Topic: Album and Cover Art Vis Plugin (xmp-coverart rev.8, source code)

[Barna]

ahh yeah there might be more unicode functions used for saving files (file names). I'll check tonight and post an update of rev.4.
Thanks for the report!

[Rich Nagel]

ahh yeah there might be more unicode functions used for saving files (file names). I'll check tonight and post an update of rev.4.

A-OK, many thanks

Thanks for the report!

Thank *YOU* for this great plugin

[Barna]

ｷﾀ━━━(゜∀゜)━( ゜∀)━( 　゜)━(　　)━(゜ 　)━(∀゜ )━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!
Should save covers now properly on 9x.
Download: http://www.nukular.ch/xmp-coverart_rev.4.zip

[Rich Nagel]

Should save covers now properly on 9x.
Download: http://www.nukular.ch/xmp-coverart_rev.4.zip

Works PERFECTLY now, MANY thanks!

[Fentiger]

Firstly, thankyou for a fantastic plugin! It works really very well and I use it all the time!

I am no programmer, but I just wondered if additional features could potentially be added to this plugin to display Last FM band/artist pictures instead of album covers from Amazon? Another idea would be to display Flickr photo streams of the particular band/artist being played on XM Play? I've seen similiar web based 'mashups' using Last FM and Flickr before, I just wondered if the same idea could be implemented in a plugin?

Anyway, it's just an idea. Thanks again!

[Fentiger]

Hi,

Me again! I found one of the Last FM/Flickr 'mash-ups' I referred to above. It's called Snappradio and found HERE. You can either use Radio Paradise or Last FM and it displays Flickr photos in a slideshow relating to the artist/song title playing. It creates interesting results sometimes, but if an artist or band is well known then it draws from the Flickr search tags usually showing concert photos...

If this is possible using a plugin similiar to the excellent cover art vis plugin..... then for example you could be listening to say Franz Ferdinand on XM Play, with concert photo's of the band displayed as a visual.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Dotpitch]

If this is possible using a plugin similiar to the excellent cover art vis plugin..... then for example you could be listening to say Franz Ferdinand on XM Play, with concert photo's of the band displayed as a visual.

Sure it's possible, it's quite similar to what xmp-coverart is doing now. But that doesn't make it easy yet. Perhaps a nice project for you, Barna?

[jwbodnar]

Hi Barna,

Hope you are still following this thread.

I just downloaded some free iTunes Plus tracks (no DRM), and the cover art plugin does not show the MP4 cover tag.

Just to make sure this was not some Apple thing, I did the following:

1. Extract the raw AAC data from the Apple MP4 container with YAMB.
2. Copy the cover art from iTunes into a new JPG file with Irfanview.
3. Put the AAC data into a new MP4 container.
4. Recreate the artist, album, title, and cover tags with Mp3tag.

The result is still no different.  The Message panel in XMPlay shows the album, artist, and title tags, and it also lists a "cover" tag with garbage data.  So, it does not matter whether it is the untouched m4a file from Apple or the one I have built from the raw AAC data.  Both show the same tags in the Message panel and do not display the cover art JPG.

I have put this file up here for you to download and take a look at (too big to attach):

http://www.nodada.com/scattergood.m4a

It would be great if you could take a look at this and see if there's something about how Apple (or Mp3tag for that matter) structures the m4a file that prevents the cover art plugin from finding the cover tag and displaying the image data.

Thanks again.

[Barna]

Hi jwbodnar

Yeah I actually check the thread from time to time :-)
Thanks for the report. Should work now. There seems to be two ways to store album art in the MP4 container. The in your file seems even more common so I'm glad I could add support for it.

I also took some time to play a bit with the ideas discussed in April.
There's some basic mashup/ripping/leeching function now for Last.fm, Google Images and Flickr.
Also new is the ability to select the search criteria for Amazon, Google Images and Flickr (Artist, Album, Title).
For Google Images it always returns all loadable images regardless of the image size.
From Flickr it loads the resized image by Flickr according to the desired resolution.
When searching on Last.fm it always fixed looks for both album art and artist image.
Downloading on one of the services besides amazon always tries to load 6 images. To download another set click "Download more images..." in the Select Cover menu.
(oh yeah, this feature could have a lot of bugs and/or won't work as one would like. Comments/reports welcome, thx!)

Download: http://www.nukular.ch/xmp-coverart_rev.5.zip

Yayay and greetings from (back in) Switzerland (again),
Bernhard

[Dotpitch]

There's some basic mashup/ripping/leeching function now for Last.fm, Google Images and Flickr.

Ooh, nice . It's a bit slower than using just Amazon, but it does show all the images properly. Thanks Barna!

[Fentiger]

Hey Barna, many thanks for the update! Really liking the new search criteria options as well as the option for Flickr, Last FM and Google searches... just tried it out and works very well!

