Updating missing cover artwork for multiple albums.

[Malcolm Burke]

Hi - new to Music Bee, so apologies if this has been asked before.

I've just imported my music and many of the albums have no cover art.  I can right click and "Search Internet for picture" for each album, but this will take a long time to do, so I wondered if there is a quick way of searching all albums to get missing artwork?

Cheers,
Malcolm

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Hi - new to Music Bee, so apologies if this has been asked before.

I've just imported my music and many of the albums have no cover art.  I can right click and "Search Internet for picture" for each album, but this will take a long time to do, so I wondered if there is a quick way of searching all albums to get missing artwork?

Cheers,
Malcolm

Probably the only easy way to do this automatically and without false positives is Picard. I don't use it for artwork, though, but maybe someone else may be able to help

[frankz]

The thing about picard (why I don't use it for art) is that if a file *does* have art and musicbrainz *does not* have art for that album, saving the file in picard will erase the existing art from the file.  So you have to be really careful about what you're doing there.

Maybe look into Tools->Artwork->Album Art Manager.  It won't do them all automatically, but it'll bring up a list of artwork-deficient albums (according to the criteria you set) that you can drill down pretty quickly.  May be a slight workflow improvement over picking around the library at large.

[hiccup]

The thing about picard is that if a file *does* have art and musicbrainz *does not* have art for that album, saving the file in picard will erase the existing art from the file.

Does that also happen if you have:  Options > Tags > Clear existing tags   unchecked?

[frankz]

I'm not sure. I use it for my tagging and I preserve the tags I want to keep, so I have that checked because want it to clear other existing tags.  

I remember reading about it being an issue (point of contention with some) on their forums back when I started using the program and noticed the behavior, and it appears to continue to be the case (they specifically say "no other artwork behavior was changed" in their most recent update, which I assumed was a reference to this behavior).

I like picard. Not saying OP shouldn't use it if it fits the need there, just saying be careful and know what's happening.

[hiccup]

Yeah, there has been discussion on the matter for sure.
As far as I can recollect right now it is about being able to preserve artwork when you have selected 'clear existing tags' and added 'artwork' to the exceptions list of tags (metadata) not to be cleared.
Until now you can't make an exception for artwork.

What I do myself: I have two separate portable Picard installs.
(well, actually six, but I should discuss that with my shrink)
The first one clears all tags, with only the most essential ones such as Album Artist, Artist, Title, and the MusicBrainz release ID in the 'exceptions' list.
Those get written afresh.
So that results in files that are spanking clean.
Then I run them through a full-fledged Picard with all bells and whistles. (scripts and plugins)

So Picard #1 has 'clear all tags', Picard #2 doesn't.

I won't lie that it was some work to set it all up, but it is saving me an enormous amount of time now that I have it working.
It now takes me only a couple of mouse clicks and perhaps some 30 seconds to go from garbage metadata to perfection for an album.