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CoverArt 4.0


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CoverArt 4.0 takes your posters and screen grabs and enhances them in any one of a number of ways.  

 

 

Spruce up your Media Browser clients with format-specific cases, automatic overlays for resolution, audio, 3D and subtitles and more.  

 

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Create automatic multi-image treatments for box-sets and collections that show off what is inside.

 

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Specify custom rotation amounts on the cases to give your displays a 3-dimensional touch.

 

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Version 4.0.6.5

 

- Remove all glossy overlays (looked dated and didn't work on Linux)

- Fix font incompatibilities on systems with no UI (e.g. UnRaid)

 


Version 4.0.6.1

 

- Server compatibility

- Fix TV not updating when changed

 

Version 4.0.3.5 (Beta)

 

- Adjust some scaling issues on indicator overlays

- Add MetroCaseCDs treatment

 

Version 4.0.3.4 (Release)

 

- Fix broken box set previews

- Reverse "oldest cover" logic

 

Version 4.0.3.3 (Release)

 

- Add new "Plain" treatment (only indicator overlays)

- Add new "MetroCase" treatment for more modern look

- Fix some of the media info overlays not showing properly

 

Version 4.0.2.1 (Release)

 


Fix null refs in image provider

Fix ordering of multi-image children

 


Version 4.0.1.6 (Release)

 

- Remove defunct server type

- Ignore box set children when building multi-sets

 

Version 4.0.1.4

 

- Treat generic videos like movies

- Add "ca-ignore" tag to ignore any item

- Don't translate banner treatments

- Treat Artists in web client view

 

Version 4.0.1.0 (Release)

 

- Update for server changes

 

Version 4.0.0.7

 

- Fix custom overlay folder selection

- Prefer external subs

- Add new "SpineCase" treatment style

 

Version 4.0.0.5

 

- More server changes

 

Version 4.0.0.4

 

- Adjust to some server changes

 

Version 4.0.0.1

 

- Fix changes to some music item treatments not being seen

 

Version 4.0.0.0

 

- Initial release

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Overview

 

CoverArt is an "Image Processor" for Media Browser server.  It does not download any artwork.  What it does is take the artwork you have (either downloaded with the normal MB providers or supplied by you) and apply different specialized treatments to those images.  So, it can take a plain movie poster and make it look like a Blu-Ray case, or a beveled glass case - or take your episode images and put TV frames around them so that they look obviously like TV episodes.

 

525404df6db2b_3bae52c8c9e53743c0f86a71ae      5254086d022fd_4502874c27ec2d448e6045cc23     5461103d18f12_caepisode.png

 

It can also do some very interesting things with Collections (box sets) or other folder types by creating images that represent the actual content that is within them.

 

546110d6ade15_cafan.png    5461146fbc4fc_caccdiscs.png        546114d404986_camccds.png

 

 

CoverArt does not modify any of your original artwork.  It does its magic on the server before the images are delivered to the clients so you can easily switch between different styles and rest assured your original posters will remain intact.

 

You can select different treatments for different types of media.  For example, movies can have a case style treatment while TV Series, Seasons and Episodes all have different styles.  Additionally, these selections can be grouped into different Profiles which allow you to define different sets of options for different physical locations within your library.

 

All of this together makes CoverArt an extremely powerful and flexible way to customize your media artwork into something much more exciting than just movie posters.

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Profiles

 

CoverArt options are all defined within Profiles.  Profiles are sets of options that pertain to a particular physical location in your library.  The Default profile will apply to any item that doesn't have a specific profile defined for it.  Most people will probably only ever need the default profile but this system allows you to treat different areas of your library differently even when MB might see those items as the same type.

 

When configuring CoverArt, the first screen will list the defined profiles.  You can either create a new one (and point it to a physical location) or edit the options for an existing one.

 

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Ignore Folders

 

Ignore folders are locations within your library that you wish CoverArt to completely ignore.  Any items within these locations (including sub-folders) will not be treated by CoverArt at all.

 

NOTE: For both ignore folders and Profile definitions, the path you define refers to the path in which the actual item resides, not the image being processed.  For instance, creating a profile that points to your IBN path will not necessarily have the effect you expect because the items being processed probably don't reside in the IBN even if their images do.

