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Topic: Album Art Downloader XUI (Read 2066601 times) previous topic - next topic
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Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1075 –
Quote from: audio20 on
how much more zoom will you get with each turn of the wheel - 5%? 10%? 50%?
The plan is to use the same speed as the Preview window uses (if you hold down the Ctrl key, the wheel zooms it), so you can try it out now. If you want numbers, though, it's 1.3x / turn. So if you are at 100%, and scroll the wheel by one click, it should become 130%. The next click would be 1.3*130% = 169%.
 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1076 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
...how much more zoom will you get with each turn of the wheel...
The plan is to use the same speed as the Preview window uses (if you hold down the Ctrl key, the wheel zooms it), so you can try it out now. If you want numbers, though, it's 1.3x / turn. So if you are at 100%, and scroll the wheel by one click, it should become 130%. The next click would be 1.3*130% = 169%.

Oh, I see... Thanks for the information! It's very clear now.
(I had already used it, but the zooming values were a little bit confusing for me, I hadn't figured out it was a "geometric" progression)

I don't mean to be disrespectuful in any way, and please forgive me for saying this, but don't you think a more "arithmetic" progression would be better?
(instead of going from 100% to 130%,169%,220%,286%,371%,483% we could go to 125%,150%,175%,200%,225%,250%)

Although in the "geometric" progression you reach a higher zooming factor much faster, in my experience those "round" (integer, 50% multiples) zooming factors are always better to work with (probably because they are easier to interpolate, they always result in a more precise, better image).

Another point (that I mentioned earlier) is that there isn't really much probability that people will need to reach those higher zooming factors (above 400%, etc) so often. So, I don't think there is much need to climb so fast in the zooming scale (not to mention that you might loose the oportunity of reaching much more useful lower-values zooming factors this way - by stepping over them).

I think that a fixed progression of 25% could be ideal; It is not too slow to reach higher zooming factors, but not too fast either. You pass a lot of 'good-looking' zooming factors in your way up and it is easier to mentally associate those fixed steps with each wheel turn.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1077 –
Quote from: audio20 on
don't you think a more "arithmetic" progression would be better?
No, I'm pretty sure a geometric progression is better. That way, the amount you zoom in or out is not dependent on your current zoom level. Consider it with a factor of 2, for example (too high, but makes the maths easier). If the image is at 100% and you zoom in one step, it expands to twice it's size. If the image is already at, say 150%, and you zoom in one step, it still expands to twice its size.

Using an arithmetic progression would feel all wrong, as you would be zooming slower and slower the larger you made the image, and faster as you zoomed out, until presumably you hit 0% and it just wouldn't show any more.

For a simple example, consider that there is a large difference between 10% zoom and 20% zoom, a small difference between 100% zoom and 110% zoom, and almost no difference at all between 500% zoom and 510% zoom.

What I'd suggest is to try ignoring the numerical zoom value, and just zoom in and out a bit with the wheel looking at the image. If you still think it's too fast, I could drop it to 1.2x instead (100%, 120%, 144%, 173%, etc.)

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1078 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
No, I'm pretty sure a geometric progression is better. That way, the amount you zoom in or out is not dependent on your current zoom level.
Your explanation was really good! I got it now. I also made an analogy with the zooming scheme the graphics programs use (irfan view, photoshop, thumbs plus, etc) and the steps are much more close to a geometric progression indeed (or is it logarithmic?). The main difference is that they tend to use aproximation steps (multiples of 25% and 33.33%).

Quote
...try ignoring the numerical zoom value, and just zoom in and out a bit with the wheel looking at the image.
Asolutely. You're wright. I did this and I must say that with the current scaling algorithm all zooming scales seam pretty equal in quality to me (even the most odd numbers). And the stepping felt pretty natural also.

Quote
If you still think it's too fast, I could drop it to 1.2x instead (100%, 120%, 144%, 173%, etc.)
Not really. I'm quite convinced the 1.3x currently being used in the program is indeed quite adequate (for me, at least).

Thanks again for the thorough explanation. 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1079 –
Hi, Alex,
I had another idea, but I really don't know if it would be hard to implement or not (or maybe you simply won't like it, and that's perfectly fine):


How about color-coding the "Size-Banding" scheme (Group by: Size), making them even more distinct from each other?

