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]

I noticed that the GetResponse method can take up to 100 seconds if an album art is found. So I added

CODE

        request.Timeout = TIME_OUT ' where TIME_OUT  = 5000 milliseconds by default

Any objections to that you think?

5 seconds seems a bit short to me, I've had art come back slower than that. As long as the cancel button works, I don't think there is any need to add a shorter hard limit to the timeout - if you don't want to wait any longer for it, you don't have to. Feel free to add it to your local copy of the script, though, just remember to take a backup of it before installing a new version over it.

AlbumArtDownloader XUI has well progressed since first versions. Even if it does time, I've just wanted to say I don't have freeze anymore when I click on thumbnails ! Thanks.

Else I don't know if it's scripts or software, but it uses a huge number of RAM (I can easily be at 400Mo).

Thanks, I've tried hard to improve the performance, and I'm glad its noticeable. Measuring RAM usage can be tricky with .net applications, particularly if you are just using the task manager to do it. They tend to grab all the RAM they like, and only release it when something else wants it. One trick I've seen is if you minimise and restore the Album Art Downloader window, that can get it to show a lower number in the task manager.

On the other hand, if you have a search window open with lots of results in, and have set it to download full size images, then 400Mb is not unreasonable at all. Large images take up lots of memory. If you are finding that memory usage keeps going up significantly, and doesn't go back down even after closing open windows, then there may be a leak I haven't found. Unfortunately these can be very tricky to track down, but if you think you've found one, PM me and I can try and work with you to resolve it.

Alex