Matching images for soundtracks

[vivadavid]

redwing, I'll try to do it as soon as possible and then I'd like other people to have a look at it in case there are things to improve, and I'm also thinking about my English.

This is the help section, the Wiki:

http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/MusicBee_Wiki

Is there another section called "How to" or are these types of texts included in the Wiki?

[redwing]

I meant How-to's board of the forum: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?board=7.0
But if you prefer to post it on the wiki, that'd be completely fine. Don't worry, even after posting it you could keep editing it whenever you want to. I don't think it's necessary, but if you really want to hear others' opinions before posting it, you could just post it on this thread.

[psychoadept]

redwing, I'll try to do it as soon as possible and then I'd like other people to have a look at it in case there are things to improve, and I'm also thinking about my English.

This is the help section, the Wiki:

http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/MusicBee_Wiki

Is there another section called "How to" or are these types of texts included in the Wiki?

To post a how-to on the wiki, see this page: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/All_How-To%27s

[KissCool]

Nice feature but I don't understand one thing:

I tried to associate manually few fanarts to a soundtrack:
Album Title: 8 Mile (Music From And Inpired By The Motion Picture) / Genre: Soundtrack
Let's say I wanna associate the same 10 fanarts for each track. It seems that I have to do it for each track:
...\Soundtrack Pictures\ 8 Mile (Music From And Inpired By The Motion Picture)--Lose Yourself
...\Soundtrack Pictures\ 8 Mile (Music From And Inpired By The Motion Picture)--Lose Yourself_2, etc.
Then doing the same thing with the 2nd tack, the 3rd one, and so on.

Wouldn't be easier to do this:
...\Soundtrack Pictures\ 8 Mile (Music From And Inpired By The Motion Picture)
...\Soundtrack Pictures\ 8 Mile (Music From And Inpired By The Motion Picture)_2, etc.
10 fanarts in the foder instead of 160! Of course, keeping the ability to set different fanart for each track is a must have but associating the same fanarts for each track should be easier, IMO.

But maybe I'm wrong and I have to wait vivadavid' tuto!
(I read again the whole thread, tried a lot of thing: naming the fanart "8 Mile", creating sub-folder for each soundtrack in the Soundtrack Folder, even using the download tool while I don't need it and associating the album to the movie).

@Steven:
Could MB check the "Group Genre" for Soundtrack too?
We are all using diffent tags for the same thing: Soundtrack, Original Soundtrack, OST, O.S.T., Film Soundtrack, Score, Film Score, Game Soundtrack, Anime Soundtrack , Musical, Musical Comedy, etc.
So, Instead of asking you to add one genre or adding ourselves a second genre tag for each soundtrack that don't have one of the three tag you have selected, checking the "Genre Category" would be nice, IMO.

[vivadavid]

KissCool, as far as I know, you don't need to create subfolders inside the Soundtrack Pictures folder (maybe that's why it doesn't work).

I simply copy, inside the Soundtrack Pictures folder, images having the the same name as the album title. If there are several images for one album, then I insert a space followed by a number.

Tell me if it doesn't work for you, and make sure you use version 2.2 final, which you can find here, at the bottom:

http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=10740.0

[KissCool]

Well, doesn't work for me. I'm using MB v2.3.5067.
Forgot about the sub-folder. I just gave it a try since I can't link a picture with my soundtracks.

Dunno why, but it doesn't work for me. If I drag & drop (or copy) a picture in the Soundtrack Pictures folder and name it with just the Title of the album, it fail. I always have to add the track title like this:
AlbumTitle--TrackTitle.jpg

Gonna try to make a fresh MB install ans see what's happen.
Anyway, thx for your help.