It seams to me that since you know there are always at most 5 bands you can assign a specific color to them. This way, the presentation is not only more visually actrative, but also more cognitive. In time, you will instantly recognize the images you want. Another good thing is that whenever you have tooo many images in one band you know "where you are", even away from the Band header.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1080 –
...and one small request (if it is possible to implement at all):

I know that for most of the images found in the various sources the file size is completely unknown.

But, whenever you mark your option to "automatically download full size images" (either for unkown sizes, or directly on the source options), there are now many images in the results that you could know the file size (in kb).

I wish, if possible at all, that these file sizes were presented to us on the interface, maybe creating one more line for it on each image that has been fully downloaded.


For these Amazon images, for instance, you
might not notice at first that some are very
different from the others, unless you have the
file size information.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1081 –
Hi all.

First off, I'd like to thank Alex for his dedication and all the partecipants for the interesting ideas that will help improve this already amazing program.

I'd like to voice a little concern I have about the zooming method proposed: I'm not an expert in graphics and imaging and I'm wondering if people like me could really benefit from it or would only be more confused...

IOW, will it be obvious also for inexperienced users which image is the best? Or is it an experts-only feature?

Alessandro

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1082 –
Quote from: mobyduck on
...a little concern...about the zooming method proposed...people like me could really benefit...or...be more confused...will it be obvious...which image is the best...experts-only feature...

Hi! 
I'm not really sure if I am the best person to respond this, but I'll try. (I'm not an expert also. Consider the possibility that I might be wrong in all that I'm saying)

There's currently 2 things being recently discussed that involve zooming:

1) The program could incorporate a new zooming possibility in the quick preview window (the one you get when you do a simple left-click on the image thumbnail in the main window).

2) Alex was considering replacing the zooming algorithm (the way the program calculates and draws the image whenever you use any sort of zoom in it)

The 1st one isn't an obvious feature (but that does not mean it's an "expert" exclusivity either). Anyone that isn't aware (or does not try, or doesn't look for it) won't even know of that possibility (zooming on the quick preview). I don't think this could particularly confuse anyone, since most people won't try to use the mouse wheel while they're in the quick preview (unless they're trying to zoom, in which case they'll be probably happy it actually works).
In other words, "what you don't know doesn't bother you" and "those who seek, shall find it". 

The 2nd one concerns every user that will make use of the popup preview window (the one you call from the context menu - right-click on the image thumbnail and choose "Preview...") or even the quick preview (when it incorporates zooming possibilities).

It seams to me that everytime you use the zoom the program actually makes a larger (or smaller) copy of the image to present you with a "closer" (or "farther") view. The method it will use to make this new image (only for vieweing purposes - not for saving) can be more accurate (the image will display the pixel blocks if you zoom close enough - e.g. 500% or more) or more smooth (the image could look a bit more blurry, but it tends to look better overall).

The discussion we were having was if most people use the zoom for image inspection (in which case the more accurate view is preferred) or if enough people had another good use for the zoom that would require (or favor) a better looking image on the zoom. The fact is that if you don't zoom too much (let's say more than 300% or 400%) or too often, this probably won't affect you in a considerable manner. Anyway, Alex was asking anyone if they had any reason to keep the current (better looking, less accurate) zooming.
If you do use the zooming for inspecting the image, some of us think that there is a good possibility that you will benefit from the new algorithm. But it also might be something that you won't even notice.

Both changes, in the end, would have one thing in common: they're targeted towards making it even easier for any user to select the absolute best from the images that are being presented from the various sources.

I hope this helps you make sense if it will affect you somehow or not. And if it does, please speak up. This is precisely the right time to do so. 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1083 –
Thanks for your reply, audio20.
Quote from: audio20 on
The discussion we were having was if most people use the zoom for image inspection (in which case the more accurate view is preferred) or if enough people had another good use for the zoom that would require (or favor) a better looking image on the zoom.
I was aware of both zooming methods and I use them (mostly the left-click on the thumbnail) for image inspection.
Quote from: audio20 on
Alex was asking anyone if they had any reason to keep the current (better looking, less accurate) zooming.
This is exactly what my doubt is all about: if the current method is better looking, less accurate, I infer the proposed method will be worse looking, more accurate. Being, as I said, no expert (add to that also not so good in English ), I don't understand how a more precise way to render an image can result in a worse looking picture (less accurate=remove imperfections?) and, if so, how can it help make a better decision quality wise.