Also wondered if it would be possible to disable all Amazon cover searches too? For example if you wanted to display the Flickr results only. I know this defeats the whole point of the vis, but it would be a nice addition.

Thanks again... Cheers!

[Barna]

It actually kinda behaves like that now... When a cover was found with any of the three image services the amazon downloader wouldn't kick in.
But now that I thought about it thats kinda weird so I changed it and reuploaded rev.5. So now all Amazon servers can be deselected and everything should be a bit more intuitive. Thanks for the comment.

Download: http://www.nukular.ch/xmp-coverart_rev.5.zip

Hooray 100st post on un4seen \o/

[Fentiger]

Wow, that is fast! Thanks for making the changes, just about to try it out now.

I just noticed it's having difficulty displaying the 'band' type images from Last FM...the covers are showing up, but not the pics. I'm not sure if this is the problem, but if the cover is contained in the same directory as the song it ignores the Last FM, Flickr search... I think this seems to be whats happening to me anyway.

Many thanks again for such a great vis...am really impressed!

By the way, congrats on the 100th post!! I see I have a long way to go

[Barna]

hmm... the implementation is still kinda basic and fluky. For Last.fm it first reads all the album images and then proceeds with the artist images. So if there are 6 or more images for the album alone it never gets to the artists images. You can always press the "Download more..." button. Another thing is, at the moment it always only loads images from the first result page for any of the new services. So 20 images max from Google Images and so on. If you want to see a bit more what it actually does while downloading the images, check the "Auto cover download -> Transfer log (debug)" option and re-initiate a download process. After it, it should open a XML-formatted log file which is kinda weird but can be looked at nicely in a web browser for instance. You can check the Last.fm pages' URLs it parses in the "Getting Last.fm results: http://www.last.fm/music/....." entries in the log.

[Fentiger]

Thanks for that...I discovered that the 'Download More' button solves things a little, but realise it is still a little temperamental... it does work very well though. Would it be possible to have 2 seperate options for Last FM? One for covers, another for artists images? Or maybe that would make things too complicated?

Keep up the great work, its really appreciated...thanks

[Barna]

No I guess it would be better because the Last.fm service kinda behaves different anyway, so it's nice to give the option and point it out that way. The cover downloader menu was huge before anyway so it doesn't hurt that much :-) Still rev.5.

Download: http://www.nukular.ch/xmp-coverart_rev.5.zip

[FB]

Works very well! Nice work Barna .

[Fentiger]

Oh thats really great! I think my personal preferences would be to use Last FM over Amazon... not only for the artist pics, but I believe the library for artist/covers could even be larger, even for the more obscure artists.

I've noticed a few of my artist it still displays either just the cover.jpg or the ID3 images only, even when I've just got the Last fm artist option selected. As I've already said this is solved by clicking Download Now. This doesnt happen if there is no cover or ID3 images contained with the album.

Thanks again for a great vis!

[al.e.as]

greetings..ive downloades all the bits i think you're supposed to have to show album art (winamp_svp.svp, xmp-coverart.svp, xmp-wavis.dll) and i cant seem to get this to work..i've got version 3.4.2.1..and the info window tells me that i need the latest version to run the latest version when i choose xmplay cover art rev.5......i'm confused what to do so a nice walk through would benice for an idiot like me..
thanks in advance.
AL

[saga]

http://www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe - this is the latest version of xmplay.

[Dotpitch]

ive downloades all the bits i think you're supposed to have to show album art (winamp_svp.svp, xmp-coverart.svp, xmp-wavis.dll)

xmp-coverart.svp is enough, you can delete xmp-wavis.dll and winamp_svp.svp if you just want coverart.

i've got version 3.4.2.1..and the info window tells me that i need the latest version to run the latest version when i choose xmplay cover art rev.5......i'm confused what to do so a nice walk through would benice for an idiot like me..

Please read the thread the next time, it has already been answered (a year ago!):

Doesn't it say "The cover feature requires a newer XMPlay version. Please download the newest release from un4seen.com and/or use download the program from http://www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe" ? Even though I just saw that it's pretty much super broken English, go ahead with the download link there :-) The EXE only releases in the stuff directory are the newest builds and the cover plugin requires a feature only recently added into XMPlay versions after the 3.4.2 release.

[SilverDogg]

just downloaded this and i really like it.

however, i like having the playlist up, and not only visuals. is it possible to do this, or is it possible to fix in a later version perhaps?

added a pic if im not making myself clear =P.

[Dotpitch]

however, i like having the playlist up, and not only visuals. is it possible to do this, or is it possible to fix in a later version perhaps?

The extended playlist is in the same window as the visuals, so it's not possible to have them both. You can use the small playlist in the main panel, but that's limited to ten entries.

[SilverDogg]

i was afraid of this. is there any workaround at all?
if the skin was edited so it could be resized that would be great.

[raina]

if the skin was edited so it could be resized that would be great.

That is not possible, the skinning system only allows 10 entries in the playlist panel and it's resizeable either.