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Topic: Album Art Downloader XUI (Read 2066518 times) previous topic - next topic
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Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1100 –
Quote from: bsleeth on
Thanks for the feedback! I think the major UI issue was that most of the clickable elements had borders round them. The sort/group controls were also misaligned vertically, and the "..." browse buttons were very narrow. The combo-boxes (like the path to save images to) were also not quite right, the drop button was shaded when it shouldn't be and the border didn't highlight when it should.

If Vista looked fine before, and hasn't changed now, then I'm happy.

I'm not sure it's worth anyone actually moving an existing installation from "Program Files (x86)" to "Program Files", I don't think it has any effect. If anyone wants to, for tidiness, then yes, uninstalling and re-installing would do the job.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1101 –
A related question: On this page the first comment claims that you can add this to your tools (within mp3tag) using these simple parameters: "%artist%" "%album%" "%_folderpath%Folder.jpg. Can someone elaborate on this, I'm not quite sure I understand it...

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1102 –
Quote from: maximus2 on
you can add this to your tools (within mp3tag) using these simple parameters: "%artist%" "%album%" "%_folderpath%Folder.jpg. Can someone elaborate on this, I'm not quite sure I understand it...
That would appear to be a suggestion that you add an mp3tag tool entry so that you can have a "Download Album Art" context menu command from within mp3tag. It suggests that for the "Parameter" setting for the tool, you use the string "%artist%" "%album%" "%_folderpath%Folder.jpg" (I added the missing final " mark). Personally, I'd use .'%'extension'%' instead of .jpg (note '%' escaping), in case the image found isn't in jpeg format - but then again most image displaying software will ignore the extension when determining format anyway.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1103 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: maximus2 on
you can add this to your tools (within mp3tag) using these simple parameters: "%artist%" "%album%" "%_folderpath%Folder.jpg. Can someone elaborate on this, I'm not quite sure I understand it...
That would appear to be a suggestion that you add an mp3tag tool entry so that you can have a "Download Album Art" context menu command from within mp3tag. It suggests that for the "Parameter" setting for the tool, you use the string "%artist%" "%album%" "%_folderpath%Folder.jpg" (I added the missing final " mark). Personally, I'd use .'%'extension'%' instead of .jpg (note '%' escaping), in case the image found isn't in jpeg format - but then again most image displaying software will ignore the extension when determining format anyway.


OK, but that has nothing to do with embedding your program within mp3tag? Because that's the way I understood it...

In any case, thanks for your help, that is very kind of you!

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1104 –
v0.32-exp on Windows 7.
The results windows shows html code for some results, especially on items from Amazon.

Otherwise working fine, I do like the 'sort by area' option.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1105 –
Hi,

Just getting used to this application.  Sorry for the basic question, but I'm having trouble specifying the path where I want my images saved. I'm using the file browser to find my albums with missing art and follow these steps:

* Find the folder with my album(s) and click Search
* select an album in the list in the file browser and click "Get Artwork for Selection"
* a search window opens and finds all the art (all fine so far)
* ...but when I click 'Options', the 'Images will be saved to:' text box is greyed out and I can't change the location.  The instructions below this text box say: 'This path was set automatically from the browser. The location of images relative to album folders can be set in the options for that window.'

Unfortunately, I cannot see anywhere in the file browser window where I would set the path. Am I going about this the wrong way?

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1106 –
Quote from: GHammer on
The results windows shows html code for some results, especially on items from Amazon.
HTML code? Now that's weird. Must be a script problem, though. Can you tell me what you searched for that produced that result?

Quote from: pedr0 on
Unfortunately, I cannot see anywhere in the file browser window where I would set the path. Am I going about this the wrong way?
No, you're doing it right. In the File Browser, click the "Options" link. The path is set in the box labelled "Specify path to find images". If you put, for example, "Folder.jpg" into this box, then the results will be saved as Folder.jpg in the album folder. If you don't want it to go in the album folder, you can put a full path into that box - something like "C:\AlbumArt\%artist%\%album%.jpg" for example.

The box in the file browser controls where it looks to find existing art, but that is also where it tries to save newly found art to, so that after saving, it then appears in the list as art for that album.

