Thank you so much.

I have a feature request... I usually download the front, back and the disc images (whenever available) using this format:

%album artist%- %album%.jpg (for the front)
%album artist%- %album% (back).jpg (for the back)
%album artist%- %album% (disc).jpg (for the disc)

Is there anyway I could set these three as presets or something? Right now i search for the covers from foobar, asking the program to save covers in %album artist%- %album%.jpg . And then when I have to manually add the "(back)" and save the back cover. Needless to say, all this is quite tiring. Could you suggest a way to automate this?

Thanks for your work on album art downloader-- i don't know what i'd do if it weren't around.

The edit box for path to save images in maintains a history list, so if you just use those three patterns then you can pick them from the history list using the drop down arrow. Does the same job as a preset, only automatically.

Alex

There is a small problem with this solution though. I can only use it if I don't give AlbumArtDownloader a save-to location via the command-line.
I need to do this though since my music is sorted like this:


If there was a %path% variable (uses the path given to it by commandline) I could set up the save-presets as following and your solution would work beautifully.

%path% in my example would be "e:\music\%artist%\%date% - %album%\"

I hope you understand what I mean and would be glad if you considered implementing it.
Thanks for your fantastic work.
Tich

edit: fixed examples

I agree... That is kinda what i meant too. Right now i have to manually type the "(back)", (disc) part for every album whose art i'm getting.

If there was a dropdown preformatted with those, it'd save a lot of time and energy.

OK, I see the issue now. I've got a design for a solution for this, but I'm absolutely determined to get the File Browser into the next release, so presets will have to wait until after it's done. I also don't have a lot of time to work on this right now, so I'm afraid it probably won't come along for a while!

In any case, I present here for your interest, and in case anyone else wants to have a stab at implementing it (always the optimist!), my design:

Presets
1. Addition of a new placeholder for the Save Images path, available from the dropper menu: %preset%
2. Addition of a dropper arrows just to the right of the Save buttons, when clicked pops up a menu with: "Save As...", <list of presets>, "More...". List of presets is initially blank, but "More" pops up:
3. "Save with Preset" dialog. Dialog with two column list of Name and Value preset entries, with Add and Delete buttons, and Save and Close buttons. Adding a Name/Value preset entry shows it as it's name on the list of presets in the menu, to avoid having to go through this dialog again. When an entry is selected, the Save button is enabled. Clicking that has the same effect of choosing the entry from the menu, which is to save, but with:
4. %preset% replaced in the path by the value of the preset, with any placeholders in that entry value also processed.

I reckon this would do the job nicely.

It would.

Can't wait for the release.

Hmm, just realised that other album art downloader requires .NET 1.1 too!

Random question, and sorry to be a pain, but is there any software at all that I can use for this without requiring the .NET framework?

Just out of curiosity, Whats the problem with just installing the .NET Framework? Not like it takes any resources when its not running.. And barely takes any when it is.

Oh really? Hmm, maybe I should just install it then. I dunno, I've just had so many problems with my PC over the past few weeks I'm really paranoid about putting stuff onto it, it's still not right now!

Well, I may be biased since I'm a developer (mainly in the .NET environment now), But I've yet to see issues caused by the framework itself. I'm sure Alex would agree

I guess I'm a bit biased too, being another .net developer. But I'd have to say it's unlikely to cause you any issues, it's a pretty flagship-type thing from Microsoft, they'll be making sure its at least as solid as Windows is. (OK so that might not be saying too much but hey, what can you do?)

Just to make sure I'm following this.
The latest version (.NET 3.0) cannot write the cover to the same album folder (as folder.jpg)?
Because I see no way o select that in the options...

Then it's back to .NET 2.0 for me...

Of course it can write the cover to any location you specify with any filename you wish.
The issue I was having is that I'm saving additional art files (Back, CD, Inlay, etc.) and thus would like to see some kind of preset system which would allow me to save different types of art with a single click instead of manually having to edit the standard-filename.

edit: foo_run

If I hit settings in the .NET 2.0 version i get an option for "default fille name" : (textbox) where I can fill in folder.jpg. By default, the art goes to the folder in which the music is.

In my system, that doesn't happen when I trigger the .NET 3 version. There is a hardcoded path (from last time used), and it doesn't go to the folder in which the music is.
I was assuming there is with the way foobar talks to AAD. Maybe not.

Can you post the exact args that you use to get it to reuse the folder where the music is (the way you have it configured in foo_run)?

Thanks

Looks like Google Image have changed format so Google search stopped working.

here is link to tweaked google.boo file that works for me


http://repo.tap.tv:9005/ad_gen/google.boo

AlbumArt Downloader XUI v0.5 Preview Released



Oh yes. That's right, the File Browser has finally made an appearance! Woo! Give it a try, and let me know your feedback on it. To get to the file browser, either use the menu, or from the command line, pass the arg: /fileBrowser (optionally followed by the path to start searching for files under).

Apart from the addition of the browser, this release also has the following changes made to it:

• Single-Instance behaviour. Only one instance of the application will now be allowed to run (others will have their command line parameters passed on to the first for execution).
• Window list menu.
• Added FreeCovers script, and updated the Google script (thanks zheka )
• Improved detection of changed scripts for recreating the script cache

Download:
See main post for latest version

Thank you so much.