[Steven]

the download tool only uses "album --  title" for the pictures if its a compilation eg. artist differs from the album artist where an album artist has been entered. Normally the picture will be named as the "album" field

[klint]

Hi
Just installed the MB 2.3 5070, and played some "Soundtrack" genre tracks. I have no image in the Soundtrack folders, so I suppose MB does a web search, doesn't it?
 But it doesn't fetch anything actually as it always display the cover of the album. While it should display images linked to the movie, right? Or did I miss anything?
Thanks

[KissCool]

the download tool only uses "album --  title" for the pictures if its a compilation eg. artist differs from the album artist where an album artist has been entered. Normally the picture will be named as the "album" field

Just realized that I only tried "compilation" soundtracks! Everything works like a charm. MB even already check genre category for soundtrack.
Thx!

@klint
1st, check if your tracks are tagged with one of these genres: Soundtrack, OST or Musical.
No image? Then use the download artwork tool (Menu->Tools->Download Artwork) if you don't wanna copy yourself some fanarts in the Soundtrack Pictures folder (you may have to enter the movie title in the second column)

[vivadavid]

@Steven,

Wouldn't you consider the structure "album --  title" for images in those cases where it's a compilation from the same author? In fact, I would say that compilations from the same author outnumber those that include several composers. It'd be a great addition to the Download Tool.

[vivadavid]

About my latest request, I found a possible solution, but I'd like to know what you, Steven, and the others think, especially as I need to write the How-to for the Download Tool (which I'll do this week).

In those cases where there's an album consisting on a compilation of tracks from the same composer, I've written the name of the composer under ARTIST and I've written "VARIOUS" under ALBUMARTIST, even if there’s only one artist: this way, MB tries to find an image for each track, which is the whole purpose. It’s a trick, but it seems to work.

My question is: could messing with the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags affect the functioning of MB? I have to say that I don't use at all the ALBUMARTIST tag anywhere in MB and this would be the only place.

Apart from this, I have some comments to make:

1. The Download Tool couldn't identify most of the tracks/(film titles) of a particular album and I had to type them myself. Now if I play a particular track, the compact player shows the picture, but if I go to the Soundtrack Pictures folder, I find a file called:

"Captain from Castile (The classic film scores of Alfred Newman) [remastered]--The Song Of Bernadette.jpg

which is empty: it has zero bytes. It seems MB temporarily downloads this image, but it's not really stored in this folder, because, although the file exists, it's empty, as I said before.

2. The dialogue box in the Download Tool is too small, considering that the film title, in these cases, is necessarily longer, consisting of the album title + the track title. It'd be great if the window could be resized by the user. As you can see here, there’s not enough space:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17615125/foros/Musicbee/downloader_tool_small.png

3. I think it'd make more sense if the tracks (of a particular compilation album) in the dialogue box of the Download Tool weren't sorted out by title, but by track number, following the order of the back cover, which the user might need to read when he’s using the tool. This makes special sense when there are several tracks of a particular film and you can’t know automatically the film they belong to unless you have a look at the back cover.

4. This doesn’t have to do with compilations, but it’s a general issue. There are too many examples of films with the same title, and in these cases, it’d be essential for MB to take into account the year. Could anybody think of a way to implement this easily?

Thanks everybody for your time and suggestions!!

[vivadavid]

Update.

Today, after rescanning my collection again, I've noticed some changes:

1. The 0 byte pictures have disappared from the Soundtrack Pictures folder: there's nothing now (and there doesn't seem to be anything in the caché folder while playing the tracks).
2. The Download Tool says that the images for those tracks have already been found and downloaded.
3. In the compact player, the images for some of the tracks are displayed, while in other cases the images are not displayed: there's inconsiscenty.

[KissCool]

Could you reconsider the "album--Title" rule for compilation, plz?

Something like this:
1st, MB search for an album--title.jpg in soundtrack folder (this way, you keep the ability to have different picture for each track)
Then, if nothing matches the 1st rule, MB search for an album.jpg in soundtrack folder (easier if you want the same picture for every tracks).

e.g.: a compilation soundtrack with 61 tracks
You have 5 pictures that you wanna use for every tracks.
Actually, I need to have and to name 305 pictures while I could just have 5 pictures in the soundtrack picture folder!

[Steven]

i have changed the matching method so that for a compilation track it first tries <album>--<title> and if no match then it falls back to <album>
its in the next v2.3 update

[KissCool]

Thank you!