PrettyPictures (Album Art Browser) [MM 3]

msouga · Post by **msouga** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 12:13 am

Hi:

On some albums pretty pictures display the wrong cover, the back cover instead of the front cover, of course the album must have both covers to behave this way. Any idea of how to fix this?

Pat_McRotch · Post by **Pat_McRotch** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 12:59 am

msouga wrote:Hi:

On some albums pretty pictures display the wrong cover, the back cover instead of the front cover, of course the album must have both covers to behave this way. Any idea of how to fix this?

In the tag, have you specified that the front cover is actually the front cover? That made sense right?

pah68 · Post by **pah68** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:59 am

It seems to be picking up the last image that's tagged, regardless of what it's called.

msouga · Post by **msouga** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 1:26 pm

pah68 wrote:It seems to be picking up the last image that's tagged, regardless of what it's called.

It seems it always pick the last image, that's wright, the only workaround I've found is to put as the last tag of the disc the front cover image.

msouga · Post by **msouga** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 1:31 pm

Right now I don't know if this is due to the latest beta of MM or the latest beta of PP, but whit beta 2.5.5.893 of MM and the beta 0.4x of PP everything works like a charm.

And of course all the images are tagged correctly!!!

ciscramond · Post by **ciscramond** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 11:46 am

First, thanks for the effort put into this, unfortunately I'm having a bit of trouble getting it to work properly.
Initial loading and navigation works fine, but I get no album art after caching. I can see the album art in the MM album art viewer though.
I'm currently using MM 2.5.4.978, PP 0.51 and have updated to the latest flash and IE downloads, without any success.
I noticed that the _curAlbums.xml file only contains the following, though I'm not sure if that could be my problem:

XML Parsing Error: junk after document element
Location: file:///C:/Program%20Files/MediaMonkey/Scripts/Auto/PrettyPictures/Cache/_curAlbums.xml
Line Number 5, Column 1:<Albums>
^

Cheers

onthuhlist · Post by **onthuhlist** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 8:51 am

I have a question about how Pretty Pictures accesses album art. I moved my collection to Media Monkey from Windows Media Player (which, being a Microsoft resource hog product, creates at least 4 hidden copies of the same album art image in your album folders). I then used Media Monkey to insert all the missing album art, and to replace album art that Windows Media Player had resized so small that you can barely see it. In Media Monkey, as I dragged album art over, I was prompted about how to store that art. I chose to embed the art in the tracks, "if possible". Apparently, it was possible. So the images are embedded into the WMA tracks themselves. This leaves no album art in the album folder itself. Well, Pretty Pictures is showing no album art. Is Pretty Pictures looking for album art in the album folders? If so,

1. What filename is it looking for?
2. How do I get Media Monkey to go through my files and save a copy of the art now embedded in the tracks into the album folder? Is there a script to do this? (I hate scripts. See rant below).

Although I hated the fact that Windows Media Player hid all these multiple copies of album art in my album folders, at least it had one advantage over Media Monkey - I DIDN'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT ALBUM ART OR MESS WITH IT ALL THE TIME AND FIDDLE WITH IT TO GET IT WORKING LIKE I DO WITH MEDIA MONKEY. Why can't someone make this stuff automatic? Why does Media Monkey make you choose between trying to embed album art in each track or not? Isn't there a standard way to do things, instead of being given the option to MAKE THE WRONG CHOICE? NOW PRETTY PICTURES WON'T DISPLAY MY ALBUM ART.

I'm beginning to hate Media Monkey as much as I hate Windows Media Player. And for the end user to have to rely on "scripts" is ridiculous. Some of us are power users and enjoy that stuff (myself included, when I have the time). But others of us want plug and play - we want things to work like our car, where we insert a key, turn it, and the engine starts. We don't want to insert the key, answer a series of optional questions ("Do you want to start your car today, or would you instead just like to sit in the driver's seat, looking stupid?") or having to write a script to make your driver's window go down.

Anyone who can help me out of this software quagmire and show me how to get my album art working with Pretty Pictures, my Creative MP3 player, AND still be visible in Windows Media Player, will get my "Good Samaritan of the day" award. Thanks.

And anyone who can improve Media Monkey to just do the right thing up front (whether that is embedding album art in tracks, or just placing album art in the album folder, I don't know) instead of prompting the user with an option to do the wrong thing will get the "Eliminate dumb software from the universe" award.

onthuhlist

Pat_McRotch · Post by **Pat_McRotch** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 2:41 pm

I personally like all of the options I am asked but maybe Ima goober.

I also have all of my album are embedded into my tracks. Maybe thats why PP isn't working for me?

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:14 am

msouga wrote:On some albums pretty pictures display the wrong cover, the back cover instead of the front cover, of course the album must have both covers to behave this way. Any idea of how to fix this?

no.. I'm not sure how to fix this... but I'll check it out my coding - I'm sure there would be a way.

msouga wrote: Right now I don't know if this is due to the latest beta of MM or the latest beta of PP, but whit beta 2.5.5.893 of MM and the beta 0.4x of PP everything works like a charm.

are you saying that the older version of PP uses the correct image but version 0.51 uses the wrong one?

Dale.

