How do album covers work for MP3

rgardjr · 11-13-2003, 04:00 PM

First let me say thanks for the great program and all the work that has been put into it. I can get an album cover to display when I click on the album from the artist parent directory. When I click on the album directory, and enter the directory, to browse the MP3s the artwork is no longer displayed. My MP3 are organized artist/album/songs ...
So I figured out that the cover .jpg file had to be renamed to match the album directory. Do I need to have a second file with a different name?
Thanks-
Rick

coyote · 11-13-2003, 04:08 PM

I'll modify to keep the cover of the parent folder if there is no cover for the file that you selected.

rgardjr · 11-13-2003, 04:14 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by coyote

I'll modify to keep the cover of the parent folder if there is no cover for the file that you selected.

Wow, Thank You Very Much !!! I now understand how the naming scheme works.

burner · 11-14-2003, 09:56 PM

Coyote:

I'm using .wma files with MediaCar. For some reason, I am unable to view the Album covers. My "Playlist" directory is setup like this:

d:\music\artist\album\song1.wma

Windows Media Player automatically puts three .jpg images in each album folder for the album cover image. The naming for these files looks like this:

AlbumArt_{7E9A8986-EC2C-4018-8E5D-9F2ECC0138AB}_Large.jpg
AlbumArt_{7E9A8986-EC2C-4018-8E5D-9F2ECC0138AB}_Small.jpg
AlbumArtSmall.jpg

From the previous posts in this thread, I thought that all I had to do was rename one of the .jpg files to the same name as the album folder, but that did not work. I tried to place copies of the renamed .jpg in the album subdirectory, the artist subdirectory and the music subdirectory, but no matter what I did, I could not view the album art in MediaCar.

Could you tell me what process I should follow to see the album art? Or would it be possible for MediaCar to display the AlbumArtSmall.jpg file or the AlbumArt*Large.jpg file (I don't know which is best) if it exists in the album directory?

Thank you!

Andy

coyote · 11-14-2003, 10:05 PM

Mediacar tries to find a JPG into the selected folder with the same name of the folder and if a file is selected it tries to find a JPG with the same name and in the same folder that the file.

burner · 11-14-2003, 10:10 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by coyote

Mediacar tries to find a JPG into the selected folder with the same name of the folder and if a file is selected it tries to find a JPG with the same name and in the same folder that the file.

Does the .jpg have to be a certain size? I tried to name a .jpg album cover to the name of the album folder and put it in the album folder, but I still did not see it even when I selected the album and not the song . . .

What am I missing?

coyote · 11-14-2003, 10:17 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by burner

Does the .jpg have to be a certain size? I tried to name a .jpg album cover to the name of the album folder and put it in the album folder, but I still did not see it even when I selected the album and not the song . . .

What am I missing?

The image is automatically resized to fit the space, thus size is without importance.

Do you have a screen shot of the Explorer view of contents of the folder?

burner · 11-14-2003, 10:25 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by coyote

The image is automatically resized to fit the space, thus size is without importance.

Do you have a screen shot of the Explorer view of contents of the folder?

Here's a screen shot . . . attached to this message . . . Thanks!

chut · 11-14-2003, 10:25 PM

Hi!
I'm curious where and how you get your album art. I have seen a couple posts about it here but haven't spent much time on it.

Quote: Originally Posted by rgardjr

First let me say thanks for the great program and all the work that has been put into it. I can get an album cover to display when I click on the album from the artist parent directory. When I click on the album directory, and enter the directory, to browse the MP3s the artwork is no longer displayed. My MP3 are organized artist/album/songs ...
So I figured out that the cover .jpg file had to be renamed to match the album directory. Do I need to have a second file with a different name?
Thanks-
Rick

burner · 11-14-2003, 10:31 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by burner

Here's a screen shot . . . attached to this message . . . Thanks!

Coyote:

You should also know that I've since deleted the test .jpg files that had the same name as the album name. In this case the name of the test .jpg was Live.jpg . . .

Also, you should know that I am using this PC for testing MediaCar and that is why so few albums are listed in the directory . . . I already have over 100GB of .wma files on a media server in my family room and I am getting ready to put them in my car soon!

Here's a follow up screen shot including MediaCar output . . . For this, I deleted all the files in the Live directory except for the .wma files and the Live.jpg file . . .

coyote · 11-14-2003, 10:47 PM

Are you sure that the jpg file format is standard when created by WMP ?
Could you try to use another jpg file ?

AlienEclipse · 11-14-2003, 10:51 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by burner

Here's a screen shot . . . attached to this message . . . Thanks!

Try changing the attribute of the jpg to NOT hidden.

frodobaggins · 11-14-2003, 10:53 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by AlienEclipse

Try changing the attribute of the jpg to NOT hidden.

I was gonna suggest the same thing...great minds think alike

burner · 11-14-2003, 10:53 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by AlienEclipse

Try changing the attribute of the jpg to NOT hidden.

Hey, I didn't even notice that . . . Thanks! I'm testing now . . .

burner · 11-14-2003, 11:17 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by AlienEclipse

Try changing the attribute of the jpg to NOT hidden.

Thanks for everyone's input on this one . . .

You won't believe this! I went to set the .jpg attributes from Hidden to unhidden and the box was "grayed out" so I couldn't make the change. I thought it was a permissions issue (even though I have full admin rights on my local domain as well as on my PC) but resetting the permissions did no good. Using the Attrib tool, I finally realized that Microsoft automatically sets these .jpg files as "hidden" and as "system" files. I removed both of these attributes and now it works in MediaCar. What the *!#* was MS thinking by doing this!

Anyone know of a good tool I can use to change attributes on every file in a directory and its subdirectories recursively as well as rename these .jpg files to the same name as the parent folder? I'm now thinking that I may just need to write some kind of script. Input is very welcome.