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Topic: WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art? (Read 20651 times) previous topic - next topic
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WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Hi all

Seems like the common choice is to use folder.jpg or cover.jpg for the filename for album art.  I would much rather the album art took on the name of the album.  But seeing as the folder.jpg choice seems so common, I'm wondering if I would be missing something by choosing to name the art after the album. 

The thing is, if for whatever reason my files were moved or jumbled somehow, I'd end up a tonne of artwork with the same name.  We work hard at our naming conventions for the audio, and yet seemingly throw it all out the window for the artwork. 

Any thoughts would be most welcome. 

If the "name it after album" option is a good one, does anyone know how this is done in dbpoweramp? 

Cheers

Max

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #1 –
Your question makes me curious too, but I haven't used separate image files for years now. Embedded artwork (into each audio file) has worked out great for my purposes.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #2 –
Glad I'm not the only curious one.  Although I must say I am not planning to embed artwork at all...  I'll be using Foobar (FLAC) and an Ipod Classic (mp3), neither of which need art work to be embedded.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #3 –
One reason is that Windows uses folder.jpg as the image for the folder.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Ouroboros on
One reason is that Windows uses folder.jpg as the image for the folder.


I've never used that feature, so for me personally that one doesn't matter....

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: MaxDread on
Seems like the common choice is to use folder.jpg or cover.jpg for the filename for album art.  I would much rather the album art took on the name of the album.


folder.jpg is the least failure prone method, both because it works without parsing tags, and because there is no ambiguity about how to deal with album names that are not valid filenames, so its most common. 

FWIW, in rockbox we do support albumname.jpg though.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #6 –
Usually my folder name is the album name...    I've always used the album name and it's worked fine in Winamp (as long as the file name matches the tag exactly). 

But now I also embed the artwork, since that seems to work universally.    I hate the inefficiency of embedding a duplicate image in every file, but it does seem to be the most reliable solution.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
I hate the inefficiency of embedding a duplicate image in every file,


Same here.  100% so for the ipod where every inch of megabyte counts.  Less important for the FLACs on foobar.  But then again, I would like to use decent quality artwork for the FLACS...  So the resulting larger file sizes would really add up over the course of 2500 albums.  Large HDs are cheap now, so space is not too much of a problem.  But - as you put it - the inefficiency is still annoying and if I can I'd prefer to go without. 

I have no plans to move on from foobar.  Used it for many years and can't see me changing.  Plus, once my ipod is up and running U cannot see that changing for quite some time.  As such, my circumstances of foobar/ipod should remain pretty consistent and if they can both read album art from "album title".jpg rather than folder.jpg, I'll go with that. 

The question of whether dbpa supports this during the rip will remain however.....  I'll ask about that on their website.

Cheers to all

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: MaxDread on
I've never used that feature, so for me personally that one doesn't matter....


Your question was why is it common. That is the reason. It's irrelevant whether you use that feature or not.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #9 –
i would definitely avoid the use of folder.jpg because if you accidentally start windows media player with its settings at default, you might might find it overwrites all your lovely art with 200x200 thumbs. it can do this without prompting. i took this screenshot to illustrate it for another thread recently.

and as already mentioned above, using the album name is problematic because it could contain characters that are illegal in filenames (i only know about windows, i haven't a clue about other OSes). for simplicity, i use cover.jpg.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #10 –
This is somewhat irrational, because value added of cover art should not depend much on losslessness, but I use to embed art in FLAC files while I tend not to do so for lossies.

But if one has front.jpeg, back.jpeg etc. and want to add album titles, then I suppose it would be much better to have front_<ALBUM> etc. in order to get the player prioritize which ones to show?

(Yeah ... although I am using Windows for music (... blame fb2k!) I have so much of a *n*x background that it is easy to see what picture files are added manually - the ".jpeg" ones.)

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #11 –
Thanks for the helpful replies guys (although if I am totally honest I did not follow everything you were saying Porcus; but thanks anyway!). 

@marc2003.  The main thing I found which looked relevant in the WMP settings was in the > Media Library tab > "Automatic media information updates for files....  Update my music files...."  I unchecked that and everything below it greyed out as a result.  And I've changed whatever else I thought might cause problems.  Hopefully that will sort that out.  I'd much rather get the damned thing off of my PC, but I've looked it up and it is seemingly a persistent stain and there to stay!  For the record, it is WMP9 on WinXP SP3.  I also do not keep my library in the default "My Music" directory.  So hopefully WMP would not have been able to sniff them out anyway...

OK, so now that we've established why folder.jpg is common I need to decide whether to go with albumname.jpg instead or stick to convention.  I've found out that DBPA does support writing albumname.jpg during the rip.  Foobar can read it.  And I'm pretty sure it will be able to export it to the iPod using foo_dop.  I cannot imagine why I'd have album filenames with non-valid characters, so that would hopefully not be a problem.  As for "it works without parsing tags" - I'm not certain what that means (can any one please explain)?   