Does that make sense?

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1107 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
The box in the file browser controls where it looks to find existing art, but that is also where it tries to save newly found art to, so that after saving, it then appears in the list as art for that album.


Ah! I saw that box, but didn't realise it specified the save place too.  Thanks Alex I'll give that a go.

BTW. I've only played around with a handful of albums so far, but it seems that when the album name has a question mark at the end, the results are not so comprehensive. Deleting the question mark pulls up better results. E.g. So What? by 28 Days.  I only mention it in case it helps you in your development.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1108 –
Quote from: maximus2 on
OK, but that has nothing to do with embedding your program within mp3tag? Because that's the way I understood it...


Hello maximus2! Yes, you understood it correctly and here's how to set it up. In mp3tag go to Tools -> Options -> Tools. Once there hit the "New" icon which will bring up a dialog box:

Name - you can put anything in here.

Path - the file path to Album Art Downloader XUI.

Parameter - this is where you put the cryptic "%artist%" "%album%" "%_folderpath%Folder.jpg

Click OK and from then on you can pull up Album Art Downloader XUI in mp3tag by right-clicking on a track and selecting whatever you entered in the Name field from the Tools fly-out menu.

Have any questions just ask.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1109 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
...The sort/group controls were also misaligned vertically...
Now that you mention it, yeah, those did not ling up.

Another (new?) strange behavior with the group/sort controls ... When the application first starts, the sort/group labels are close to the corresponding values.  If you click on the value, the label is pushed left as the drop list is shown.  The values in the drop list are right-justified.  Once a value is selected, the label remains pushed over (to the left); thus leaving a gap between the label and the value.  For example, the following two lines represent a before/after:
Code: [Select]
  Group by: Size
Group by:   Type

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1110 –
Quote from: pedr0 on
...it seems that when the album name has a question mark at the end, the results are not so comprehensive. Deleting the question mark pulls up better results...
I think it's the same issue I was talking about in this post here.

Here's Alex previous response:
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: audio20 on
Is there any way you could strip those characters ( & and : ) from the search strings you get from the queue?
The only problem I have with this is that if a source did make good use of those, they would then not be available any more. I'd really rather not throw away data if I don't have to. A better idea would be to modify the scripts of sources which work better without those characters to strip them before sending the query to the server. To do that, I'd have to do a survey of each site, testing which one works better with the characters removed, and which with them left in.
So, the way I understood that is that it is always possible for the user to remove those characters manually now, but if the program stripped the characters all by itself, the result might not be as good as expected and, not only the user will never figure out that the results are bad because of the stripping, but also he will never be able to enforce the search with those characters if he purposely wishes to do so. So, indeed, it's tricky like that...

I thought that was a very reasonable response and good enough reason for him not to adopt stripping those characters as default for the program. But the more I use the program, the more I am convinced that stripping certain characters from the search string is always good for the results. It may be so that I can't yet "mathematically" prove so, but still... I've been stripping a group of characters ( & . ; : ? ! ' " ) from the input string for quite some time now; And repeating the search without them. I must say that I have yet to come across any result that wasn't at least as good as before (most of the time the results are much better indeed). The only problem I have to offering this as proof is that I don't isolate the sources.

I think the way to go should really be like this: We gather a fairly large group of albums with those characters in the name, test and record all results, one source at a time, both with and without those characters. Then analyze it and offer at least a small statistical proof that what we "feel" (stripping those characters is always good) is in fact true. I was meant to do that a while ago, but as this is probably gonna take a looong time (and, let's face, will be very boring to do) I haven't yet "found the time" to do it (it's on my TODO list, though).

