How to display Album art in RR, and where do I get the Images?

JohnWPB · 10-26-2007, 06:30 PM

The very first step is to open Road Runner Config, and click on the "MUSIC" tab at the top. Then in the "Album Cover File" make sire it is set to *.jpg

For the images to show up in Road Runner, you will need to have a skin that supports it, as well as album art in EVERY folder of your music collection. If you have artists with multiple albums, you will need an image in the root of that folder as well. For instance:

If your library is organized in the following manner:

- Artist
--[IMAGE]
-----Album Folder # 1
---------[IMAGE]
---------Songs
-----Album Folder # 2
---------[IMAGE]
---------Songs
-----Album Folder # 3
---------[IMAGE]
---------Songs

You would have an album cover art file in each album forlder, BUT you would need one in the "Artist Root folder" as well, or you will not see the almub art till you enter that artist, and highlight one of the almums in that folder. Personaly, I place an artist image in that root folder, so when browsing, I see the artist as the cover art, then when entering that artists folder, then see the correct cover for each album.

Windows also has a habbit of making the "folder.jpg" a hidden file. That can hinder the art showing up, or you even knowing, or being able to see if it is actually in the folder. (It will also prevent you from saving a newer version, as the file is hidden, and windows will not let most programs overwrite the file).

To fix this problem easily, open up a text editor, and place this line into it:

attrib -s -h -r f:\mp3\*.jpg /s

(change the path above in red, to your MP3 Root folder)

Then, save it as UnhideFiles.bat or what ever you want to call it.

Now double click that file, and it will remove the hidden attribute from any of the JPG's in that directory, and all subdirectories as well. For me it takes around 30 seconds for it to to go through my mp3 folder that has a little over 900 Albums in it.

Now, you might think that finding the cover art is a matter of googling and saving the images, which is a VERY daunting task, even for a small music collection. LUCKILY there is a FREE program called Album Cover Art Downloader that pretty much automates the process. It will scan your collection, locate what it thinks is the correct images, (you choose from a thumbnail list) and simply click "Set as cover" It will save the cover in a .png format, as well as a .jpg to the music folder. It goes a step further, and saves the image into the MP3 files themselves, using ID3 V2 tagging. (Although Road Runner does not get the images from the tags, many other programs do, and it's nice when taking the time to do all this, to make you music collection compatible with just about anything out there, including many portable players).

If you have a lot of one hit wonders, and then the mp3 have the images embedded in them, you can also look at THIS RR Extension plugin from Guino, that will display the cover art in RR, if it is embedded in the song.

greatwhite · 10-26-2007, 06:39 PM

"album cover art downloader" linky no worky

slvrsol · 10-27-2007, 05:33 PM

http://www.google.com/search?q=album...art+downloader

JohnWPB · 11-05-2007, 03:44 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by greatwhite

"album cover art downloader" linky no worky

Just checked the link, must have been a internet hickup or something, as it is working now.

Spawn12336 · 11-27-2007, 01:31 PM

There is a much easier way, as far as I am concerned. I did this to make sure that all (all 3000+!!) of my mp3's had cover art for my ipod.

For whatever album you are looking for, enter it in google images search. Most of the images you will get are 300x300 to 500x500, so are fairly small. I found that those programs just weren't accurate enough.