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Topic: Album Art Downloader XUI (Read 2066303 times) previous topic - next topic
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Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1625 –
Hi Alex, I have a few things I'd like to say.

First off, I'd just like to tell you how much I appreciate Album Art Downloader. It's very minimal, fast and does exactly what it is supposed to. I used it to go from a point where I wasn't using any album art at all for my music collection of 10,000 files to a point where every file has a respectable and decent cover art. This is a task that I personally never thought would be worth accomplishing (but always wanted) and yet your tool made it very possible. I truly appreciate that.

As someone who has been using AlbumArtDownloader for awhile, I noticed some odd functionality in the auto updater that you should be aware of. According to the auto updater within the app I was at the latest version. However, I had noticed over time that my results back were becoming worse and worse, to the point where I wasn't finding anything except google image results. I started doing some research and found a button in the lower right that said update scripts and when I checked it (which I thought was weird because I clearly remember getting updates and my GIS script was clearly up to date) it found updates for nearly every script. So I restarted thinking everything would be better however the application crashed compiling scripts saying that the "util" import was not found. I thought this was odd, since the util import was in my archived old scripts and many of the scripts looked the same, but I gave up troubleshooting and decided to install the latest version from html download. This  version appeared to have more scripts and they were all updated so I thought everything would be good, but when I ran it, I got poor results, so I forced the auto update to run again. It told me it had script updates and restarted, ran the test again and still some poor results, so I ran the updater a 2nd time and it found even more updates. Also, something odd that I noticed at this point is that this "new" same version was missing the check box in the lower right to tell it whether i wanted new scripts or not. Weird since it was the same version. Anyhow, after the multiple updates, my results started looking a lot better and I was getting everything back. The only thing worth mentioning is that the take2 script is completely worthless, it always returns the same 10 matches.

Just to recap:
1. Auto update is clearly leaving some of us out-of-date. I'm not sure if it is because you released 2 versions under the same version rev, so our clients 'think' they are up to date or what.
2. Even when the correct version is there, the auto update still needs to run multiple times to get the most up to date scripts, this seems odd behavior.

I hope this helps, I was just worried there may be other people out there who might think the application has dipped in quality when in fact it is just that they are being unknowingly left behind by false positives on the auto updater.

I'd like to end this with a tangent. My scripts were so old that I still had one for AlbumArtExchange. I used AAX significantly when I started populating my collection and while I noticed when it stopped returning results, I didn't bother troubleshooting it because I had 90% of my artwork. However when I started researching these issues, I dug into the AAX debacle and I must say, what a disappointment. I won't go over everything that seemed flawed from what I read, but I will say that the world will move on without AAX and all of that beautiful artwork that many, many people created for free will ultimately go unused. A shame.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1626 –
Quote from: skace on
Hi Skace, thank you for your comments. I will investigate the auto-updater issues you mention. This is certainly not intentional. My best guess at the moment is that you somehow managed to get it to update to the latest versions of the scripts without having the latest version of AAD itself, which meant that some of the newer scripts weren't compatible with the older AAD version. Why it wouldn't detect the newer AAD version though, I don't know yet. What I don't understand at all is how, after running an update bringing all the scripts up to date and restarting, those scripts were still not up to date. Older versions of scripts are not kept, so if it downloaded anything, it would have been an up-to-date script.

Are you sure it was the same scripts that needed updating twice, or could it have been that it updated some of the scripts the first time, and other scripts the second time? (that's still wrong behaviour that needs fixing, but it's a bit less weird)

The other thing that is really weird is that you say the "Automatically download new scripts when available" disappeared? I can't understand that at all, there isn't even any code for hiding that checkbox.

In case it's helpful, here's some details on how auto-update is supposed to work

There are three separate tasks that auto-update can perform: a check for updates to the application itself, a check for updates to the scripts you have installed, and a check for available scripts that you do not have installed.

When checking for updates (either automatically or triggered by the menu command) it will first check for a new version of the application itself. If there is one, then that is the only update offered; it won't show any updated scripts as they should be included with the updated application version, and scripts designed for newer application versions may fail to work properly on older versions.

If the application version is up to date, but installed scripts are not, then it will show the updates available to scripts. At this point, if it also detected that there were available scripts that were not installed, it will cause the "Get more scripts" link to be shown under the sources list. If you've previously checked the "Automatically download new scripts" checkbox, then rather than showing that link it will just download them all without notifying you of any changes.

Scripts are updated as problems with them are reported (so I'll take a look at take2 now and either fix or remove it), so they are updated more frequently than AAD is. If the latest version is quite old (as 37.1 is) then there will be an update to scripts available as soon as it is run for the first time.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1627 –
Ok so, the checkbox...

