album art not showed consistently

[ersy]

Hallo!
Yesterday I installed Minimserver2 on my QNAP-NAS. I browse with KAZOO and use an Ipad.
Installation was in so far successful that I can see the Minim icon on my QNAP screen but when I try to open it nothing is shown from my data, folders etc.
When I do open the Twonky icon I see immediately all my audiofiles etc.
So failure somewhere!?
Last night I got a headphone session and curious I decided to click back to the Twonky level. To my big surprise I saw there, alongside the Twonky icon, also the Minim icon!
I clicked on it and everything was there! Choice possibilities for album, artist, folder etc! Hurray!

But my problem is the way that album art is showed/not showed.
When e.g. I open “Albums” the file opens and every album shows its own albumart. So I'm shure it really is all there!
But if I open “Folder” or “Artist” only 1 or 2% from all the files shows its album-art. The rest shows the music note icon
Opening a file and again all album-art is there … complete!
Hope you have a suggestion what to do.

[simbun]

Unfortunately there are just too many variables to provide an answer, so you might want to look at the user guides for artwork rules.

Core artwork.

Index artwork.

[simoncn]

For folders:
Is artwork missing from the folder name in the list of folders or is it missing from the list of files within the folder?

For artists:
Have you set the indexArtwork option in the serverOptions property? If you set this to indexArtwork=auto, you should see more artwork images.

[ersy]

Hi Simon. Thanks for reaction.
Sorry, my mother tongue is not English and especially when it comes to technical/computer English. It's difficult for me to read a user guide etc.
I will describe step by step what I see working with minim.
Opening minim on KAZOO I see a list to choose from, all starting with the music note icon (= mni). Opening the first one (mni) "2005 albums" I see in tile form all my albums and all with their corresponding album art.
The same happens when I open (mni) "11453 items": all records show their corresponding album art.
But when I open (mni) "artist" or "folder view" (the one I use in 98% of all cases) I only see the mni and the artist or record name without any album art. Opening the record then all albums belonging to this artist or record show themselves with corresponding album art.
In Twonky on KAZOO opening "artist" or "by folder" all records show themselves with album art, but there the tracks within an album often show only the mni and no album art.
Hope that we can reach the good results from Twonky also in/with minim.

By the way: your question/remark "Have you set the indexArtwork option in the serverOptions property? If you set this to indexArtwork=auto, you should see more artwork images." did not work out for me: I simply nowhere can find an item as "server Options property" when I open mimin in QNAP.

[simoncn]

Thanks for explaining this in more detail.

To show artwork when you select Artist, you need to do the following:

1) Activate a MinimServer trial license or full license if you haven't done this already
2) Install and run MinimWatch on another computer (PC, Mac or Linux) on your home network if you haven't done this already
3) From the MinimWatch minim icon, select Properties
4) From the Properties dialog, select the Advanced tab
5) In the field named serverOptions, type the value indexArtwork=auto and then click OK
6) Restart MinimServer

I am not sure what is causing the problem with folder view. When you select [folder view], do you get a list of albums (record names) or a list of artists? If you get a list of albums in folder view (album folders), selecting one of these folders should show artwork for the album inside the folder. If this isn't happening, this means MinimServer can't find an artwork image for the folder. Does the folder contain a file with artwork (JPG or PNG)? If so, what is the name of this file?

[ersy]

Hi Simon! Thank you again.
For "Artist" your solution is to heavy for me and again: I open in more than 98% in "folder view" so that's what I am looking for.
Opening "folder view" in KAZOO nearly all records shown start with the music note icon (mni) followed by the name of an artist. No album art what so ever! When I open for example "(mni) 10 CC" (only one album in this file) in the screen that opens now I see 2 tiles a) and b).
a) is a tile only showing the mni and named "> > tag view", followed by a tile containing the album art and album name. Clicking on "> > tag view" I see two records. The first is named "(mni) Hide contents" and the second "(mni) 10 cc" (no album art here on this screen). Open "(mni) Hide contents" and you see only the word "empty".
b) Click on the tile with album art and album name and you will see the play functions of KAZOO and the different tracks, ready for playing and so on. Hope you have a more clear picture now

[simoncn]

When you are using folder view, you should completely ignore the >> Tag View selection.

A folder shows artwork if it contains a file named folder.jpg, folder.png, cover.jpg or cover.png or if any file in the folder has embedded artwork. MinimServer looks only in the folder itself for these files. For example, when showing the menu entry for the 10 CC folder, MinimServer looks in the 10 CC folder for artwork but does not look in the album folder contained in the 10 CC folder.

[simoncn]

I am working on a change that should do what you want for [folder view] if you set indexArtwork=auto as described in this post.

With this change, if a folder doesn't have artwork and if indexArtwork=auto is enabled, all subfolders underneath the folder would be checked for artwork. If any of these subfolders has artwork, the first subfolder artwork image found would be shown for the folder.

For example, with this hierarchy and indexArtwork=auto:

Folder1
---Folder2
------Folder3
------Folder4
---Folder5
------Folder6

and if Folder4 and Folder6 have artwork, the artwork from Folder4 would be shown for Folder2, the artwork from Folder6 would be shown for Folder5 and the artwork from Folder2 (originally from Folder4) would be shown for Folder1.

If indexArtwork=auto is not set, only Folder4 and Folder6 would show artwork.

This is similar to how indexArtwork works for index menus (look for an image inside the index entry contents and show it for the index entry).