yet another Front End!

**NeonDev** · 04-21-2008, 01:52 PM

that part should actually not be that hard. what i am doing is parsing through the .itc byte by byte and extracting the data that is contained inside. one piece of data is the persistentId. this matches up to the persistentId that shows up in the itunes xml for a particular song/album.

that is ONLY true for the "local" folder (ie the folder containing the itc files for the songs with embedded album art. worthless imo because if the song has embedded art you can simply get the artwork from the file) so you will still be unable to view the album art for songs where you used the itunes advanced->get album art function. there is no album persistent id in the itunes XML.

please correct me if I am wrong and you have found a way to match an itc from the "download" folder to a song in the itunes library

now i have the first part working great where i can read all the data in the file my problem is displaying the pic. what are you doing to display the actual picture?

I no longer use the itc file directly. I use leopards quicklook framework which will work for any song downloaded art or not. But when i did all i did was read the itc file into memory and extract the image portion into a new image object

**natedawgg** · 04-21-2008, 02:04 PM

Originally Posted by NeonDev

that is ONLY true for the "local" folder (ie the folder containing the itc files for the songs with embedded album art. worthless imo because if the song has embedded art you can simply get the artwork from the file) so you will still be unable to view the album art for songs where you used the itunes advanced->get album art function. there is no album persistent id in the itunes XML.

please correct me if I am wrong and you have found a way to match an itc from the "download" folder to a song in the itunes library

yeah i have done all my tests with artwork from the downloaded folder and have been able to extract the persistentId. i have yet to actually test it by matching them to the album only because i have been spending so much time trying to actually extract the image data itself.

I no longer use the itc file directly. I use leopards quicklook framework which will work for any song downloaded art or not. But when i did all i did was read the itc file into memory and extract the image portion into a new image object

that is what i am attempting to do now. AIR gives me a nice tool to look through a directory to get all the files inside, and i can write out new files, problem is that in trying to write out the new files the images will not display. i am trying to do a seek and destroy of the .itc files so i can then be done with them and move on with my life. anyway if you have any ideas or methods to do that, i would really appreciate the help

**NeonDev** · 04-21-2008, 03:30 PM

right let me clarify. I know that the itc files in the download folder carry a persistent id, however, that id is not the track id like it is with the local folder and the xml file contains only track and library ids no album id. unless i am wrong, in which case i have to ask where in the xml/wherever else you are finding the album id?

as for extracting the art if you read the itc file from byte 492 to eof that is the image data 90% of the time. you can parse the itc file if you want to be precise. you can play around with it using a hex editor. simply delete the header off the file (header end with the ascii string:locl, if i remember right) and rename it with the proper image extension (either jpg or png depending on the data) and preview will open it just fine.

my advice on how to move forward would be different depending on how you are constructing you music library. if you use the itunes.xml file exclusively or if you simply drill down through the itunes music folder. if you are building off the xml file you can just use the "track persistent id" (for local folder only) to find the proper itc file and display the image data. this will prevent your users from having to do "imports".

of course if you are simply drilling down through the folder hierarchy I would suggest simply reading the embedded art in the files ID3/atom tag. I can help you with how to do that as well since that is how NBB did things in the beginning.

I find that ALOT of people ***** about FEs not being able to display the art downloaded through the itunes download album art function, however.

since those downloaded that way are only stored as itc files in the "download" folder your only hope would be to decipher the way apple generates persistent ids or if AIR can somehow use quick look but that is mac only

regardless I really don't have AIR exp so my advice may be shaky

**onepuff** · 04-22-2008, 02:47 AM

Looks great. Keep it up. Don't go to medical school or lose your job or anything so we can finally have a great front end.

**natedawgg** · 04-22-2008, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by onepuff

Looks great. Keep it up. Don't go to medical school or lose your job or anything so we can finally have a great front end.

haha well i dont think any of you have to worry about that, at least i hope not (especially on the job front). anyway thanks to everybody for the support.

NBB,

hey thanks for the help with the .itc files. i had been fishing around byte 348 and couldnt figure out where the actual image data was. anyway, you were right about the persistent id for downloaded files not corresponding to anything in the xml. first off that is really weird. but there has to be a way that they are linked, i mean itunes knows soemthing. have you been able to figure anything out as far as correlation?

**NeonDev** · 04-22-2008, 02:23 PM

I am quite confidant through my vast experiments (changing the album on various songs mostly) and research into the matter that it is the "Album persistent id" not present in the XML file and I do not know how apple generates these ids. My only thought on how to get the id would be maybe ask itunes via applescript

**natedawgg** · 04-23-2008, 01:58 AM

Originally Posted by NeonDev

I am quite confidant through my vast experiments (changing the album on various songs mostly) and research into the matter that it is the "Album persistent id" not present in the XML file and I do not know how apple generates these ids. My only thought on how to get the id would be maybe ask itunes via applescript

yeah i am beginning to believe that iTunes hates me and everything that i am trying to do here. i finished my app that strips out the image data. it goes through the album art folders and grabs all the .itc and spits them out to a new folder with a name that corresponds to the persistent Id that is found inside the .itc file. so there are a couple ways that i can see to go about this.

this would be ugly but, now that i have all the artwork sitting in one folder, one could drag the artwork back into itunes which would cause iTunes to store it with the track persistent id that is in the xml file. then run my app again and theoretically you would have all your artwork named in a way that you could associate with itunes xml file.

as suggested before, neglect the itunes xml, traverse through music folder and essentially build my own xml or something that would allow me to quickly jump to a certain song/album/artist. but then the user would still have to put their artwork in with the album

either way the user is going to have to manually add the artwork in some way. i just cannot see how to automate the process.

on another note, i spent the better part of the day switching coverflow components. the old one was put together in flash using some basic shape bending and masking. it worked, but was painfully slow. when pushing close to 100 album covers, my whole system would come to a crawl. the new that i just emulated is really cool. it utilizes real 3d rendering and physics. the exciting thing is for one, it is much faster, and b i will be able to use a series of calculations to (hopefully) create the iphone-esque feel. in other words as you drag your finger across the screen, the app flips through the images according to how fast you move your finger.

well thats all i have for tonight. please if anybody can think of a way to associate the album to music please share your thoughts.

**NeonDev** · 04-23-2008, 09:22 AM

i say just do the embedded art. if people are going to be finicky and demand all their art work there are several 3rd party apps/scripts that will go through itunes and embed all their downloaded art directly to the mp3/aac

also good job on sticking with it. good to hear the cover flow is actually usable. I was going to question how fast it was before. you see cover flow is the reason those itc files exist in the first place, it is much faster for itunes somehow ;-)

**onepuff** · 04-23-2008, 10:17 AM

YAFE sounds like an interesting cool name for your project front end. I hope everyone sees where i got it from.

**Bugbyte** · 04-23-2008, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by NeonDev

i say just do the embedded art. if people are going to be finicky and demand all their art work there are several 3rd party apps/scripts that will go through itunes and embed all their downloaded art directly to the mp3/aac

This is the most expedient way to do it. If you want the artwork, download one of the scripts that embeds it and run it. It's ridiculous to try and work around the iTunes issues.