Poll: Can You Browse Album Art?

kbreeden · 05-04-2006, 06:03 AM

Though I love RR, one of my major frustrations is that I'm unable to successfully browse album art. Some of my album covers show up, but most of them show up as the generic folder icon. I have verified that I have valid folder.jpg files in each album folder.

I know I'm not the only one having this problem and am hoping to get some user feedback so maybe we can isolate the cause. It would be helpful for people to post responses to the following questions:

1. Can you successfully browse by album art?
2. What path have you set for music in config?
3. What directory structure are you using for your music?
4. What skin are you using?

My responses to the questions are as follows:

1. No
2. d:\
3. d:\genre\artist\album\songs (folder.jpg is in folder with songs)
4. CFX (Blue, 800x600)

Thanks in advance.

Sonicxtacy02 · 05-04-2006, 07:58 AM

the majority of people are browsing via album art. Why not just post asking how to do it.. or better yet search :O.

Add this line to your audio_browser1.skin
SD,02,2,120,95,"c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Music\"

Change the file path to wherever your music is. Then set your button that loads the audio broswer to load audio_browser1.skin

kbreeden · 05-04-2006, 08:19 AM

Geez, give me a break. It's a known issue. Many people are having the problem. I have read every post having to do with browsing album art multiple times. Even Guino doesn't know what the problem is. This is an attempt to try to isolate the problem based on what setups are working for people and what setups are not working. "Why don't you do a search?" is an appropriate response for some threads, but this is not one of them.

b8bboi · 05-04-2006, 09:17 AM

1. Yes
2. D:\Media\Music\
3. Genre\artist\*.mp3
4. CFX

However, I do notice that sometimes, some album art won't load. Pretty rare, though.

camsgs3 · 05-04-2006, 09:29 AM

1. Yes
2. D:\Media\Music\
3. Genre\artist\*.mp3
4. MC 2.0

Im also get some art not showing, if my focus[highlighted] is on one Artist folder..when i browse that one spot will have no art

MGD · 05-04-2006, 09:41 AM

I have no problem browsing by album art, maybe because my structure is very simple.

1. Yes
2. C:\Music
3. Artist\Album.......(Folder.jpg is in Artist. If I have more than one album from the same artist then there is a folder.jpg in every album).

Griff1 · 05-04-2006, 10:47 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by MGD

I have no problem browsing by album art, maybe because my structure is very simple.

1. Yes
2. C:\Music
3. Artist\Album.......(Folder.jpg is in Artist. If I have more than one album from the same artist then there is a folder.jpg in every album).

,I use the standard WMP directory: C:\Documents and Settings\Lee\My Documents\My Music.

The folders are just Artist/Album and i have artist.jpg in Artist and AlbumName.jpg in Album for each artist and each album.

Works like a charm with every skin i've used but FYI i use the BMV2 skin.

I would suggest trying it this way and see if your problem persists.

froop · 05-04-2006, 07:05 PM

It mostly works for me. The only thing is that every time I page up/down, the newly highlighted art shows a folder icon. I read another thread that mentioned it could have something to do with the label being too long and having to scroll. Guino has done some work on the latest version, but I haven't gotten around to trying it out.

I think I have organised my album art differently to everyone else.
My music is in C:\Music\<Artist>\<Album>
Browsing by album art doesn't really work too well when there is more than one album for an artist. So I have a separate structure for album browising:
C:\Albums\All\<Artist> - <Album>
C:\Albums\A-K\<Artist> - <Album>
C:\Albums\L-Z\<Artist> - <Album>
C:\Albums\Various\<Album>
C:\Albums\Soundtracks\<Movie>

Each album folder then has a folder.jpg and a playlist.m3u (or for multiple disk albums, disk1.m3u, disk2.m3u etc)

The issue that I have with this method is that not all SELECT methods work. (I don't have my browser.skin files here, so this off the top of my head). Only the SELECT works. Using SELECT+ or ADD1 don't do anything, so I can't add multiple albums using this structure. Not sure if its because they don't work on m3u's or something else..

guino · 05-04-2006, 07:36 PM

@kbreeden:

Your folder structure is EXACTLY the same as mine -- the same I use in the car, and the same I use for testing/development. I don't even bother renaming the files to "folder.jpg" .. needless to say it works fine here.

I recommend you check:
-Your Album Art setting in RRConfig.
-That the JPG files that don't show do NOT have a hidden attribute.
-That the format of your files is valid -- I do not know what application you're using to save those images, but there are some spin offs of the JPG format that may not work -- you can try simply opening the file in MSPaint and re-saving it. I also recommend images of up to 320x240 (smaller=faster).

kbreeden · 05-05-2006, 12:37 PM

Thanks all for the responses. Very helpful. Guino, I'll try the things you mentioned and see if that helps.