Post Reply 
 
Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Album art priority
20-01-2017, 19:54
Post: #1
Album art priority
Many downloads these days have embedded art in each track at a resolution of say 600x600, with a separate art file which might be much higher resolution (say 1400x1400 or more). I keep the hi-res art in a file Folder.jpg, but based on use of my retina iPad, I think Minimserver may be defaulting to the embedded art?

It's convenient to keep the moderate-resolution art embedded in the tracks for when they are converted for use on portable players, the car etc. So I don't want to embed the hi-res art in every file. Can you confirm whether Minimserver would disregard the hi-res art file in the use-case I've described, and if so, whether an option might be added to prioritise folder-level art when it's available?

Thanks.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
20-01-2017, 20:43 (This post was last modified: 20-01-2017 20:44 by simoncn.)
Post: #2
RE: Album art priority
MinimServer uses embedded art when available and falls back to folder art files when embedded art is not available. This is described in this section. The rationale is that embedded art is part of the UPnP specification and folder art files are an informal convention.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
20-01-2017, 21:17
Post: #3
RE: Album art priority
Agree the default approach adopted by Minimserver makes sense. But having an option to prioritise folder-level art would enable hi-res artwork to be used without having to either strip art out from individual tracks, or replacing the embedded art with the hi-res version. But replacing the embedded art might be the easiest thing to do in the meantime.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
29-01-2017, 22:02
Post: #4
RE: Album art priority
I just want to voice my support for making this configurable.

Best case for me would be for MinimServer to use folder.jpg if present when browsing albums to decide which one to play, since the point of having a folder.jpg is to represent the whole. Then when playing an individual track, use embedded art when present, falling back on folder.jpg when not.

The point of standards is to keep from having to accommodate everybody's personal use case, but then again the fun of MinimServer is its configurability. Either way, thanks for the great tool.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
29-01-2017, 22:52
Post: #5
RE: Album art priority
Thanks for this suggestion.

There is a trade-off between configurability and complexity. The current handling of album art uses the same image (either embedded or folder.jpg) for the album as a whole and for the tracks in the album. Allowing the album and track images to be different might cause surprising results for some users such as a low-quality image showing up in some places but not in other places. (I have seen many threads about such problems when using other servers.) It would also add significant complexity to what is already a complex area of the MinimServer code.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
02-02-2017, 03:59
Post: #6
RE: Album art priority
Yep, no worries--thanks for the reply. I can only think of two albums in my collection where this applies. One is a album from The Bad Plus a few years ago where they released a bonus track online that I've appended to the album. The bonus track had its own artwork, which was kind of nice, but now appears as the default artwork for the album because it overrides folder.jpg. I imagine the workaround here is to embed a copy of folder.jpg in the first track (I assume Minimserver picks the artwork from the first track that has it as the cover to display when browsing).

The other one I can think of is a box set of NASA Voyager recordings where each disc had its own artwork and the set itself had separate artwork. I've put them together as just one long album, each track with embedded artwork from the CD and dropped the box set cover in as folder.jpg.

It's all good. It's clearly not a typical use case.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
02-02-2017, 11:33
Post: #7
RE: Album art priority
(02-02-2017 03:59)likescookies Wrote:  Yep, no worries--thanks for the reply. I can only think of two albums in my collection where this applies. One is a album from The Bad Plus a few years ago where they released a bonus track online that I've appended to the album. The bonus track had its own artwork, which was kind of nice, but now appears as the default artwork for the album because it overrides folder.jpg. I imagine the workaround here is to embed a copy of folder.jpg in the first track (I assume Minimserver picks the artwork from the first track that has it as the cover to display when browsing).

Yes, this is how to solve the problem. However, it will mean you don't get the custom artwork when playing the bonus track.

It might be possible for me to change MinimServer so that an individual track of an album could have custom artwork in a filename.jpg file in the same folder. This is supported for non-album files but not currently for album tracks. With this change, you wouldn't need any embedded artwork to get what you want, just folder.jpg and filename.jpg files.

Quote:The other one I can think of is a box set of NASA Voyager recordings where each disc had its own artwork and the set itself had separate artwork. I've put them together as just one long album, each track with embedded artwork from the CD and dropped the box set cover in as folder.jpg.

It's all good. It's clearly not a typical use case.

You should be able to handle this by removing embedded artwork from all tracks of the album, then adding discname.jpg and albumname.jpg files as described in this section.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
04-02-2017, 13:00
Post: #8
RE: Album art priority
Excellent, thanks! I'd definitely employ a filename.jpg approach if it appears in a future version, and I'll revise the box set per your directions. Very helpful.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
10-02-2017, 19:45
Post: #9
RE: Album art priority
The filename.jpg change is now available in update 97.
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
11-02-2017, 03:57
Post: #10
RE: Album art priority
Just tested it--works perfectly! Thank you!
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
Post Reply 


Forum Jump:


User(s) browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)