Album Art for Albums with the same title

[jph6t]

Originally posted by DJ Egg

Winamp 5.5 Released

* New: Album Art support
* New: [ml_local] Album Art support/pane and retrieval service

Notes:

-Re: Album Art support
-Lookup order: embedded (in tags),
%album%/cover/folder.jpg/gif/png, *.nfo file.
-Note: The cache is the art*.* files in the "Plugins\ml" folder
-(art.dat, art.idx, art60.dat/idx, art90.dat/idx, art120.dat/idx).
-Downloader access via:
Art icon rt-click menu, unified file info & pmp edit info box
-Currently saves as %album%.jpg in the containing folder.
-Art retrieval criteria and saving isn't configurable... yet!
-ie. you can't get it to look in a specific dir or save as anything other than %album%.jpg

Common Requests:

Commonly requested features taken from all of the 5.36/5.5 beta threads.

• Anything else already covered in the above notes,
  eg. AlbumArt (in)completion

I'd like to point out a design issue with the current approach for naming Album Art.

The use of %album% is insufficient, as Album title is NOT unique.
What happens when two different Albums have the same title?
"Greatest Hits" is the most common example.

This won't be an issue for those who organize their physical music files into separate folders by album, but the above will be a big issue for those that keep all of their MP3s
in one folder. I would also point out, that this later group is the group most likely to use the %album% method for populating Album Art, as they are NOT able to use the cover* or folder* methods for associating an image with an album (and it has already been discussed in this thread why some prefer not to embed Album Art images in the ID3 tags)

To be clear, currently the Media Library (ML) DOES in fact recognize two Albums
with the same title as two different items within the ML ... so no issues there.
The problem is with associating the two different Album Art images with the two
separate items within the ML.

My suggestion is to add the Album Artist's name to the naming scheme used by
"Get Album Art" (separated by a hyphen). Example:

• 2Pac - Greatest Hits.jpg
• Aerosmith - Greatest Hits.jpg
• Kenny Chesney - Greatest Hits.jpg

As such, the lookup order would have to be modified to look for:
embedded (in tags), %album artist% - %album%, cover.*, folder*.

This naming scheme has the added bonus of complimenting the naming scheme many likely use for their physical music files (Artist - Song Title). And very often the value for Artist will be equal to that for Album Artist. As such, the image files for an Album Artist's Album Art will appear next to that Artist's MP3 files when exploring the folder where these files are contained. Or if in the future the capability is added to Winamp to designate an Album Art folder separate from the folder containing the MP3 files ... having the Album Artist name in the Album Art's filename would still be nice as it will assist the user in remembering the Artist who recorded the Album, and puts all the Album Artist's Album Art side by side.

NOTE:

The above item was reported/discussed in the 5.5 BETA thread. As such, the issue is likely a well known quantity as far as the DEVs go. I am creating this post more to track the bug/feature request, and to assist new 5.5 users who are trying to figure out why some Album Art is NOT being displayed correctly within Winamp.

[DJ Egg]

Hi jph6t
This is a feature request, not a bug.
The config for Album Art lookup/retrieval/saving criteria has not been implemented yet.
Sorry, but we ran out of time.
Hopefully it will all be implemented in time for 5.51 :-)

[Michael T.]

I hope so DJ Egg because I get tired of seeing Samantha Fox, Dio and The Allman Brothers Band as the default image for most selections. I would think that using the auto-tagger would help find the correct album artwork but it doesn't.

[DJ Egg]

Maybe it's time to start storing your music files more suitably?
eg. X:\Path\To\Music\Artist\Album\*.mp3

Then you could just have one folder.jpg or cover.jpg file in each individual album folder, and all proper covers will be displayed.

Note that if %album%.jpg (ie. the cover file has the exact same name as the album title) exists in the containing folder, then the correct covers will also be shown.

So, even if all your music is one folder, then the only problem you'll ever come across is the one outlined by jph6t above, where only albums with the exact same title will share the same cover (eg. Greatest Hits).

At a guess, you've got 3 folders, each with a Samantha Fox, Dio and The Allman Brothers Band folder.jpg or cover.jpg file in.

Rename those files to %album%.jpf instead.
Problem solved.

Currently, the only way to get Winamp to download art is to right-click the cover icon and select 'Get Album Art', but you can only do it for one album at a time, not en-masse.

Winamp will save the art as %album%.jpg in the same folder as the album.

[jph6t]

Originally posted by DJ Egg
Maybe it's time to start storing your music files more suitably?
eg. X:\Path\To\Music\Artist\Album\*.mp3

DJ Egg, I would think you of all people would appreciate how subjective that suggestion/statement is!