Alessandro

[Edit]Reading my post after a good cup of coffee, I'm perhaps understanding now: if the image looks ok with the more accurate method you can be confident it is a quality image, which isn't so sure now. So I guess my next question is: which rendering method is implemented by the programs commonly used to display it? I ask because if no good images are found you'll have to pick a bad looking image and, in this case, you'll want one that looks ok in your player rather than in AAD... or maybe I need something stronger than a coffee.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1084 –
Quote from: mobyduck on
This is exactly what my doubt is all about: if the current method is better looking, less accurate, I infer the proposed method will be worse looking, more accurate. Being, as I said, no expert (add to that also not so good in English ), I don't understand how a more precise way to render an image can result in a worse looking picture (less accurate=remove imperfections?) and, if so, how can it help make a better decision quality wise.
Take a look at [a href='index.php?act=findpost&pid=664967']this post[/a], where I show a couple of example images. The one on the right is more accurate, and worse looking. If it helps, think that it accurately reproduces the imperfections in the image! In any case, all of this only applies to the image when zoomed in. At 1:1 zoom, or below (for thumbnails, or when manually zoomed out), the existing scaling algorithm will continue to be used.

As audio20 has mentioned, I'm hoping these changes will be completely unobtrusive for anyone who doesn't actually want to use them, I do try to avoid adding confusion wherever possible.

In answer to a couple more proposals:
File Size: I don't know why you think this information would be easily available. In general, it isn't (or not until the image is downloaded, in any case). It may be possible to do an HTTP HEAD request and ask the server for the size of the file without downloading it, which it may then tell us - but this would still be a new HTTP request to send to the server for every result. I'll do some experiments, but I suspect that for many sources, the overhead of making the server request will mean that you might as well then download the image data too.

Coloured Bands: I don't really like the look of that, to be honest. Maybe I'm just boring with my mostly grey interface, but that's my preference. If you really want, stick it in as a feature request and it might go in someday (so long as it was optional).

Experimental Release
Now, good news, I've had some time this weekend to work on the stuff we've been discussing, so here's a 0.32 experimental version: AlbumArtDownloaderXUI-0.32-experimental.zip. New UI things to try out:
  • Sorting by area
  • "Remove" command on results context menu
  • Zoom by mouse wheel in popup preview window
  • Show Pixels button in the top right of the preview window to toggle between scaling algorithms.

The icon for the Show Pixels button is a bit rubbish; if someone with more artistic talent than me wants to knock together something better (16x16, png with transparency) then I'd be more than happy to replace it. Also note that this doesn't work (has no effect) without the SP1 for .net 3.5 installed.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1085 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
File Size: I don't know why you think this information would be easily available. In general, it isn't (or not until the image is downloaded, in any case). It may be possible to do an HTTP HEAD request and ask the server for the size of the file without downloading it, which it may then tell us - but this would still be a new HTTP request to send to the server for every result. I'll do some experiments, but I suspect that for many sources, the overhead of making the server request will mean that you might as well then download the image data too.
I'm sorry.    I assumed you kept all the images that were downloaded (whenever the "Automatically download full size images" was marked) in some temp files on disk. That way I thought the program could have means of "knowing" the file size (only for these images that were already download - which happens to all Amazon sources, in my case).
I guess it's just like the old saying that says something about "assuming" (I can't quite rembember it, but I know it's not good).
Anyway, that request is not that "critical". Thank you for looking into it.

Quote
Coloured Bands: I don't really like the look of that, to be honest. Maybe I'm just boring with my mostly grey interface, but that's my preference. If you really want, stick it in as a feature request and it might go in someday (so long as it was optional).
Never mind... It was meant more like a sugestion and it has no relevance whatsoever. The program interface is a very personal thing and even the slightest change could ruin it for the creator. Anyway, it's not even boring at all. It's actually very good with the gradient shading and all. I don't disaprove at all, I was just seeking more "contrast" specifically in the size banding scheme, but it's kind of foolish indeed.

