cover art - embedded or folder level?

cmartincmartin Member
in General

My collection is organized in the common artist/album hierarchy. Over 150 artists, many with multiple albums. A few albums (<2%) have cover art. I am planning to add cover art to the entire collection soon; by coincidence, I'll probably be using Bliss. I am wondering whether it is best to add a single file (folder.jpg) per album/folder versus embedding images in the metadata of every mp3/flac file. I am not asking about the best way from a file management standpoint, I know that is an old debate, I mean specifically for using Astiga to play my music going forward.

I have been using Astiga (with pCloud) for past few months only, and for the few albums with art, I have noticed that a single folder.jpg file does not seem to appear when navigating or playing music with the web player, only embedded cover art seems to be shown. Is this correct? Is it by design? Am I better off to embed it so it always be visible on the web player and also on the Android app, since these will be the primary modes of playing my collection.

Thanks

Comments

  • cmartincmartin Member

    Sorry, I just realized I mistakenly posted this on Feature Requests, instead of General Discussions, where it belongs.

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    When the Web player shows album art, it is looked up in a cache that we have pre-populated during the 'sync' process. The 'sync' process is what happens when you click the 'Synchronise' button for a storage - it prompts Astiga to download your files and folders, look inside them for tags, and build its knowledge of your Library for the Astiga service. This is also where the notion of "albums", "artists" etc comes from.

    Embedded art is always preferred.

    If there's no embedded art, we look for a cover or folder image file (e.g. cover.jpg ) and use that.

    There's a chance that somewhere along the way the logic doesn't cover your case, so let me know some more details about the files and folders if you're not seeing the artwork where you expect.

  • cmartincmartin Member

    My entire collection is stored pCloud/My Music organized in folders by Artist/Album1, Artist/Album2, etc. Yesterday I made some changes in the pCloud repository. I added a folder.jpg cover art files to a few folders where there had been no artwork. In a few other folders which had embedded art in the mp3s (but no folder.jpg), I removed the embedded art and added a folder.jpg file. I then synced Astiga. Results are inconsistent.

    For instance, the album folder \Aaron Neville\The Grand Tour has 13 mp3 files, plus 'folder.jpg' with the cover art. It never had embedded art. When I view this folder (by artist) on Astiga web browser after the sync, no artwork appears.

    On the other hand, folder \K.D. Lang\Shadowland was one which had embedded artwork, which I removed and then added folder.jpg. Artwork does appear on web browser. However, from your description of the artwork process, it may be that the Shadowland album art appears because the embedded artwork which was removed is still in Astiga's cache. If instead, it is getting the art from folder.jpg in Shadowland folder, why is it not getting it from The Grand Tour folder?

    Are there size limitations to folder.jpg files? The file in The Grand Tour (which is not being shown) is 600x600, whereas the file in Shadowland (which does appear) is 500x500.

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    I can see the art column for The Grand Tour is empty, which means the sync process didn't pick up the art. This is an important first step to work out, because it was also a possibility that sync did pick it up, but subsequent display was failing.

    When we list the contents of Aaron Neville/The Grand Tour we aren't seeing any folder.jpg file.

    So that made me look at my own test folders in pCloud. Sure enough, I'm seeing something similar in my folders. And, in fact, I'm seeing something similar on Google Drive too. So this needs further inspection - I'll add it as a ticket.

    So as far as I can see and for now it's embedded only. When you synchronised, do you use the "force" option?

  • cmartincmartin Member

    The Grand Tour album did not (ever) have embedded, I only added the folder.jpg file yesterday. No, I did not use 'force' option, I will try that and update whether it makes a difference.

    The folder.jpg file is definitely on pCloud, here is a screenshot: https://ibb.co/ftwxVJr

  • cmartincmartin Member

    I ran sync with 'force' option, and it picked up the The Grand Tour folder.jpg cover art, displaying it on both the web player as well as Android app. I also checked the few other album folders where I had added folder.jpg but which was not displaying; they are now displaying as expected.

    So it would appear for within-album/folder changes such as adding cover art, the 'force' option is required to pick it up and update Astiga's cache. Thanks this will help as I begin to update the collection with cover art.

    A related question. While I do not have any personal experience with it, I know that some music repositories can also include lyrics and that some media players display these when playing. Does Astiga have handle/display lyrics, and, if so, as with cover art, should lyrics be embedded in metadata or can they saved in sidecar files?

    Thanks

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    Ok, glad we made progress.

    Lyrics are generally embedded in music files although you can also get .LRC files also. We don't currently pick either up nor display them. Lyrics have been something of a legally murky issue in the past...

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