As I stated previously, some users would prefer NOT to have their file structure
dictated to them by their software/media player.

Originally posted by DJ Egg
So, even if all your music is one folder, then the only problem you'll ever come across is the one outlined by jph6t above, where only albums with the exact same title will share the same cover
(eg. Greatest Hits).

Michael T., as Egg has pointed out, your problem with Album Art displaying correctly
is NOT the very specific gap in design to which I am bringing attention.

[Michael T.]

Actually I only have a few songs by Samantha Fox, a couple by Dio and one by The Allman Brothers Band, all in seperate folders. I have been using amptracker to save album cover art and then place it where the correct cover art should be. There's another bug but I know this isn't the thread for it so I'll go hunting for the official bug thread.

[DJ Egg]

@Michael T.

The only way Winamp will show album art is if one of the following criteria exists:

1. There is an image file embedded inside the tags of the album files

2. There is an image file with one of the following names in the same folder as the album files:

folder.jpg
folder.gif
folder.png
folder.bmp
cover.jpg
cover.gif
cover.png
cover.bmp
%album%.jpg
%album%.gif
%album%.png
%album%.bmp

3. There is an .nfo file with the same name as an image file in the same folder as the album files.

And that is it.

If none of those criteria exist, then Winamp will not show an album cover, and we cannot reproduce anything contrary to that.

[zackbuffo]

I've found another Album Art issue in WA5.5.

There are some albums, that have a ":" in the album name. To display them correctly, WA should be able to cope with the "forbidden" characters in Windows that show up in ID3 tags and don't appear in album art filenames.

[jph6t]

Originally posted by zackbuffo
I've found another Album Art issue in WA5.5

zackbuffo, what does this issue have to do with the glitch being documented here?
This report belongs elsewhere. Thread hijack.

Originally posted by zackbuffo
There are some albums, that have a ":" in the album name.
To display them correctly, WA should be able to cope with the "forbidden" characters in Windows that show up in ID3 tags
and don't appear in album art filenames.

Did you search for an answer before posting?

Originally posted by DJ Egg
Winamp 5.5 Beta Preview 3 (Build 1600) to 5.5 Final (Build 1640) Changelog

-Improved: Album Art: %album%.jpg path cleaning. Retrieval service now replaces illegal characters in the Album name by using the same naming convention as cd ripping for saving the cover filename. i.e.
? * | are replaced by _ (underscore)
/ \ : are replaced by - (hyphen)
" is replaced by '
< is replaced by (
> is replaced by )
Examples:
Album Name: Greatest Hits: Why?
= cover filename: Greatest Hits_ Why-.jpg
Album Name: Vol. 1: "\Bleh/" <|Blah|>
= cover filename: Vol. 1- '-Bleh-' (_Blah_).jpg*

zackbuffo, I speculate your filenames do NOT comply with the above naming convention. Mine that do, handle a ":" in the Album name just fine.

[DJ Egg]

Winamp 5.5 Beta Preview 3 to 5.5 Final Changelog

QUOTE

-Improved: Album Art: %album%.jpg path cleaning. Retrieval service now replaces illegal characters in the Album name by using the same naming convention as cd ripping for saving the cover filename. i.e.
? * | are replaced by _ (underscore)
/ \ : are replaced by - (hyphen)
" is replaced by '
< is replaced by (
> is replaced by )
Examples:
Album Name: Greatest Hits: Why? = cover filename: Greatest Hits_ Why-.jpg
Album Name: Vol. 1: "\Bleh/" <|Blah|> = cover filename: Vol. 1- '-Bleh-' (_Blah_).jpg*


[edit]

Oops, too slow. Hi jph6t :-)

[jph6t]

Feature Request - Album Art Config

Originally posted by DJ Egg
The config for Album Art lookup/retrieval/saving criteria has not been implemented yet.
Sorry, but we ran out of time. Hopefully it will all be implemented in time for 5.51 :-)

Bruce Springsteen, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, & 2Pac called.
They'd like to have their "Greatest Hits" cover art displayed correctly.
Right now they all have the cover art for the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Greatest Hits" album.

vs.

No calls were received from Flea & Co.

[MrSinatra]

i think its reasonable to suggest that users have a sensible directory structure as a prerequisite to fix this issue, however adding artist to the string is reasonable as well.

the problem is what happens when someone complains that two different greatest hits albums for instance by the same artist aren't having their artwork differentiated? more rare, but same problem.