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:17 am

ciscramond wrote:First, thanks for the effort put into this, unfortunately I'm having a bit of trouble getting it to work properly.
Initial loading and navigation works fine, but I get no album art after caching. I can see the album art in the MM album art viewer though.
I'm currently using MM 2.5.4.978, PP 0.51 and have updated to the latest flash and IE downloads, without any success.
I noticed that the _curAlbums.xml file only contains the following, though I'm not sure if that could be my problem:

XML Parsing Error: junk after document element
Location: file:///C:/Program%20Files/MediaMonkey/Scripts/Auto/PrettyPictures/Cache/_curAlbums.xml
Line Number 5, Column 1:<Albums>
^
Cheers

well there's definitely a problme with the xml file... can you please PM me so I can get that file off you to check it out.

Dale.

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:23 am

onthuhlist, firstly... have you pressed the "cache" button to cache the album art... if you haven't done this, PP will not show any album art... if you don't know where this is.. read the first couple of posts thoroughly.

Also, please don't blame MM for these errors.. remember that PP is programmed by me, an amateur programmer who is only doing this in spare time... it is also in Beta stage and is therefore 'expected' to have errors.

PP, however, uses MM's inbuilt method for accessing the album art (however MM has stored it).. and so simply does it 'through' MM... it should therefore see everything that MM itself can see (provided you cache first).

good luck getting it working... hopefully it's just a caching issue.
Dale.

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:25 am

Hi everyone,

sorry it's been so long since the last update.. it's been a hectic few months and I haven't had the time or the headspace to work on Pretty Pictures.

Hopefully I'll get some time to knock over some of these things and the memory issue soon.

till then, merry christmas and happy new year.

Dale.

tobbbie · Post by **tobbbie** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 3:39 pm

Hi DaledeSilva,

...first of all Congratulations for this piece of beauty added to MM

I was envying the Itunes users with their album browser, and now we have one as well, THANKS!
Afte some initial woes that relate to documentation, I really like the browser but here some remarks/questions:

- you must make more prominent that you add bottons and that the Cache (or Quick Cache - but what is the difference?)
must be pressed before anything will be visible.

- I keep getting the query if I wish to allow the active-X to run, how can I get this permanently allowed?

- Could you please add the option to let the album list follow the played songs?

- I also have the problem with back-covers as mentioned earlier, they are tagged correctly in MM, but cached incorrectly.

- I also see that some front covers have taken an (older) low-res version from the mp3. This rises two questions:
- why not cycle though all "front cover" reported by MM and then take the one with the highest resultion?
- How can I refresh JUST ONE album in the cache after I have deleted such a low-res picture?

- I wonder how you can keep track of changed art-tags?

- when Letters are on and just ONE album is active, the LETTER is in front and the album itself in the background to the right. I also noticed the the show/hide Alphabet marker seems to have no meaning.

- could you make the layout of the labels for the albums without art depending on the sort? So in Case of ALBUM sort, put the Album first (and in BOLD), in case of ARTIST sort, the same for the ARTIST?

- I also noticed that some Album Covers do NOT show title or artist and thus I wonder If you could add this information on top/bottom of the displayed foreground album. Again placed depending on the chosen sort one or the other on top (and the other at the bottom).

OK, thats enough for now, thanks again!

bye
tobbbie

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:17 pm

tobbbie wrote:you must make more prominent that you add bottons and that the Cache (or Quick Cache - but what is the difference?)
must be pressed before anything will be visible.

if you read the first few posts in this forum.. you should find the explaination.

tobbbie wrote:I keep getting the query if I wish to allow the active-X to run, how can I get this permanently allowed?

again... you'll find it in the first couple of posts (also on the website

tobbbie wrote:- when Letters are on and just ONE album is active, the LETTER is in front and the album itself in the background to the right. I also noticed the the show/hide Alphabet marker seems to have no meaning.

Letters work like normal album covers... they will not change in there behaviour as I develop the script... what is 'more' likely to happen is that I will drop them altogether in support of the "Alphabet marker" or something similar or better... however, I actually have no plan to drop them as there is no problem with leaving them in.

The alphabet Marker is what shows "while" your scrolling.

tobbbie wrote:Could you please add the option to let the album list follow the played songs?

I'm pretty sure this is already mentioned in the todo.

tobbbie wrote:- I also see that some front covers have taken an (older) low-res version from the mp3. This rises two questions:
- why not cycle though all "front cover" reported by MM and then take the one with the highest resultion?

good idea, will keep it in mind.

tobbbie wrote:- How can I refresh JUST ONE album in the cache after I have deleted such a low-res picture?

currently, you can't do one album at a time... if you want to REcache something, use the normal cache button. If you want to cache only albums that have not been chached yet, use quick cache.

tobbbie wrote:- could you make the layout of the labels for the albums without art depending on the sort? So in Case of ALBUM sort, put the Album first (and in BOLD), in case of ARTIST sort, the same for the ARTIST?

good idea

tobbbie wrote:- I also noticed that some Album Covers do NOT show title or artist and thus I wonder If you could add this information on top/bottom of the displayed foreground album. Again placed depending on the chosen sort one or the other on top (and the other at the bottom).

not sure if this is 'listed' on the todo.. but it is to do.

Dale.

FadeToBolivia · Post by **FadeToBolivia** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:53 am

First, I have to say that I love the program.

Not sure if this is a bug or not and I didnt see it on the bug list, but:

When I click on an album in the MM tree, PP then switches album covers to display the current album selected. But if I then switch to another album by the same artist, PP doesnt switch to the new album art. Shouldnt it change?

However if I jump between different artists, then PP also changes the artwork along with the selections.

PrettyPictures (Album Art Browser) [MM 3]

Pretty Pictures display the back cover insted of the front

Re: Pretty Pictures display the back cover insted of the fro

Question about album art

Re: Pretty Pictures display the back cover insted of the fro