OTOH, whilst I don't like the idea of thousands of pieces of artwork with the same name, if I did go for folder/cover.jpg...... 1) Files re-organising themselves or getting moved is unlikely, and 2) With a good back up regime if the worse should happen I can use back ups to reload everything. Plus, 3) I could always delete and re-tag ALL artwork in the event of an issue.

But will my anally OCD mind cope?  Hmmmm... Decisions, decisions...

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: MaxDread on
Thanks for the helpful replies guys (although if I am totally honest I did not follow I cannot imagine why I'd have album filenames with non-valid characters, so that would hopefully not be a problem.

I'm afraid album name containing a question mark is rather common. Other than that, characters such as :, /, \, |, <, >, *, " are invalid on Windows file system.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: nu774 on
Quote from: MaxDread on
Thanks for the helpful replies guys (although if I am totally honest I did not follow I cannot imagine why I'd have album filenames with non-valid characters, so that would hopefully not be a problem.

I'm afraid album name containing a question mark is rather common. Other than that, characters such as :, /, \, |, <, >, *, " are invalid on Windows file system.


Damn, I hadn't thought of ?'s.  Come to think of it, forward and back slashes are not too uncommon either.  On the plus side though, I believe dbPoweramp automatically changes restricted to characters.  It loads with a default set but is customisable.  I'll have to check to see whether that applies to album art as well.  If it doesn't, then there might be an option in in the ID Tag Processing DSP....

Cheers

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #14 –
Well on the topic of invalid path names, what I do is use the full-width Japanese equivalents instead. This requires the player to be unicode-aware, of course.

Almost every software has the option to replace invalid characters with underscores or spaces (or even a user-defined character), but in case of albumname.jpg, the name has to be exactly the same as the album tag, so you'd have to change it there, too.

I didn't know about albumname actually. The reason I'm always embedding cover art in each file was that when using folder/cover.jpg it wouldn't work in a scenario where you put together mixes - it would just use the last album cover copied.

Slightly OT, but creative portable player's embedded art support used to do exactly that, it extracted the embedded art on copy and put it in a separate directory. I wonder if people listening to whole albums is that more common than people listening to single tracks from many albums.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: MaxDread on
The thing is, if for whatever reason my files were moved or jumbled somehow, I'd end up a tonne of artwork with the same name.
Are all your audio tracks uniquely named at the file level? Some people make sure they are.

If not, then that's another problem in this hypothetical scenario of everything ending up in the same folder.

Mine aren't unique. I use quite short filenames. I don't like the visual clutter of long ones. Just 01. Dancing Queen.flac, or 01. Dancing Queen - Abba.flac for different/various artists. If they all end up in the same folder then lots of things are going to get overwritten and I'll need to restore from a backup. If they all end up in the wrong folders, mp3tag can put it all right for me with one click. If they all get their tags destroyed then that's really bad and I'll need to restore from a backup.

Cheers,
David.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #16 –
If one worries about invalidcharacters.jpg, then - for one's own rips - one could use the CDDB ID? It has collisions, but not that many, and it is a tag you don't update on purpose.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: marc2003 on
i took this screenshot to illustrate it for another thread recently.


Do you have alink to that thread please.....  Sounds interesting. 

Quote from: marc2003 on
i use cover.jpg.


Presumbly this does not have the same issues with WMP then?  Is it as ubiquitous as folder.jpg?

Quote from: ChronoSphere on
in case of albumname.jpg, the name has to be exactly the same as the album tag, so you'd have to change it there, too.


Would you mind elaborating.  I'm not understanding why this would be the case...

Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Are all your audio tracks uniquely named at the file level? Some people make sure they are.


I haven't actually started the ripping project yet tbh (I'm about to).  I'm going for a naming scheme of:

Artist / Album / Artist - Album - Track # - Track

So....

FOLDER-Iron Maiden > FOLDER-Killers > Iron Maiden - Killers - 05 - Genghis Khan


Many thanks to everyone for joining and sharing.

Max

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: MaxDread on
Quote from: ChronoSphere on
in case of albumname.jpg, the name has to be exactly the same as the album tag, so you'd have to change it there, too.


Would you mind elaborating.  I'm not understanding why this would be the case...
Well, if you set it up to look for albumname.jpg but your album tag actually is "album/name?" (two illegal path characters), it would then try to search for album/name?.jpg and not find it. Unless it's smart enough to search for albumname.jpg instead, discarding the illegal characters.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: ChronoSphere on
Quote from: MaxDread on
Quote from: ChronoSphere on
in case of albumname.jpg, the name has to be exactly the same as the album tag, so you'd have to change it there, too.


Would you mind elaborating.  I'm not understanding why this would be the case...
Well, if you set it up to look for albumname.jpg but your album tag actually is "album/name?" (two illegal path characters), it would then try to search for album/name?.jpg and not find it. Unless it's smart enough to search for albumname.jpg instead, discarding the illegal characters.


That makes perfect sense.  Thanks for that.  Perhaps cover.jpg is the best option then after all....

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #20 –
Quote from: MaxDread on
Quote from: marc2003 on
i use cover.jpg.

