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Topic: Album Art Downloader XUI (Read 2066444 times) previous topic - next topic
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Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1875 –
@Spile:
That looks like a problem I had some pages back. For me the problem appeared to be in Windows XP's environment variables. If you go to Control panel --> System --> Advanced --> Environment variables you'll see "Path" under system variables. Double click on it and check the line for anything put there by 3rd party programs. Delete those parts and try again.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1876 –
Quote from: pianoinbush on
it seems that discogs script has some problems as I don't get any results from it lately
Ooh, it looks like Discogs has a shiny new API to play with. Here's an updated script that should work with it: discogs.boo. It's a major change, though (pretty much a re-write), so if you could give it a go and let me know any problems with it before I publish it through online updates, I'd appreciate it.

Quote from: spile on
Have tried uninstalling version 0.37 and reinstalling latest version but it still crashes when I use the browse option...
I'm sorry Album Art Downloader is not working for you, but I can't give you any other answer than the one I've already given. There is something wrong with the Windows Imaging Components installed on your PC. No new version of Album Art Downloader is going to fix that.

Quote from: MC Escher link=msg=0 date=
check the [system path] for anything put there by 3rd party programs. Delete those parts and try again.
I'd be very interested to know what the part of the Path that caused the issue was - I don't suppose there's any chance you recorded what it was before deleting it, is there?

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1877 –
Back, finally, I can't believe how fast time goes.. and it's summer too, don't want to miss that completely.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: Akkurat on
Ok, next script idea: Glandigo Music
Did you notice that all their images come from "aim4music.com", though? That site seems to be under maintenance of some sort, but if it comes back with a search of its own, it would make sense to go straight to the source and ignore Glandigo as a middle-man. Maybe worth giving it a week or two and see what it comes up with?

IIRC the site has been like that for some time already (=months, could be many months). The site in 2007 and 2009 tells e.g. that: "Aim4Music offers a flexible solution which is fast and easy to implement. The result is a custom-made website that completely integrates with the platform using our tools, whilst maintaining your own identity and quality.".. I think that they're only providing content for other website stores.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
I can do a pure iTunes search without involving Google or Bing, and involving far less server round-tripping as it doesn't have to fetch the iTunes web page for each album to get the thumbnail. I'm not usually much of a fan of Apple's, but I've got to admit, this is the way an API ought to be done.

The downside is that it only searches the US store. You can choose to search a different one, but not to search across all stores, which is a shame.

Hey, can't you write a loop where you try to get images from different itunes stores (starting from "big" countries going through all stores) until you get some results and then stop the loop? For example, now searching for "José Luis Perales / Tiempo de Otoño" doesn't get any results from the script. Why not just loop back and do the same search with the next country store? I don't see why it shouldn't work, just as long as there are not ~100 stores to go through. You have 22 alternative stores, so 23 stores all and all. If you arrange them wisely (e.g. first US, CA, GB, DE, ..., SE, FI, LU) on most cases the first stores gets the job done fast. If something obscure is searched, I'm sure the user won't mind the extra wait of script going through several stores, as long as the chances of getting an artwork increases.

API done right, really? It doesn't fetch exact album results at all. Which might make it harder to implement the "loop stores" method above.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
Discogs has a shiny new API to play with. Here's an updated script that should work with it: discogs.boo.

Seems to work.

--------

To Ideas for new scripts page: WantItAll.co.za ?

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1878 –
Hi-Bit of a newbie here-downloaded AAD recently and was working fine until I updated my iTunes-Now I get a blank when I try to copy a cover into the iTunes window
 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1879 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: MC Escher link=msg=0 date=
check the [system path] for anything put there by 3rd party programs. Delete those parts and try again.
I'd be very interested to know what the part of the Path that caused the issue was - I don't suppose there's any chance you recorded what it was before deleting it, is there?

Alex


If I remember correctly, there were two (or maybe three) additions made by third party programmes, one of which was The Gimp. I removed them all so I don't know which one was to blame.
Interesting side effect: if I called system programmes like chkdsk from cmd.exe, the command was not recognised unless I navigated to C:\Windows\system32\ first. There was nothing wrong with the path %SystemRoot%\system32 and even adding C:\Windows\system32\chkdsk.exe at the beginning of the line didn't work, until I removed all the crap.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1880 –
Quote from: Akkurat on
Welcome back!

