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

[Bjossi]

Putting it there would be fine by me. But to be honest I could get used to not seeing number of pages or frames, to me it serves no special purpose. The player just looks weird with an empty space.

Oh, and I was wondering; is there a way to configure the size of the album art displayed in the visuals tab? Sometimes text on the cover is unreadable due to the small size. Most of the pictures I have are pretty big so a small size increase wouldn't affect quality.

[Dotpitch]

...is there a way to configure the size of the album art displayed in the visuals tab?

Sure, just enlarge the whole window by dragging the bottom corner . Perhaps tick auto-resize off and remove any rendering restrictions for visuals as well.

[Bjossi]

That did the trick, but now the contents of the other tabs in the info window look weird.
Like the tags, they look so lonely in the center of that big window.

[Lesmo16]

Quote from xmp-coverart.txt:

"The configuration of the cover art can be accessed by middle clicking the visuals screen."

Well ... quite a problem with my HP Compaq Notebook with 2 buttons Synaptics Touchpad.

I googled suggestions like <Shift+LMB> or <LMB+RMB> but nothing works.


@Barna: What do you think about a keyboard shortcut?

[Barna]

On my laptop I can tip ON the touchpad with two fingers to get a middle mouse button click (three fingers = right MB). I think it's synaptics, too, plus the laptop itself is nothing fancy or so, so it may be a standard feature. Try that :-)

The middle mouse requirement is not something I added, but a feature of the visuals implementation in XMPlay. So maybe Ian could add a ctrl/shift left/right click option to get the same result. Otherwise I could look into adding a shortcut either to XMPlay or hard code one into the plugin itself.

[Ian @ un4seen]

That did the trick, but now the contents of the other tabs in the info window look weird.
Like the tags, they look so lonely in the center of that big window.

The vis window size should be retained, so just enlarging that (without disabling auto-resize) should suffice.

The middle mouse requirement is not something I added, but a feature of the visuals implementation in XMPlay. So maybe Ian could add a ctrl/shift left/right click option to get the same result.

This has come up before, but I haven't changed things yet as I'm not entirely sure what the "Clicked" function's "buttons" parameter is meant to be. It suggests that multiple buttons may be supported, but there's no information in the Sonique API. Perhaps you know something about it?

[Lesmo16]

On my laptop I can tip ON the touchpad with two fingers to get a middle mouse button click (three fingers = right MB). I think it's synaptics, too, plus the laptop itself is nothing fancy or so, so it may be a standard feature. Try that :-)

Thanks, but that doesn't work either.

[Sam_Zen]

This plugin works fine, when showing one album bitmap in PNG or JPG format,
but i'm not able to stop the playback anymore, other than closing the application.
This is a bug, I think.

[Barna]

Does the same kind of frozen state occur on a clean XMPlay application directory with just xmplay.exe and xmp-coverart.svp?
On what kind of media file does that happen for you? One with a cover included (ID3, FLAC, MP4) or with an external PNG/JPEG file in the same directory as the song you're playing?

[Sam_Zen]

It's not a matter of a frozen state. And I must add that this is happening in the full-screen representation.
Then, the only command available is to disable the function via the context menu.
Stopping some playback is not directly possible.

EDIT: In the meantime I noticed, that, if two bitmaps are in the dir, a JPG is shown, not a PNG.

[Dotpitch]

In the meantime I noticed, that, if two bitmaps are in the dir, a JPG is shown, not a PNG.

Middle click > Select cover? The JPG is just chosen first by the plugin.

Then, the only command available is to disable the function via the context menu.

Wait, are you using the latest version? The previous version (with Winamp visuals) had a 'Disable' command, but the current xmp-coverart does not.

[Sam_Zen]

Quite a pity the BMP, or another uncompressed format, is not supported by this plugin, by the way.
Thanks Dotpitch. Nice tip about the Middle click for the choice. Is there a keyboard equivalent for the middle click ?
I think I'm using the latest version.

[Cypress]

Mhh ... I can only say thanks 4 this great plugin it makes xmplay even better..  (posting from my k300 usin' opera mini)

[Sam_Zen]

Right on, Cypress. I forgot to express my thanks for this great tool, of which I've searched for a long time..
I did some testing, and it's even possible to give every track of the album its own bitmap.
For example the cover, but with the track-title edited on it. As another file of course.
If every track has its own subdir, with that bitmap included, and the proper path-decription is in the playlist-file, it will work.

