Notices

So after some more usage of this, I really think that the cover art view should advance vertically rather than side to side. I mean, the scrolling should go left to right still but it should be:

1 3
2 4


rather than

1 2
3 4

The reason for this is because you're not going to want to advance from left to right through and entire list of albums until its halfway through, and then go back to the far left of the list again to continue alphabetically, but instead view things in both rows the entire time, so you only half to scroll from the left to right once to look at all the albums.

id have to be in agreement on this one , and also to have the option of when in cover art view , to be able to have the albums grouped together by artist

Why does the Canola 2 Audio player not just support "folder.jpg" or "cover.jpg" file placed in the media folder for the artist album like many other players do?
Or...am I missing something?

i have written a guide with details instructions on how to get canola 2 to properly display cover art... youve got it partially right if ya want the guide , just pm me with you email addy and ill send it

Andersbk: You can read the other threads about it, but what I can say : there are several cases where this don't apply and people want more and more flexibility. That's why. It's really the simplest solution but it's too simple for hitting the most cases.

You can read here in the forum some of the cases that people really have strange things, or sometimes: because of disk space people copy only 3 o 4 songs of each album without copyting the folder structure... people that have a songs organized only by artist not by folder and a lot more. : /

Believe me is not that easy : / but we are trying to find ways to solve most of those problems.

BR

Marcelo Eduardo

Marcelo

Seeing as this thread gets a lot of reads I will add my overall thoughts here for reference in addition to thoughts/comments included in bugzilla on both this and id3 tagging issues etc.

My understanding is that many experienced users store copies of their source music on their main PC's in folders by Artist, Album where they then store a master *.jpg, *.png in the Album folder to represent the album cover.

Additionally many users including myself also understand that if we are going to copy the contents of say a playlist, which will take a number of tracks from one or many albums (Throwing the resulting mp3’s and playlist in ONE folder with no album covers etc) then we are going to need the album cover storing in our id3 tagging data of each track.

Where we have an album of various artists in my case I store all these albums in a folder called Various Artists, Album and then mimic the method for Artist, Album above.

Generally if I store any AV material on my NIT it is not my master source!

Using a UPnP media server such as Twonky with the Media Streamer application on the NIT's results in a perfect album cover presentation when playing tracks from my personal selection using the above methodology as a base.

So as was mentioned in another thread, perhaps prioritise album cover look up of Canola2 beta (UPnP or Local) as follows:-

1) Cover art of id3 tag of track (or itunes.db equivalent )
2) *.jpg *.png of Album Folder

Notes:

Need to consider scaling the album art to fit Canola interface as users will store different quality images based on availability of correct cover art.
No issue for Canola with legalities as it is user’s responsibility to source and if users have no Art stored then NO album art will appear.


3) Plug-in to search Internet for cover to represent track being played to add to id3 tag and/or folder of album. (Ensuring these are never over writing existing Album Art storing them in complementary but separate folder structure only when users have no Album Art stored via 1 or 2 above)

Hi Mike thanks for the detailed feedback. I will add this to the notes to consider like always =) but just a note : the 3rd point is the legal problematic. =)

BR

Marcelo

MB. Point taken. Since memory on the IT is limited it makes sense what you have implemented thus far. I do agree with others that C2 should honor the image in the tag if present.

I used the python script to get cover arts, and for me it worked flawlessly. I tag all my originals using Musicbrainz, so that may be why the script had no problems.

I like what the previous poster talked about. Since the IT is really only for storing your portable music (originals on your "server"), then it's easier not to have to organize by Artist/Album/Title, rather just a single (or several) folders with the audio content therein. Using this methodology begs for tag embedded cover arts.

I understand that C2 requires two seperate cover art files. What about using netpbm to scale on the fly so only one art file was required?

Hi Guys,

This is already evolving =) The guys just confirmed that the folder file support is already on testing, and we are after the other details. So I think in the end, in what legal is not concerned we are going to have a much more improved support for the arts.

Still not the best thing or what we really wanted to do, but it will be closer to the user's need.

Thanks for all the feedback on this subject.

br

Marcelo Eduardo
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www.marceloeduardo.com

one thing i would ask for , is that when and if you get a legal and suitable solution for getting the cover art from within canola , have the option for it not to be auto matic , as i like being able to make sure ever cover is the correct cover , even the my manual method is a PITA , of with an automatic way give a choice of what to place in the folder , as i do not want a bunch of extras downloaded like the current plugiin does... that eats up way too much memory