I had a look to see if I could find anything else using aim4music that had a working search feature. http://www.mega-media.nl/ does reasonably well - I can search by album title and get useful results, but would then have to filter by artist within the script itself. Still, I don't have anything Netherlands-focussed sources yet, so it might be worth doing.

I don't really want to start performing multiple searches in a single script, and I don't think people would agree on the right order to search them in anyway. Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm going to stick with one script per country store. What I meant by the API done right was that it doesn't require any sort of sign-up or key, and it returns all the relevant information from a single http GET. Something I'd really like to see in other APIs.

I've added WantItAll to the wiki page. The results I saw were just some more ~500px covers, and the usual sort of selection in the catalogue - nothing outstanding about the site, but it doesn't look hard to work with if a reason to use it does come up.

Quote from: MC Escher on
Interesting side effect: if I called system programmes like chkdsk from cmd.exe, the command was not recognised unless I navigated to C:\Windows\system32\ first. There was nothing wrong with the path %SystemRoot%\system32 and even adding C:\Windows\system32\chkdsk.exe at the beginning of the line didn't work, until I removed all the crap.
That is interesting. I have no idea how adding extra stuff to the path can stop the standard "%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;" entries at the start from applying, but certainly not having those directories in the system path would cause all sorts of badness. @spile, if you wouldn't mind posting the contents of your path variable, I can try setting mine to the same value and seeing if I can reproduce the problem.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1881 –
Alex, please note this newly merged-in post (previously its own topic but hardly seems to require that):
Quote from: Jlo7551 on
Hi-Bit of a newbie here-downloaded AAD recently and was working fine until I updated my iTunes-Now I get a blank when I try to copy a cover into the iTunes window

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1882 –
Quote from: db1989 on
Thanks, db1989. @Jlo7551[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=765986"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a], I'm going to need a little more detail to be able to help. Can you paste into any other application: Paint, for example? Is it only certain covers that can't be pasted, or all of them? Do you get any error message appearing when you try to copy the cover? Have you already seen the full-size image, or did it have to download it before completing the copy operation? A little globe symbol appears in the top left of the cover while it is downloading.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1883 –
Quote from: pianoinbush on
Hey Alex
it seems that discogs script has some problems as I don't get any results from it lately

thanks for the work, as usually

hey, I heat to repeat myself, but it seems that the discussion drifted too far away from my post. sorry.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1884 –
Quote from: pianoinbush on
hey, I heat to repeat myself, but it seems that the discussion drifted too far away from my [discogs] post. sorry.
Guess you must have missed my reply!  Discogs have made a new API, and I've updated the Discogs script to access it: discogs.boo

Early indications are that it's working fine, so unless you report any problems with it, I'll probably publish it through online updates later today.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1885 –
As promised, a Mega Media (aim4music.nl back-end) script: megamedia.boo.

As ever, please let me know of any issues with it.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1886 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
I don't really want to start performing multiple searches in a single script, and I don't think people would agree on the right order to search them in anyway. Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm going to stick with one script per country store. What I meant by the API done right was that it doesn't require any sort of sign-up or key, and it returns all the relevant information from a single http GET.

Ok, now I understand the API part. I'm actually surprised that apple doesn't have any sign-up or key to their API.

About multiple searches: the best part is that people could choose the order & stores used. How? Just put an array variable with countrycodes to the script which can be easily edited. Or allow more than 1 additional scripts enabled simultaneously. Which brings me to; did I understand the additional country store scripts correctly: one can enable only 1 store search at the same time? That's a bit of a bummer.. especially for "batch searchers". Well, I guess you can't have everything.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
As promised, a Mega Media (aim4music.nl back-end) script: megamedia.boo.

When searching "turin brakes / ether song" there's one "empty" result (no picture) which refers to this page. I guess you have to check that the picture is actually there, not just an album page.

