[faq] Album cover image

[hakko]

What images are chosen as album covers?

For the web interface, MusicCabinet has a setting called "Prefer last.fm artwork". If this is set to "Yes", artwork available at last.fm will be favored and displayed using image links pointing at last.fm. Artwork from last.fm is not downloaded to your server, only referenced by URL. This is useful if you have bandwidth limitations for your server, as it then no longer needs to serve both images and music to clients. This is only used in the web interface, not for apps (using an external image host is not supported in the official API). That means that some albums might have artwork in the web interface, while not for apps when using this setting.

If last.fm artwork is not used, MusicCabinet uses embedded artwork. If different songs from the same songs have different artwork, the choice of which to use is arbitrary.

If embedded artwork is not found in any song, folder artwork from any folder containing songs from the album is used. Images are picked by name: folder.jpg/jpeg/png/gif first, then cover.jpg/jpeg/png/gif. If different artwork is found in different folders for the same album, the choice of which to use is again arbitrary.

[sigel]

seems fair.. but to allow more control would you consider maybe adding an option such as 'clear art' or somehow to enable/allow users like myself who run MusicCabinet on a remote server and upload all their music, to change the covers within the MusicCabinet interface? Currently, it seems if a song has an embedded image, you would have no way of changing it via the interface.

I would use the last.fm option, but if that means no covers in DSub/iSub period, that's just worse in my case since I would say 85% of the listening on my server is done via apps.

[hakko]

Hmm I guess that could be added to the tag editor, but maybe not as easy as new text fields. Depends on how advanced it's supposed to be. My general approach to this is that better tagging software already exists (command line tools for batch updating, beets for automatic tagging including artwork etc) and re-inventing the wheel isn't really worth it. But adding simplicity is of course worth something in itself.

The last.fm artwork option doesn't affect apps at all. Apps only use embedded/folder artwork (if available), no matter what the last.fm option is set to.

[sigel]

You are right, maybe with a option to just clear the embedded image (if easy/possible), one could then use the built in Art google searcher to add one into the folder if one doesn't exist.

I will use the last.fm option for now, which will at least clean up the webinterface.

[hakko]

If you want to recognize other cover art files than folder.* and cover.*, this can be "configured" by updating the table library.coverartfilename which by default looks like this:

filename | priority
-------------
folder.jpg | 0
folder.jpeg | 1
folder.png | 2
folder.gif | 3
cover.jpg | 4
cover.jpeg | 5
cover.png | 6
cover.gif | 7

[rubbersoul]

thanks for the tip hakko. for anyone who is interested in doing this but doesn't know anything about postgresql (like myself), let me save you a couple minutes:

launch sql command-line interface (enter the password you set during install when prompted):

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psql -U postgres -h localhost -d musiccabinet

view the table of interest (don't forget the semicolon):

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select * from library.coverartfilename;

you should see an output like this:

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  filename   | priority
-------------+----------
folder.jpg  |        0
folder.jpeg |        1
folder.png  |        2
folder.gif  |        3
cover.jpg   |        4
cover.jpeg  |        5
cover.png   |        6
cover.gif   |        7
(8 rows)

add a new line to the table:

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INSERT INTO library.coverartfilename VALUES ('lastfm.jpg', 8);

if you view the table again, you should see the following:

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  filename   | priority
-------------+----------
folder.jpg  |        0
folder.jpeg |        1
folder.png  |        2
folder.gif  |        3
cover.jpg   |        4
cover.jpeg  |        5
cover.png   |        6
cover.gif   |        7
lastfm.jpg  |        8
(9 rows)

rinse and repeat until you're done. to exit psql:

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\q

now restart the subsonic service and everything should be working.