mp4 (NOT animated gif) Cover Art

[MusicMee]

I have seen requests to support animated gifs as cover art and realize that is not happening. To be clear - I am not requesting support for animated gif cover art. However, it seems that Apple, Tidal, etc now support video cover art - in the mp4 format. Since a standard has clearly emerged I am wondering if a setting toggle to support animated cover art might be possible. My thought is that MusicBee could look for a cover.mp4 file in the album folder (or whatever name(s) makes sense) and if found it would display that instead of your standard jpeg/png cover art. For performance reasons I could see how it might be necessary to limit the animated art to views like now playing and the full album view while not supporting it in grid view, etc... Anyway, I realize it's not for everyone but part of what makes MB so great imo is it's flexibility and it's look and feel. It seems like an emerging standard that no players yet support - someone needs to be first...

[phred]

To be clear - I am not requesting support for animated gif cover art.

Since a standard has clearly emerged I am wondering if a setting toggle to support animated cover art might be possible.

So you -are- requesting support. In that case you should add your comments and support to the existing thread(s) in the Wishlist section. We don't need another thread for the same request.

[MusicMee]

To be clear - I am not requesting support for animated gif cover art.

Since a standard has clearly emerged I am wondering if a setting toggle to support animated cover art might be possible.

So you -are- requesting support. In that case you should add your comments and support to the existing thread(s) in the Wishlist section. We don't need another thread for the same request.

The discussions I saw focused on support for animated gifs, embedded I think. I am suggesting supporting an mp4 video overlay using a extermal file in a video format that appears to be emerging as an industry standard. Appoligies if that has been suggested and I missed the request but it is quite different than the requests I have read.

[hiccup]

I am suggesting supporting an mp4 video overlay using a extermal file in a video format that appears to be emerging as an industry standard.

Could you provide some examples of that? Maybe some gifs of existing 'moving artwork'?

[MusicMee]

I am suggesting supporting an mp4 video overlay using a extermal file in a video format that appears to be emerging as an industry standard.

Could you provide some examples of that? Maybe some gifs of existing 'moving artwork'?

No GIFs, since that is not what I am requesting.    But here are a couple of examples from tidal:

https://resources.tidal.com/videos/1771fa9a/8e02/4738/9a39/d1ea2d590eaf/1280x1280.mp4
https://resources.tidal.com/videos/b1a9790b/dd3f/4102/8527/a567edae36f4/1280x1280.mp4

You may need a tidal account to view how the player uses the moving covers but tidal displays the static cover on page load and then, if there is an animated cover, they load it and present it over the cover art. They also use it for the background:
https://listen.tidal.com/album/66143874

[hiccup]

No GIFs, since that is not what I am requesting.    But here are a couple of examples from tidal:

Thanks MusicMee, that looks interesting. (opinions on the matter will differ of course)

Allow me to share a gif that displays these two artwork examples together without the need of leaving this forum :-) :

[MusicMee]

Thanks hiccup!

[tuivlacic]

+1 on this 

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Technically, it is a different request than GIFs. Lol
+1

[KangNi]

Technically, it is a different request than GIFs. Lol

+1

To get some further inspiration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-xzFFm9zeE&t=950s

[valaroma]

+1
MP4 animated covers are becoming the standard, such as AM or Tidal. I believe this is not the same as GIF covers.

[KangNi]

https://kb.ddex.net/implementing-each-standard/best-practices-for-all-ddex-standards/guidance-on-releaseresourcework-metadata/animated-cover-art/

... secondary resource is provided as an image, e.g. in JPEG (including motion JPEG) or GIF (including moving GIFs).

https://artists.apple.com/support/1120-cover-art

Cover art specifications: JPG, PNG, or GIF format.

https://help.apple.com/itc/albummotionguide/en.lproj/static.html

Artwork Specifications ... File Type .mov

... so it looks like Motion JPEG (MJPEG) AND GIF become both a standard for animated cover art already. In Apples case, they obviously (nowadays) prefer using the MOV container format for presumably H.264/H.265 compressed video. I assume that the format WebP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP) has good potential to become a successor for all that, especially for this specific application.

Greetings

[Haste]

+1

[VNCE]

+1

[innoisdope8]

+1