Quote
Experimental Release
Now, good news,

You call this good? I call it great!!   

* Sorting by area
Feels so absolutely incredibly natural to me! I love it! Thaaaaaanks! 

* Medium band extended to 520px
I must also say that a lot of good images are back to the Medium band - 600x534/600x528/etc - it's great! Both grouping and sorting are now a perfect 10 in my book!

* "Remove" command on results context menu
I like it (very much). Makes it easier to refine the results (specially when there are too many). Although I would personally prefer to have an icon for direct dismissal of the image (single click, isntead of two), I think it was very clever to put it on the context menu. This way, no one is expected to remove an image involuntarily and the command won't get "in the way" of anyone who doesn't specifically wants to use it.

* Zoom by mouse wheel in popup preview window
I was alredy impressed, but now it's official. You ask for something and you get another thing twice as good...
Here's what I loved:
- the possibility of quickly inspecting the images;
- the fact that the image will hold it's zooming factor until you dismis it (zoom out) even after you release the right-click (makes it so easy to compare a set of images, specially now with the removal option);
- the panning scheme; I thought the panning capabilities is perfectly set up; it's very easy now to quickly inspect even a very small image (e.g. 170x170);
- the fact that the preview window doesn't grow and "jump in your face" when you zoom in;
- the fact that you don't zoom out less than 100% (I like that limitation and it makes perfect sense to me);
- the fact that the image will also hold the panning that you did before, making it so easy to compare some sets of images;

* Show Pixels button in the top right of the preview window to toggle between scaling algorithms.
Very easy, very intuitive and it's sure to please everybody now.    Great work!

Quote
The icon for the Show Pixels button is a bit rubbish; if someone with more artistic talent than me wants to knock together something better (16x16, png with transparency) then I'd be more than happy to replace it.
I think this is an almost impossible job. You would surely need a bigger image to portrait with fair accuracy what this button is supposed to do. My guess is that it is good enough now, specially if you already knew what's the button assigned function. But if you don't really know what we've been talking about, you're most likely to find out in practice what this button is supposed to do. The icon is actually good, but it's too small for anyone to figure out what it's representing.
I will think hard  about it and try to see if I can come out with any better ideas for this icon. If I do (which I'm not quite convinced I will), I'll post it here later.

A side note that took me a couple of seconds to figure out, is that whichever zooming scheme/algorithm you choose to have on the popup preview window will also be the one it's used on the quick preview window. I think this makes perfect sense, but it's not "straight-forward" logic. Anyway, I'm just saying, in case anyone else doesn't figure this out at first.

I used to think this program was great, but now I'm out of words...
Thanks again, Alex, for such a great application! 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1086 –
Quote from: audio20 on
I thought the program could have means of "knowing" the file size
Oh, I thought you meant for results for which full size images had not yet been downloaded, so you could make a judgement about whether it was worth downloading them or not. If they've already been downloaded, then yes, it should be possible to determine their size. Sadly not as easy as you assumed, as they aren't actually saved as temp files at all, just held in memory as images - but still technically possible. I'm not sure I see the value in it, though, given that you'll already have the full size image and accurate dimensions by this point. It won't go in to 0.32, but could be added as a feature request for possible future inclusion.

Quote from: audio20 on
You would surely need a bigger image to portrait with fair accuracy what this button is supposed to do.
Given that with a paragraph of text and two 400x400 images I still wasn't able to explain it clearly enough, I don't think any size of icon is going to do that job! I'd still like one that fits in and looks nice, though, and once you know what it does, makes at least some sort of sense.

