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]

A few changes to the headers sent in the initial request seem to make all the difference:

Yes, that does fix the search you mentioned, and doesn't appear to break others. Here's an updated itunes.boo script with them in.

Performance of the new version is really great. Good work.

What do you think about a context menu item for windows explorer? I organize my library with windows explorer and use the following structure: Artist/(Year) Album. It would be great to start aad with the right parameters by clicking on the album folder.

Thanks! It took some doing, but I'm pleased with the results. If I've understood you right, what you want to be able to do is right click on a folder and choose "Browse for Album Art..." or similar, and have AAD launch with the file browser window searching that folder? AAD has a command line parameter you can use for that, /fileBrowser "path". Here's a little .reg file that will add that command line to the context menu for folders for you: AlbumArtDownloaderBrowseFolder.reg

Of course, if you've installed AAD somewhere other than "C:\Program Files\AlbumArtDownloader", or you want the command called something other than "Browse for Album Art...", then edit the file before merging it.

I have the album art in the folders of my albums. How can I search those for artwork with the foobar browser and how can I save them in those folders?

If you run the foobar browser it will search your foobar library for artist and albums. For each one it finds, it will try to find art for it. By default, it will look for "Folder.jpg" in the same folder as the album. If that's not where you are storing your art, then click the Options link in the Foobar Browser window, and change it to the right filename. The search is done relative to the media file that the artist/album information was read from.

To save art in the album folder from the Foobar Browser, just double click on the album in the Foobar Browser results list, or select several and click "Get Artwork for Selection...". Each art search window launched from the foobar browser will be set to save the art into the place where the Foobar Browser was searching for art for that album. So, if it was looking for Folder.jpg in the album folder, that's where the search window will save it by default when you click the Save button.

I hope this answers your question.

[phunkydizco]

Thanks! It took some doing, but I'm pleased with the results. If I've understood you right, what you want to be able to do is right click on a folder and choose "Browse for Album Art..." or similar, and have AAD launch with the file browser window searching that folder? AAD has a command line parameter you can use for that, /fileBrowser "path". Here's a little .reg file that will add that command line to the context menu for folders for you: AlbumArtDownloaderBrowseFolder.reg

Of course, if you've installed AAD somewhere other than "C:\Program Files\AlbumArtDownloader", or you want the command called something other than "Browse for Album Art...", then edit the file before merging it.

I don't want to launch AAD with file browser window. I want to launch the album art search with right parameters for artist, album and JPG path. I think this is not possible with a reg file. ADD should extract the parameters from the passed path. The algorithm for the extraction should be configurable. I hope you understand what I mean.

[AlexVallat]

I don't want to launch AAD with file browser window. I want to launch the album art search with right parameters for artist, album and JPG path. I think this is not possible with a reg file. ADD should extract the parameters from the passed path. The algorithm for the extraction should be configurable. I hope you understand what I mean.

Ah, OK, I misunderstood. AAD will not attempt to extract artist/album information from a filepath. I don't see this changing any time soon. It can read the artist/album information from most media files, though, so if you pass it a media file from the album you want to search for, or a folder containing media files from the album you want to search for, it will read the information from that. This is what the File Browser is for.

I realise that this is one additional step than what you were hoping for, you have to first see the result in the browser, then double click on it to search, rather than going directly to the search window, but I can't think of a good way around that at the moment.

Alex