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Album Artwork
15-04-2021, 16:57
Post: #1
Album Artwork
To avoid having to deal with illegal characters and lengthy song titles I have a very flat file layout:

%ALBUMARTISTSORT%/%YEAR% - %ALBUM%/%DISCNUMBER%.%TRACKNUMBER%.flac
%ALBUMARTISTSORT%/%YEAR% - %ALBUM%/%DISCNUMBER%.cue

So I have all the tracks for an album/boxset in a single folder.

I've always embedded album art, but I've just worked out that I'm using about 7GB of data, when storing them externally would only take up 480MB. The other reason for storing them externally is for compatibility e.g. MinimServer doesn't read embedded ogg vorbis album art.
I've just played around with automating the removal of art and padding from the files only to realise that my assumption of MinimServer's artwork rules are wrong; I had thought that it would read from a file named %discnumber%.[jpg|png], but it doesn't, and that kinda breaks where I was going with this.

I know the rules around artwork are already quite complex so adding anything to that is best avoided, but with %discnumber% there's just one rule I need to follow for all the scenarios (except group art obviously).

I know I can change my layout to have one folder per CD and stick with folder.jpg, but I just find it a little crude/unnecessary - especially with albums with just one CD.
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15-04-2021, 17:27
Post: #2
RE: Album Artwork
(15-04-2021 16:57)simbun Wrote:  I know I can change my layout to have one folder per CD and stick with folder.jpg, but I just find it a little crude/unnecessary - especially with albums with just one CD.

The issue doesn't arise for an album with one CD. In this case, you can use albumname.jpg or folder.jpg. It also doesn't arise for multidisc albums where all discs have the same album art. I presume this covers the great majority of cases.

For multidisc albums where you want different album art for each disc, you can add a DISCSUBTITLE tag and use discsubtitle.jpg.
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15-04-2021, 18:17
Post: #3
RE: Album Artwork
I tried not to put too much detail in but I haven't really explained what I'm trying to achieve, sorry :-)

I appreciate that by following the rules you can get MinimServer to display the artwork that you want, but those rules are at best awkward to automate.

Given most taggers operate on a per file basis, at the very least you'd need to add TOTALDISCS to all the files to be able to identify whether it's a single CD album. Then, you'd have to assume that if one CD has a %discsubtitle% then they all will, so use %discsubtitle% otherwise use a single folder.jpg.

This still requires that you follow the MinimServer illegal character naming guide, which might not work for other tools e.g. with foobar you can tell it to use external artwork, but if I put %discsubtitle%.jpg would it follow the same rules?

I can probably work around this, I mentioned it mainly as it's a much simpler solution than the current rules (it's just one rule), albeit you do duplicate album art for multi-disc albums that share the same artwork.
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15-04-2021, 19:53
Post: #4
RE: Album Artwork
It sounds like you are using a specific ripping/tagging program and you want MinimServer to match exactly what that program generates. As far I can can understand your suggestion, you want MinimServer to recognise a filename of 1.jpg for a single-disc album and filenames of 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc. for the discs of a multidisc album.

As you said in your original post, the rules around artwork are already quite complex so adding anything to that is best avoided. Bearing this in mind, adding a new naming rule to match this specific use case doesn't feel right to me.
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15-04-2021, 21:07 (This post was last modified: 15-04-2021 22:41 by simbun.)
Post: #5
RE: Album Artwork
(15-04-2021 19:53)simoncn Wrote:  It sounds like you are using a specific ripping/tagging program and you want MinimServer to match exactly what that program generates.
In some sense it's actually quite the opposite. Getting a tagging program to extract the album art and name it the same as the discnumber is much simpler than to have it work out whether it needs to use %discsubtitle% (with illegal chacacters removed), folder.jpg or a combination of both (quite a few albums have one disc without a subtitle and the other with).

(15-04-2021 19:53)simoncn Wrote:  As far I can can understand your suggestion, you want MinimServer to recognise a filename of 1.jpg for a single-disc album and filenames of 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc. for the discs of a multidisc album.
It doesn't matter how many discs are in the album, just match the %discnumber% tag (I actually have it set as '01').

I'm fully aware my pains are self inflicted, they usually are, but something else I've just thought of is how I organise boxsets!
'The Beatles in Mono' boxset contains 11 CDs, all of which are albums; I have a tag called BOXTITLE and set it to 'The Beatles in Mono' and have all the CD's tagged with album name, so there's no discsubtitle to attach artwork to (given I have them all under a single directory).