Thanks a lot for all your comments, it's always good to know when my work is appreciated.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1087 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
...If they've already been downloaded, then yes...Sadly not as easy as you assumed...technically possible...see the value in it...won't go in to 0.32...feature request for possible future inclusion.
Ok, it's very nice to hear that. Maybe in the future indeed, there is no rush whatsoever.
Let me just try to explain the reason why I wanted it in the first place:
I was thinking specifically about Amazon images, although it may apply to every other source. It is very, very common to see Amazon come up with a whole set of images (from the various Amazon sources - .jp,.uk,.de,etc) that look exactly the same and have the exact same dimentions. But when you start inspecting them one by one, sometimes you realise that a few of them are in fact different and have better quality than the others (probably from coming from a digital source, instead of a scanned cover). What will happen though, is that most of the times you don't catch that difference, mainly because when you will have a set of something like 20 identical-looking images with the same dimentions, you do not want to inspect each one of them, one by one, because most of the time you'll end up just loosing your time. So, the whole idea of having the file size displayed in this case was to be able to look at a fairly large set of identical-looking images and figure out at first sight if they're really identical or not. This way you can inspect only the different ones and quickly decide what's best.

Quote
...I'd still like one that fits in and looks nice, though, and once you know what it does, makes at least some sort of sense.
That's good enough specs. I'll look into it to see if I can come up with anything at all.

Quote
Thanks a lot for all your comments, it's always good to know when my work is appreciated.
No, really. Thank you. This program is just incredible! (even more now, it seams to me)

One quick question:
Can I copy my old settings to this new version?
(should I just copy the old user.config to the new folder?)

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1088 –
Quote from: audio20 on
So, the whole idea of having the file size displayed in this case was to be able to look at a fairly large set of identical-looking images and figure out at first sight if they're really identical or not.
Fair enough. Feature Request

Quote
Can I copy my old settings to this new version? (should I just copy the old user.config to the new folder?)
Settings should be automatically upgraded from the previous version. If that's not happening, I might have screwed something up, but it was working fine when I tried it here.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1089 –
I've just read through the 40+ pages (!) of this thread and I understand your position on embedded art, but I'll ask anyway...

Actually I have a watered-down request: would you consider only *reading* tags to find embedded art?

Much of my collection has its art embedded, and I'm trying to find a tool to download cover art for the rest... my problem with AAD is that when I do a search it can't tell me which files already have art embedded. And with 40k+ music files, it's not an option to just download art for all of them.

FooBar reads embedded cover art, so I thought that the FooBar integration might do it, but AAD still reports the files as not having any cover art.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1090 –
Quote from: lowfi on
Actually I have a watered-down request: would you consider only *reading* tags to find embedded art?
Yes, that makes sense. I'll add that as soon as I get a chance.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1091 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Settings should be automatically upgraded from the previous version. If that's not happening, I might have screwed something up, but it was working fine when I tried it here.
Well, I did copy the settings file after all and it worked fine then. I'm gessing that what happened was that I was 'afraid' of writing the 'experimental version' on top of the 'oficial release' so I've put it in another folder. The program then created a different directory to put the settings file. I've been using the program intensively since then and it's working very well. No problems whatsoever so far. 

Quote from: lowfi on
...Much of my collection has...art embedded...download...for the rest...AAD...can't tell me which...have art embedded...40k+ music files...not an option...download...for all...
Hi, lowfi,
I'm sorry to get in the middle of your conversation here  , but if you allow me, I could suggest a good solution that I've been using myself (with great success).

I also have a huge music collection (I inherited my uncle's CD collection with more than 5,000 CDs).

With such a collection, you're bound to have a personal favorite tagger already. Mine is "Tag & Rename".

In your specific case, one of the advantages of Tag&Rename is that you can either:

[1] Read your entire digital music collection files, Export all the information to a CSV file and open in Excel to isolate all the albums that do not have cover art embedded yet. Then go loading folder by folder (from the path field in Excel) to the queue in AAD to have it download your covers for you (or even read the entire collection in the file browser and start marking only the ones that were filtered in Excel).

[2] Read your entire digital music collection files, then use T&R sorting capabilities to sort by cover art field (column) and see all the albums that do not have the cover art embedded yet.  Then go loading folder by folder to the queue in AAD to have it download your covers for you.

From what I could understand by your post, you wanted AAD to filter out the albums that already have cover art, but I'm guessing you could still end up with some albums that do have cover art in their folders but cover art that is not embedded yet (this situation happens to me often).