And I'm curious, how/why did you categorize the script as "Netherlands"? Why not "general"? Does it have mainly Dutch artists? No, just checking the artists page (and doing some searches) tells me that it's really a general script, artists all over the world. It's the same thing as e.g. "Canadian" "HMV Canada" script, it's more of an general script IMHO. I always test new scripts so I'm not worried, but some other users may be confused and think that the script is only for Dutch artists (category Reggae means reggae music, right? And Dance/Trance means certain type of music, so what does Netherlands mean? I haven't seen any "Netherlands" music type yet, so it must mean Dutch artist, right? That's ok if the site/script has mostly that kind of artists.). What good does it do to categorize a script based on it's top-level domain? (IF that is what you've done) IIRC, I initially said that it might be hard to categorize scripts, and to me now it looks like that you're trying too hard to categorize scripts out of the general cat. I don't know, some of your categories baffle me a lot.  (phew, that was long, sorry! ) Anyways, a million thanks again for another script!

I still have one very good source (with seemingly unlimited sizes AND picture quality URL switch!), but do you want to hear about it at all since it's only usable with google?

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1887 –
Just tried it and they have yet again added more protection measures (this has happened twice already before this), this time "services are not yet available in your country" checking & redirecting.. now one has to use google AND its "Cached" feature to get the images. So it's still available but how long?

Ok, the site is Deezer. (I can only see a "Deezer's music services are not yet available in your country." page wherever I try to go.)

It has been a struggle to find a perfect google search method, but I think that the following is ok: example #1, example #2, example #3.

Then use the "Cached" link to retrieve a page and find an image URL (http://cdn-images.deezer.com/images/cover/THISPARTCHANGES/120x120-000000-80-0-0.jpg) with regexp.

Next change the size (obviously the 120x120 part in the URL) to something you like. It seems that there's no limit at all! Though I haven't tested SICKLARGE  sizes in fear of crashing browser. EDIT: I got 9000x9000px with 80 quality (it takes a while) but 10000x10000px with the same quality was too much for the browser, it time-outed the page request (it takes too long for the site to make the image on-fly).

And finally the quality switch (the "80" in the URL) to 100, compare here: quality 80 Vs. quality 100 (compare the circles in the shirt for reduced artifacts in the quality 100 image).

There seems to be some kind of an API available (I can't reach it).


That's it. That was my last source. All in all, I counted that my suggestions yielded almost 10 new scripts. I'm happy that I could share those with you.. and I'm happy that I can scratch off this task from my to-dos and move to the next in my never ending list.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1888 –
Is there an easy way (or different easy ways) to launch the Foobar Browser from within Foobar2000?  I recall (perhaps incorrectly) I was able to do this in the past, but can't remember how.

I do know how to launch Foobar Browser while I'm in AAD, and I know I have the COM automation component correctly installed and working in Foobar.  thanks.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1889 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: db1989 on
Thanks, db1989. @Jlo7551[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=765986"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a], I'm going to need a little more detail to be able to help. Can you paste into any other application: Paint, for example? Is it only certain covers that can't be pasted, or all of them? Do you get any error message appearing when you try to copy the cover? Have you already seen the full-size image, or did it have to download it before completing the copy operation? A little globe symbol appears in the top left of the cover while it is downloading.

Alex


Alex-It applys to all covers and I'm suddenly unable to paste the image anywhere-even my desktop(tried that as a test)-I'm not getting any error messages or warnings of any kind-The images just won't paste(or copy) properly-They didn't show up at all when I tries to paste to the desktop as a test and they show up as a blank square in iTunes-I am able to load and view the full size image properly-The issue only arises once I try to copy to iTunes-And as areminder, this only started with an iTunes update a few days ago-Hope that helps with the info you need

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1890 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: pianoinbush on
hey, I heat to repeat myself, but it seems that the discussion drifted too far away from my [discogs] post. sorry.
Guess you must have missed my reply!  Discogs have made a new API, and I've updated the Discogs script to access it: discogs.boo

Early indications are that it's working fine, so unless you report any problems with it, I'll probably publish it through online updates later today.

Alex

sorry, I'm amazed I managed to miss it
thanks!

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1891 –
Quote from: Akkurat on
did I understand the additional country store scripts correctly: one can enable only 1 store search at the same time?
No, you can have as many as you like, it should work fine. It's a bit redundant to install them all, but if you really must, then nothing is stopping you.

