A suggestion for artwork rule

[yellowpjk]

I’m a minimserver user in Seoul. Thank you very much for the free program.

I’ve collected music files for more than 10 years, and I keep albums in directories named as the composer for classical music, artist for Jazz/Pop/Rock. So there are many albums and files in a directory. To identify individual disc of a multidisc album, I put suffix like (CD <n>) or (Vol. <n>) or (Vol. <n>, CD <n>) at the end of the albumname. The suffix is a physical permanent part of the albumname. I made artwork files named albumname.jpg. This worked very good for most controller application, especially for foobar2000 (It seems that foobar2000 does not have DISCSUBTITLE processing). But this is not fully acceptable to minimserver.

Now, I found that minimserver has a good/better artwork scheme for multidisc albums. And I want to change my artwork scheme according to minimserver's.

But there is a problem. In most case, DISCSUBTITLE would be [disc <n>] or (disc <n>) or disc <n> because the disc <n> method is very convient to identify individual disc of a multidisc album. Otherwise, the DISCSUBTITLE would be a short simple words like "Live”, “Studio”, “Live in Boston, 2018”, “Compilation”, etc. For that reason, in the case that multiple multidisc albums are in a directory, there could be a conflict (duplication) because discs of some multidisc albums can have the same DISCSUBTITLE such as (disc 1), (disc 2), etc. It means that DISCSUBTITLE can’t be used as the artwork filename. To avoid this, I must put such multidisc albums in seperate directories. But, I don't want to keep too many directories by creating different directory for each album, because it's hard to edit/create/maintain tags and files from huge number of directories. I still want to keep my own directory structure mentioned at first.

Thinking that many discs in a directory can have the same DISCSUBTITLE, the following minimserver's artwork search rule is not suitable.

When displaying a disc of a multidisc album, MinimServer looks for artwork using the following search order:

1. [NEW] A file named discname.jpg or discname.png (exact-case match only) in the same directory (folder) as any of the audio files in the album disc, where discname is the name of the album disc as specified by a DISCSUBTITLE tag. See the Illegal filename characters section for details of how to handle album disc names containing characters that can't be used in a filename.

My suggestion: In spite of the same DISCSUBTITLE, to make a unique artwork filename using DISCSUBTITLE, how about changing the discname.jpg to albumname <DISCSUBTITLE>.jpg? i.e. Replace the discname to the combination of albumname and DISCSUBTITLE.

For example, assume that albumname of a two-disc album is “Gould Plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations” and DISCSUBTITLEs are "(Disc 1)" and "(Disc 2)", the artwork filename of the multidisc album itself will be “Gould Plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations.jpg”, the artwork filenames of individual discs will be "Gould Plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Disc 1).jpg" and "Gould Plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Disc 2).jpg". These filenames are different from any other artwork filenames of discs which have (Disc <n>) as their DISCSUBTITLE.

The DISCSUBTITLE can be ‘[The 1955 Version] (Disc <n>)’ or ‘[The 1981 Version] (Disc <n>)’ according to the recording date, place, etc.. This example may not be suitable but it shows the possibility of various usage without confliction (duplication of artwork filename). I think, for various cases, albumname <DISCSUBTITLE>.jpg is more acceptable/general than discname.jpg. Of cause, the file type can be png or whatever.

[simoncn]

Thanks for this suggestion. I understand the issue and I agree that allowing the combination of album name and disc subtitle would provide a solution. I would suggest that this combined name be formatted as albumname.discname.jpg (rather than albumname discname.jpg) and it should be the first filename that is checked for a disc of a multidisc album (ahead of discname.jpg).

What do other users think about this?

[paultaylor]

(01-03-2019 13:22)simoncn Wrote:  Thanks for this suggestion. I understand the issue and I agree that allowing the combination of album name and disc subtitle would provide a solution. I would suggest that this combined name be formatted as albumname.discname.jpg (rather than albumname discname.jpg) and it should be the first filename that is checked for a disc of a multidisc album (ahead of discname.jpg).

What do other users think about this?

My comment would be that using a dot in the middle can cause problems since generally expect file type to come after suffix, now sure you shoud just check the for the last dot but how about using an underscore instead.

e.g albumname_discname.jpg

[simoncn]

I have many files with multiple dots in the name and I have never seen a case where any program sees anything other than the last dot as marking the start of the filetype.

[yellowpjk]

Thank you for your interest in my suggestion.

I think there is no need to have a specific delimiter. Because what the search routine concerns is not a part (neither the albumname nor the DISCSUBTITLE) of the filename but the whole filename. Sometime in the future, we may need a specific delimiter for some reason for more functionality. The program author might have some idea about it.
For the time being, the only thing I care is the way how it looks among files, the visibility. Because I want to find it easy and quick.

I think it would be better to leave it to the program author.

[Donuk]

Hi yellowpjk

One tiny issue - although it is possible to use Minimserver for free, it is not really a free programme. Simon is too modest to keep hammering on about this, but he puts a lot of time into this project and has bills to pay like the rest of us.
If you like the product might I suggest you make a voluntary donation. If you try to download it again you will be invited to do this.
Thanks
Donuk beautiful downtown York

[timster]

https://minimserver.com/donate.html