Matching images for soundtracks

[Xyzzy]

Hi

In case of movie and game soundtracks, it would be appropriate to display movie stills/game screenshots in places where Artist slideshow is displayed (fe. Playing track panel).

[vivadavid]

+1

I agree! In the Now Playing area, I admit it's a bit boring to see pictures of the composers, as much as I love many of them. MB could read the tag, check it's a soundtrack and display captions from IMDB, for example! In my case, that'd a be a big improvement, since most of my music is made of soundtracks.

[Zak]

Plenty of hi-res fanart pictures at themoviedb.org.

Allowing to users to specify which pictures they want rotated (like an "artwork" subfolder") would be a flexible solution.

[vivadavid]

Steven, any chances of seeing this implemented in the foreseeable future? That'd be awesome!

[ma_t14]

+1 The only problem I can think of is whether it would be easy to distinguish whether a track is also a soundtrack. Are soundtracks clearly labelled at databases such as musicbrainz? If yes, I doubt that the movie/game title is also included consistently in the tags.  

A reasonable solution, but one that would require more work on the user's part, would be for the user add the movie/game name manually into a tag and then musicbee will search the themoviedb.org database for images.

Regarding game soundtracks and a game database, a quick google search brought up this: www.giantbomb.com/api/

I'm curious though what can Steven come up with  

[redwing]

This is what I suggested for a similar wish.

For search terms, it could use album name, or a custom tag where the user needs to input the exact movie title and the released year to avoid films with the same title.

Then MB would check whether the pre-arranged custom tag ("Movies" or "Games") has a value when the option is ticked and, if so, it would retrieve pictures from movie or game sites instead of artist pic sites.

[Steven]

musicbrainz does have a soundtrack indicator so that could be used for an automated approach.
Would i be right in thinking the usual way to tag the music files would be to put the movie name as the album name?
i dont know what could be done for games as an automated approach

[redwing]

In most cases, a soundtrack album name would include the movie name, but they're not exactly the same: e.g. "The Mission: Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture." Also there are lots of compilation soundtrack albums, which have no hint for the movie name in their album names. That's why I suggested a custom-tag approach.

[ma_t14]

I'm not quite sure whether Musicbrainz will contain correct info for soundtracks that are also songs which are part of a regular commercial albums, so the most reliable solution might be for the user to input the movie/game name into a custom tag (as redwing suggested) and then use  www.themoviedb.org database for movies and www.giantbomb.com/api/  for games to retrieve matching images.

[psychoadept]

Ok, so since MusicBrainz doesn't include the appropriate tags

Do you mean because it doesn't differentiate between types of soundtrack?  There is a soundtrack tag.

[Xyzzy]

I agree that custom tags are the way to go.

I propose tags GAMESOUNDTRACK and MOVIESOUNDTRACK with values of game name and movie name.
In case id ID3 tags, they would be TXXX tags.

In case of MOVIESOUNDTRACK, movie year can be put in parentheses at the end, to differentiate movies with the same name.

[ma_t14]

Ok, so since MusicBrainz doesn't include the appropriate tags

Do you mean because it doesn't differentiate between types of soundtrack?  There is a soundtrack tag.

Nevermind, I read Steven's response completely wrong. I edited my post to clarify.

[Steven]

the only thing i can see musicbrainz offering is an indicator that a release is a sound track. But it doesnt have anything to say the name of the movie so that pictures for the movie can be found. I can see a round-about way - not sure how effective it would be.
Having a custom tag is probably the only reliable way but then that reduces the usefulness for the general MusicBee user base

[redwing]

Having a custom tag is probably the only reliable way but then that reduces the usefulness for the general MusicBee user base

Guessing movie name from album name could be given as an option (it won't always work though). Also if using custom tags can be a barrier for the general users, then how about adding the suggested new field(s) as regular fields to MB?

[vivadavid]

Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but I would have assumed it was enough with the tag Genre (if the value equals "Soundtrack", that obviously means the album corresponds to the music of a film), and the tag Album (whose value is, in this case, the name of the film). Am I wrong?