Displaying pictures of artists?

[audio_elf]

(28-03-2015 08:52)simoncn Wrote:  It does make sense. I would change the Artists and Composers folders to Artist and Composer so that they match the tag names exactly.

For the root icon, I think it would make sense to use the special filename Artist.jpg or Artist.png. This shouldn't conflict with the name of any real artist.

That certainly makes sense - to be honest I couldn't remember if it was Artist & Composer as single or plural.

I look forward to the possibility that it gets implemented :-)

[Lakorus]

(27-03-2015 22:18)simoncn Wrote:  

(27-03-2015 22:05)Lakorus Wrote:  Hello Simon,

as I opened this thread, I would appreciate such an option very much, though it's mostly a cosmetic thing. For me, a solution similar to the one you have for album art would be perfect:

For example:
First look into the MP3's current folder if there is a jpg that is named exactly like the artist is.
If there isn't any, use the album art in the artist's first album (alphabetical).

Best regards
Lakorus

Edit: Obviously, I was a bit slow in typing. Stampie covered it pretty well!

Thanks for this feedback!

An artist would typically have tracks in a large number of folders. If each of these folders specifies a different image for the artist name, it isn't clear which image MinimServer should use.

It also isn't clear how to extend this to support other image types such as Composer, Conductor, Soloist, Genre, Instrument, etc.

Because of issues like these, this approach would be more difficult to implement than the design that I described.

Okay, I understand this problem. I don't know the algorithm that MinimServer uses for scanning the library, but I assume that it goes through the specified folders and subfolders alphabetically. One option then would be to have MinimServer look for a fitting image in the folder, in which the tag values first occurence appears. For example: In folder "B" there is a subfolder named "Björk", in which a file is found that contains the artist-tag "Björk". MinimServer then looks for an image-file named Björk.* or Artist_Björk.* in that folder. If such a file isn't found, then the file's album art is used instead. Does that make sense?

I only thought of the artist's images, as the vast majority of my collection is Rock & Pop, where composers etc. aren't important for browsing. Maybe you could (for any solution of searching for images) add a new property item like "SearchImage", in which those indexTags can be added, for which the user wants MinimServer to search for images?

The solution Audio_elf suggested seems to be easier to handle for the maintenance after the initial setup, but it is a more "completionist" approach. I would prefer to have a fallback-option that uses the album art embedded in the file, if there is no dedicated image available.

BTW: Thank you for considering these ideas and requests!

Best regards
Lakorus

[simoncn]

(28-03-2015 20:45)Lakorus Wrote:  Okay, I understand this problem. I don't know the algorithm that MinimServer uses for scanning the library, but I assume that it goes through the specified folders and subfolders alphabetically. One option then would be to have MinimServer look for a fitting image in the folder, in which the tag values first occurence appears. For example: In folder "B" there is a subfolder named "Björk", in which a file is found that contains the artist-tag "Björk". MinimServer then looks for an image-file named Björk.* or Artist_Björk.* in that folder. If such a file isn't found, then the file's album art is used instead. Does that make sense?

This doesn't work because the user could add more albums with the same artist which would mean a different folder comes first in the scan.

Quote:I only thought of the artist's images, as the vast majority of my collection is Rock & Pop, where composers etc. aren't important for browsing. Maybe you could (for any solution of searching for images) add a new property item like "SearchImage", in which those indexTags can be added, for which the user wants MinimServer to search for images?

This would add more complexity than I think is justified for this "feature".

Quote:The solution Audio_elf suggested seems to be easier to handle for the maintenance after the initial setup, but it is a more "completionist" approach. I would prefer to have a fallback-option that uses the album art embedded in the file, if there is no dedicated image available.

BTW: Thank you for considering these ideas and requests!

Best regards
Lakorus

Thanks for your feedback. I understand what you are saying even though I am personally more inclined to the "completionist" view. I look forward to hearing the views of other users.

[airflow]

(28-03-2015 20:55)simoncn Wrote:  Thanks for your feedback. I understand what you are saying even though I am personally more inclined to the "completionist" view. I look forward to hearing the views of other users.

I am a new user of MinimServer, coming from Plex. I still use Plex today for media like movies and series, while I switched to MinimServer for music. Plex has a huge advantage over MinimServer when it comes to dynamically fetching metadata of media, generally speaking. For example, for each movie in my collection, Plex automatically fetches casting actors and the director of the movie, which then is used for the search-tree/directory when browsing the collection. While you probably could implement this by tagging of media, here this is done dynamically when scanning the library.

