Album Cover Art - Finally a Fix

[Dogbomb]

Originally Posted by PeterPan

So you are saying that you deleted files from both these directories:

C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\ehome\Art Cache
C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS

And you are 100% sure there is NO embeded jpgs???

Other than the folder.jpgs in your music directories, there are no other places that I am aware of that cover art is stored.

Final thing I would do if all of the above has been done is delete all files with the extension ".wmdb" in the following dir:

C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player

They are the the databases WMP uses. WMP will rebuild them and I would then try adding just a few albums to WMP then running my app and see how you go.

Bizare ...

Good luck.

Pete.

Greetings From London Peter Pan and my Aussie Cuzzes

Big thanks to Peter Pan you are a LEGEND! you saved me from doing some serious damage to my VMC from frustration. Spent days scanning all my album art with a Fujitsu fi-5220C scanner, scans were great but after i saw them in VMC i nearly cried and had to restrain myself from pressing the RED BUTTON :-D P.S. if u havent already got one of those scanners, id think about investing in one, its got the best twain driver options ive seen, no need to edit the images afterwards ;-)

Nehows... ur app certainly gave me a huge improvement, but i have a 60 Inch tv and im wondering is there any way i can get higher res than 500x500 ? as it still looks a little pixelated on the 60 inch screen :'( reckon i need 700x700 or 800x800 to make it fine.

PS. i have a large collection of Trance & House album art if anybody diggs

Thx in advance ur reply

Dogbomb :-D

[be1hov1]

Hi

Thanks for his great fix, it really rocks. Just want to kow if you have to run it each time you add a new album from now on?

/Be1hov1

[McoreD]

Hi PeterPan,

Great finding put into code. I am interested in tinkering it a bit too, could I please have access to the source? My email address is mcored@ii.net.

Thanks,
McoreD

[sialivi]

Feature Request:
A button which clears the cached artwork for wmp and media center

[superplay]

One word

Awsome!

Cheers

[<><]

hum ok so this app bascially still stores a copy of the cover art on your local machine under the LocalLMS folder....just copies and renames the high res cover art that it finds in your Mp3 folder to <GUIID>.jpg.

I've been using UrlToCoverArt app (thread here) to do the same thing, except this app doesn't need to copy over the high res album art to the LocalLMS folder. It alters the UrlToCoverArt.dat file found in the LocalLMS folder to point to the Folder.jpg (or whatever you have it named as) in your mp3 folders. This saves space and if you ever change the Folder.jpg in your mp3 folder, you do not have to run that program again. The only thing I have in my LocalLMS folder is the .dat file, nothing else.

Although, as same w/ your program, if adding new albums w/, you would need to run the app again.

[McoreD]

Hi<>< / All,

I don't see to have the .DAT file anywhere in the hard disk. Could you please send me a copy of your DAT file to mcored@ii.net?

Thanks in advance,
McoreD

[<><]

McoreD,
it should be in your C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS

if you've deleted it, media center automatically rebuilds it the next time you run media center and click on the music library.

these are the steps i took first time I ran this:

1. Downloaded Mp3tag so I could easily remove the embedded cover art from my mp3s, as thru WMP11 i had to click on each individual track and remove it and was very time consuming.
2. Added High-Res cover art to each of my mp3 folders, named Folder.jpg or Coverart.jpg or whatever you want to name it as.
   Also deleted anything else i found in that folder, including the hidden images/files that windows created. The only things I have in the folders are the mp3 files and a Folder.jpg image.
   
3. Open WMP11 and remove all music from Library Only, then close WMP11.
   
4. Deleted all files from the following locations:

   C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\eHome\Ar t Cache
   C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS

5. Open WMP11, go to Library->More Options->Library Tab->Monitor Folders (should already have your folders there)->Click OK
   Let it find all your music.
   
6. Open Vista Media Center and go browse your music by album cover...it should show no album covers this time, thats fine, Close Vista Media Center. It should have built a UrlToCoverArt.dat file in your LocalMLS folder and probably a copy of all your cover art there as well, but this will only work for the first track of your album.
   
7. Run the UrlToCoverArt program i liked above, point it to the root folder of all your albums (default is C:\USERNAME\music i believe), and put the name of the .jpg you named it in your folders, eg. Folder.jpg or CoverArt.jpg. It'll scan all your music and compare it to the .dat file for the location. It should auto fix it, then you can just go to File->Save and overwrite the .data file. It creates a backup as well, so no harm will be done.
   
8. You can go back to the LocalMLS folder and delete everything EXCEPT the UrlToCoverArt.dat file.

Thats pretty much it, now everytime I add a new album to my root folder, i just run the program and it adds the entries to the .dat file pointing to the coverart for my music.

It all works pretty well.

All the top steps are off the top of my head, as I'm at work right now, but it sounds/looks about right

[lemonato]

Originally Posted by PeterPan

newic
Glad it solved your long outstanding issue.

colb
Thanks for the feedback. As for your Xbox 360 and album art cache, not really sure how it works with the 360 as I don't have one. Anyone know where, how it works for the Xbox?? Or anyone willing to donate one to me so I can create a fix???

Cheers,

Pete.

Peter, the 360 is basically the same as the standard user DB. It's just stored in Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player. Within that directory there is the currentdatabase_360.wmdb and a few other wmdb files.