Quote from: Akkurat on
I guess you have to check that the picture is actually there, not just an album page.
Well that's a pain. I'll see what I can do.

Quote from: Akkurat on
And I'm curious, how/why did you categorize the script as "Netherlands"?
If you've got a better suggestion for a name for the category, I'm open to it. I chose Netherlands because it has albums like these (which are hard to find on other General sources), and it does not have a lot of the artists I use on my standard test searches (for example: Muse, Ash, The Offspring). I think it's more helpful to suggest that if you are looking for Dutch music, this would be a good script to try.

I'm open to better category suggestions, but as you guess, I do want to avoid "General" as much as possible, as that gives you no information about why you might want to install that script or not.

Quote from: Akkurat on
the site is Deezer. (I can only see a "Deezer's music services are not yet available in your country." page wherever I try to go.)
Deezer looks interesting. I can't see anything other than 'not available yet' either, but strangely I can access their API: Example. Can you? If you can't, then chances are it isn't worth doing a script for as I can't rely on it working for anyone else, but if you can then all I need to do is figure out the API interface and it should be doable. The fact that you can get unlimited sizes of images suggests they are just being resized on the fly, so what I'll need is some way of figuring out what the native size of the image is. It's not really helpful to download a 9000x9000px image that was generated by the server resizing a 600x600 native one!

Quote from: Akkurat on
That's it. That was my last source. All in all, I counted that my suggestions yielded almost 10 new scripts. I'm happy that I could share those with you.. and I'm happy that I can scratch off this task from my to-dos and move to the next in my never ending list.
Nice work in finding them! I hope people find them useful, thank you.

Quote from: godrick on
Is there an easy way (or different easy ways) to launch the Foobar Browser from within Foobar2000?
I would suggest using foo_run, and giving it the command line "C:\Program Files\AlbumArtDownloader\AlbumArt.exe" /foobarBrowser (adjusting for where you've installed it, if necessary). Or /foobarBrowser search if you prefer it to start searching immediately too.

Quote from: Jlo7551 on
Alex-It applys to all covers and I'm suddenly unable to paste the image anywhere-[...] this only started with an iTunes update a few days ago
Thanks for the additional info. If you exit iTunes completely (which can be tricky to do, it loves to keep itself running), can you then copy and paste elsewhere? Can you copy and paste images from other programs (like your web browser)? I found this thread which suggests it's an iTunes problem, but if it is still happening even if iTunes is not running (or even better, not installed!) then something else must be wrong...

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1892 –
Updated megamedia.boo (now checks for and excludes blank images)

For testing: deezer.boo
If people could let me know if it works for them or not, and which country they are in, that would be helpful. Unless you are in a Deezer-supported country, the info Url (small (i) button) will probably just show you a "Deezer not available in your country" page, but at least for the moment the actual search and images seem to work.

I'm using "0x0-000000-0-0-0.jpg" as the suffix for Deezer, which (as I hoped) appears to give the native size and quality. They are all around 1400x1400, which is pretty good.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1893 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
For testing: deezer.boo
If people could let me know if it works for them or not, and which country they are in, that would be helpful. Unless you are in a Deezer-supported country, the info Url (small (i) button) will probably just show you a "Deezer not available in your country" page, but at least for the moment the actual search and images seem to work.

Alex


The plugin work here in the USA, though it's 'not available in your country'

The two items I searched for returned 1417 x 1417 sized images.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1894 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
No, you can have as many as you like, it should work fine. It's a bit redundant to install them all, but if you really must, then nothing is stopping you.

Ok, thanks for correcting me.. ATM I'm going to use the google script, but if that fails at some point, I'll check the add. store stuff. Thanks.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
I'm open to better category suggestions, but as you guess, I do want to avoid "General" as much as possible, as that gives you no information about why you might want to install that script or not.

Like I've said, I find it hard to categorize most of the scripts, so I don't have any suggestions other than not categorizing at all. Which leads to the actual reason why I think that we disagree so much with this; I think we have very different thoughts about how (new) users use AAD. I've a hard time thinking that (new) users wouldn't use almost all of the scripts (initial testing for which scripts might be good/maximizing the chances to get best artwork available), as opposed to your thinking that (new) users use only a limited set of scripts (a view I've from what you've posted here previously), which is actually sort of what I do; I use the "search first" feature first.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
strangely I can access their API: Example. Can you?