I thought about modifying myself each script to strip those characters before sending the search, but I am really a lousy programmer. So, between the time it will take me to study the boo language and figure out exactly how should I modify those scripts, I will be better off just doing the procedure above. 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1111 –
Quote from: GHammer on
...I do like the 'sort by area' option.
Me too!  Nice to know. I think Alex will be happy that more users are pleased with this option than otherwise.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: GHammer on
The results windows shows html code for some results, especially on items from Amazon.
HTML code? Now that's weird. Must be a script problem, though. Can you tell me what you searched for that produced that result?
I believe this has happened to me also, once in a while, in the previous versions (0.30, 0.31). In the middle of the results you get some very large "cells" where the text that was supposed to go there is followed by a bunch of code. As a result, the next "line" of results is very "far away" down below. I always believed this was due to a malformation of the source page (some interruption or corruption on the flow of data) rather than a program fault (I might be wrong, though). What led me to believe this was the fact that if I repeat the same search, I might even get other "rather large cells", but not the same ones. I never mentioned this before because it is very rare that it happens and I can't purposely reproduce it (not even right after it happens).

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1112 –
Quote from: bsleeth on
Another (new?) strange behavior with the group/sort controls ... When the application first starts, the sort/group labels are close to the corresponding values.  If you click on the value, the label is pushed left as the drop list is shown.
Yes, that's not new, it's always been the case. If you show the drop down, then the label has to move to make room for the widest option in the list. Until then, it only makes room for the option that is currently displayed. Not ideal, perhaps, but not a big deal either.

Quote from: audio20 on
[Character Stripping]
I'll tell you what, I'll add code to every script to strip the characters & . ; : ? ! ' ". It will be right at the top, and easy to modify. I'd appreciate it if, whenever you get the time, you could test out for any given script whether re-including any of those characters would actually improve results, and I'll reinstate them as the information is gathered.

Quote from: audio20 on
[HTML Codes]
This is a failure of the script to properly parse the HTML of the source that it is searching. Unfortunately, without knowing which script, or when it does it, it will be very hard to fix! It is possible that it will occur if the source changes their HTML pages, which would mean the script needs modification to match. I can usually make those sorts of changes pretty quickly, once notified.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1113 –
Hi, Alex,
thanks for such a fast response!
Quote from: AlexVallat on
[Character Stripping]...I'll add code to every script to strip the characters [font= "Courier New"]& . ; : ? ! ' "[/font]. It will be right at the top, and easy to modify.
Wow! I can insert the code in each script if you point me in the right direction (you could PM me the sample code that would do the job), I mean, if that is easier for you. I really didn't mean before to give you even more trouble. Thank you so much for offering.

Quote
...whenever you get the time, you could test out for any given script whether re-including any of those characters would actually improve results, and I'll reinstate them as the information is gathered.
If you think it will help you, I can even do all of it by tomorrow. I can compile and post an excel sheet with the results on google-docs.
(I was postponing it mostly because I didn't think this would really interest you that much; and, ok, also because I was lazy...  )

I was thinking about getting a 50 random albums sample to insert in the queue and test them on each source, both with and without the characters. But now, I was just re-thinking the hole test procedure, and if you're giving me the code to build all the scripts that will automatically strip the characters for me, I guess it will all be much easier.

[1st] Create, in a separate folder, a copy of the program with all scripts modified to strip the characters;
[2nd] Separate 50 random albums with those "problematic" characters;
[3rd] Have those albums in a queue from the "file browser" on both versions of the program (with and without modified scripts), one version at a time;
[4th] Let the program automatically perform the searches and go on recording the number of results for each source, for each album.
[5th] Compare the number of results for each version and draw a conclusion.

Quote
[HTML Codes]This is a failure of the script to properly parse the HTML of the source that it is searching.
I thought so too (something like one field being captured way beyond what it's limit should really be). But I considered that the code the program was getting from the source at that specific time and on some very specific conditions was corrupt, therefore (by some conditions not being met) the program wasn't being able to parse that code correctly. I think that the fact that only very few cells (when more than one) did display the strange code and all the rest of the cells were just fine corroborates that thesis in a way.

Quote
Unfortunately, without knowing which script, or when it does it, it will be very hard to fix! It is possible that it will occur if the source changes their HTML pages, which would mean the script needs modification to match. I can usually make those sorts of changes pretty quickly, once notified.
Duly noted. So you'd rather have me report (and record the most accurate information I can get) whenever that happen again, even if that is not a big deal for me, right? (I didn't report before mostly because I thought that if I couldn't reproduce it, it shouldn't be a glitch - and also because I didn't want to bother you even more than I already do). I'm also not that much confident that you will be able to reproduce the problem yourself, even if I record and give you all the information I can get whenever (and if) that happens again (but I'll try anyway, that's a promise).

