[Canola] Default Covers location
 

Is it possible to change the default location for the covers?
I have over 130 albums, and when I run the updated canola tuning, it fails when my root filesystem fills up. The previous version could not find a lot of the covers on the internet, so I never encountered the problem.
I have tried creating a symbolic link to a folder on one of the SD cards, but the tuning app fails with an error.
Other than that the update is a major step forward over the previous version. Much much quicker, I love the scrolling text on the now playing screen. That was something I was wanting, but not expecting.
thanks
Gaz

Re: Default Covers location
 

Hi Gazza_d,

This was already reported to us, and we will add a way of doing it... but you can solve it now by just creating a link form /user/.canola/cover to any folder on you media card.

Anyways I think it will be time to compile these tips and put on a stick thread.

BR

Marcelo

Re: Default Covers location
 

That was my first thought, as I've used linux for a few years now. Trouble is that when I create a folder on my media card called covers, and create a symlink to it in /home/user/.canola called covers using "ln -s covers /media/mmc1/covers", and then run albumcover.py I get the followig error. Any ideas? Exception in thread Thread-2:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 460, in __bootstrap
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 440, in run
File "albumcover.py", line 311, in process_items
os.symlink("cover-1.jpg", link)
OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted

Thanks

Gaz

Re: Default Covers location
 

HI Gaz :

Chencarek sent me the correct way of doing it , look for it in the following post under the name "Chenca"



BR

Re: Default Covers location
 

Just been testing, and ln -s will let me make a link to another folder on any filesystem, but cd to that folder or a mkdir in that folder fails unless the linked folder is on the same filesystem (i.e. / ). Obviously this is not a problem caused by Canola.

Just been having a look at the source for albumcover.py and found that there is an option "-o" to specify the albumart output folder, but it still fails with the same error as above, although it has created various cover files in the correct destination folder. strange. Unfortunately I do not know enough python to dig into this much further.

Gaz

Re: Default Covers location
 

HI Gaz:

Please don't use the albumcover.py anymore, it's old and has bugs. Please install Canola-Tuning to make this works. This -o for the output does't matter that much, because canola will always look in the ./canola/covers that's why you need the link.
then when canola looks for cover the system redirects to the file you created the link.

We teste here.. it works the way I sent you.. if you can test that... you don't need to touch anything in python =)

Br

Re: Default Covers location
 

Just been trying, and canola tuning from the extras menu just stops saying "loading". I have uninstalled the deb, and reinstalled it from the link on the canola2 web page with no problems, and still have the same issue.

Thanks for your efforst guys. I'm sure we'll crack it - Off to bed here in the UK, got be up early for work.

Thanks

Gaz

Re: Default Covers location
 

Hi gazza_d

The option -o in albumcover.py has a problem, this option changes the the location to store the album covers, but not changes the album covers location in Canola2 settings, so Canola2 will look into the wrong folder. My fault, sorry :-(

The new version of Canola-Tuning (0.2.5) will fix this and probably Canola2 will have a option to set the covers location using the UI (Canola2 already has a command line to set this).

Looking the Handful post I found a error, maybe this is the reason to you can't access the folder pointed by the symbolic link.

The correct commands to change the album cover location are:

- If you are running the XTerm or the SSH session as root, change to user:

su - user

- Copy the already downloaded album covers to another Location, for example to the removable memory card (mmc1)

cp -r /home/user/.canola/.covers /media/mmc1/.

- Remove the old location

rm -rf /home/user/.canola/covers

- Create a symbolic link

ln -s /media/mmc1/covers /home/user/.canola/covers

I hope that helps you.

Re: Default Covers location
 

I have done everything in your post and now Canola cover loader is sitting on the first cover.

Re: Default Covers location
 

Rj : I sent your problem to Chenca through IM, and let's see what he says... I also facing this here in mys tests now : /

BR

Re: Default Covers location
 

I managed to cheat by freeing up enough space on / to run the album cover app. Still cannot get it to run over a symlink to a location on either of my sd cards, but a simple copy or cd in xterm does not work either. My theory is that this is due the cards being formatted as fat32, and not linux. Not moved the covers folder to the card to see if canola will read the dir, but I suspect that it will fail. I have a new 2gb card to hand, so I will try formatting that as linux and see if that works.

An idea may be to have the location for .canola to be customisable so it can be on an sd card.

Gaz

Re: Default Covers location
 

Hmm when I'm in the .canola/covers folder and I type in "ln -s covers /media/mmc2/covers" it says "operation not permitted". Any idea why? I get the same answer when I try to copy a hamachi file to sbin. It can't be permissions cause I make sure I'm root beforehand.

Re: Default Covers location
 

Laughing Man

How/where was your card formatted? I have not been able to get this working with either of my 16Gb cards which were formatted in Windows before my N800 arrived.

I have just inserted a 2GB card and formatted it in the N800, it is formatted as vfat, and it does work. removed and reinserted the 16GB and the symlink still works.

albumcover still does not work though with the symlink, remove the symlink and it works without question. however could it be down to things like "-" and ":" in diretcory names causing the symlink to fail?

Re: Default Covers location
 

I'm guessing FAT, though I didn't have to format them at all. Plugged into into my laptop booted into Vista and it never asked me about formating.

Re: Default Covers location
 

moving the populated covers folder and then symlinking back to /home/user/.canola/covers works for the main canola app, although the albumcover still chokes on the symlink.

Re: Default Covers location
 

Hi gazza_d

The new version of canola-tuning is available at Maemo Extras (now you can use Application Manager to install it) and in this version -o option is working correctly.

