• Registered: 2012-07-09

Topic: How to "refresh" cover art

Hey guys

Well after a little advice here, my library is in far superior shape than when I started.  I'm working through remaining issues in severity order.

The current problem is that, for some reason, many of my albums share the same coverart.  I don't know for sure picard did this, because my library was a mess and had been autotagged and auto-blendered before by other software (including picard) and had tonnes of stuff wrong.

Regardless, I'd like to know the best way to automatically check all files and re-image the coverart if there is coverart available.  I'm not picky, so if there's another version, or even another album by the same artist in the worst case, I'm OK with that.  I just dont want blanks and I especially dont want completely wrong (and duplicated .. 100's of instances) of wrong cover art.

What is the best way to accomplish this?  I'm not anal enough to go through by hand.  So to boil it down :

1) whats the best procedure to automatically refresh and write coverart to a large number of files?
2) Is there a way to select specifically songs without album art?

thanks, this software is making my music experience livable :)

  • From: Singapore
  • Registered: 2007-02-13

Re: How to "refresh" cover art

#2 - If you mean a way to search your existing collection and only re-tag ones without art, then no, you can't do this with Picard.

#1 - It really depends. I'm afraid you're going to have to provide a bit more information on your library and player software. Relevant information includes

* Is your library all mp3s? or are you tagging FLACs, mp4 etc as well?
* what software/player tool are you using to determine that your albums share the same cover art incorrectly? If it doesn't do it automatically, have you forced this software to refresh its art after tagging with Picard?
* are you trying to depend on cover art embedded in tags, or using folder.jpg/cover.jpg and/or Windows support for album art at folder level? Some software will display artwork from both locations, with different preferences - it can be very confusing when dealing with artwork.
* are you using the Cover Art Downloader plugin with Picard?

Jumping ahead a bit to possible answers, even with the Cover Art Downloader plugin in Picard there's no easy way to ensure no blanks for artwork when re-tagging your collection with Picard. If it matches the wrong (or obscure) version of an album in the database, there may be no cover art; so may need to manually correct the match to one with cover art by right clicking and trying another release.

If we implemented something like http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/PICARD-262 in Picard, once could use a script to try and separate out albums files with/without cover art so it moved them to a different folder but that's not available currently.

Others may have some suggestions using other tools, but after doing a largely automated run through Picard, personally I just use my player tool in a album art grid mode to try and quick find albums without art, and then try and manually run any without art through Picard again. If none of the MB releases have cover art, I try and fix it in the MB database by adding an Amazon link or similar, thus contributing back to the community. Alternatively, you can now also contribute by uploading scans/images to the Cover Art Archive via the release page in MB.

voiceinsideyou's Website

  • Registered: 2012-07-09

Re: How to "refresh" cover art

Thanks VIY.  That info really helped.  I found hidden system album art files placed in my (huge misshapen single directory) that explains where some of the "wrong, duplicate" album art came from. 

For completeness, I'm using all .mp3's, embedding into tags.  I'm using google music primarily, and yes I have deleted completely and re-uploaded my whole library after I thought I had gotten a "good" run, but I think I'm going to re-scan everything local and then see what the art looks like before re-uploading again.  This time without hidden "albumart.jpg" for wrong content.

I would certainly find it useful to be able to select all without art.  One other thing I noticed that seemed pretty non-ideal is that (as far as I can tell) there is no way to search the right hand pane for a particular song.  So in the manual situation you describe of using your player in grid mode, it still seems quite difficult to actually find the song you are wanting to edit in picard's right hand pane once you have identified it in the player. 

Thanks a lot, I'm well on my way now, I hope :)

  • From: Singapore
  • Registered: 2007-02-13

Re: How to "refresh" cover art

bluenote wrote:

I would certainly find it useful to be able to select all without art.  One other thing I noticed that seemed pretty non-ideal is that (as far as I can tell) there is no way to search the right hand pane for a particular song.  So in the manual situation you describe of using your player in grid mode, it still seems quite difficult to actually find the song you are wanting to edit in picard's right hand pane once you have identified it in the player.

Well when I do this I'd be starting "fresh" in Picard with no albums in either left or right pane. I find an album with no cover in player, then I drag and drop from my player into Picard (you can do this with more players than you might expect!). Since they are already tagged with Picard previously it would (by default) automatically match them on right hand pane. Then I'd right click and look at other releases and see if they have cover art based on image in bottom right corner.

voiceinsideyou's Website