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Profile Options

 

Once you select a profile, the first configuration page allows you to set some global options that will apply to any content that is treated by it.

 

546118a346247_caoptions.png

 

 

 

Cover by definition instead of type

 

Unless this option is selected, CoverArt will decide which label and color to use for each treatment style based on the actual type of media involved.  This carries down to the specific video format of the item for most videos.  So, a BD rip will get one color and label while an avi would get another one.  Selecting this option will, instead, bypass this detailed logic and select either a "HD" or "SD" label and color based on the resolution of the video item.

 

This determination is made by the width of the video not its height because this allows different aspect ratios to be recognized properly.  Any video with a width >= 1280 will be considered HD.

 

Ignore images sourced from IBN

 

This option is a bit of a hold-over from the MB 2 days but, if you have created custom images for certain items and placed them in the appropriate IBN folders manually, then selecting this will ensure that CoverArt ignores them and does not apply any other treatments on top of the custom images you created.  In most instances, this option will have no effect.

 

Use original art aspect ratio

 

One of the benefits of using an image processor like CoverArt is that it will normalize all of your artwork of like times to the exact same shape/form factor.  So, small variations in the size of the original artwork won't make layouts be uneven or otherwise look strange.  However, the different treatment styles are usually designed for artwork of a specific aspect ratio.  So if, for instance, you choose a treatment style that is designed to treat a portrait-style movie poster for a landscape-style thumb treatment, the effect may be to squeeze the thumb image into the wrong shape.  If this is happening, select this option and CoverArt will re-form its treatment to match the exact shape of the original image instead.

 

Enhance Banners

 

If you use banner style images, selecting this option will apply a beveled glass style treatment to them.

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Treatment Styles

 

Within each profile you can select the style of treatment that will be applied to each of the item types that CoverArt understands. 

 

 

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First select the type of item and then select the specific style of treatment by clicking the treatment style popup button and selecting one from the list.

 

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 There are several different styles in a number of different categories.  Some of these styles are designed to be used with certain item types like the cover styles for movies and TV series/seasons and the thumb styles for thumb images or gloss or picture styles for people.  Additionally, there are multi-item styles which are designed for collections or other folders.

 

54627d9fd9595_caselecttreatment2.png  54627daf68a03_caselecttreatment3.png

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Custom Rotation

 

To apply a bit of 3D "pizzazz" to your items, you can apply custom rotation to any of these treatments.

 

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The perspective of the rotation can go either direction...

 

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A couple of the treatment styles are designed specifically to have rotation applied to them.  The ThickCase and SpineCase treatments look best with about a 10 right rotation applied.

 

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Specific Covers

 

By default, CoverArt will examine the type of video for each item and apply a specific color and label for that type within the general style selected.

 

54628374da895_cadvd.png   54628385ce9ab_cabd.png   54628393d88da_campeg.png   546283a1d22e7_cah264.png   

 

 

If you don't want this fine of detail or variation on cover styles or if you just want to re-direct certain video types to certain types of covers, you can do this using the Specific Covers configuration page.

 

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On this page you can tell CoverArt to use any cover label/color for any video item type that you wish.  One mapping you may want to create is the BoxSet->BoxSet one which, while it sounds silly, will tell CoverArt to use the "BoxSet" label instead of using the item types for the actual content.

 

Or, if you wanted all of your H264 items to actually use the Blu-Ray label, you could tell CoverArt to do that here.

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Indicator Overlays

 

In addition to all the various treatment styles, all of them can have graphical indicators for details about the item like if it is 3D, what audio and video codecs there are, the video resolution and subtitles.

 

To configure these indicators, go to the Indicator Overlays config page and select the type of overlay (3D, Media Info, Subtitles or Specials).  Then select the location of the indicator (which corner of the image) and either None (for no overlay), Internal (for the internally defined style overlay) or Custom (for a custom image you provide).

 

5462872045205_caindicators.png

 

You can even make CoverArt do nothing but put these overlays on your original covers by selecting the "Plain" treatment style and then setting up the indicators that you want.

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