AndresE:

cw-kid I know that you have gone through a lot recently with this low-res/hi-res album art issue, but as someone who is about to take the Media Center plunge I truly do appreciate you posting about your experience in the detail that you have.  Thanks so much!!

Well sometimes I post just for myself so I can keep track of what I am doing and where I am up too.
Other times just to rant and let off steam and most other times to discuss things with others members on this brilliant community.

I am almost there now with this whole issue, if I can get one of the various VMC artwork fixers working for me then I'll be home and dry. I've been messing with all this now for about a week and its one of those jobs you wish you never started. I'm still amazed you have to go through this much pain and effort to do something the system should do for you in the first place.

I still haven't got this artwork fixer working for VMC yet, but I have got a good tip which I have tested and it does work great.

Everytime I use the "Add To Library" command in WMP11 it always picks up my music album artwork, I then have to go to Folders view under Pictures in WMP11 to delete them out again each time or they appear in the Picture Library in VMC.

To stop this happening make all your jpg's in your music folders hidden this will stop them from appearing in the WMP11 at all when you re-scan your media files and so you won't have them showing up in the Picture Library in VMC, which is the last place you want to see your album cover art showing up with the photos of the family and kids! 

I ran this command from the root of my music folder on D:\Data\Music to set all jpgs to hidden.

attrib +H *.jpg /s

Now when I use the "Add To Library" command in WMP11 these album artwork pictures don't get added to the WMP11 Media Library / VMC Picture Library. This has bugged me for ages and the solution is so simple!

Can anyone talk me through using this UrlToCoverArt.exe program? Or recommend another VMC art work fixer program ?

I just need to fix this issue of some albums in Media Center not showing the cover art for all tracks on the album in the Now Playing view when you skip through the tracks. On some I get the cover art on other tracks I get the blue note symbol. Funny thing is this does not affect all albums, some albums display the cover art on all tracks I can't see a pattern as to why some albums are affected and some are not?

Many Thanks

cw-kid,
i don't know why your having so many problems, if you follow my steps it works perfectly....
make sure you can view hidden files/folders so you can delete the hidden images found in your mp3 directory, like i said, all you need are you mp3 files and a Folder.jpg image...DO NOT embed cover art inside mp3s, this will overwrite your high-res Folder.jpg you have stored...
In WMP11 i have disabled anything that relates to automatically updating mp3 track info or anything thru online.
Also, i do NOT have to scan for new albums/folders etc, when i get a new album, i just create a new folder, pop the mp3's in there along with a high res Folder.jpg, run the UrlToCoverArt.exe and thats it....Media Center adds it to its albums list and show the correct cover art for all the songs.  Obviously add it to a folder that VMC is monitoring so it can automatically pick it up.

As far as using the program, just double click it, if needed, point it to the correct .dat file, it should auto correct the URL's to your cover art (look at the screen shot posted by another user here).  If you added a new album, click on RESCAN and it'll find the new folder/album, click ok, and then re-save. it should have ALL your mp3's listed and the url to the cover art should be the <path of mp3>/Folder.jpg. (for example mine says \\tower\disk6\mp3s\<folder name>\Folder.jpg for all my cover art in that program.
Also, how are your mp3 folders organized? I beleive this program only scans 2 levels deep, so if your mp3s are located deeper than 2 levels the tprogram does not detect them...atleast thats what i've noticed.

fatalcure:

cw-kid,
i don't know why your having so many problems, if you follow my steps it works perfectly....
make sure you can view hidden files/folders so you can delete the hidden images found in your mp3 directory, like i said, all you need are you mp3 files and a Folder.jpg image...DO NOT embed cover art inside mp3s, this will overwrite your high-res Folder.jpg you have stored...
In WMP11 i have disabled anything that relates to automatically updating mp3 track info or anything thru online.
Also, i do NOT have to scan for new albums/folders etc, when i get a new album, i just create a new folder, pop the mp3's in there along with a high res Folder.jpg, run the UrlToCoverArt.exe and thats it....Media Center adds it to its albums list and show the correct cover art for all the songs.  Obviously add it to a folder that VMC is monitoring so it can automatically pick it up.

