Cover Art

[Duncan Ross]

I have spent HOURS trying to, firstly dragging a cover art thumbnail off my iMac desktop over to Albums on the B2 control panel on my iMac to no avail, then trying to use the Upload function, selecting [File Upload]. I have the Album, Artist, [Choose Files] seeing IMG_7377.jpeg in the box. I hit [Send to Brennan] and that's the last I see of it. Where it goes to, only him up there knows! 

Some of my albums, and I own all the CD's, I cannot find the cover artwork on the net, so I use my iPhone to take a photo of the cover art and send it to the iMac. I have tried HEIC, JPEG (large & small files) & GIF formats to no avail. I am sort of sure I have been able to do this in the past. I can drag it off the desktop with a green circle and white {+} but as soon as I take it over the white square with the camera in [Albums] it just does not "stick", going back to my desktop.

What am I doing wrong?

[K B]

I am having the same problem. I thought that it was user error but it seems that this might not be the case. The interface is not clear on how to achieve results and the videos I have looked at seem to use another, perhaps older, UI. I am at a loss to know how to proceed and frankly am getting a little frustrated. Any guidance would be appreciated.

[Steve Peers]

Hi Duncan and K,

The image attached shows which file types can be loaded by various paths.

An older review is here  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/brennanb2/jog6cmOhBRk.

I believe that there are BB1 compatibility issues with additional file types, i.e. the B2 will load, but copies on BB1 would not display.

So, try to stick to *.jpg or *.png file types.

Steve

[Brian Allars]

Hi Duncan,

I have a B2 and still using the older UI, which I prefer (from waht I have seen) to the latest version.

Firstly, if you are using .jpeg make sure that thw filesize is small, not more than 500 x 500. I use Picassa which allows me to specify filesizes when exported. You probably know already thet you can determine file size from right clicking over the target.

I reduce the size of the UI and drag and drop the finished images into place, however this does not work if there is an image there already (have to go throught the file upload box on the UI).

If CDDB can't find a cover file I find searching on the net gets results; just save the image you want; they are nearly always very small in filesize so easy to use. Hope this helps!

[Daniel Taylor]

Setting up your B2 as NAS can really make life simpler.  Once your computer can view your Brennan HDD as an attached drive, you can drag and drop files to/from it just like with any other attached drive.  When copying files to the B2, when you're done, always run the Scan Disk command to update the B2's internal list.

My original understanding was that all cover art files must be named coverart.jpg.  My personal preference is to keep all filesizes under 30KB.  I have stuck with that and have had no problems.  Recently, I've seen mention of being able to use different filenames, but until this thread, I've not seen any other file types supported other than jpg.  Regardless of what name you give a cover art file, consider the problem when there are more than one file in the folder.  How will the B2 know which one to use?  Keep it simple and just save the one you want.

[K B]

How does one attach the Brennan as a NAS? Thanks for you help

[Edwyn Corteen]

Hi

Settings/Maintenance/ scroll down list to Start NAS

[Peter Lowham]

Guys,

I note that Duncan is using an iMac.  Unfortunately, after looking on the Internet, it seems that the later versions of Mac OS do not work very well, if at all, with NAS.  This seems to be because the Brennans all use SMB1.0 and Apple does not support this version due to a falling out between Apple and the supplier of their SMB.  Apple attempted to develop their own version but appear to have not completed that work.

If you google 'OSX NAS problems' you will see what I mean!

Regards,

Peter.

[Mark Fishman]

Yes, Apple decided that they didn't want to use the well-vetted and reliably functional open source code base developed by samba.org, so they wrote their own a few versions of OS-X back. It is still a piece of cr*p. Bunch of arrogant and self-serving idiots, Apple, with absolutely no concern for their customers. They do what they want whether it works or not.

HOWEVER: even if you can't get network-attached storage [NAS] to work with a Mac, they haven't entirely broken secure copy [SCP] or secure FTP [SFTP], which also works with the Brennan B2. If you are mildly techy, you can use the command-line client for scp to copy your image files into the appropriate directories (same directory as the music tracks it's supposed to represent).

If you MUST have a gui, there doesn't seem to be one that's Mac-native past OS-X 10.7 (Fugu from the University of Michigan hasn't been updated), but WinSCP, which works extremely well under MS-WIndows, also runs under recent versions of Wine. The one potential hitch is if you're running Catalina, which will not run 32-bit apps anymore. Wine itself can run, but you'll need to get a 64-bit version of WinSCP.

Cheers? -- m.

[John Bisset]

After some experimentation, as a result of inconsistent display on my television, I've discovered that 500 x 500 works best for legibility. Somewhat above that size the image displays as if it were small. I use irfanview (https://www.irfanview.com/) to resize the images from the internet if there is nothing suitable on musicbrainz and save the image to the relevant folder using NAS (drag and drop works fine; I'm just more used to saving files)

[PMB]

Hi Duncan,

When using the Upload File function the Album and Artist names you enter are where the uploaded file will be stored on the B2, not where it is coming from. So if you want to add an artwork to an existing Album you do the following -

Click Upload

Click File Upload

Enter Album name e.g. The Trilogy

Enter Artist name e.g. Andreas Vollenweider

Choose file on your computer e.g. coverart.jpg

Click on 'Open'

Click Send to B2.

