Gmus won't find Cover Art if it's not "cover.jpg"

[daniel227]

hello and thanks for gmus! i took some time to find the best solution for my new linux-setup and this is the best!
complex yet intuitive. right-clickable. also it plays my music the way i want to.

however i have problems solving this little annoyance:

- Gmus displays cover art that is embedded in the mp3 as well as cover.jpg in the same folder. everything else is ignored.
i think there should be some setting to use any picture in the same folder or subfolder? or even make an intelligent choice?
right now, i have noticed, it isn't even case-sensitive, meaning that Cover.jpg won't be displayed...

- my audio files are tagged poorly, many of them appear as "Unknown", and in that case Gmus seems to have stored some kind of default-unknown-cover-art and displays that. so could another rule be applied like "folder goes over tag" ?

thanks so far. would be nice if someone could point me in the right direction.

dan.

ps: is there a list of available plugins?
pps: i also have some problems with endings being cut off - and not only with mp3, also flac. but this seems to be a much-discussed matter so mayb i should search some more first. anyhow, can i be sure that gmus doesn't mess with my files by default?

[Quentin Sculo]

first, in case you missed it, you can select the picture manually by right clicking on an album name in an album list or on the current album name.

The album cover is auto-selected based on a few rules, that are currently not configurable (but it's planned), but it should fall back to any picture in the same folder. The problem is if the folder contains more than one album, then no picture will be auto-selected. A related problem that might affect you, is if some songs of an album have an album_artist set and some do not, then they will be considered as 2 separate albums, thus no picture will be auto-selected as the folder is then considered as containing more than one album.

- my audio files are tagged poorly, many of them appear as "Unknown", and in that case Gmus seems to have stored some kind of default-unknown-cover-art and displays that. so could another rule be applied like "folder goes over tag" ?

It currently applies the same rules for unknown albums, so a picture may be selected if all the songs of the folder(s) are of the same "unknown" album.

ps: is there a list of available plugins?

not currently, there is a few plugins that have been posted on the forum, I haven't been doing a good job so far of reviewing them so they could be included, sorry about that, plugins author are welcome to create a page on the wiki.

pps: i also have some problems with endings being cut off - and not only with mp3, also flac. but this seems to be a much-discussed matter so maybe i should search some more first. anyhow, can i be sure that gmus doesn't mess with my files by default?

If you're talking about the transition of one track to the next, you could use the gapless option in advanced settings window for gstreamer.
If you're talking about something else, I have no idea.

[daniel227]

thanks.

first, in case you missed it, you can select the picture manually by right clicking on an album name in an album list or on the current album name.

yes, it's pretty easy to select them by hand but still quite some work for a whole collection.

The album cover is auto-selected based on a few rules, that are currently not configurable (but it's planned), but it should fall back to any picture in the same folder. The problem is if the folder contains more than one album, then no picture will be auto-selected. A related problem that might affect you, is if some songs of an album have an album_artist set and some do not, then they will be considered as 2 separate albums, thus no picture will be auto-selected as the folder is then considered as containing more than one album.

this is exactly what i'm wondering about, why doesn't gmus fall back on any pic in the same folder in my case?
to show you one case of many i included a screenshot. the thumbnails in the file browser are small but i think you see they are not what shows in Gmus.
audio files are flac, and there's other stuff in the folders besides, could it come from that?

If you're talking about the transition of one track to the next, you could use the gapless option in advanced settings window for gstreamer.

i'll try that and see how it works.

[VastOne]

Perhaps this is a version issue?  Any named image I have in my folder(s) is picked up as the cover art.

I use the latest from squentin git

[daniel227]

mine is 1.1.8

[daniel227]

@vastOne,
what do you mean by "named" image?

about versions - i have added this:
http://gmusicbrowser.org/deb ./
to the repositories in synaptic packets manager.
i don't remember where it comes from or why there's a ./ instead of the ubuntu version.

this allows me to go up to 1.1.8
-what's git and could i get newer versions with that?

@Quentin:
the gapless option is working fine. no more cut-offs so far, knock on wood.

[VastOne]

@vastOne,
what do you mean by "named" image?

about versions - i have added this:
http://gmusicbrowser.org/deb ./
to the repositories in synaptic packets manager.
i don't remember where it comes from or why there's a ./ instead of the ubuntu version.

this allows me to go up to 1.1.8
-what's git and could i get newer versions with that?

@Quentin:
the gapless option is working fine. no more cut-offs so far, knock on wood.

For instance, I have a song and file name here

Code Select Expand

/media/storage/Music/mp3new/Alternative Rock/30 Seconds To Mars/30 Seconds To Mars - Message In A Bottle (Acoustic)

Also in that directory is a file

Code Select Expand

30_Seconds_to_Mars_album_cover.jpg

and GMB finds that cover no problem

Git brings you the latest code as squentin release it.. fixes, changes augmentations, languages

It is explained how to get GMB with Git here on the wiki starting at Initialization

[daniel227]

Git brings you the latest code as squentin release it.. fixes, changes augmentations, languages

It is explained how to get GMB with Git here on the wiki starting at Initialization

...so it's basically just this line:

Code Select Expand

git clone http://github.com/squentin/gmusicbrowser.git
and then i have to run

Code Select Expand

./gmusicbrowser.plin that folder -
that works nicely -
but how do i know it's a newer version now? it still shows 1.1.8
also there's a gmusicbrowser.desktop in the folder, but that just seems to be starting the normal gmusicbrowser...?

but thanks so far and i hope you (or you) have some patience to help me with this (git is totally new to me) before returning to my actual problem (which seems persistent so far).