Is probably missing because I previously checked it (which caused the old version to stop loading) and then I installed the html downloaded version on top of my previous version (with the scripts dir renamed). I didn't realize the checkbox vanishes once you check it?

I assume that is what you mean by "If you've previously checked the "Automatically download new scripts" checkbox, then rather than showing that link it will just download them all without notifying you of any changes."

The double updates...

May possibly be 1 update to get new scripts and 1 update to get updated scripts. I didn't take screenshots but I recall the second sweep have a large number of .5 -> .6 upgrades and an upgrade from .9 to .10 of google image which was the reason my google image wasn't returning anything. I guess the first update did completely new scripts. My suggestion would be to combine this functionality into 1 update or have it force updates until it can't find anything more to update. Either way, had I continued using it without manually forcing the second update, my results would have been consistently poor.

The outdated identical version...

Is it possible that your auto-update failed to update a file that was used by AAD (a dll or some such) but updated everything else including the version information the updater uses to check if you are up to date? This would make the most sense to me. However, just a stab in the dark. Either way, when i told scripts to update I could no longer even launch the application (failed in compiling phase) which means it failed to update something in the wrong order.

Sorry, that is the best info I can offer. I wish I had taken screen captures of the issue, but at the time I just assumed all the scripts had gone unsupported and I was SOL. I didn't actually except such a drastic difference after the manual update.

-------------

It'll be interesting to see the new version. My only feature request would be if AAD, called with no parameters, defaulted to some sort of main window that contained the queue list, foobar browser and other hidden functionality all sort of built into 1 app window. And then you could use the main window to launch your searches (maybe even have them launch as tabs). As it is, I tend to launch an empty search just to launch other windows and then launch my real searches, which launches more windows + the queue window. I'm guessing many other people probably launch the program via scripted commands and don't see this type of issue.

Thanks again.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1628 –
Quote from: skace on
I didn't realize the checkbox vanishes once you check it?

The "Automatically download new scripts" checkbox doesn't vanish, but rather than showing the "Get more scripts" link under the sources list in the main window, it just downloads the new scripts and shows a yellow "New scripts downloaded" note there instead. If you click that, it will show you a window listing the scripts it downloaded, and that has an "Automatically download new scripts" checkbox too, that you can uncheck to stop the behaviour.

Quote from: skace on
My suggestion would be to combine this functionality into 1 update or have it force updates until it can't find anything more to update.

In the next version (which I'll upload this weekend), even if it has automatically downloaded new scripts, it will still show the updated scripts window if there are scripts to update too. Hopefully that should stop the double-update issue.

Quote from: skace on
Is it possible that your auto-update failed to update a file that was used by AAD (a dll or some such) but updated everything else including the version information the updater uses to check if you are up to date?

I don't think so, the updater will download scripts automatically, however it doesn't automatically patch the main application. It only provides a link for you to download the normal installer from the normal place. The installer should overwrite everything, if you install to the same place as the existing version.

Quote from: skace on
My only feature request would be if AAD, called with no parameters, defaulted to some sort of main window that contained the queue list, foobar browser and other hidden functionality all sort of built into 1 app window.

The main search window has all of those other windows available from the menu. I suppose having always-visible buttons for them would be one click shorter, but are they really that hard to find on the menu? The queue window automatically appears the first time an album becomes queued anyway - I don't think there's much point in drawing attention to it before then, really.

Quote from: skace on
I tend to launch an empty search just to launch other windows

If you prefer to start with a browser window rather than a search window, then add "/fileBrowser" or "/fooobarBrowser" to the command line of the shortcut you use to launch AAD. I might a step to the installer to ask which of the three windows you want to see at startup, which would add the parameter automatically to the shortcut it creates in the start menu.

Thanks again for the details and suggestions,

Alex
 

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1629 –
Thanks for the /foobarbrowser tip. I'll start it that way. I still think a main window is just about the only thing missing from the app and would make it stronger, but I realize that it might be unnecessary work. I was thinking of something like this:



However, tie all the various browsers into 1 search window. File, Foobar, etc. This also shows how my sources doesn't have whatever link you are saying it should have. Windows 7 x64.

Anyhow, just a suggestion. Also, it would be cool if when you zoomed in on an image, if you had an image already for that album / artist, if it brought both up in some sort of comparison window. So you could do quick comparisons on whether it is an image upgrade.

Sorry, I know this all sounds like work, but its a great app and I can't help make suggestions. Take2 returned a valid result. Thanks!