I have copied the currentdatabase_360.wmdb from the Mcx1 directory to my user directory and then run your program to get the album art with the right GUIDs (as they are different from my user ones) then copied the currentdatabase file and the album art back to the mcx directory and it works a treat.

So if you ever release another version please add an option to update the xbox database aswell. I assume it would be fairly easy to just get the program to look at Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\currentdatabase_360.wmdb and the output the art into Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS

Cheers

[PeterPan]

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay in my response, been pretty busy lately ...

Anyway, ont to answering some questions, I only respond to those in the last month, any older ones still looking for a response feel free to ask it again and I will follow up with an answer.

Dogbomb

You can choose to have your images what ever size you like, my app won't resize them, but when VMC displays the cover from the cache, I believe its max size of the image is 500x500 anyway ... so nothing I can do there.

be1hov1

Yeah, you need to run it every new album you add ... you could use windows scheuler to run my app every couple of days late at night to "automate" the process for you I guess ....

McoreD

Code sent as requested

sialivi

I'll work on adding a button which clears the cached artwork for wmp and media center in my next release.

SuperPlay

You are welcome

<><

I am aware of that app, but for my needs this solution worked better as my albums are actually on a network storage area and it is quicker to use the local cached thumbnails than for it to retrieve the hundreds of highres album covers across the network.

... there are many ways to skin a cat. If the other option work well for you, keep using it.

lemonato

For it to work with the Xbox, all you are suggesting is that when coping the art, I do so to 2 places instead of 1? One for VMC and the other for xbox?

If that is the case, that is an easy feature add. I'll add a check box for Xbox Extender which will shouw another input box where you can browse for a second path (The paths will be save in the ini file so that the next time you run the app you don't have to add that option). Sound like that would work?

Cheers again to all that are using my app, glad so many are finding it usefull and still using it.

Pete.

[lemonato]

Originally Posted by PeterPan

Hi All,

For it to work with the Xbox, all you are suggesting is that when coping the art, I do so to 2 places instead of 1? One for VMC and the other for xbox?

If that is the case, that is an easy feature add. I'll add a check box for Xbox Extender which will shouw another input box where you can browse for a second path (The paths will be save in the ini file so that the next time you run the app you don't have to add that option). Sound like that would work?

Hi pete,

The program needs to check the currentdatabase_360.wmdb that is stored in the mcx1 (xbox) user path as it is different to the one stored in the VMC user path.

AFAIK this must be true, as the album art generated from each DB has different GUIDs.

Also it's almost guaranteed that the extender path will be Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player on every machine.

Thanks pete

[PeterPan]

Hey lemonato,

Hmm, different GUID for the 2, are you 100% sure about that? If so then it is going to be a little more challenging as I don't directly read the currentdatabase_360.wmdb but instead use a WMP API that accesses the db. I am sure there is an API to access the Xbox wmdb, but it is going to be quite a challeng to develop considering I don't actuall have an Xbox.

Can you double check by adding a new album and comparing the new jpg's that are created in the cache folders for VMC and the Xbox?

Cheers,

Pete.

[lemonato]

Ok Pete, here's exactly what i've done:

Added a new cd to the computer (single, only 2 tracks)
Downloaded an album art jpg for it and stored it in the same directory as the tracks as art.jpg (all my albums art files are called art.jpg)
Started up WMP and allowed it to add the 2 tracks to the library
Started up MCE on the 360 and added the tracks
Closed both WMP and MCE
Started VMCAAF (album art fixer) and allowed it to overwrite the existing files with all my art.jpg and outputted the files to C:\Users\Chickens\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS (yes my user is called chickens )
Moved currentdatabase_360.wmdb from C:\Users\Chickens\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player to ..
Moved currentdatabase_360.wmdb from C:\Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player to C:\Users\Chickens\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player
Started up VMCAAF again and allowed it to overwrite the files in C:\Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS
Moved both currentdatabase_360.wmdb back to their original locations
Started WMP and MCE on the 360 and checked if the new art was there - OK.
Checked the files in C:\Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS and C:\Users\Chickens\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS and the 2 new files for the album art do indeed have different GUIDs for each user. For example chickens has {8487.....} and {C180.....} MCX1 has {8B8E.....} and {E3D0.....}

Hope this helps, thanks again.

[colincliff]

@ PeterPan

Firstly, thankyou so much for this application. I worked perfectly with my music running off a NAS networked folder. Storing the image files locally works really well for me.

I have a strange request. I frequently run you app in the background after i have added music etc and I have a few tracks which have no album art. Obviously when your app gets to these tracks the dialogue box appears to let me know that these tracks are missing albumart. Since i am running this in the background i dont see this dialogue, and i dont want to keep poping out of VMC to click ok in this dialogue box.

My work around for this was to run a small app called click-off which you can configure to 'click' a button when it appears based on the name of the window etc. My problem is that the dialogue box that pops up when there is no album art has the same name as the main window of you app, and so click-off can't tell the difference between the two.

Is there an easy way that i can rename the name of the window that pops up when there is no art so that click-off can distinguish it from other windows, i.e. change the name to 'VMC Album Art Fixer - no Art' or somthing like that.

I dont expect you to make any changes to you app for my odd request, but if you could point me in the direction of which code to alter i would be most grateful

hope this all makes sense, Thanks in advance

Col

[sialivi]

colincliff,

From the version 1.1 changelog:
* Added error ignoring options as per sialivi request

This prevents the dialogs from appearing