[mgrubert]

Daniel : there is another solution to follow the recent changes
There is 2 ppa very closed to the git version, if you are running Ubuntu or Mint (or even Debian distribution) :

• ochosi has set up this ubuntu ppa which tracks git master. Note that it contains some small changes from Quentin branch, in particular the default layout and icons and ochosi usually wait for new bug correction to make updates
• abo has is own ppa too, which is a daily repository

[daniel227]

i added poth ppa's - now i upgraded to 1.1.8+919~lucid1.
although the git-thing was working too.
anyhow i can't see any change in behaviour as far as my original request is concerned.
It's very difficult to say exactly when gmus does not display cover art properly, but it's definitely still happening although there are pictures in the song folder. sometimes even when cover art is embedded.

right clicking the album name and selecting a pic by hand works like a charm.

one definite thing:
when both artist and album are unknown (and i have loads of these) gmus falls back on some default unknown artist picture (which is for some weird reason in the only folder in my whole music collection that contains a cd image + cue). if i try to set a picture for any of these songs it is then used as the new default unknown artist/album picture.

come to think of it, i don't seem to have any files with artist unknown but album known.

there are some that have artist known and album unknown; to those i can assign a picture by hand.

- i'm trying to think of what is so unusual in my scenario that i get different results from others.
my music is on an ntfs usb-hd that i've been using for years before i switched to linux.
lots of my music isn't tagged or very poorly (i've mostly been using the folder structure for orientation).
i'm running linux mint lucid but it's really very much like ubuntu.
enabled plugins: gnome mmkeys; mpris v1; picture finder.
now i see there is an album info plugin - will that pimp my tags? and download covers automatically?

also i haven't forgotten what quentin wrote earlier about the limitations at this moment:

The problem is if the folder contains more than one album, then no picture will be auto-selected. A related problem that might affect you, is if some songs of an album have an album_artist set and some do not, then they will be considered as 2 separate albums

- but it doesn't explain it completely.

but basically i'm really happy with this software! i'm not complaining.
and thanks for reading all this and trying to help.

[ochosi]

just a quick comment: it's probably better to go with only one of the ppas. usually they shouldn't interfere, because andreas' version-numbering system differs from mine so his versions would always overrule, but mine contains a few modifications and by switching to andreas' version you'd lose those (or to look at it from the other perspective: your known behavior from andreas' ppa would differ suddenly).
having that said, the changes are not really that big, mostly exchanging some click-actions and different default settings/layouts.

[Quentin Sculo]

I think it works as it is supposed to (which doesn't mean it's perfect), the problem is the bad tags in your library.
The bug with songs from one album having different album_artist can be hard to spot, it probably explains some problems.
Also I just remembered, about embedded pictures, it only uses them automatically if the embedded picture is tagged as "front cover", I plan to make this condition an option in the future.

Another thing, maybe it isn't clear, the auto-selecting is only done when you add the albums, to force it again you have to select more than one album in an album list (FilterPane), and select "Auto-select pictures" in the context menu (it won't change the pictures of album which already have one existing picture).

The rule of ignoring folders which have more than one album is to made  for cases where one folder contains lots of albums. Though as it done as it is adding songs, it is possible that for unknown albums by artist X it chose a picture at a time when only one folder of these was added, and kept it as more "unknown album by artist X" were added, so the chosen picture doesn't seem to make much sense. I should probably do something different when selecting pictures for unknown albums.

[daniel227]

hello to all who've posted here!

i want to give some final feedback on this thing but first i want to sort out my gmb version.
i think i can deal with the ppa's in synaptic but i'm unsure about git -
in a previous post i described how i installed a "git-version" (?) of gmb - is it enough to just delete the folder? it's ~/gmusicbrowser.

so i think i'll revert to 1.1.8 as presented by one of the 2 ppa's and after that check the behaviour again.

[Quentin Sculo]

About the git snapshot, if you didn't type "make install" yes deleting ~/gmusicbrowser should be all it take to remove it
and yes btw, all versions derived from current git (like the ppa) will still say they are 1.1.8 in the about box, I'll maybe change it next time.

Anyway I don't think I changed something related to this since 1.1.8 so it shouldn't matter which post-1.1.8 version you are using.

[daniel227]

ok, i removed the git-stuff, i removed one ppa from software sources and made a fresh reinstall with this ppa:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/shimmerproject/ppa/ubuntu

- i have a feeling it's running more stable now and i'm not missing any functionality that i didn't miss before.
actually i dropped the whole conky integration because the desktop widget is just so sexy.

yes, i guess i'd have to clean up the tags of my whole collection. but i guess i'll never do it ;-)

so maybe this is a feature request: possibility to change the logic of choosing covers (and mayb other things) between more tag-orientated and more folder-orientated.

just a few little nags:
- still songs sometimes get cut off too early, and also sometimes playback stops at the end of a song - it doesn't go to the next song and the ui looks like the song is still playing.
- in settings/plugins/desktop widget the minimum size field is dangerous - if you press the little arrow it goes really fast and suddenly you have like 100000 pixels - and the whole system gets stuck.
also the widget with controls doesn't stay exactly in the chosen position.
also the choice of centered on % x % is not so good - it seems 1% is quite many pixels so it's not precise.

i hope you see this as encouraging, not criticizing.
i really love this player and i hope the development continues. thanks a lot!

EDIT: i forgot to check replaygain->advanced->enable gapless. that should take care of the ends being cut off, at least it did so last time.