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1630 –
Quote from: skace on

Thanks for the suggestion, but I prefer the multiple windows design. That way you can have them individually the size and shape you want. Your example might work for you, but personally I would find the browser too narrow, and the queue manager far too wide! I don't see any reason why the size of one should constrain the size of the other. Also, you might want several results windows open at once, and there's no good reason to disallow you from seeing more than one of those at a time either.

To answer your other points: The Get More Scripts link doesn't show because you already have them all. It only shows if on the last automatic update check it found new scripts for you, or if you have automatic update checking turned off (in which case there *might* be new scripts, it has no way of knowing, so shows the link just in case).

If you want to compare images in detail, right click on each image to compare and choose "Preview". This will open a preview window for that image which will let you zoom in and pan around to check detail. For your existing art, you should either see it in the results from the "Local Files Source", or in the file browser there should be a link to it in the Artwork Status column that you can also right click on to choose "Preview".

I'm glad Take2 is working again; I thought I'd fixed it, but it's good to get confirmation, thanks.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1631 –
Version 0.38.2
This version improves the behaviour of automatic updates when both new and updated scripts are available, and the "automatically download new scripts" option has been enabled. It also reverts the default filename extension for jpeg format images to ".jpg" instead of ".jpeg", to maintain consistency with the versions prior to 0.38.

If there are no further reports of issues with the move away from GDI+, I'll publish this version through online updates and make it the default download from the front page from next week.

Download:
AlbumArtDownloaderXUI.exe (Installer. Recommended)
AlbumArtDownloaderXUI.zip (zip archive for those who don't like installers)
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (required, except for Windows 7)

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1632 –
Hi,

I have a request to make. I have a lot of Italian CDs in my collection. Amazon recently created a web site for Italy :

http://www.amazon.it/

Would it be possible to add the italian web site to the amazon script ? Hopefully that should not be too difficult.

Thanks in advance...

Jean

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1633 –
Quote from: Jean Tourrilhes on
Would it be possible to add the italian web site to the amazon script ?
Sure, that's no problem. I'm putting 0.38.2 onto online update today, so I'll include the new amazon.it script with that.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1634 –
I have now published 0.38.2 through online updates, along with updates for broken scripts (the installer is also updated, but if you've already got 0.38.2 installed you don't need to reinstall). I've fixed up all of them that can be fixed up, but the following scripts have been removed:
  • CoverIsland.boo
  • FreeCovers-api.boo
  • ManiaDB.boo
You should delete or disable these scripts if you have them installed, as they won't work, and can't be fixed.

I've also made a slight change to the installer so that the specialist scripts are no longer installed by default. You can still install all the scripts if you want just by checking the relevant boxes, but I think the smaller websites are getting annoyed by all the irrelevant queries, and they aren't providing benefit to most users. The general use scripts are:
  • Amazon
  • Google
  • 7digital
  • Coveralia
  • Cover-Paradies
  • CD Universe
  • Discogs
  • DarkTown
  • AllCdCover
  • Buy.com
  • hitparade.ch
  • LastFM
  • Chartstats
  • Archambault
Any other scripts should probably be disabled unless you know why you want to use them, otherwise you're just wasting your bandwidth and theirs.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1635 –
hello, thanks for the update
I'd like to point out that something's quite wrong with big preview images, sometimes when you click to view them, they show up very thin instead of original-sized.

thanks for the hard work.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1636 –
Quote from: pianoinbush on
I'd like to point out that something's quite wrong with big preview images, sometimes when you click to view them, they show up very thin instead of original-sized.
Oops, I can't believe I missed that. Of course, it only happens for some of the images, so I suppose all the ones I tested before just happened to be fine.

I've got a fix for it that I'm putting out immediately as 0.38.3:

Download:
AlbumArtDownloaderXUI.exe (Installer. Recommended)
AlbumArtDownloaderXUI.zip (zip archive for those who don't like installers)
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (required, except for Windows 7)

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1637 –
I wonder has anyone else got problems with covers from AllCDcover. For me they are very unreliable often returning a standard little image of theirs apologising about some error. I load the page in my browser and then often I can see it and seomtimes still not. In those cases I sometimes start another browser (say Chrome) and try and I can see it. Sometimes nothing helps and I just try again later or give up. I find CoverParedies is reliable and the second best in terms of quality and size and ability to find stuff after AllCDcover.

I'm left wondering if AllCDcover have some load control and return that simply when they won't serve me because say form my IP it's received a few requests already or even in parallel.

