 Having learnt from using mptagthat that there are different size cover art pictures stored against my music albums (really how many should there be! some of my albums now have 4 or 5 pictures (all the same but different sizes) attached.) I realised there could be something I have done wrong as only 2 out of all the albums show a small cover art image in the list view of albums. If you go into each album then the cover art is shown correctly. I have checked the 2 album / images details that work but cannot see any difference to the rest? Can anyone advise? This problem is the same in the default MP display and streamedmp plugin. (It occurs to me that surely one large coverart image 500X500 could be used and scaled rather than storing various different sizes of one image?)

Hello and welcome to MP

Music thumbs are either embdeded with the music files or stored as a folder.jpg file in the folder where the files live. Not sure why you have four images (although if you have used WMP before you may find it is that it created four jpg files in the folder of the files)

Have a read through Music - MediaPortal Wiki and see if that sorts out any issues. If not come back with details as to what these multiple images are

2 I am trying to understand the relationship between the standard MP display and the various plugins and skins. Is a plugin like moving pictures meant to be selected from the plugin menu every time you start MP or is there an option in the config to make it default? kind of a like when you apply a skin.

Check out Plugins - MediaPortal Wiki
the In Home / In Plugins setting changes where things are shown on the start menu

 

[martinofyre]

Thanks jameson_uk for your response. I did as you suggested and went back and read the wiki again, always enlightening.

I went back and generated the database for music, which I dont believe I had done yet, went back into MP but no change...the list view icons are still not showing the cover art, except for about 3 of them.

So I have revisited the music folders to ensure I have complete write access, (I think I read somewhere someone having problems with W7 folder permissions) so now I have complete control over the folders and complete r/w/d permssions.

btw if you search the internet you will find a very useful rmb context menu reg hack to " Take Ownership" of any folders which is a necessary first step to gaining full permissions on a folder.

So I now have a look into the multiple image files problems, this must be part of the problem?!
Please see the picture link below. This shows in mptagthat 4 image files and 1 .ini file in the album folder. It also shows the windows explore of that folder next to it, which clearly does not show those files. I have checked my windows folder settings to ensure that all hidden files and folders are shown.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The file names are:
E:\Music\Girls Aloud\Chemistry\AlbumArt_{FE16A706-6F83-4E75-992B-BD036CD3BA96}_Large.jpg
E:\Music\Girls Aloud\Chemistry\AlbumArt_{FE16A706-6F83-4E75-992B-BD036CD3BA96}_Small.jpg
E:\Music\Girls Aloud\Chemistry\AlbumArtSmall.jpg
E:\Music\Girls Aloud\Chemistry\Folder.jpg (this one is blank)
E:\Music\Girls Aloud\Chemistry\desktop.ini (this one has an image shown against it)

The obvious next step would be to delete all the files and regenerate, however, I can only do this through mptagthat. Has anyone had any experience taking this step?

I'm going to try a reboot and then do a bit more digging on W7 showing hidden files.

Any other suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks

 

[jameson_uk]

These files are the crap created by WMP

I would suggest you delete all jpg files, delete the music database file then reimport everything.

That should probably sort it (assuming your files have the artwork embedded within them)

 

[martinofyre]

Ok, this is a bit strange, when I look for the music database to delete here C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Databases its not there and neither is the databases folder...
The only reference to database is the file databases.dll under C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\

I couldnt find any further issues with W7 hiding files so I assume all the image files are embedded.

I deleted all the image files and tags for the one album shown and retagged plus image from mptagthat. Then went through all the config options for streamedmp and MP, then launched MP....no difference.

I feel a rebuild coming on, any other suggestions?

 

[rekenaar]

Go to Start menu; Programs; Team MediaPortal; MediaPortal; User files
Your database folder will be there.

 

[jameson_uk]

Deleting the music database is only to ensure everything is cleared
Folder/File Locations - MediaPortal Wiki
for Win7 this will be
C:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Database
and delete the music file.

Then do a rescan and this should pick up the correct thumbs

Btw you are using the database views and not shares view to browse your collection? (these are the artist / album / genre views)

 

[martinofyre]

Ok so I deleted the music database, one query, the locations of the database both jameson and rekenaar gave me are the same, was this intentional or have I missed something ie. there is only one database for music?

Did some more reading on shares / database view, jameson you were right I was looking at the shares view, problem solved?
YES, I think, seems that the default database view setups are not what I want (shares view was what I wanted) but I know I can sort that out.

In the mean time I am going through every album again in mptagthat and fixing anything that is wrong, deleteing all cover art and redoing.

I guess this in another case of "READ THE WIKI"!! Ok so its alot of information to take in but I think I understand now.

Thanks to all that assisted.

I will update once its all running good.

 

[1gkar]

Here's a batch file that could assist you in deleting ALL albumart on you HTPC's music drive. Alot quicker than doing it {semi}-manaully. I know.