Again, thank you for being so much interested in helping us and for such fast responses. 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1114 –
Quote from: Innuendo_ on
Quote from: maximus2 on
OK, but that has nothing to do with embedding your program within mp3tag? Because that's the way I understood it...


Hello maximus2! Yes, you understood it correctly and here's how to set it up. In mp3tag go to Tools -> Options -> Tools. Once there hit the "New" icon which will bring up a dialog box:

Name - you can put anything in here.

Path - the file path to Album Art Downloader XUI.

Parameter - this is where you put the cryptic "%artist%" "%album%" "%_folderpath%Folder.jpg

Click OK and from then on you can pull up Album Art Downloader XUI in mp3tag by right-clicking on a track and selecting whatever you entered in the Name field from the Tools fly-out menu.

Have any questions just ask.


Thanks a lot, mate! Unfortunately, I'm not exactly a genius in figuring stuff out myself 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1115 –
Quote from: audio20 on

I'm not sure it's going to be quite that easy - AAD compiles the scripts to form a cached copy, and then does not re-compile unless it detects that the scripts have changed. So, even if you had a copy of the program in another folder, it would still share the same cached copy and wouldn't know that it had to re-create it (as it's scripts would not have changed).

What I would suggest is to use a single copy of the program, and just replace its script files. If it starts getting confused and doesn't re-compile when it should, then you can always force the issue by deleting the "boo script cache.dll" file from the scripts folder in the local user settings.

Here are the character-stripping scripts: Scripts.zip. You'll want to turn off (or ignore) update checking, as otherwise it will claim that they're all out of date and all need replacing! You can replace them all in one go, or one at a time, whichever is more convenient, but you must make sure that you replace util.boo first. Replacing it won't affect old scripts, but new ones won't work until the new util.boo is in place.

For the HTML thing, it's probably worth reporting the source and search terms if it happens more than once with a single source. Otherwise, chances are I'll never be able to reproduce it and any fix would be a complete guess.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1116 –
Quote from: maximus2 on
Thanks a lot, mate! Unfortunately, I'm not exactly a genius in figuring stuff out myself 


Nobody is an expert at figuring everything out. That's what internet forums are for...so we can fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Glad I was able to help you out.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1117 –
Hi, Alex.
Wow,  that was fast! 
Quote from: AlexVallat on
I'm not sure it's going to be quite that easy - AAD compiles the scripts to form a cached copy...suggest is to use a single copy...just replace its script files...deleting the "boo script cache.dll"...
Got it! Foolproof explanation (very good!).  I'm doing exactly as you explained. It's going fine.

Quote
Here are the character-stripping script...turn off update...new ones won't work until the new util.boo is in place.
Great! I believe there was a problem with util.boo (at least here it showed up):
line 75 was missing a closing parenthesis:
[font= "Courier New"]    if(String.IsNullOrEmpty(stringToStrip)[font= "Arial Black"])[/font]:[/font]

It's all working now.

A quick question (just out of curiosity, I couldn't 100% sure just by reading the script code):
Does the Regex.Replace in StripCharacters on util.boo replaces any (and all) "problematic" characters with an empty string?
If it is so, this way "Vol.1" would turn out to be "Vol1", instead of "Vol 1". I usually do a very sloppy programming and replace all with a space character and (if I want to tidy up the result) do a final replacement of double-spaces for single-spaces (very much probably not what you want to do).

I was also thinking that the characters "(" and ")" could be stripped from the strings... What do you think?

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1118 –
Quote from: audio20 on
...getting a 50 random albums sample to insert in the queue and test them on each source, both with and without the characters...