This adds the artwork to the existing Album.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Duncan Ross]

Problem now solved. Any file needs to be a {.jpg} Files I have dragged off Photos of the cover art which I took with my iPhone X, to my iMac desktop for dragging over to {Album} on the B2 page were a {.jpeg} and that just does not work. So I went and just renamed them {.jpg} and dragged them over and SUCCESS. Don't need to go near {Upload} at all. What could be simpler?

[Jon Herd]

Team - some observations I have come across with adding cover art to albums where the MusicBrainz and Amazon searches fail to find the artwork. Apologies up front if this has been discussed before, but I am new to the Brennan products and have just bought  BB1 ( which is brilliant I have to say ). 

So I have some of the Now That's What I call Music compilations, and have added them to the BB1, but each one cannot find the cover art. I scanned this forum and found a tip that said to find the artwork on the web, copy the image and then on the Web UI. hover over the "Album" header and then do a CTRL & V ( note cut/paste does not work with mouse in this field on the Web UI)  to paste it into the album. This works a treat BUT I then see the cover art work in the Web UI but not on the BB1 screen when playing a track from that album.

So I assume the place it stores the cover art for the Web UI is different to where it stores it for the BB1 display. OK so onward and then I tried the way Paul from support say to do it (earlier in this forum post) by adding the JPG file to the album as a file upload and this works as designed and placed the cover art in both the Web UI and the BB1 display. 

I also tried another trick that I found worked as follows. In the album folder on my PC with the tracks I am going to upload, I also add the cover art JPG file. When doing the bulk upload from PC >> BB1 this JPG gets sent to the BB1, but does not appear on the track listing on the Web UI, however it does add the cover art to the album both on the UI and BB1

So now I have a proven way to add cover art but its a bit fiddly so .....

Paul /Martin - here is a suggestion. In the edit functions for an album could you add another option to add the cover art from a file in addition to the MusicBrainz and Amazon options. This way the user can add the cover art they have already found on the web easily ?

Thanks Jon

[JFBUK]

Hi Jon,

I believe this is already possible using the file upload functionality of the the Web UI that you have described.

The B2 uploads files incrementally to an existing folder.

Here are the steps I followed: (it assumes you have downloaded the art to a file on your computer)

1. Find the album with art in the Web UI and display its details in the bottom right album subwindow

2. Click on the Upload tab and the 'File Upload' radio button

3. If you click on the album title of the album bottom right you will see that the 'album name' and 'album artist' input boxes of the upload dialog are populated with the details of the existing album

4. Click on 'Choose Files' and choose your album art file from your computer folders

5. Click on 'Send to Brennan'

Voila your album has art :)

John

[Jon Herd]

John

Yes I agree this is one way to do it as I mentioned in my previous post. 

For me if Paul / Martin could just add a button in the edit menu for the album, to add cover art from a file along side the MusicBrainz and Amazon find options , it would be simpler for the user ?

[lesli...@hotmail.com]

I agree with Jon.H....  I am in the very laborious throes of uploading a lot of music to my B2 from my JB7 back up (bulk upload managed about 35% of my collection, but the other 65% is being uploaded individually...), and many of them don't have artwork matches despite lots of effort to get musicbrainz or amazon to find them. I've now used this get around and it works fine, but just adds more steps to my workload. Might eventually get all this done by Xmas! That additional button might help. Till then I can at least get artwork uploaded for all my music. Still haven't lost faith in my Brennans...just having to persevere!!

Leslie. 

[PMB]

Hi John H,

Thanks for the suggestion.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[harlond57]

John, many thanks.  I have never figured out out to replace incorrect album art, but following your procedure (and making sure I renamed the album art as "coverart.jpg"), I have been able to replace the wrong art with the right stuff.  Lotta clicks to this procedure, but it works, and considering the problem of incorrect cover art itself is pretty inconsequential, I'm very happy to be able to do it at all.

[harlond57]

Resurrecting another thread because I have a new question.  I used the procedure described above to change the cover art where it was wrong from the beginning or I put the wrong art there.  Now I've noticed that when I'm playing an album whose cover art I have replaced, the top-left pane in the Web UI displays the prior wrong cover art rather than the new correct art.  Anyone know why?  How to fix?

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

I think I saw this in the Forum! Something to do with some images in Tags stored as part of the music being displayed in some cases. Have a poke around in the forum.

Fred.

[JFBUK]

This is what I posted some time ago

I have investigated further with the following results.

1. I use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip CDs  to FLAC files and then use the Upload function to move them to my B2. 

What I hadn't realised is that EAC is tagging album art to my FLAC files and that on occasions the databases it uses are not necessarily 100% accurately using the album art relevant to the CD version being ripped.

2. When I have uploaded an album I add the album art using the B2 UI (pasting into the album title details bottom right). I still use the original Web UI .

The B2 creates a file COVERART.PNG in the tracks folder for the album on the B2 HDD and this is what it retrieves for that album when you view the track listing in the bottom right box.

3. When a track is played the B2 retrieves any tagged album art from the track's FLAC file  metadata if its there, if not it uses the COVERART.PNG file for the album. This is what is displayed in the track playing box top left.

4. I used MP3TAG to manually change the cover art tag on one track of an album and this confirmed the above as the art changed for that one track when played after another track from the same album.

I now understand better what the B2 is doing.

John