Author Topic: Less compressed artwork previews as an option  (Read 2073 times)

willguitar100

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 7
One thing (pretty much the only thing) that's been bothering me with music bee as of lately is how the album artwork is compressed so badly in it's small preview window. It's not as bad as Windows Media Player was, but this is one of the main reasons why I moved to Music Bee. The compression artifacts of the album artwork is super noticeable, especially at the size I enjoy mine to be. I know that the compression/resolution will change within a range of resolution.

This is bigger than I usually have it, but it's made bigger so it's easier to tell.



When I drag the artwork to be one pixel larger, it will bump up to the next step in resolution.

 Where I usually have it is nowhere near it's next step, and suffers from bad compression artifacts. I know it's a funny thing to complain about, but it's just one of those small things that bothers me at times, especially because I spend a while making sure I always get the best quality album artwork.
Albums with a lot of RED color suffer the worst from this.
Here's an album by Fugazi, with the artwork size right where I like it most, but as you can see it looks terribly compressed in the text. The actual artwork assigned looks MUCH better than this, and it clears up if I make it massive.

Meanwhile, this is how it should look (original image, shrunk to 500x500px)


Sorry for the long post. I didn't know if this belongs in help, or wishlist, but I figured this was an intentional feature of MusicBee. I can understand why though, save space and have better performance. I just wish there were options to opt for better quality artwork or even a little .ini or .cfg fix I could make for this! Thanks a ton for reading. Music Bee is easily my favorite media player ever.

sveakul

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2438
+1 for the option.  You made me dig out my Minor Threat "Complete Discography" again :)

redwing

  • Guest
I'm not really sure what the OP is complaining about. Maybe what you need is just a little patience.
If you resize artwork, MB shows cached image first (that's why it looks terrible for a while when you have enlarged artwork size), and then read the artwork for each file/album and replace the cache image with a resized artwork image one by one. If you resize artwork size/column again, the same thing happens.

Steven

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 34313
Also if we are talking about the Album Covers view then untick "fit to panel" in the view preferences

willguitar100

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 7
+1 for the option.  You made me dig out my Minor Threat "Complete Discography" again :)
I heard that Minor Threat is an awesome band! I haven't heard them yet though.

I'm not really sure what the OP is complaining about. Maybe what you need is just a little patience.
If you resize artwork, MB shows cached image first (that's why it looks terrible for a while when you have enlarged artwork size), and then read the artwork for each file/album and replace the cache image with a resized artwork image one by one. If you resize artwork size/column again, the same thing happens.
What I'm "complaining" about (asking about) is why the artwork is so heavily compressed unless I raise it to be a certain size. It decompresses in increments based on the size of the artwork, but it's always a size much larger or smaller than I want. Thanks a ton for the recommendation on how to bypass this issue though. Although I have plenty of patience, I don't know if I have enough to fix 500 albums worth of artwork + CD singles. Maybe it's just one of those things I can spend a few mins a day doing for a few weeks, and hope that they won't all eventually be replaced automatically.

Also if we are talking about the Album Covers view then untick "fit to panel" in the view preferences
I think I might be dumb, I've looked everywhere and still haven't seen it.

Also this is the layout of my MusicBee right now. I've definitely replaced the artwork several times. They still look very compressed and ugly. I don't think this was an issue about a year ago in a previous version, but I'm not sure. Either ways, it would be nice to have an option for something like this like "display full resolution artwork"


Steven

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 34313
Also if we are talking about the Album Covers view then untick "fit to panel" in the view preferences
This will still give the best results, but for the next v3.4 update i have upgraded the interpolation algorithm for cached artwork

willguitar100

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 7
Also if we are talking about the Album Covers view then untick "fit to panel" in the view preferences
This will still give the best results, but for the next v3.4 update i have upgraded the interpolation algorithm for cached artwork

Oh sick! I really appreciate that, and I especially appreciate that you replied nearly two years later to let me know about this. I seriously appreciate your work. I've used MusicBee probably almost every day for four years.

(Also now that I'm actually an adult I am able to donate so there's that)