Album art vs. singles art.

[Bizy]

Hé,

I'm wondering how you guys deal with collections.
For instance:  'Greatest Hits' of Elvis Presley.

I look for the cover of the original singles (and have them as primary picture, without rotation).
At the same time I would like to see the album cover in Music Explorer. 

As far as I can see, that's impossible when all tracks have their own art.
The only thing I could think of up so far is:
having the album cover as primary picture in the first track.
(coz that seems to be the picture that shows up as album picture - temporary conclusion)

Maybe someone can think of something else?
Thanks for bringing that in.

b.

[Zak]

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to do this, as you have already discovered.
I used to try and create "virtual" albums using ASX files that referred to the original singles.
That way you can keep the single art embedded in the file, and a separate image file in the "Greatest Hits" folder.

ASX files are covered briefly in this thread:

https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=24465.msg141184#msg141184

On the other hand, Redwing's post in this thread is also a fairly accurate account of my experience:

https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=23588.msg137561#msg137561

Easier to just accept the fact you're wasting some file space and keep separate files.  


Built-in support for some kind of "virtual" album that refers only to other files but allows its own tags would be super neat, but I suspect also tricky to implement.

[Bizy]

Hé Zak,

Thanks for your response!
(I wouldn't have thought about that.)

Yet I must have done something different than what you did.

1) I created a duplicate file of the first song.
2) Used 'Duplicate manager' to create an *.asx-file
3) Tried to add the album cover to that *.asx-file (either embedded or with a link).
4) Which is impossible (kind of logical as it refers to the original file).

So I guess I did not quite get you ;-)

Also:  are you saying that - in the end - you had two folders with the same content (so duplicates for every file), one folder with the album art, one with single art?

b.

[Zak]

3) Tried to add the album cover to that *.asx-file (either embedded or with a link).

I think you'll only get custom artwork working for your album of ASX files if they're in their own folder and you save the cover image in the same folder with a name recognised by your preferences in Tags (1) > Artwork storage.

So your Greatest Hits album (or other compilation) would look like this:


...where each of the ASX files links to the original copy, but is tagged with the Greatest Hits details.

Also:  are you saying that - in the end - you had two folders with the same content (so duplicates for every file), one folder with the album art, one with single art?

Yes, there is one file for the original single/album and one for the compilation, each with their own album cover.

As previously mentioned, the ASX approach works in theory, but in practice became too annoying to bother with.
Depending on how many compilation albums you want to set up, you may think it's worthwile.

[Bizy]

I see.

(Seems a lot of work though.  And I know by experience that having *.asx-files in your library can be tricky, yes...)

Mmm.  Guess I'm gonna make some kind of wish out of this.
Like:  adding 'track art' as a category.  And an option to overrule 'track art' (as primary picture) by album art whenever the album is shown.  (As always: don't know if that's doable or how much effort that would need.  But if it's doable and if more users would support the idea...?)

It's not a pressing issue though.
For now I'll settle for saving the album cover in the first track.

Thanks again (Zak) for your responses.

b.

[Bizy]

For whoever that might stumble upon this post using Google or the search function of the forum:

I settled for the following solution, suggested by Redwing (and with some details from MTOakey) in this post:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=21100.0

- create a silence file of 10 sec
- tag it with album artist and album name (as for all the other tracks in the folder, so in my exemple:  'Elvis Presley' and 'Greatest Hits')
- make sure it's first in line
- ban it from playing (Edit/Settings/Exclude from playback - full ban)
- embed album art ('Greatest Hits')
- all other tracks: embed 'single art' (with 'Embedded' first in line in Edit/Edit preferences/Tags (1)-artwork storage-set which pictures are displayed)
- tracks that don't have single art will show album art, coz I have Cover.* as second in line in above mentioned setting, and a picture of 'Greatest Hits' (named cover.jpg) in the album folder;  this way, when I embed a single cover, this will immediately overrule the album cover

Easy ;-)

b.