In any case I onwder if anyone else has seen it, and if so, if it's worth writing some work around which keeps trying when the dummy image is detected and gives up if one can't be got after a certain number of tries.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1638 –
Quote from: Bernd on
I wonder has anyone else got problems with covers from AllCDcover
AllCDcover has some sort of leech protection on it (see earlier discussion). It seems to vary a bit, probably to deliberately frustrate attempts to work around it. Personally, I'd suggest just not using AllCDcover - but if you do want to, I think the best thing to do when it starts acting up is just leave it and come back to it another time.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1639 –
Thanks Alex. I should have search, didn't see the box for that. Bummer. I do avoid AllCDCover wheenver I can, but like it or not often they ar ethe only ones with a cover or back image I want! usually coverparadies covers my bases, but sometimes it's AllCDcover.

All I can say is it's not IP based I think because I just had the problem and thried hidemyass.com and no luck there either for the image I wanted. It seems specific to the image perhaps. Who knows.

The do have an API it seems:

http://www.allcdcovers.com/api

and it would seem to me that this was a meaningless thing with such dud protection. Could it be that if you used the API that this problem diappears? Or are you already using it, of course?

I haven't looked at it closely I admit.

In any case given this has been asked a few rtimes already and your very patient with referring up and IMHO the linear nature of one forum trhead kind of sucks, I wanted to ad a note to wiki hee FAQ here:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/albu...tle=FAQ-General

but can't (it's not open). You might wnat to do that quickly Alex.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1640 –
Quote from: Bernd on
The do have an API it seems:
Yes, I searched their forum too. As I see it, there are two obstacles to using the API: first, they are not accepting any new requests for access keys at this time (or at the time the other forum posts asking about it were made, anyway). Secondly, and this is even more of an obstacle, it is not a public API - it requires that you use a private key with each request. This makes it pretty much unusable for an open-source project as there is no way to keep the key secret, and I'm guessing not keeping the key secret would be a deal-breaker for using the API (otherwise why bother with a key at all).

Incidentally, that's the same reason we aren't using the Amazon API any more. APIs are great, and I'd love to be able to use more of them, but as long as sites think that APIs should be less public than HTML interfaces, chances are we'll have to stick with HTML interfaces.

The wiki should be editable by anyone with a sourceforge account - were you logged in to sourceforge when you tried to make an edit? If so, then let me know and I'll try and figure out why it's been protected. The reason I haven't added anything to the FAQ is that I don't really have a good handle on the problem; I can't say for certain if it's IP based, or specific image based, whether it's only affected by your actions or whether images could get locked down if lots of different people search for them, what relation their captcha has to any of this. I've put a very vague answer up there now, though.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1641 –
I just discovered this very handy utility. Thank you for developing it!

I noticed one thing: I use J. River Media Center to manually invoke searches in AAD ("Send to external program"). If I click to save cover art for one album and the downloads are so slow that they are not initiated/completed before I invoke the next search, the downloaded file is put in the folder indicated in the subsequent search, not the folder path I saw when I clicked download. Is this a known issue? I have the option to open search results in a new window unticked.

Would it be possible to identify also Inlay and Booklet, which are used at least on Cover-Paradise? If so, would it also be possible to introduce an option for downloaded booklet (and preferably also CD) files to be numbered sequentially, i.e. "Booklet-1", "Booklet-2" etc. starting with the first number not already existing in the download folder?

Would it be possible to add more types in the type drop down list (custom types or at least the additional types Preset, Inlay and Booklet) so that the file name for that file, if downloaded, can easily be changed this way? (I found that the presets are actually better for this.)

(Sorry if this has been asked before - It is a long thread.)

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1642 –
Quote from: vagskal on
Thank you for your comments - I'm not sure I've understood them all correctly, so if not, please let me know.

1. If you click the Save button for a result which will take a while to download the full-size image, then immediately search for something different in the same window (causing the result which is being saved to disappear from the results list), then when the full-size image for the result has completed and it's saved, it will be saved with the wrong filename? That hasn't been reported before, but it certainly sounds like a bug. If I can reproduce it, I'll include a fix for it in the next version.

2. Sequential numbering is not currently supported, but is a good idea. I've added a feature request for it to the tracker.

3. Support for additional or custom types can not easily be added. The types system as implemented relies on their being a single well defined list of types that doesn't change. You can change how they appear in the filename (so the Front type could appear as Cover, for example), but not what they mean or how many there are.

In contrast, the Presets feature was designed to allow you to define any number of custom strings that you can pick from to substitute into the filename. You can add as many of these as you like, and pick from them using the drop-down arrow next to the save button. For example, if you use the filename pattern "%preset%.jpg", then edit the presets so that the default is "%type%", and there are two other presets "Inlay" and Booklet" then you could use the dropdown next to the save button to save as Inlay.jpg or Booklet.jpg

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1643 –
Thanks for your immediate response! Excellent support as well! 