As far as using the program, just double click it, if needed, point it to the correct .dat file, it should auto correct the URL's to your cover art (look at the screen shot posted by another user here).  If you added a new album, click on RESCAN and it'll find the new folder/album, click ok, and then re-save. it should have ALL your mp3's listed and the url to the cover art should be the <path of mp3>/Folder.jpg. (for example mine says \\tower\disk6\mp3s\<folder name>\Folder.jpg for all my cover art in that program.
Also, how are your mp3 folders organized? I beleive this program only scans 2 levels deep, so if your mp3s are located deeper than 2 levels the tprogram does not detect them...atleast thats what i've noticed.

Hi Fatalcure many thanks for your reply!

I have no embedded artwork now in any of my MP3 files. I can view all hidden files and folders. I have deleted all the artwork jpg's that the system creates in my album folders and I just have the Folder.jpg Hi-Res at 600 x 600 I also have Hi-Res ZuneAlbumArt.jpg  for the Zune software / Device.
I have disabled WMP11, VMC and Zune from automatically updating album artwork.

Once you have updated your dat file in the eHome\Artcache folder using UrlToCoverArt.exe so it lists that the images are Folder.jpg on what ever the path is to your music folders and then you delete all the system created jpg's with the Guid's in the name from the eHome\Artcache folder, do those jpgs get re-created by the system?

Each time I delete them and open VMC again all artwork is gone and is only displays them again when they have been re-created in the eHome\Artcache folder.
Its as if the dat file pointing to my Folder.jpg's in my albums folders on D:\ drive is being ignored.

My folder struture might be too deep in places:

D:\Data\Music\Library\Genre\Artists\Albums

cw-kid,

first, let me answer some of your questions:
When i said i do NOT have to scan for new albums/folders in WMP11, it meant that since I have the folder being monitored by WMP11, it automatically shows up in the WMP11 library. 
The thing is, WMP and VMC are very very closely related, changes you make in WMP11 will reflect in VMC and vice versa, so if you add a watched folder in WMP11, it'll show up in VMC, same with if you delete the library only from WMP11, it won't show up in VMC (same with pictures/tv shows/etc).

Secondly, no system created files were recreated for me, once i deleted all the system created files in my mp3 folders, locallms folder, and art cache folder, nothing was created for me...all i have in the art cache folder is the .dat file (along with the backup .dat files the program creates) and nothing else, also nothing is located in the locallms folder.

Let me ask you this, when you use the program and it scans your music, does it list ALL your music? are all your mp3s listed along with the correct path to the folder.jpg? post a screen shot if you can.

Also, just to get the folder stucture issue out of the way, you can try this:
create a folder under d:\data\music\library called "test album" (d:\data\music\library\test album) and put some mp3s of an album in there along with a high res Folder.jpg image. Run the program, rescan your list in the program, it should find the newly created folder "test album" and point the mp3s correctly to the folder.jpg inside the folder.
Start up VMC and see if it works correctly for that album or not...

let me know what you find

good luck

edit: i also do not experience the problem your having with the cover art showing up in your picture library, and i do not have any of my folder.jpg set as hidden....i'll post some screen shots of mine when. i get home tonight.
remember, you only need to run the scan in WMP11 once, as listed in my steps....after that just pop in a new folder under your albums along with a high res folder.jpg and re-run the application, rescan, and save :D

Is there any quick way to remove all embedded low res images? I have a funny feeling the answer to this is no.. but I have a few of these to remove and I'm not a patient person.

yes, use mp3 tag
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/permalink/242991/241506/ShowThread.aspx#241506
select your album mp3s, right click on the image, click remove, do that for all your albums, then click SAVE.

fatalcure:

cw-kid,

first, let me answer some of your questions:
When i said i do NOT have to scan for new albums/folders in WMP11, it meant that since I have the folder being monitored by WMP11, it automatically shows up in the WMP11 library. 
The thing is, WMP and VMC are very very closely related, changes you make in WMP11 will reflect in VMC and vice versa, so if you add a watched folder in WMP11, it'll show up in VMC, same with if you delete the library only from WMP11, it won't show up in VMC (same with pictures/tv shows/etc).

Secondly, no system created files were recreated for me, once i deleted all the system created files in my mp3 folders, locallms folder, and art cache folder, nothing was created for me...all i have in the art cache folder is the .dat file (along with the backup .dat files the program creates) and nothing else, also nothing is located in the locallms folder.

