Album Art Downloader XUI, A tool for downloading cover art Options

[AlexVallat]

AlbumArtDownloader XUI - You know you want it...

This project is a rewrite of the Album Art Downloader code, using .NET Framework 3.5.

Features:

• Dynamically resizeable thumbnails
• Thumbnail information
• Sort by Name, Size, Source, Type, and Page
• Filter results under or over a specified size, or by type (front, back, etc.), or by maximum results for each source
• Substitution syntax path to save images
• Local files search that matches save pattern
• Enable or disable scripts from the command line
• New strongly typed interface-based script model; write compiled scripts in any .net language
• Backwards compatible with existing scripts
• Backwards compatible with existing command line parameters, including old CoverDownloader parameters.
• Analyse files to find Artists and Albums from tags, and check if album art is already present.
• Analyse folder and file names to find Artist and Album names based on a path pattern, and check for album art.
• Read your foobar2000 media library or playlists to find Artists and Albums, and check for album art.
• Checks for existing album art embedded in file tags.
• Queue up multiple searches to occur sequentially.
• Automatically download album art that matches set criteria for several albums as a batch.
• Show previews windows to compare art side by side, zooming and panning to check details.
• Many, many scripts included. (I would seriously not recommend using all of them at once, choose the ones that suit you best.)
• Prioritised searching - can set some sources to always search, and some to only search if the first ones didn't find anything.

For the graphically-minded out there, although this app isn't skinnable, the UI is all created in XAML, so if you want to grab the source and start editing the UI, please feel free. It is under the XUI folder in the SVN Repository

Links:
SourceForge project page
Wiki and reference guide (incomplete)
Donations

Download:
AlbumArtDownloaderXUI.exe (Installer. Recommended)
AlbumArtDownloaderXUI.zip (zip archive for those who don't like installers)
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (required, except for Windows 7)

This post has been edited by AlexVallat: Jun 27 2011, 20:19

[AlexVallat]

ok, I'm trying to figure this out. Is it possible to search for album art based on ID3 tags? If so, how would I do that? In addition, I don't like adding Album names for my Singles (I just leave it blank). Therefore, iTunes can't find the album art for the songs, since it only searches for "Artist - Album". It would be nice if I could use the title of a song as the Album title to solve this problem.

If you mean from within foobar, then as mobyduck points out, foo_run is used for this, and you can pass whatever info you like to the Artist and Album command line args. If you mean within Album Art Downloader itself, then to search for album art based on ID3 tags, you use the File Browser. This can be pointed at a folder to scan, or you can just drag and drop files on to it.

It will not read the track title though, just Artist and Album. As you point out, some sources won't search for just an artist without an album. The way I see it, the Album is the CD that the track is on, even if there is only one track on that CD, and it is the Album that has art, not the track.

I also encountered problems with flac and Album Art Downloader - it downloaded album art for 5 of my albums out of 100+. I can see no difference in the file information in MediaInfo for those particular 5 albums compared to the others. I am very keen to get a fix for this - what info or files can I send you to help you?

If you have a file that, in MediaInfo, displays "Album" and "Performer" correctly, but in Album Art Downloader File Browser does not show the correct Album and Artist values in the columns, or does not appear in the file browser at all (please verify by dragging and dropping that particular file on to it), then it would be very helpful if you were able to send me that file.

You could try just sending me the text report from MediaInfo, but all that would let me do is verify that Album and Performer are correctly reported there, something I'm sure you're able to do just as well yourself!