   

When I tested MinimServer for the first time, the artists-list in my music section didn't look as nice as I was used to by Plex, because there were no pictures of the artists. I attach a screenshot of how this looks. The pictures are obviously from some online-database (I don't know which one), and make browsing more visually appealing for the user. I still very much prefer using MinimServer as many functions are superior than in Plex, mainly search-tree, speed and the search-function, so I decided to live without these pictures. While I would be happy to see visual representation of artists within MinimServer, I still wouldn't use it if it the pictures had to be manually provided by the user for each artist. For me, personally, that would be too much of hassle and work. :-)

greetings, airflow

[simoncn]

(29-03-2015 18:57)airflow Wrote:  I am a new user of MinimServer, coming from Plex. I still use Plex today for media like movies and series, while I switched to MinimServer for music. Plex has a huge advantage over MinimServer when it comes to dynamically fetching metadata of media, generally speaking. For example, for each movie in my collection, Plex automatically fetches casting actors and the director of the movie, which then is used for the search-tree/directory when browsing the collection. While you probably could implement this by tagging of media, here this is done dynamically when scanning the library.

When I tested MinimServer for the first time, the artists-list in my music section didn't look as nice as I was used to by Plex, because there were no pictures of the artists. I attach a screenshot of how this looks. The pictures are obviously from some online-database (I don't know which one), and make browsing more visually appealing for the user. I still very much prefer using MinimServer as many functions are superior than in Plex, mainly search-tree, speed and the search-function, so I decided to live without these pictures. While I would be happy to see visual representation of artists within MinimServer, I still wouldn't use it if it the pictures had to be manually provided by the user for each artist. For me, personally, that would be too much of hassle and work. :-)

greetings, airflow

Thanks for this feedback, which is very helpful.

I don't know where Plex is getting these pictures from and I don't know whether MinimServer would ever provide this functionality. I also understand that you wouldn't wish to enter these pictures into your library manually.

Even so, there might be a reason to have the proposed facility because it opens up the possibility of someone creating a third-party tool that could download these pictures and store them in the correct locations in your library to make MinimServer show them automatically.

[audio_elf]

(29-03-2015 23:56)simoncn Wrote:  Thanks for this feedback, which is very helpful.

I don't know where Plex is getting these pictures from and I don't know whether MinimServer would ever provide this functionality. I also understand that you wouldn't wish to enter these pictures into your library manually.

Even so, there might be a reason to have the proposed facility because it opens up the possibility of someone creating a third-party tool that could download these pictures and store them in the correct locations in your library to make MinimServer show them automatically.

Plex scans your library and downloads artist information from Discogs (iirc or it may be lastfm). Not sure if it would work with Plex, but certainly with XBMC there should be a way you can export the metadata which could be parsed (external to Minimserver) to provide artists images.

Not sure if this is Simon's thought; but I was imagining this function would be manual for the end user though I'm sure some enterprising scripts could be developed.

Eloise

[simoncn]

(30-03-2015 10:01)audio_elf Wrote:  Plex scans your library and downloads artist information from Discogs (iirc or it may be lastfm). Not sure if it would work with Plex, but certainly with XBMC there should be a way you can export the metadata which could be parsed (external to Minimserver) to provide artists images.

Not sure if this is Simon's thought; but I was imagining this function would be manual for the end user though I'm sure some enterprising scripts could be developed.

Eloise

Thanks for this information about where the artist images might be located.

I was imagining the same as you, that the images folder could be populated either manually or by running a script (not written by me).

[tboooe]

Sorry for reviving a somewhat old thread but I was thinking why can Minimserver just keep it simple and display a layered collage of the artist albums instead. I believe JRiver Media Center does this. This way Minimserver is just using information it already has either embedded in the music file or as folder.jpg in the album folder.

[simoncn]

(13-04-2015 22:47)tboooe Wrote:  Sorry for reviving a somewhat old thread but I was thinking why can Minimserver just keep it simple and display a layered collage of the artist albums instead. I believe JRiver Media Center does this. This way Minimserver is just using information it already has either embedded in the music file or as folder.jpg in the album folder.

The UPnP protocol doesn't allow for displaying a layered collage. It would be possible to display a random album cover, but some people don't want this (see the discussion on this thread). Another problem is that this approach doesn't work for showing other images such as composer, conductor, etc.

[Mihaylov]

Do you plan to add images for minimserver folders ("choices") in the home container as in Asset UPnP?
Visualization of "choices" is much more convenient than the Artist, Date, Genre, etc signatures.