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

[Akkurat]

...AllCDCovers...
...protection...irritating, but I'm not going to spend too long trying to work around it and get into some sort of arms race.

I completely agree with you. We (users) can still wait the 15 minute grace period (as Akkurat pointed out) or just follow the link and type the captcha if we can't wait at all to get the image.

Hmm, I may have phrased my previous answer a bit oddly (didn't remember the full story and I glanced the post I made in 2008 too quickly). The about 15 minutes is the time when you can see the images in the result list, after that EVERY search to AllCDCovers will yield the leech prevention images only (there seems to be an IP detection too, not just the "hash" I wrote about). At least that's how it was back then. Below is a quote from the post I linked to:

...So, it seems that this would happen in AAD if user searches some covers and doesn't touch the results for a while. After that "don't leech" image, all subsequent searches would yield only thumbnails (or possibly the "don't leech" image) for X amount time which has been set by AllCdCover in the server side. Yes, it's definitely an IP address leech prevention; right after the both above image URL's "failed/timeouted", all my AAD searches started to show only thumbnails.

I then waited about 20-30 minutes and ran AAD search again, still thumbnails. Then some browsing in their website, all full size images load up fine. Back to AAD, still thumbnails. Tried to close&reopen AAD, nope, still doesn't work. Nasty leech prevention.

[AlexVallat]

Why not include a txt file with this reference in the program folder?

I'd rather have a proper documentation or help file in the program folder, the command line reference is just supposed to be the equivalent of the output you get for passing /? into a command line tool. If you want it as a file, though, just copy and paste it into Notepad and save it.

I also thought it could be good to include the sources names in the reference, since the users will be using them quite often.

Part of the point is that there should be no fixed set of sources (as anyone can write and distribute them - although I haven't really seen this happen), but I agree that when there's proper documentation it will probably contain a list of the most common ones. For now, you can get a list either by going to http://album-art.sourceforge.net/Updates.xml, or using the command line tool: aad.exe /listSources

It could be good also to have an abbreviation system for the various sources

The names of the sources are specified by the sources. If you want, you can edit those in your local copy to be those abbreviations, or anything else you find convenient. I suppose I could add the capability for a source to define both a full and abbreviated name for itself, but I'm not sure it would be used much.

This way, it's always best to re-set everything again (just to be safe).

Just delete the user.config file, that will make sure everything is reset!

Still, I think it's advisable to always disable [ArkivMusik] by default. It's usually (for most users, probably) a waste of bandwidth.

It is listed in the installer under "Classical". If they've chosen to install it, then I'm not going to have it disabled by default. I expect that most scripts outside the "General" category in the installer will not be useful for most users, but some of them will be, and it's not up to me to decide which are and which aren't.

I'm still testing and as soon as I'm done, I'll post the results.

I look forward to seeing the conclusions! 0.32 is ready to go apart from this, so once the scripts are updated in whatever way turns out to be best, I'll release it.

Alex

[randal1013]

0.32 is ready to go apart from this, so once the scripts are updated in whatever way turns out to be best, I'll release it.

Alex

probably a stupid question, but: will version 0.32 still require .NET framework 3.5 on windows 7 x64?

[AlexVallat]

will version 0.32 still require .NET framework 3.5 on windows 7 x64?

Windows 7 x64 includes the .NET Framework 3.5 already, so you don't need to download or install it yourself.

[randal1013]

good that's what i wanted to hear.

[Benji99]

I've just found out about this amazing program today.
It's amazing!

I have a small question, I want to save artist pictures into a static folder, say M:\Pictures\%artist%.jpg
I'd like to know if it's possible to download multiple pictures for the same artist and have AAD save the files as %artist%-0.jpg, %artist%-1.jpg or something like that so I don't have to rename every additional picture I want to download.

NOTE: I'm using it with foo_run within Foobar

Is this possible?
Thanks!

[Benji99]

One more question:

- Using the LastFM Artist search, a lot of the pictures are exact duplicates. I'm pretty sure they don't show up as duplicates on the site... Is this normal? If it is, how about a feature request, can you filter identical or near identical pictures from the results?

NOTE: Am I crazy not to be able to edit my original post? I can't find the option anywhere...

This post has been edited by Benji99: Nov 13 2009, 09:13

[AlexVallat]

have AAD save the files as %artist%-0.jpg, %artist%-1.jpg or something like that so I don't have to rename

Sorry, no, there's no function for an auto-incrementing number in AAD.

- Using the LastFM Artist search, a lot of the pictures are exact duplicates. I'm pretty sure they don't show up as duplicates on the site... Is this normal?

Could you give me the artist name searched for? I'll check it out. If they aren't duplicates on the site, then I can probably fix it. If they are, then no, AAD will not be doing any intelligent image comparison to eliminate similar images.

Thanks for the comments!

Alex

[AlexVallat]

Album Art Downloader XUI v0.32 Released

This version implements several requested features and bug fixes, and sorts out some cosmetic issues on Windows 7. Some changes to the way scripts handle special characters have been made - these are still under review, and updates to the scripts may be released separately later.