I've tested 10 albums so far and compared the results  :
and 46 to go...  (that is... if I don't get some more to extend the sample...) 
I'll post the results as soon as I'm done.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1119 –
I've been trying hard to remember which was the last album where that "HTML glich" last ocurred. The fact is memory is too weak... I couldn't remember which one it was. But instead I could reproduce a similar one with the folowing entries:
artist: Sophie Ellis Bextor
album: Read My Lips
souce: Amazon (.jp)
Only one cell presents the glitch.
Here's some screen caps (click to see full-size): Main window --> / tooltip -->

While we're still on this page, I've also noticed that this problem with AllCDCovers has been ocurring regularly; You click on the image to get a preview (or click on the button to try and save the image directly) and instead you get this CD image giving you this message:
"Download isntructions: Yes, we do have the cover you're looking for, but no, we can't show it to you. You've most likely clicked on some old link to this cover or something else has gone wrong. Please visit our homepage to download this cover."

When you follow the link to the page and click on the download button there, everything goes fine (the image is available there - like you see below).

I am not sure if this is some sort of protection (no hotlinking or something like that) implemented from AllCDCovers site or if they are in a process of changing the way some of the images are presented (or maybe something else completely different, probably).

P.S.: One more, almost identical, again from Amazon (.jp)...
artist: Snap
album: The Power (Best of Snap)
souce: Amazon (.jp)

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1120 –
Well, the board won't let me edit the message above (I don't know why, exactly... time limit?), so here's some more sources for the "HTML glitch":

artist: Paul van Dyk
album: 45 RPM
source: Amazon (.jp)

artist: Ian Van Dahl
album: A.C.E.
source: Amazon (.jp)

artist: (empty)
album: Cream Ibiza Arrivals
source: Amazon (.co.uk)
and some caps for this last one (the first I caught in Amazon.co.uk): main window -->[a href="http://i36.tinypic.com/16j29ud.png" target="_blank"] too much... These ocurrences are very very rare.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1121 –
Quote from: audio20 on
line 75 was missing a closing parenthesis:
Oops, you're right of course, sorry.

Quote from: audio20 on
Does the Regex.Replace in StripCharacters on util.boo replaces any (and all) "problematic" characters with an empty string?
Yes. If you want it to be a space instead, just change the "" in the line to " ". I doubt multiple spaces would have any effect on results, but space vs. no space probably would. Maybe even some characters should be spaces and some just removed? I was thinking of things like Alisha's Attic, which would almost certainly have better results as Alishas Attic than Alisha s Attic! On the other hand, as you say Vol 1 is probably better than Vol1.

Quote from: audio20 on
I was also thinking that the characters "(" and ")" could be stripped from the strings... What do you think?
Easy enough to check, just add them to the list in the StripCharacters call. I can't think off hand of any artist or album names with those characters in, but I expect there are some.

Quote from: audio20 on
I've tested 10 albums so far and compared the results
That's great work, thanks a lot! Some of the results are very surprising, though - from personal experience I know the Amazon search using a web browser works fine with &, so the Aly & AJ result was unexpected. Rather than stripping, that could probably be fixed to encode the & in the way it does in the web search - needs more investigation, but I'll look into it.

Quote from: audio20 on
arkivmusic consistently gives only false positive results
Arkivmusik is a classical music site. I'm not surprised it does pretty poorly with those searches! If they collect statistics on what people search for on their site, I imagine "Agnes / Dance Love Pop : Love Love Love" is likely to have them scratching their heads a little. :-)

Quote from: audio20 on
HTML glitch
All that information is really useful - I'll try and work up a fix to the Amazon scraper script to fix it.

For AllCDCovers, yes, I believe that's a protection device. I think it's triggered by rate of download of images, or ratio of image to html downloaded or something. It's pretty irritating, but I'm not going to spend too long trying to work around it and get into some sort of arms race.

Thanks again,

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1122 –
Right, I've looked into Amazon, and believe I have an update that should fix the HTML problem. It appears to occur on Amazon.co.jp (randomly, but reproducibly), and on other countries when there was no artist listed for a result, only an album title. The updated amazon-common.boo should take care of both of those cases.

Further, I've checked out why amazon wasn't working with the & character, and have fixed that too. I've removed the stripping from Amazon and Freecovers, the rest are undecided. With the updated util.boo, though, results for & and ? should be discarded and re-tested, as they may have been fixed.