Quote from: AlexVallat on
1. If you click the Save button for a result which will take a while to download the full-size image, then immediately search for something different in the same window (causing the result which is being saved to disappear from the results list), then when the full-size image for the result has completed and it's saved, it will be saved with the wrong filename? That hasn't been reported before, but it certainly sounds like a bug.

1. Yes, that is what I am seeing. But I invoke searches from J. River Media Center (with a new file path for each album/search), not by clicking the search button in AAD.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
2. Sequential numbering is not currently supported, but is a good idea. I've added a feature request for it to the tracker.

Great!

I saw this in the tracker.
Quote
Add a placeholder (such as "%n%") that is replaced by the smallest number greater than 0 required to make a unique filename. So if "cover %n%.jpg" was the filename, and "cover 1.jpg" already existed, the filename would be "cover 2.jpg".

But then the file name would be "cover .jpg" if there already is a "cover.jpg" file. This could be solved if you allowed the new placeholder to include also " " or "-", i.e. "% n% or %-n%, or %n%. Or have you considered implementing conditional placeholders like "%% %" that would put a space, or something else, in the file name only if there are some other character than a period following? They could come in handy.

Quote from: AlexVallat on
In contrast, the Presets feature was designed to allow you to define any number of custom strings that you can pick from to substitute into the filename. You can add as many of these as you like, and pick from them using the drop-down arrow next to the save button. For example, if you use the filename pattern "%preset%.jpg", then edit the presets so that the default is "%type%", and there are two other presets "Inlay" and Booklet" then you could use the dropdown next to the save button to save as Inlay.jpg or Booklet.jpg

Yes, I figured that out, thanks.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1644 –
Quote from: vagskal on
I saw this in the tracker.
But then the file name would be "cover .jpg" if there already is a "cover.jpg" file.

No, it would be "cover 1.jpg" in all circumstances where there was no "cover 1.jpg" file already existing. If there's a %n%, then there's a number. I don't want to complicate the placeholder system by adding conditionals and logic to it - I can see where that leads with the foobar titleformatting syntax, and I'm not interested in going down that path. This means that there would be no way to name the first file as "cover.jpg" and the second as "cover 1.jpg"; you either have numbers as part of your filename or you do not.

If you want to add further comments or opinions on that proposal, would you mind making them on the tracker itself? That way, when someone (probably me, but you never know) comes to implement it, they won't be forgotten.

Thanks,

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1645 –
Thanks for the reply!

Quote from: AlexVallat on
If you want to add further comments or opinions on that proposal, would you mind making them on the tracker itself? That way, when someone (probably me, but you never know) comes to implement it, they won't be forgotten.

I have added a comment in the tracker. (Please forgive me, I am totally new to these forums and your "tracker").

As you might have guessed by now I am not a programmer, so I am afraid I cannot help out in that respect. But you are doing a great job!

Thanks for considering this enhancement!

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1646 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
For example, if you use the filename pattern "%preset%.jpg", then edit the presets so that the default is "%type%", and there are two other presets "Inlay" and Booklet" then you could use the dropdown next to the save button to save as Inlay.jpg or Booklet.jpg

Oh, and I just wanted to let you know that if you do this then the proposed file name displayed is [folder path].jpg, i.e. the preset value (%type%) is not displayed. This was a bit confusing at first.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1647 –
Quote from: vagskal on
Oh, and I just wanted to let you know that if you do this then the proposed file name displayed is [folder path].jpg, i.e. the preset value (%type%) is not displayed. This was a bit confusing at first.

Hmm... that's a bug. The displayed filename should always be what you would get if you hit the save button (i.e., the default preset value if used). Thanks for reporting it.

Alex

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1648 –
Quote from: AlexVallat on
Quote from: vagskal on
Oh, and I just wanted to let you know that if you do this then the proposed file name displayed is [folder path].jpg, i.e. the preset value (%type%) is not displayed. This was a bit confusing at first.

Hmm... that's a bug. The displayed filename should always be what you would get if you hit the save button (i.e., the default preset value if used). Thanks for reporting it.

And if you drag the file out of AAD you get a ".jpg" file.

Album Art Downloader XUI

Reply #1649 –
Quote from: vagskal on
And if you drag the file out of AAD you get a ".jpg" file.

Yeah, that would be the same underlying cause. Unfortunately I can't do anything this week, but will fix over the weekend. The only question then is whether to try and also do something about numeric suffixes, or just release a purely bug-fixing point release.