V 1.2.4.1 Album Artwork

[c22600]

Hi Matt,

Since downloading 1.2.4.1, I am having issues with the album artwork.
Seems this version is trying to recover artwork from the internet. The
previous version was displaying the fplder.jpg file in the track
folder.

Is it possible to have this as an option so can disable the internet
search and use folder.jpg?

Cheers,

Norm...

[Matt Stevens]

Hi Norm,

Are you still using Winamp? I just tested this with both Winamp and Windows Media Player and Signal is picking up folder.jpg. There are a couple of cases where folder-based art might not be used:

- Signal only uses folder-based art if the path contains the artist or album name
- If a previous track for an album did not have folder-based art and Signal found a match online, it will use the cached online match

It is possible that one of these is happening for the tracks you're seeing different art for?

--
Matt Stevens
www.alloysoft.com

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[c22600]

Hi Matt,

Yes still using Winamp, nothing changed here. All of my folders
contain a "folder.jpg" file so Signal should pick these up. The
previous version 123 worked like a charm.

As an example, I have a compilation album on the server called "Flower
Power: The Time Of The Season" with 36 tracks. There is a file
"folder.jpg" in the same folder which is the correct cover art for the
album and each track also has the cover art stored in the ID3v2 tag.
Some of the tracks don't display any artwork (cant find on the net)
and others display whtever they can find on the net. "Nights In White
Satin" by the Moody's drags down the cover from the album "The Days of
Future Passed", "Going Up Country" by Canned Heat drags down the cover
art for the Album "On the Road Again" while "Good Morning Starshine"
by Oliver displays nothing.

The correct artwork is displayed in Winamp.

To add to this, I now have an iPod Touch 64 (this toy is fun), that
also drags the cover art from the web instead of using the
"folder.jpg" file. The problem is that often the web based covers are
not correct or look crappy.... Is this normal for the ipod interface
(Safari)?

Any plans to develop an iPod app for this in the future instead of the
Safari interface?

Cheers,

Norm.....

[c22600]

Hi Matt,

On reading your response more thoroughly, "Signal only uses folder-
based art if the path contains the artist or album name", this is how
I set my library up and the path with Artist & Album names are
actually generated from the *.flac files so everything should match.

I went back and checked the album in the example below and there was a
mismatch between the album name & the folder name and with was due to
the limitations on folder naming conventions (my mistake as I usually
check this) ID3v2 tag = "Flower Power: The Time of the Season" whilst
the folder was "Flower Power The Time of the Season" with the colon
character missing. I found the same with another compilation and after
correctly matching the folder name with the tag name, your App works
as it is supposed to.

All is now good on both the WM5 device & the iPod.

Where I said below that the previous version worked like a charm, the
albums in question had not been added to the server at that stage so
no doubt, I would have seen the same issue.

Sorry for raising this as a bug but the outcome is I have a better
understanding of your great program and probably helps others as well.

Cheers & Thanks,

Norm.....

[Matt Stevens]

Glad to hear it's working for you again! Thanks for investigating this further and providing the details, that's a huge help. I hadn't considered invalid file system characters when implementing the test, I'll update it to strip out punctuation and common words in the future. I don't want you to have to modify your metadata to get something to work with the app.

In the meantime, there is a setting built in that will work around this issue for you right now. In your user data directory look for Alloysoft\Signal\MCP.config. You can jump to it by clicking Start > Run and entering:

%APPDATA%\Alloysoft\Signal

Exit out of Signal if it's running, then open MCP.config in a text editor and add the following line:

PreferFolderAlbumArt=true

You may also want to delete the Album Art directory in this location to immediately clear the album art cache. After Signal is restarted it will skip the artist/album check when using folder-based art.

--
Matt Stevens
www.alloysoft.com