I believe a good tagger could do a much better (and precise) job of filtering those albums for you and AAD would still be invaluable on what it's really good at: getting those covers for you.

P.S.: I realize that you very well might say "now tell me something that I don't know..."  , but that was just in case you haven't yet tried filtering with a tagger. I saves me a lot of time when processing old album folders.
P.S. 2: I also believe that a lot of people will be very pleased when AAD gets to be able to read those iD3v2 embedded art. I'm not against it at all.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1092 –
v0.32 experimental, again
I've just upgraded to Windows 7 x64, and noticed a few inconsistencies with AAD. I've therefore updated 0.32 experimental to include various tweaks to the UI to bring it more into line with what it was supposed to look like. I've tested under XP, and it still looks fine there too. The only thing I'm not happy about is the height of the menu separators, but unfortunately it looks like I might be stuck with those.

I don't have a copy of Vista to test on, so if anyone wants to let me know if this version looks better (or worse) than 0.31, then please do so.

I've also updated the installer to point to Program Files rather than Program Files (x86) when installing on a x64 system, as Album Art Downloader runs as a 64 bit process (100% managed code).

AlbumArtDownloaderXUI-0.32-experimental.exe

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1093 –
Hi Alex

I'd like to add myself to the long list of people who nag you about the possibility of embedding album artwork directly into mp3 files.

Embedded picture are obviously the way it's gonna work in the future. Having one picture per folder really only makes sense for people who listen to music mostly by album. I for example have quite a large collection of mp3s. I have a computer which I use only for DJing, and an iPod. I ripped about 1500 CDs, but I also buy single tracks. Especially for the later, it makes no sense whatsoever to have one image file per mp3 file.

Your program is obviously great, but only does half the job for me. I only browsed this thread quickly, but as far as I can tell there still is no (third party) automated way to embed images to all the music files within a folder, or am I mistaken? Which means you still would have to do it manually for every album with mp3tag for example.

In an ideal world, I would be able to automatically download and embed images in the amazon.com thumbnail version (240x240 pixels, extremely small files size) and embed them to the files with your program.

I read all your arguments (I basically scanned the whole thread for postings involving the word 'embed') and to be perfectly honest they don't convince me. The only viable reason is not wanting to include such a function for technical reasons, those being like you said that this function should belong to a tagging program.

That being said, I beg you to reconsider. I really cannot see any benefits at all for having the image as a separate file. The way it stands now, using mp3tag to download AND embed the images is a much better solution, because you have to do it album by album anyway, but it at least does both at the same time.

Edit: Never mind, I'm a moron. I only now noticed that mp3tag (automatically) does what I want, and that you actually gave a link to the instructions of how to do it. Now I only have to figure out how to use AAD optimally :-)

Cheers from Switzerland!

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1094 –
Revisiting Embedded Artwork
This seems to be coming up quite a bit again. I'm not going to re-hash all the arguments against them, but I still believe this is not the tool to be doing that job - it doesn't have the right UI or the right workflow for tag management. Sure, I could make it able to save the image result by embedding it into a tag in a (single) specified music file rather than saving it as an image file, but I just don't think that's going to be very helpful - you want the artwork available for the whole album, and without getting into tag management that means it's got to be an image file either in the album folder, or in a known folder elsewhere.

An interesting point that has recently been raised is that of reading existing embedded artwork. I've been thinking about that one. When using the File or Foobar browsers, the result is a list of albums. These have the following information: Album name, Artist name, and Folder path. The folder path may have been determined by the folder in which an mp3 was found, but this is not necessarily the case, it may have been matched by a pattern instead. All that can be relied on is that this is a folder which contains, in some form, an album of the specified name and artist (or potentially "Various Artists").

AAD will then search for one image, for each album, based on those 3 pieces of information, plus the specification of where to look for images. So, if you specify "Folder.jpg" as the image, then it will look for a file called Folder.jpg in the folder for that album. The only way I can think of to include embedded images would be to allow you to specify something like *.mp3 as the location to look for images - then it would try to find any mp3 file in the album folder, and when it found one, look for any image embedded within it. We end up bumping into the same problem that AAD expects a single image for an album, but embedding results in an image per file, rather than per album. Hopefully they would all be the same, of course.