Yes I can! (For now, hopefully they don't monitor where the new requests for artwork come from and restrict it somehow like they have done several times with their website.) Excellent excellent find!

Quote from: AlexVallat on
The fact that you can get unlimited sizes of images suggests they are just being resized on the fly, so what I'll need is some way of figuring out what the native size of the image is. It's not really helpful to download a 9000x9000px image that was generated by the server resizing a 600x600 native one!

Never got to the part of checking out the image qualities (now I've and you're right, the source images are not as big as I dreamed/hoped).. and because I thought that it was accessible from google (cached) only, I thought that you would scrap the idea completely.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1895 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Updated megamedia.boo (now checks for and excludes blank images)

Works, thanks.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
For testing: deezer.boo
If people could let me know if it works for them or not, and which country they are in, that would be helpful. Unless you are in a Deezer-supported country, the info Url (small (i) button) will probably just show you a "Deezer not available in your country" page, but at least for the moment the actual search and images seem to work.

I'm using "0x0-000000-0-0-0.jpg" as the suffix for Deezer, which (as I hoped) appears to give the native size and quality. They are all around 1400x1400, which is pretty good.

Script works too, website still says "not available in your country".

About the native quality: the quality URL trick I described earlier still produces less artifacts than the "native" URL. "Native" (size: 146 KB) Vs. "best quality" (345 KB). Again, compare the circles in the shirt for slightly reduced artifacts (looking the monitor from downward angle should reveal the artifacts better). The "best quality" is actually slightly better than an iTunes image (google script search, the API script doesn't find this big image) (141 KB) of the same album (obviously the same source of images).

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1896 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Thanks for the additional info. If you exit iTunes completely (which can be tricky to do, it loves to keep itself running), can you then copy and paste elsewhere? Can you copy and paste images from other programs (like your web browser)? I found this thread which suggests it's an iTunes problem, but if it is still happening even if iTunes is not running (or even better, not installed!) then something else must be wrong...

Alex

OK-I've tried shutting off iTunes and I still can't copy and paste from AAD into any folder-I can still copy and paste normally within any other function on the computer whether iTunes is on or not, just not from AAD-I CAN save the covers to a document folder from AAD and then I can copy them to my desktop then into iTunes but that seems like a rather roundabout way to do get it done. I hope this will help with figuring this out because I definitely like the program. Thank Alex.

Jeff

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1897 –
Quote from: Akkurat on
About the native quality: the quality URL trick I described earlier still produces less artifacts than the "native" URL.
Sorry, I just don't see it! If the image returned with no specific quality requested comes back as about 85 (according to a jpeg quality estimator I found), but one requested at 100 is better quality (which I will have to trust you on), then it stands to reason that there is some other underlying native image that is being converted to jpeg on the server, and it is just using 85 as a default for some reason. Ideally I'd like to be able to get that native, unconverted image, but I suppose they just aren't exposing that.

You think Deezer and iTunes are getting images from the same underlying source?

I noticed one album cover with some quite nasty artefacts: iTunes, Deezer, Deezer-100. To me, they are all as bad as each other.

Quote from: Jlo7551 on
I can still copy and paste normally within any other function on the computer [...] just not from AAD
I'm afraid I've got to admit I'm baffled here. The code for copying the image to the clipboard quite literally just calls the .net library function "Clipboard.SetImage", I'm not doing anything special or unusual there, I can't think of any good reason why other applications can put images on the clipboard, and AAD can't. As it isn't reporting any error messages, that doesn't give me anything to go on either.

Just one thing - you say you can't "paste from AAD into any folder" - you wouldn't normally be able to paste an image into a folder (you can only paste files into a folder); but you should be able to paste it into a document Write or Paint or similar.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1898 –
FYI When you shut down iTunes, it still leaves 2 iTunes processes running in the background. You should kill those processes before testing.
Glass half full!

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1899 –
Using windows 7 x64 (virtual machine in vmware fusion), I have this really annoying bug with the latest version, everything is RED:

http://imgur.com/htGkb

How can I solve this ?