Using XTerm try this:

albumcover.py -o "/mnt/mmc1/canola_covers"

Let me know if it helps you.

Re: Default Covers location
 

That works, thanks very much for all your efforts.

Much appreciated.
Gaz

Re: Default Covers location
 

Cool, will this allow me to share coverart with UKMP? (no point in having twice the cover art).

Re: Default Covers location
 

Laughing : the thing is the canola needs 2 sizes, maybe this is ok for UKMP =)
And also, if I'm not mistaken ukmp uses names for the covers right? we use (folder/folder) structures ) with cover.jpg

So I don't know if its going to be out of the box...

Marcelo

Re: Default Covers location
 

I am still having problems. Cover downloader either freezes or continues to put the art, up to 10 versions of each cover on the device memory.

Re: Default Covers location
 

Yeah your right.

I'll just have to order a bigger SD card sometime (currently running 2 GB ones). Maybe it's time to up to 4 or 8 GBs.

Re: Default Covers location
 

from my experience both UKMP and Kagu will read in a "folder.jpg" file in the album folder, and use that as the cover art. This is the same mechanism as windows media player, and slimserver.

It is a shame that Canola does not support this also, as I have folder.jpg coverart for 98% of my albums. The albumcover program reads the album title from the id3 tag, and then tries to create folders in the covers folder of the format artist/album. Some of my albums have characters in them such as ":" which are not usable, and therefore cause the utility to fail when it hits them. Easy enough to fix, just drop the files on a PC, and retag them without the illegal character. It's just a pain.

I appreciate handful's points about the legality of canola downloading art, but it would be nice if it supported folder.jpg in the album folder like the other players, although it is streets ahead of the default player which has no cover art support at all.

Re: Default Covers location
 

from my experience both UKMP and Kagu will read in a "folder.jpg" file in the album folder, and use that as the cover art. This is the same mechanism as windows media player, and slimserver.

Hi Gazza,

I totally understand you, and sometimes as the responsible for the products, I just get to the developers and ask things like this, but listenting to them is really enlightment in a lot of ways. So there's a lot of things that should be taken into account, and each application has a strategy to implement. So I will explain to you some of this so you will se that is actually not a shame =)

1) have the image on the folder of the music is a ok solution, but then you assume that people uses folders to organize. believe me there people that uses several forms of organization including folders for "moods" or folders for "playlists" so a album.jpg on this doesn work.

2) also, there is no way of supplying everyone at once. This is your way and a lot of user, but not of all users. We still have users that use embedded album art, centralized album art (like itunes or others) and some a only folder with the covers with "hash" names.

3) we are on a "removable" and also a not very powerful media device. This implies a lot of cares, and we put a deep thought on how to make the covers work, and at least until now the idea makes more sense. So we do save 2 sizes, we need several files (cover-X.jpg) to enable the cover choose of cover from internet etc. So instead of placing garbage on user music folder, we need a centralized repository.


BUT:
"Some of my albums have characters in them such as ":" which are not usable, and therefore cause the utility to fail when it hits them.""
This is a bug, and we will fix on our application, so don worry about it. We really need to test with users so we find this cases. Nobody here had this on their album, and now we have a case and we will fix. There not other way =) it finding bugs and fixing...

"I appreciate handful's points about the legality of canola downloading art, but it would be nice if it supported folder.jpg in the album folder like the other players, although it is streets ahead of the default player which has no cover art support at all."

Again, as I said, the goal is already to support and it's failing because of a bug, but it will work, and support folder.jpg images, as well embedded and downloaded, and "pick from disk"

So in the end, our goal is to go even far then any other application is going... but that takes time and feedbacks =)


cheers!

Re: Default Covers location
 

gazza: I found with putting a folder.jpg file in the same folder as the album then running the canola tuning application worked perfectly for finding my album cover art - i was able to successfully populate 100% of my cover art using this technique...

I posted what I did to this thread: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...t=14963&page=2

There are also a few freeware (and not paid) tools to populate cover art so once you download it to your folder as a folder.jpg file you should have no trouble with canola tuning.

Re: Default Covers location
 

It worked great with albumCover -o ...
Thanks

Re: Default Covers location
 

I hate to bring up old history, but could some one give some concise directions for a noob on how to change the default location for the cover art? I too am having the problem where I have a huge music collection on my SD cards, and enabling the cover art fills up the device memory. I know how to get root, and navigate the file system, but I'm still learning (things like symbolic links). Thanks!

Re: Default Covers location
 

Anyone? I continue to search the forum and I'm not finding anything recent or relevant to the Canola Tuning plug in. All of the posts I've found on changing the default cover director to a SD card are pretty old. Thanks.

Re: Default Covers location
 

Hello Vrette, the following directions are copied from a post in page 1 with a few corrections.

First, you do not need to be root.
Second, Canola stores the Album Art in /home/user/.canola/covers/ and that cannot be changed, but you can create a Symbolic link that links to an expansion card.

Remember, you can change the location of where you copy the album art in command 1, just remember to input that location in place of /media/mmc1/ in command 3.

Let me know how it goes.

Re: Default Covers location
 

That did the trick, after I figured out that mmc1 is the external card, and mmc2 is the internal card, and I wanted to use the internal card. First time I've used the link command.

I saw a couple of post referencing a python script, and that didn't seem relevant, hence my "confusion."

I'm not seeing the covers when I pick cover art, and some of the files are still missing covers (they are all embedded), but those are different issues.

Thanks!