Music - Meta Tagging

[strugglez 7]

Hey, I know as future upgrades and all will come out with maybe more flexitbility, but I was wondering if someone could help me with this.

My music collection is pretty well maintained via iTunes.

 

1. 1st thing is, I hope that in no way MB3/The server fetches it's own meta data and edits the existing meta data within my mp3/m4a files. So far it hasn't seemed to alter any of that, but rather fetch Meta data for folders and sub folders as the same way it organises movies. Could someone just clarify to me on that as it would be one less thing to worry about.

 

2. I've noticed that all the album art/folder files (.png files) have been extracted from sources such as LastFm, Amazon etc..., and so far from what I've seen, they have been 200x200 or less so the image isn't as clear as the images I have within my music files themselves. Is MB3 limited to these files being a certain size or is this for some way to keep MB3 as efficient as possible.

 

I have previously had a batch file extract the image from within the 1st track of every album and add a folder.jpg file to each album folder. If I did this, would I be able to use the local image the batch generates instead? and would the server automaticly update and switch the album covers around.

 

Hopefully this makes sense.

 

Thanks in advanced.

 

[Luke 37174]

we don't overwrite any tags in your audio files.

[strugglez 7]

Thanks Luke.

 

Okay, to recap on my 2nd point. I have done a a lot of digging around and have done what I ultimately wanted to do. I haven't checked on the server end thoroughly yet, but so far it seems to of done what I wanted it to do.

 

1st thing is 1st, I've noticed that the folder.jpg/png file that is downloaded into each folder album is made into a system hidden file. Presumably to avoid people deleting them and creating issues with the server end.

 

I deleted all of these by doing a mass search for folder.jpg/png within my music folder and sorted the media by date created. and deleted any appriate file accordingly. It took a fair amount of time to sort this without deleting too much of the data that MB3 had already downloaded (Ie: artist profile photo's as they are also labeled folder.jpg - saw most of them to be 1000x1000 images though so not hard to differentiate).

 

I then ran a batch/script to extract the album image from the 1st track of each album and title it folder.

The images ranged from jpg/png depending on what had been imbedded.

(I don't believe this matters , but I am fussy when it comes to things like this so I also added an extra step here and managed to find a batch/script to convert all the png files to jpg within my music folder)

 

I have left those new files as not hidden for in anycase, it's qucik and easy to change.

 

As for the server end, it just refreshed with the new folder.jpg's and I am away laughing with the album images I want.

 

Hope this made sense and in any case, helps others.

Edited October 21, 2013 by strugglez

[Luke 37174]

we don't save images as hidden or system files though, so that happened elsewhere somehow.

[ebr 14947]

Wmp extracts thumbs and saves them as hidden/system files.

[strugglez 7]

In that case, will WMP alter those again?

[Luke 37174]

i have no idea how wmp works.

[Tikuf 663]

In that case, will WMP alter those again?

Yes it will. Wmp kindly over wrote all my 400x400 folder images with 200x200 folder images. You will need to disable wmp generating album art so yours don't get overwritten.

 

Under options> Library uncheck Retrieve additional information from the internet. I think that is the fix from memory.

[strugglez 7]

Hmmmm, I think I had that disabled before I used WMC to create my library database, so it may have altered something there when adding my music library via WMC, but now that I realize I could sort/play my music via MB3, I have since removed the library from from WMC/WMP.

In using MB3 I have found it to organize it separately while using WMC to simply play back the file, not adding it back into the WMP database. That is correct right?

[Tikuf 663]

Yup that is correct. I don't use wmp for anything now including playback 

[strugglez 7]

Hmmm, Do you at all use MB3 to organize your music? I am just wondering, as I am fairly new to MB3, but it uses the WMC interface for me as I am not too fussed on this. Do you use an external player?

[Tikuf 663]

Mb does all my presentation, my music is fairly well organized. No i don't use any external players

[strugglez 7]

What plays back your audio then?

[Tikuf 663]

Well it varies. Mbc (which i suppose is sort of wmp), the webdash, android tab or phone or tv, or mbt (which you will have access to soon enough)

[steve1977 67]

2. I've noticed that all the album art/folder files (.png files) have been extracted from sources such as LastFm, Amazon etc..., and so far from what I've seen, they have been 200x200 or less so the image isn't as clear as the images I have within my music files themselves. Is MB3 limited to these files being a certain size or is this for some way to keep MB3 as efficient as possible.

 

I have previously had a batch file extract the image from within the 1st track of every album and add a folder.jpg file to each album folder. If I did this, would I be able to use the local image the batch generates instead? and would the server automaticly update and switch the album covers around.

 

I am also looking for a solution here. Would be great to have an option to extract the album art instead of downloading it from other sources?

 

Alternatively, what is the batch file you are using? If I use this and disable albumart poster download from MBS, it should do the same trick for me?

[Tikuf 663]

I grabbed all my album art using this app

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/album-art/

 

(it took a long time but i got em all in the end) I then ran a ps action and resized them all to 400x400 and then i ran mp3tag and embedded then 400x400 image in the mp3's

 

This was pre mb3.

[steve1977 67]

Thanks. Can't you "tell" MBC just no longer to download folder.jpg now? This way, it should keep what you have?

 

Ideally, MBC would do this task and extract album art, but above may be a workaround to keep my nicely embedded posters.

[Tikuf 663]

Mbs does extract the album art but from memory if you have a folder.jpg it takes precedence (cant recall sorry)

[steve1977 67]

Are you sure that MBS extracts album art from MP3 tags? Is this a new function as most of my albums do not have album art in MBS, but all of them have embedded album art in the MP3? I may not have refreshed the albums though for 1-2 weeks, so if this is a new feature?

Also noticed that some folders include folder.jpg and some folder.png. Any idea why this is happening?

[Tikuf 663]

I know it extracts art I wrote the command line. I dont think it has changed in recent times

[steve1977 67]

Thanks. By "extracting" you mean extracting embedded art from an MP3? Unfortunately, this does not work for me. I just refreshed a few albums and it does not work. May I send you one of these MP3s by email?

Also, any thoughts on folder.jpg vs folder.png?

[Tikuf 663]

pm me a link if you can. Not sure about the png I haven't seen that at all

[Tikuf 663]

Just tested your file i put it in a folder called test/unknown/unknown/waterloo.mp3 an the embedded image was ignored in favour of a png downloaded from last.fm

 

 

@@Luke is the default now download rather than extract?

[steve1977 67]

I don't mind the default being download rather than extract. My issue is that it doesn't download for this album and also does not extract. For other albums, it does download. Second issue is that some are folder.jpg and some are folder.png. Not a big deal, but would be great if this could be changed?

[strugglez 7]

So, I just have have all my mp3/mp4's embedded with the correct album art before I start to extract the folder.jpg. From there, the MBS just recognizes the folder.jpg and uses that, that is how I thought it worked, or it's worked for me anyway.