Scripts-update.zip

Alex
 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1123 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
For AllCDCovers, yes, I believe that's a protection device. I think it's triggered by rate of download of images, or ratio of image to html downloaded or something.

Just a reminder, I investigated this problem back in 2008. It's a leech prevention system which seems to use session hashes (or similar) which expire after about 15 minutes.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1124 –
Hi, Alex,
thank you for all your fast responses!

I've been trying to come up with a more efficient method for testing the album examples for the stripping/no stripping scripts.

My internet connection is not very good, and I was loosing a lot of time before, just downloading images that I wouldn't even keep in the end.

So I went on to read the command line reference again to see if there was a way to disable in batch (all at once) the "Search First" option for each source. I couldn't find it, so I just wrote a command line to enable "Search First" on all but ArkivMusik (as I intended) and then another to re-enable just the ones I usually use (for when I was finished testing).

I only found the command line reference on the help menu, which is fine for me, but it got me thinking:
Why not include a txt file with this reference in the program folder?
(maybe even a .rtf or .pdf file, like these --> rapidshare.com/files/304880632/Command_Line_Reference.zip )

I also thought it could be good to include the sources names in the reference, since the users will be using them quite often.

The other thing I was searching for was a way to disable all the "Always download full size" options I previously marked on some of the individual sources. I Couldn't find it, so I did it by opening (and closing) each source and unchecking the option there (quite a few clicks, I must say...). The positive side of this was that I also needed to reset the "Limit to xx results" option, so this was a good opportunity.

It seams to me it would make sense to have both a "08:" ("Limit to xx results") and a "A:" ("Always download full size") parameter, for those options for each source. (in the same fashion of the "F:" for the "Search First" option) e.g.
Code: [Select]
AlbumArt.exe /s "A:F:Album Art Exchange,08:F:Coveralia,20:GoogleImage"

It could be good also to have an abbreviation system for the various sources (it could even help prevent some errors due to misspelling on the command line). e.g.: Album Art Exchange = AAE | AllCdCover = ACD | Amazon (.ca) = ACA | Amazon (.co.uk) = AUK | Amazon (.com) = ACO | Amazon (.de) = ADE | Amazon (.fr) = AFR | Amazon (.jp) = AJP | Archambault = ARC | ArkivMusik = AMS | Buy.com = BUY | CD Baby = CBY | CD Universe = CUN | Cover-Paradies = CPA | Coveralia = COV | CoverIsland = CIS | Darktown = DTW | Discogs = DIS | Encyclopaedia Metallum = EME | Freecovers API = FRA | GoogleImage = GOO | hitparade.ch = HIT | HMV Canada = HCA | Juno Records = JUN | LastFM Artist = LAR | LastFM Cover = LCO | maniadb = MDB | Metal Library = MEL | MusicMight = MUM | Psyshop = PSY | RevHQ = RHQ | Yes24 = Y24 | YesAsia = YES

This way, we could have an absolutely complete (but not as much massive) command line:
Code: [Select]
AlbumArt.exe /ac off /mn 200 /mx 2100 /o s /o a- /s "12:A:F:AAE,15:F:ACD,12:A:F:ACA,12:A:F:AUK,12:A:F:ACO,12:A:F:ADE,12:A:F:AFR,12:A:F:AJP,4:ARC,4:AMS,4:BUY,12:A:F:CBY,12:A:F:CUN,12:CPA,8:F:COV,8:CIS,8:DTW,8:A:F:DIS,4:EME,8:FRA,20:F:GOO,4:A:F:HIT,4:HCA,12:A:F:JUN,6:F:LAR,4:A:F:LCO,4:MDB,4:MEL,4:MUM,4:PSY,4:RHQ,12:A:Y24,12:A:YES" /fileBrowser

instead of this (incomplete and more massive):
Code: [Select]
AlbumArt.exe /ac off /mn 200 /mx 2100 /o s /o a- /s "F:Album Art Exchange,F:AllCdCover,F:Amazon (.ca),F:Amazon (.co.uk),F:Amazon (.com),F:Amazon (.de),F:Amazon (.fr),F:Amazon (.jp),Archambault,Buy.com,F:CD Baby,F:CD Universe,Cover-Paradies,F:Coveralia,CoverIsland,Darktown,F:Discogs,Encyclopaedia Metallum,Freecovers API,F:GoogleImage,F:hitparade.ch,HMV Canada,F:Juno Records,F:LastFM Artist,F:LastFM Cover,maniadb,Metal Library,MusicMight,Psyshop,RevHQ,Yes24,YesAsia" /fileBrowser

