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Topic: Finding the cover foobar displays? (Read 4298 times) previous topic - next topic
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Finding the cover foobar displays?

Hi, this is a niche issue, and I hope not to waste (too much of) anyone's time. This is a curiosity, but also something that's genuinely annoying for a long time now.

If you listen to a track on foobar, which doesn't have any artwork tagged on it, foobar will find an image in the same folder to represent the album cover, right? As long as you clicked "front cover" on the artwork widget in foobar.

Well I have a number of tracks in my "downloads" folder, various formats, and I don't plan on moving them anywhere else any time soon, or categorising them, the tracks that stay there are uncategorisable, they are samples of records, some mp3 tracks I found online, etc, stuff that I listen to quite a bit, but that's not really presentable enough or good enough quality to go anywhere else. In addition, I also have word documents, pdf documents, and images in the downloads folder.

Anyway, whenever I play untagged (no images attached) tracks in foobar which sit in my "downloads" folder, the album artwork displayed is something that I cannot seem to locate at all. It's a very ugly image, which is why it's so annoying. I have uploaded a snipping tool of my foobar titled "cancer.png" which you can refer to, to understand why I am taking action against this.

Is there anything I can do to find out where this front cover is? So I can nuke it from orbit? Other than going through every unfoldered file in my "downloads" folder. All I know is that for some reason foobar is prioritising it above all the other images in my downloads folder to display on untagged tracks. This has to end.

EDIT: There are even files in my downloads which are already tagged with a front cover image, and yet this ugly image is still displayed on them even though they aren't tagged with it? I don't understand this.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #1
Double-click the albumart in foobar. It'll open explorer and show you the file.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #2
Good idea, didn't think of that! Sadly when I do it, it just opens up the downloads folder and doesn't highlight any files in specific, just shows the folder normally.

What does this mean, if anything? Is the whole "downloads" folder the cause of this? Or what.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #3
My guess is foobar2000 is displaying some embedded image and not an external image file. To check the embedded pictures, right-click on the track to open the context menu and select Tagging --> Manage attached pictures.
I'm late

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #4
That's the thing, I went through all of the audio files and none have this image attached, some have other images attached, and out of those, some are displayed in foobar and some aren't (replaced with that terrible image again), whilst ALL the untagged ones display the image. Please note that when I said "untagged" in my previous posts I meant have no pictures embedded in them, this was of course one of the first things I considered. As you can expect, any item in further folder(s) after "downloads" does not display the image, it is only the unfoldered files in "downloads" if that makes sense.

 So this image is coming out of nowhere, BUT only for my downloads folder. Is it possible to delete the downloads folder and create a new one that carries out the same purpose? I am certain that none of my loose files in the "downloads" folder have this image embedded in them in any way, then perhaps it is some benevolent curse with the downloads folder? Obviously that's a joke but it appears that no conventional solution is in sight?

Thanks for the replies.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #5
I have fraps, I could make a short video capture showing the issue and what I have tried, if that helps people wrap their heads around how absurd this is?

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #6
It's probably hidden/system files. You'll need to go in to the folder options in windows explorer to be able to see them. They're often tiny little jpg thumbnails created by windows media player.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #7
Chances are its one of your images in your downloads folder, hidden or not. I think some of marc2003's JScript artwork viewers might be able to show you the exact location.

You can probably go to 'File/Preferences/Display/Album art' and review your settings there. If you have something like *.*, it'll just pull any imagine in. If you set it to something specific, like cover.*, you'll reduce the cases where it gets it wrong (but you'll have to make sure your covers are actually called as such). There's also 'File/Preferences/Advanced/Display/Album art' which you can tweak to your liking.

But really, you shouldn't have a generic folder with all kinds of random clutter inside it in the first place.


Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #8
No hidden files at all in my "downloads" folder from what I can see. Although I didn't know about this feature, and I found files I didn't need elsewhere thanks to it, so those are going to get deleted.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////

In reply to Daeron, who's message I only now saw:

Yeah, I am aware that clutter isn't cool, this is the only folder (apart from desktop) where it really happens.

I will however try to change the settings so that only specific things are pulled in.

The file/preferences/display/front cover used to have this:

front.jpg
cover.jpg
%filename%.jpg
%album%.jpg
folder.jpg

After removing the bottom "folder" one, I was able to eliminate this picture from showing up. Guess the image had "folder" in the title. I thought maybe I could use this clue to find it, searched "folder" and "folder.jpg" in my downloads, no luck, so whatever it is, is still out there somewhere, THAT SAID, issue is permanently solved. I always name my front covers as "front" or "front cover" so I don't think I will be hindered by removing "folder.jpg" from the preferences.

Thanks to all for contributing.

Whoever is able to close the thread as solved, please do so, if that person is me, then i'll likely find that button soon anyway.

 

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #9
This was a very niche issue, once again, so I am sorry to have wasted people's time on it. It may seem like something utterly insignificant but  I have over 4 weeks of total time played in foobar in somewhat under two years, I love foobar to death and so this grew to become quite a bother. Glad that it's now fixed.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #10
As I recall folder.jpg is generally created by WMP, as marc2003 already suggested and he also gave you the way to show it.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #11
Sorry Daeron, what has marc2003 suggested that I have overlooked?

He told me that I "need to go in to the folder options in windows explorer to be able to see them. They're often tiny little jpg thumbnails created by windows media player". I have done this, and subsequently not found the file in question after carrying out searches of "folder.jpg" or "folder".

This is why I am confused by your most recent message. Apart from that, you mentioned " I think some of marc2003's JScript artwork viewers might be able to show you the exact location", however I don't know what my action in response to this suggestion should have been. as marc2003 has not mentioned JScript artwork viewers in his posts.

Thanks.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #12
Did you actually change the settings in the the explorer folder options? You need to make sure the settings match this...



Also, I'd search for *.jpg and then re-arrange the results by file size. If present they will be noticeably smaller than any proper album art in your folders.

And I didn't say anything about my component+scripts before. :P Basically it's a panel that can be customised to do lots of things and one of the included scripts is a replacement for the default artwork panel. When you hover your mouse over it, tooltips show the exact location of whatever image is being displayed...



Instructions here: https://github.com/19379/foo-jscript-panel/wiki/Requirements-&-Installation

The script is inside the samples\complete folder named album art.txt

If the art is embedded inside the audio file, then it will actually show the location of it (.mp3, .flac, whatever).

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #13
Everything would also show them immediately.

Re: Finding the cover foobar displays?

Reply #14
I have downloaded "everything". It is a nice program for sure, perhaps didn't help me, but I found a lot of junk I didn't need with it.

With regards to the JScript Panel. I have installed the component and it says "click here to open editor". There is a bunch of code in there, the most I know is python so it's nothing I can work with. You say that "The script is inside the samples\complete folder named album art.txt". Where am I supposed to find this? How am I supposed to get it. Sorry if these aren't good questions.

Also, when I have the "script", am I supposed to paste it into the "panel configuration", or what?

I don't enjoy asking endless questions, but when the solution involves something completely new to me, I hope you don't mind.