[Sam_Zen]

Hmm. I did some testing with non-square bitmaps to use as cover art during playing.
I did this by adding some information at the right side of the cover. Two examples :



Strange thing is, the first one is shown correctly by XMP while running a song or the playlist,
while the second one only shows the left half of the bitmap. I don't understand this.

[Barna]

I tried it with these two JPEG files you hosted on tinypic and both displayed just fine.
Can you upload the original images somewhere? Maybe ZIP them first.
Also make sure you didn't use the 'non-image-resizing' scale mode and had the window at a too small size.

[Sam_Zen]

Before using any own server space, I DL'd these tinypic bitmaps and used them in the playlist again.
Same result. Although a bit smaller, the first one ok, the second one just shows this :

Still only the left side.
The common factor of these two is the fact that I added an area to the right of the original square cover with a black background and text.
I checked different skins, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

[Barna]

Here's how the same cover image file looks here:

Works fine in all scale modes and skins as far as I can tell.

[Dotpitch]

Strange thing is, the first one is shown correctly by XMP while running a song or the playlist, while the second one only shows the left half of the bitmap.

Before using any own server space, I DL'd these tinypic bitmaps and used them in the playlist again.
Same result. Although a bit smaller, the first one ok, the second one just shows this :

Are you sure it's not showing the original cover, the one without the extra information?

[Sam_Zen]

I'm sure, because it's the only bitmap in the album-directory. The original square cover is at a different location.
This is the actual representation :


But I noticed in the screenshot of Barna things that are different, never seen before :


Very useful dialogs about album art, but I just don't have them, can't find a shortcut or whatever.

[Barna]

The menu can be opened by clicking the window with the middle mouse button.
If you don't have a middle mouse button, you cannot open it (except by attaching a mouse with 3 or more buttons to a USB port). See the end of the second and the top of third page of this topic for more discussion about it.

[Dotpitch]

I'm sure, because it's the only bitmap in the album-directory. The original square cover is at a different location.

Do the audio files themselves perhaps contain album art?

[raina]

You need to middle click the vis display.

[Sam_Zen]

v

Do the audio files themselves perhaps contain album art?

I don't think so. Plain common MP3 ones.

Strange. I used the middle mouse click, advised by Barna and raina.
First, the square front moved to the left of the area, but with still an empty right part :


(Comment on this : isn't there a kb shortcut alternative for this middle mouseclick function ?
I noticed, that if the click is unintentionally done with some move, the next of the visuals in the list is called.
Quite a clumsy control I must say.)

So after a second middle click I get the menu:

Select Cover (2) ? Why ? There's only 1 cover 'inner_mounting_flame.jpg'.
But 'Cover (front) (ID3)' seems to be default.
So maybe Dotpitch is right, that the plugin first scans for album art among the ID3 tags.
But if there isn't any embedded art among the Mp3 files, why pick a square of an existing bitmap ?

So I checked the second option with the filename, and then it was ok.
The right part with the text was shown as well, as intended. So the bitmap as it should be.

To re-check things, I did the first album 'Spectrum' again using the middle mouse-click in the frame:

No 'Select Cover (2)' there, just the name of the present bitmap 'spectrum_front'.
So maybe it seems to be caused by a specific MP3 detection script, because the files of 'Spectrum' are OGGs.

In order to check this behaviour further, I converted the Mahavishnu files from MP3 to OGG in the same dir with the cover bitmap, and made a new playlist.
All went well. Even when playing a single file, the wide cover art was correctly displayed.

[Dotpitch]

First, the square front moved to the left of the area, but with still an empty right part.

That sound like 'Album Art alignment/stretch'.

Comment on this : isn't there a kb shortcut alternative for this middle mouseclick function ?

No, but a few message up in this thread Ian says he's not sure about this button. A shortcut might be helpful in the future.

I noticed, that if the click is unintentionally done with some move, the next of the visuals in the list is called.

That means you're moving the scroll wheel, rather than just pressing it.

But if there isn't any embedded art among the Mp3 files, why pick a square of an existing bitmap ?

There is album art embedded in the mp3 files, that's why the plugin is showing it. Embedded album art is always the plugins first choice, it does not use the external bitmap in this case.

Hey, wait... 1000th post .