Presumbly this does not have the same issues with WMP then?  Is it as ubiquitous as folder.jpg?


you may have to check the software or other devices you use supports the use of cover.jpg. if not, then it may be useless for you.

also, if you're aware of the WMP options that overwrite folder.jpg and know how to turn them off then you might be ok sticking with it but i prefer to err on the side of caution.

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #21 –
Quote from: MaxDread on
I haven't actually started the ripping project yet tbh (I'm about to).  I'm going for a naming scheme of:

Artist / Album / Artist - Album - Track # - Track


Myself I am using one folder for artist and album rather than subfolder under artist, but in any case I would have a YEAR in between them for sorting and to avoid duplicates ending up in the same folder and possibly overwriting each other. I would use e.g. the CDDB DISCID as well - actually I use the Accuraterip ID, but CDDB ID is a tag that more software would write. I wish I had put remasters aside when I ripped, to not confuse them by the first releases.

Also, I would not use a dash as a separator, as that is often used in the metadata themselves. I have no ¨ (that's the umlaut, not the quotation mark) in the metadata, and hardly any ~ or ^ -- the latter is an ASCII printable if that is an issue. Also, the backtick `is ASCII printable, but it often shows up by in metadata by mistakenly entered as an apostrophe. I also use § (or you could maybe easier find the pilcrow ¶) for disc number.

That means that in case of Killers, I would go for one of the following modifications of your structure, where the year in the filename could be removed if you like:

Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers ¨ 7209130A/Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 Killers ¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac
Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers [1998 remaster] ¨ A40E6D0C/Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 Killers ¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac

notice that this saves you trouble if you mistakenly didn't get the remaster tagged/named correctly - or

Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers ¨ 7209130A/Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers ¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac
Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers [1998 remaster] ¨ A40E6D0C/Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers [1998 remaster] ¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac

or if you want them all in the same folder:

Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers/Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers ¨ 7209130A¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac
Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers/Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers [1998 remaster] ¨ A40E6D0C ¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac

This assumes that you insist that Killers was "released" in the original release year of 1981. Then comes the next issue: what about the 1995 reissues (which I do not think was remastered, merely had a bonus disc, I could be wrong ...) I don't own that, so I substitute "<DISCID>": you could modify the above as e.g.

Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue] ¶1 ¨ <DISCID> /Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue] ¶1 ¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac
Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue] ¶2 ¨ <DISCID> /Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue] ¶2 ¨ 02 ¨ Women in Uniform.flac
Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue US] ¶1 ¨ <DISCID> /Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue US] ¶1 ¨ 05 ¨ Ghengis Khan.flac
Iron Maiden/1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue US] ¶2 ¨ <DISCID> /Iron Maiden ¨ 1981 ¨ Killers [1995 reissue US] ¶2 ¨ 02 ¨ Invasion.flac


or similar for the other patterns.  You can consider using ¶BONUS rather than ¶2 to flag that it wasn't a part of the original (and if so, leave out the ¶1). Myself I indicate releases with both a CD and a (bonus?) DVD by patterns like ¶CD and ¶DVD.

Still you have to think of what to do about boxed sets. The Led Zeppelin complete studio recordings, should they be one 1993 release, or should you have Led Zeppelin [1993 remaster TCSR]? What about the Judas Priest remasters, sold both individually and in a box?



Sorting would be locale-dependent. In some locales, you will have the Killers ¨ sorted after the Killers [, and if you want the original first ... test for yourself!



(... I need to remember a hitword to search up this post rather than starting to rattle off next time. Ghengis Khan is not a track I discuss that often.)

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #22 –
Quote from: marc2003 on
also, if you're aware of the WMP options that overwrite folder.jpg and know how to turn them off then you might be ok sticking with it but i prefer to err on the side of caution.


If you have the WMP setting which need changing to hand, would you mind letting me know.  Better still, if anyone knows how to get rid of the damn thing even better (I'm on XP SP3, and the WMP is version 9.00.00.4503.


@Porcus.  Many thanks for all that.  I'll be considering some of those points you raise 

WHy is it so common to use folder.jpg name for album art?

Reply #23 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Also, I would not use a dash as a separator, as that is often used in the metadata themselves.
I thought about that the last time you mentioned this in a thread. Having thought about it, I couldn't see how it would matter to me. I populate filenames from tags, not tags from filenames. The filenames are named so that if I (as a human  ) need to find a file by browsing filenames, I can. This implies that the alphanumeric sorting of them in various OSs needs to be consistent and make sense too. I think it was you who pointed out before that this is non-trivial!

In this context, using a character as a separator that's also found in the data doesn't really matter. My brain can cope with that. My PC doesn't care.

Whereas not being able to use ? and / constantly jars with my human brain, even though there are easy substitutions.

Those folks using long filenames: don't try and browse by folder on something with restricted width display. Sansa clip, DVD player / STB, some DLNA clients, etc.

Sorry for going waaaaaaaaay off topic.

Cheers,
David.