Wouldn't it be nice to simplify the rules down to:
embedded JPEG, PNG, GIF or BMP
%discnumber%.[jpg|png]
%discnumber%.%tracknumber%.[jpg|png]
%groupname%.[jpg|png]
;-)

Obviously I'm not suggesting you remove all the other rules!

Thanks anyway for your time and consideration.
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16-04-2021, 11:46
Post: #6
RE: Album Artwork
I am not comfortable with using 1.jpg or 01.jpg for a single-disc album with a DISCNUMBER tag of 1 or 01. In this case, I think albumname.jpg, folder.jpg or cover.jpg should be used.

For your 'The Beatles in Mono' boxset, albumname.jpg should work. The purpose of albumname.jpg is to cater for multiple albums in a single folder.

For a multidisc album where one disc has a DISCSUBTITLE tag and another disc does not, you can use the default disc subtitle to name the art image for the other disc (if this is different from the overall image for the album). The default disc subtitle is 'Disc n' for English and the corresponding localized value for other languages. The default disc subtitle is available for multidisc albums whose discs are not being merged and is used to display the contents of the multidisc album in the control point.

I understand that you have a different preference but I think the current scheme works well enough for the various cases and I don't think a change is justified.
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16-04-2021, 18:24
Post: #7
RE: Album Artwork
I completely understand.

The damn flexibility of this software has brought out the OCD in me, sometimes I find myself sitting down just looking for something to change :-)

As you say, everyone has their preference, and lengthy filenames that will never be referenced and that can't necessarily match the tag (because of filesystem limitations) is one of those things that irk me, that and having a folder for each disc! I just find %discnumber% or %discumber%.%tracknumber% visually appealing and elegant, similar to the TV Show "standard" I guess of S01E01.

I have a master copy of my music that get's synced across for MinimServer and is the source for any other conversions (for portable devices e.t.c.), and I've had a quick play and it looks like with a bit of scripting on the MinimServer system I could simply, find each %discnumber%.jpg and add it to the track in the same folder called %discnumber%.01.flac.
In the control point this seems to propogate to all the other tracks on the disc (although I would need to make sure I preserve the timestamp for subsequent syncs).

So it looks like I can still have the best of both worlds.


Thanks again for what is a truly fantastic product that I wouldn't be without!
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16-04-2021, 19:31
Post: #8
RE: Album Artwork
I am pleased you have found an acceptable solution.

(16-04-2021 18:24)simbun Wrote:  In the control point this seems to propogate to all the other tracks on the disc (although I would need to make sure I preserve the timestamp for subsequent syncs).

This propagation is done by MinimServer, not the control point.

Rule 2 of "When displaying an album" applies the artwork from track 1 of a single-disc album to the album. Rule 5 of "When displaying an audio file" applies the artwork from this single-disc album to all other tracks of the album.

Rule 2 of "When displaying a disc" applies the artwork from track 1 of an album disc to the disc. Rule 4 of "When displaying an audio file" applies the artwork from this album disc to all other tracks of the disc.
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17-04-2021, 10:18
Post: #9
RE: Album Artwork
(16-04-2021 19:31)simoncn Wrote:  
(16-04-2021 18:24)simbun Wrote:  In the control point this seems to propogate to all the other tracks on the disc (although I would need to make sure I preserve the timestamp for subsequent syncs).

This propagation is done by MinimServer, not the control point.

Rule 2 of "When displaying an album" applies the artwork from track 1 of a single-disc album to the album. Rule 5 of "When displaying an audio file" applies the artwork from this single-disc album to all other tracks of the album.

Rule 2 of "When displaying a disc" applies the artwork from track 1 of an album disc to the disc. Rule 4 of "When displaying an audio file" applies the artwork from this album disc to all other tracks of the disc.

Oh I had no doubt that it was made possible my MinimServer, I just didn't know EXACTLY why, now I do ;-)

Good to see the tagValue changes in update 193 (accepting a literal).

I wonder if it would be worth putting a new post up for new releases (or at least those with new features) as I'd have thought not many people regularly check the homepage. I was only aware of the 193 change because of another post.
It might also provide a good place for any feedback.
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17-04-2021, 16:52
Post: #10
RE: Album Artwork
I agree that it would be helpful to announce the availability of new features on the forum and I will do this for future feature updates.
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