I know it's very uncharacteristic to have such a complete command line, but when you start to fiddle and change your sources and the specifics of each source as often as I've been changing, you never know what kind of settings were left the last time. This way, it's always best to re-set everything again (just to be safe).

There's always the argument against all these changes I brought up above: very few people will probably make use of these (command line reference file on folder | abbreviation for sources | "limit result" and "always downl. full size" options for sources on Comd.Line). I just thought it was worth bringing it up anyway, just in case you might agree with any of those remarks.

Quote from: Akkurat on
...AllCDCovers... Just a reminder, I investigated this problem back in 2008. It's a leech prevention system which seems to use session hashes (or similar) which expire after about 15 minutes.
Hi, Akkurat,
I must admit  that I did not think of searching the thread for this problem before I posted. Thanks for the remainder! 
It's nice knowing all that. It will be much easier to avoid this problem using the 15 minute rule now. 

Quote from: AlexVallat on
...Maybe even some characters should be spaces and some just removed? I was thinking of things like Alisha's Attic, which would almost certainly have better results as Alishas Attic than Alisha s Attic! On the other hand, as you say Vol 1 is probably better than Vol1.
Indeed! I hadn't thought of that. Maybe we could execute the function 2 times then, one time replacing some of the characters by a single space and another just stripping the rest of them. (I thought it could be easier to pass on the replacement value in the function, rather than creating another function for different char replacements)

Quote
...arkivmusic consistently gives only false positive...
Arkivmusik is a classical music site. I'm not surprised it does pretty poorly with those searches! If they collect statistics on what people search for on their site, I imagine "Agnes / Dance Love Pop : Love Love Love" is likely to have them scratching their heads a little. :-)
That's very funny indeed! I didn't have the basic idea to go out and check ArkivMusik site... Now I get the reason for all those false positives! Still, I think it's advisable to always disable this source by default. It's usually (for most users, probably) a waste of bandwidth.

Quote
...HTML glitch...
All that information is really useful - I'll try and work up a fix to the Amazon scraper script to fix it...
...I've looked into Amazon, and believe I have an update that should fix the HTML problem...
Wow!  That was lightning-fast!

Quote from: AlexVallat on
...I've checked out why amazon wasn't working with the & character, and have fixed that too. I've removed the stripping from Amazon and Freecovers, the rest are undecided. With the updated util.boo, though, results for & and ? should be discarded and re-tested, as they may have been fixed.
Ok, I started a whole new test battery (and included more albums to widen the sample, including also the characters "(" and ")").

I did a slight modification of the scripts you sent, just for testing purposes. It seams to me it would be more beneficial if we could compare the effects of stripping/no-stripping: (a) including the "(" and ")" characters and (b) testing the effects of stripping different characters on all sources.

Let me explain why I decided to reintroduce stripping to Amazon and Freecovers: I am still believing that Amazon will give equal results on both stripping and no-stripping and I would like very much to see if that's true. I also believe it would be beneficial to have Amazon tested for stripping against a much wider sample than those initial 10 albums I did. And regarding Freecovers, if you inspect carefully the results from before, you'll see that it give worst results for stripping for 3 cases, and better results for 2 cases. Being like that, I would like to see the results it would provide for a wider test sample.

Quote
...AllCDCovers...
...protection...irritating, but I'm not going to spend too long trying to work around it and get into some sort of arms race.
I completely agree with you. We (users) can still wait the 15 minute grace period (as Akkurat pointed out) or just follow the link and type the captcha if we can't wait at all to get the image. Trying to implement something to go around it could be pointless, mainly because it would be probably outdated very quickly, as you said.

I'm still testing  and as soon as I'm done, I'll post the results.

Thanks again for everything!