How do I remove the unwanted pictures?

[SimpleisBest]

In "Now playing" and elsewhere, I get tons of unwanted pictures.  Do I really need to see Beethoven's death mask when playing "Moonlight Sonata", or Bach's grave......   it kinda spoils the mood, ya know?  ANY Broadway Cast album has the same generic silly billboard background.

I figured that I picked them up from the metadata sites, so I deleted everything MusicBee, all caches, and etc....  then reinstalled, with internet disconnected.  Still there.

OK, used Mp3 Tag to delete embedded files, but the only embedded jpeg is the cover............  stuff still shows.

Hint......  this does NOT show in any albums that DO NOT have ID3 stuff in the tags, so it seems embedded in those it does show, but even the ID3 tagged files don't show these in MP3Tag as album art.

If internet is disconnected, they have to be cached or embedded, right?  Can I safely overwrite ALL ID3 tags, will that do the trick?

I want the opposite of what most users want.  I DON'T want lyrics, neat band photos, bios, etc.  I just want the music.  Artist, Album, title.

How can i get rid of all this metadata?...............  now that I've somehow got it.           Thanks a ton.    

Signed, Ol' Fogie.

[psychoadept]

The pictures you're referring to are not saved in file tags; they're saved in the Artist Pictures folder of your library.  If you don't like a specific image, you can right click on it and tell musicbee to ban it.  But if you don't want the pictures, I suggest changing your Now Playing view to Album Cover or some other alternative.  Then you won't see them at all.

[SimpleisBest]

Thank you for indulging a total newbie.  I was able to change settings in the main panel of Now Playing, as you suggested.

I see it, App Data Roaming......  Music Bee....  Internal Cache, Artist Thumbs.

So I'm unintentionally grabbing these from the net, due to some setting I have, right?  (Not asking you to solve THAT setting problem).


If you can, however..........  CAN I SAFELY REMOVE ALL ID3 TAG INFO FROM MY FILES, without corrupting actual music itself?  I really want to remove all metadata.

thanks.

[psychoadept]

I don't think you can stop the images from being downloaded, actually.  But with Now Playing not showing them, they shouldn't be downloaded anyway.

As for getting rid of all metadata, you can do that fairly easily with the tagging tools.  But I STRONGLY advise against it.  Even if you have the info you want in file names, MusicBee can only organize your library with title, artist, etc that is found in the tags.  And if the file name ever got changed by accident, you would have no way to restore it.  You'd have no way of identifying tracks except by ear.

Why do you want to remove the metadata?

[SimpleisBest]

Cause I'm a control freak?   

I so much dislike all that info that 99% of the world wants to auto-update - lyrics, pics of the band, facts about the production, etc...  that it gives me the creeps even knowing it's lurking there somewhere on the computer.  BESIDES....  I thought I was seeing stuff like that pop up even when not in "Now Playing", but I'll trust you on that.

MB can't download it if I'm not connected to the internet, so I'll start that way...  clear all the caches, disconnect the net, change settings to not update, and see what happens.

Then a deep dive into tutorials on settings.  Before I asked the question, it was enough to drive me back to MediaMonkey....  but I way prefer MB, except for this.

Thanks for all.

[psychoadept]

MusicBee doesn't make any changes to the files by default.  It will download lyrics & album covers, but not save them.  You can turn off those downloads in Tags (2) preferences.  You can also turn off all the locations that display them.

[theta_wave]

Cause I'm a control freak?  

I so much dislike all that info that 99% of the world wants to auto-update - lyrics, pics of the band, facts about the production, etc...  that it gives me the creeps even knowing it's lurking there somewhere on the computer.

Besides what psycho said, all of that stuff you mentioned is downloaded not part of the file's metadata.  If you want to see what info is in your file's metadata, just highlight a file, SHIFT+ENTER and go to tag inspector.  Believe me, you don't want to get rid of stuff like Artist, Track #, Song Title, Album Title, Composer, Year data, especially if one is a control freak.

[SimpleisBest]

I REALLY appreciate this stuff, so I'll clarify and follow on.

So NONE of this "Extra" stuff is in megadata, correct?  SOME "artist images" are saved, that's what I found in that cache.... but even those are in my control via different settings.

You are telling me that NONE of those extra pictures that flash through when I'm playing a file (not joking: death masks, gravestones, etc - I play lots of classical) is just pulled from the web in real (layman) time......  they are NOT in my computer?

It's just a matter of settings, or worst case, not being connected to the web when I play that stuff?  If I just take time to learn proper settings, it's under my control.

DO I HAVE THAT CORRECT?


That said, and I'm trying to not waste You All's time for things I can learn.....  but I can't find any sort of "Reset to last good X" button.  I experiment when trying to learn, click something, everything changes, and I can't get what I had back.  Can I do like I'd do with a spreadsheet, if I get so lost in adjustments, I just close it without saving, and restart back where I was originally.  Anything like that?

tons of thanks, really!

[psychoadept]

The quickest way to reset your settings is to delete the settings file (MusicBee3Settings.ini), which you will probably find in %User%\AppData\Roaming\MusicBee.  But that will reset ALL your settings, unfortunately.  However, if you know what you're trying to do you can always ask here for guidance.

Some of the "artist photos" are saved on your computer, yes, including the background photos you see in Now Playing or the Compact Player.  If you're really determined to get rid of them, there are cached images in the AppData folder I mentioned above.  (You also have some control of where things are downloaded from, in preferences and panel settings.  For instance, a lot of the objectionable and seemingly random content may be from Flickr, which can be disabled.)

It is lyrics and album covers for the currently playing track that you can disable completely in preferences. The others you disable by using a different setting (as with Now Playing) or getting rid of that display element. You can get rid of album art and lyrics panels completely (so they don't even show up as empty boxes) from the Panels Configuration window, which is the button next to the search box.