My development platform is now Windows 7 x64, but I aim to retain compatibility with Windows XP, so please let me know if anything doesn't work properly, or looks wrong on your OS.

Changes:

• Tweaked Medium size group to be 520-700 instead of 540-700
• Fixed bug, and removed debug code from Cover-Paradies script that would produce a cover-paradies.log file.
• Added option to sort by Area (similar to size, but sorts by width x height)
• Added command line support for sorting by type and area, and for grouping
• Add "Remove" command to the results context menu. This allows for manually removing results from the list.
• Experimental zoom support for popup preview (use the scroll wheel while it's visible)
• Added "Show Pixels" button to Preview window toolbar. This is an option to use Nearest Neighbour (Box) scaling when zoomed in. It does not affect the display at 100% or below.
• Installer now points to "Program Files" rather than "Program Files (x86)" on 64 bit systems.
• UI Fixes for Windows 7
• Added Archambault and HMV Canada scripts
• All scripts now strip the characters: &.;:?!'" from artist and album field. (this is under review)
• Improved Amazon script handling of character entities in titles
• Updated to latest version of Boo (0.9.2)

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)

[tuxman]

Feature request:
The file browser should stop searching for covers for files which don't actually have an "album" tag in it.

[Akkurat]

Thanks for the update.

One odd thing, how's this possible?

[tuxman]

A new script is not an update.

[Akkurat]

*Doh* For some reason I thought that the "get more scripts" shows updates too. This is the very reason why I recommended not to use separate systems for updates (I consider new scripts as updates) a while ago.. it might confuse users (or is it just me? ).

[tuxman]

"Get more" is a quite clear phrasing, isn't it?

This post has been edited by tuxman: Nov 15 2009, 15:47

[Benji99]

Sorry, no, there's no function for an auto-incrementing number in AAD.

Could you give me the artist name searched for? I'll check it out. If they aren't duplicates on the site, then I can probably fix it. If they are, then no, AAD will not be doing any intelligent image comparison to eliminate similar images.

Alex

Hi Alex, almost every search (~99%) for last.fm artists give me duplicates.
Here are a few examples:

Hi-Fi CAMP
AI
YOUR SONG IS GOOD
九州男
松田聖子
松山千春

Btw, I tried 0.32, same problem.

About the lack of auto-incrementing number, how about these suggestions:
- a random number that can be added via a variable
- Even better, a unique number that is somehow unique to that picture (and identifies it), so that next time I run a search, I could theoretically only download new pictures that haven't been downloaded.

Thanks again for the great program!

[AlexVallat]

Feature request: The file browser should stop searching for covers for files which don't actually have an "album" tag in it.

Could you elaborate on that a little? I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for here.

Here are a few examples:[snip]
About the lack of auto-incrementing number, how about these suggestions:
- a random number that can be added via a variable
- Even better, a unique number that is somehow unique to that picture (and identifies it), so that next time I run a search, I could theoretically only download new pictures that haven't been downloaded.

Thanks for reporting those examples; I've updated the LastFM Artist script to 0.4, it should be available for download now.

I'm not sure that a random unique number would be very useful, they would have to be rather large. For example, Cover-b369e5a2-a15c-40d0-b968-a8f8f37b8f56.jpg wouldn't make for a very good name, in my opinion.

Alex

[tuxman]

Could you elaborate on that a little? I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for here.

The "Search for audio files" window also finds files without an actual album tag. I think these should not be listed at all, as it is quite useless...

[AlexVallat]

The "Search for audio files" window also finds files without an actual album tag. I think these should not be listed at all, as it is quite useless...

As it stands, files with either an album name or an artist name available (either through tags, or path pattern matching) will be listed. If it doesn't have either, then it won't be. I think this is the correct behaviour.

If you want to remove all results where an album name is not visible, then just click the album name column header to sort by it, then you can easily select and remove them from the list (hit the Delete key).

Alex

[tuxman]

As it stands, files with either an album name or an artist name available (either through tags, or path pattern matching) will be listed.

What is the deeper sense of finding images of the artist for an unknown album via an application called Album Art Downloader?

[AlexVallat]

What is the deeper sense of finding images of the artist for an unknown album via an application called Album Art Downloader?

Off the top of my head, I'd say: Finding artist images, finding images for albums where the album name is missing (but known, and can be typed in), or finding albums whose path doesn't quite match the defined pattern. There may be others, or maybe no-one has ever wanted to see them in the list, but I certainly don't feel confident enough to say that they are always unwanted.

[tuxman]

So maybe a simple check box would do. Like... no more manual sorting.

[Ross1]

dunno if its been mentioned, but it would be great if the search for id3 tags could use the album artist tag. At the moment, on any album which has different track artists but an overall album artist, it just lists that as 'various artists', so its search results arent very good.

[AlexVallat]

it would be great if the search for id3 tags could use the album artist tag.

It already does. For an ID3 tag it will, by preference, use the TPE2 frame (which is technically Band, but most media players use it for Album Artist). If that's not present, it will fall back on TPE1 (Artist). Unfortunately there is no standard Album Artist tag, but TPE2 is the closest there is to such a thing.

This post has been edited by AlexVallat: Nov 17 2009, 14:56