Obviously there would have to be further customisation to the commands available from that point; rename wouldn't make any sense at all, but could be replaced by an Extract command to let you save it as an image file.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1095 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Revisiting Embedded Artwork
This seems to be coming up quite a bit again. I'm not going to re-hash all the arguments against them, but I still believe this is not the tool to be doing that job - it doesn't have the right UI or the right workflow for tag management. Sure, I could make it able to save the image result by embedding it into a tag in a (single) specified music file rather than saving it as an image file, but I just don't think that's going to be very helpful - you want the artwork available for the whole album, and without getting into tag management that means it's got to be an image file either in the album folder, or in a known folder elsewhere.


Well, I guess thats your call. Obviously you want to make a coherent program, but I'm sure you're also interested in having as many people as possible using it.

I'm sure noone is opposed to having an image file in a folder where there's a complete album, but at the same time I'm absolutely convinced that embedded images are the future. For me an ideal solution would be to have a program which downloads real good quality art covers to place into the folder for albums, like for example iTunes does (covers are about 1 MB in size) and then also to download very small images, not more than 50k, to embed into the files themselves.

Btw, is there a manual somewhere for how to use Foobar? I'm not exactly great at learning by doing, and a step-by-step instruction guide on how to automate cover art download for a large collection of music would be of great use to me!

Cheers to you for developing a very helpful software 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1096 –
Hold up a minute, have I misunderstood something? Is it not possible to automate the program, such that for example you choose a folder, and for each subfolder which holds an album it automatically downloads the best image that meets certain criteria? Such as that you do not have to manually choose the image?

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1097 –
Quote from: maximus2 on
For me an ideal solution would be to have a program which downloads real good quality art covers to place into the folder for albums, like for example iTunes does (covers are about 1 MB in size) and then also to download very small images, not more than 50k, to embed into the files themselves.
Having a high quality image file in the folder, and embedded thumbnails within the files themselves sounds like a very sensible scheme. I'd suggest that these thumbnails should be generated from the high quality ones, rather than downloaded separately, though. In my view, it is AAD's job to find and download the high quality image file. It is the job of a tag management program to take that image and generate smaller embedded ones for the files belonging to that album. For example, what if you got hold of the large image file from somewhere else, independently of AAD? You'd still want to generate the smaller embedded files, but there would be no natural 'way in' to get AAD to do it (if it was just done as some sort of automatic step when saving search results).

I don't think mp3tag currently supports resizing art as it's embedded, but it would definitely be worth a feature request.

Quote
is there a manual somewhere for how to use Foobar?
The Wiki is about as good as it gets, I think.

Quote from: maximus2 on
Is it not possible to automate the program, such that for example you choose a folder, and for each subfolder which holds an album it automatically downloads the best image that meets certain criteria? Such as that you do not have to manually choose the image?
Not at present, no. You always have to choose which result you want to save.

There is a command line version which will download a single image without UI, but nothing that is just a fire and forget "download your best guess for everything in these folders" functionality.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1098 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
v0.32 experimental ... I've just upgraded to Windows 7 x64, ... I don't have a copy of Vista to test on, so if anyone wants to let me know
Alex,

As always, thank you for sharing your great tool and for providing such a high level of support.

I just tested v0.32-exp on Vista.  Frankly, I could not tell the difference between v0.32-exp and v0.31 (so much so, that I had to reinstall v0.31 and double check).  So, as you would have to tell me what changed for me to actually notice, I guess you could say v0.32-exp looks fine on Vista too.  Of course, I have been using v0.31 on Vista and never noticed a UI issue, so I may not be the best person to make this call.

Also, for those on x64 systems, you may want to let them know that they might want to uninstall their pre-v0.32 version prior to installing v0.32.  Otherwise, the install folder used by the v0.32 installer will be that of the previous install (which of course would be "Program Files (x86)".

Thank you again

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1099 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
There is a command line version which will download a single image without UI, but nothing that is just a fire and forget "download your best guess for everything in these folders" functionality.


OK. Then I must have misinterpreted one of the descriptions of the functionality of your program somewhere on the internet.