Let me ask you this, when you use the program and it scans your music, does it list ALL your music? are all your mp3s listed along with the correct path to the folder.jpg? post a screen shot if you can.

Also, just to get the folder stucture issue out of the way, you can try this:
create a folder under d:\data\music\library called "test album" (d:\data\music\library\test album) and put some mp3s of an album in there along with a high res Folder.jpg image. Run the program, rescan your list in the program, it should find the newly created folder "test album" and point the mp3s correctly to the folder.jpg inside the folder.
Start up VMC and see if it works correctly for that album or not...

let me know what you find

good luck

edit: i also do not experience the problem your having with the cover art showing up in your picture library, and i do not have any of my folder.jpg set as hidden....i'll post some screen shots of mine when. i get home tonight.
remember, you only need to run the scan in WMP11 once, as listed in my steps....after that just pop in a new folder under your albums along with a high res folder.jpg and re-run the application, rescan, and save :D

Fatalcure, thanks for the reply, I'm really glad for your assistance.

I understand what you are saying above and I will try the few things out you suggested and let you know.

When I ran UrlToCoverArt.exe it lists over 3000 items. (Mp3's / WMA's). I have about 250 albums in my collection. At a glance most appeared to be in the list and all pointed to D:\Data\Music\Library\Genre\Artist\Album\Folder.jpg etc etc.
I posted a partial screen shot of this on the previous page of this thread. This is it:



If I delete all GUID jpgs from the
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\eHome\Art Cache
folder VMC re-creates them all the next time it is opened, I can't seem to stop this.
I think this is where my problem lies, VMC must be still looking at the newly created cached jpg's instead of the dat file that points to my Hi-Res Folder.jpg's on D:\ Drive.
This is what is happening I suspect.

The system does not re-create artwork however in my album folders on D:\ drive or in the following folders:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Zune\ArtCache

Cheers

MarkSewell:

Is there any quick way to remove all embedded low res images? I have a funny feeling the answer to this is no.. but I have a few of these to remove and I'm not a patient person.

I have both MP3Tag and a program called Tag&Rename.
I prefer to use Tag&Rename and this is the program I used to removed all embedded artwork from my mp3 files.

ok, let it recreate it the files in the artcache folder...(it should happen after you lauch VMC for the first time)....after it recreates it, only do the following:
close vmc
go back to artcache folder and delete everything but the .dat file.
rerun urltocoverart.exe, re-scan in the program if necessary, and then save and overwrite the .dat file.
launch vmc

fatalcure:

ok, let it recreate it the files in the artcache folder...(it should happen after you lauch VMC for the first time)....after it recreates it, only do the following:
close vmc
go back to artcache folder and delete everything but the .dat file.
rerun urltocoverart.exe, re-scan in the program if necessary, and then save and overwrite the .dat file.
launch vmc

Ok I will try this, not sure if I have done it in this order before?
But I will have another go tonight when I get home.

Cheers mate.

Edit: If I finally get all this working I am going to post a step by step summary so anyone else wanting to do the same thing can more easily follow what we have been discussing here.

yea man good luck, it was pretty painless for me, thus the steps i posted...try the two things above and see if you have any luck

also in your screen shot, why don't you click on the colum heading and sort it by media or image, b/c ur current screen shot only shows like 1 mp3 per folder, i sort it just to double check that my newly added mp3s all point to the correct folder.jpg

fatalcure:

yea man good luck, it was pretty painless for me, thus the steps i posted...try the two things above and see if you have any luck

also in your screen shot, why don't you click on the colum heading and sort it by media or image, b/c ur current screen shot only shows like 1 mp3 per folder, i sort it just to double check that my newly added mp3s all point to the correct folder.jpg

Yeah I did do that, I clicked on the Media column heading and it did list more than one MP3 per album and they were pointing to the same Folder.jpg in the albums folder on D:\ drive.
Perhaps that was not the best screen shot to put up here.

Relating to this, thanks for the info guys!

 

I have a slight issue that I have half my music as MP3 and half as WMA. Can anyone recommend a good bulk converter tool?

Also when this is done, I need to change itunes to look at my MP3 (so I have only one copy of the music, as opposed to 2 seperate libraries). Has anyone got high res URLs working in this setup? Anything I have to do above and beyond what is mentioned above/

 

Thanks

Mark