I cant get either of those new links to d/l do you have any mirrors

Great new look, but several questions/issues:

1. Load time has become significantly long (over 30sec on WinXP SP2, more than 3 times from the non-XUI versions).
2. Default options: search options will not save, for some reason.
3. Command-line options: since I use the app from FooBar, I'm wondering about the new ability to pre-determine the filename by tags. At the moment, my foo_run commandline includes all necessary options as was for the previous versions. Has anything changed? Can I get rid of some switches now?

I also checked the new file browser. Looks great, but is it really necessary to have a window for every search? I sort of miss the old queue method. Much more efficient in any way. This new methos searches all missing covers simultaneously

2 more small file browser issues:
- 'search art in folder' should also ignore the filename, since this should be determined via commandline.
- Apparently the 'search art in' also determines where and how the newly found art will be saved. IMHO it should keep the previously set options in the main window (for filename).
- I sometimes add something after the usual %artist% - %album% in the filename. Can wildcards be used as well in searching for existing cover art?


Thanks for all the great work.

Hi, thanks for your comments, let me see if I can give you some answers:
The first run will be slow, as it is spinning up the WPF framework (although 30s is longer than I expected, I get about 15 here). Subsequent runs should be quick enough. If they aren't, then something is wrong. It is also worth noting that this slow load will just be for the first time any WPF app is run, and all other WPF apps will be quick after that until reboot. Not much consolation if this is the only one you use, I suppose.

Now that's just not right. I'm not sure why this isn't working for you, could you try just running the app without command line parameters, move the window around, change which sources are selected, then close the app, and run it again to see if it has remembered the window position or selected sources? If it hasn't, then for some reason it can't save its settings - I can try and work through this with you via PM if you like.

For your command line, -ae on and -pf off are obsolete and have no effect - the local files source will be on unless you turn it off, and will display local file art according to the pattern it is set. The rest is fine, but you might like to change your path to -p "C:\#pix2\CD Covers\%%artist%% - %%album%% FRONT.%%extension%%". Adding the extra % marks adds an additional level of reference to the artist and album placeholders, which means that they will be substituted at save time by album art downloader, rather than at run time by foo_run. Practically, that means that you can do additional searches just by changing the name and artist in the album art downloader search window, and the results will be saved to the right place automatically.

Using %%extension%% instead of jpg has the advantage that if the artwork found is not a jpeg, then it will have the appropriate extension when it is downloaded. The vast majority are jpegs, but some of the sources return the occasional png, I've found. If you prefer to just name it .jpg regardless of actual content, then leave this how you had it.

Queuing has already been requested, and will eventually make it in, I hope.

I'm not sure I understand this point, could you elaborate a little?

That depends on what you have in the "Specify path to find images" path. If you have a relative path set, like just "Folder.jpg", for example, then the location the newly found art is saved has to be set relative to where the file was found. In your case, because you have a well-ordered system for organising where the art lives, you should set the path to find images to be "C:\#pix2\CD Covers\%artist% - %album% FRONT.jpg", rather than Folder.jpg. As it is an absolute path, the location the newly found art is saved to will not depend on the folder the music was in.

Finally, if you just want to get back to the previously set path to save to, it will always be the first entry in the drop down history list for the path to save to.

Yes. "C:\#pix2\CD Covers\%artist% - %album%*.*" should work just fine. Also
\**\ can be used for finding art in any depth of subfolders.

I hope this helps! Thanks again for your feedback,

Alex

I just grabbed the new XUI and it looks sweet, and the file browser works nicely, but I am having some problems with it.
1) My options are not staying. Each time I run the program, the default image name reverts back to "Folder.jpg".
2) I think this is tied in with the first problem, but I am not sure why or how to fix it. None of my music folders come up as having album art, which they all do except for one or two out of 300+ albums. Every album art I have is named "albumpicture.jpg".
So, my options aren't staying the same and my album art is not found. Any suggestions?

Heh, your definition of "works nicely" would not be mine! I'm sorry you are having such trouble with this, I don't know why your options are not staying. Please try running the program with no command line, just by double clicking on it, then go to File, New, Browser, click the Options link and replace Folder.jpg with albumpicture.jpg, then go to File Exit. Run the program again, and repeat the steps, only once you open the browser options, it should have remembered the new setting. If it hasn't, then something strange is going on, because it does for me.

If your art is not being found, then it might be due to the same problem, if it is actually looking for Folder.jpg instead of albumpicture.jpg. If you have successfully managed to change the images path to albumpicture.jpg and it still isn't finding anything, then please give me an example of the path to a music file and the path to the associated art file, and I'll see if I can figure out why it wouldn't be found.

Thanks,

Alex

I'm having a problem using AlbumArtDownloader XUL 0.5... It doesn't seem to find anything. I tried searching manually, tried using the file browser and the command line - nothing.
I think it has something to do with the fact that on the right panel, there is only Local Files. I'm using Vista, if that helps. And I used the installer to install the program.

If you only see Local Files on the right panel then yes, it won't be searching any online sources. I don't have Vista, so I can't test on that, I'm afraid. If anyone else is using it under Vista and can chime in, feel free.

To try and figure out what is going wrong, look in the "Scripts" folder under the album art downloader folder. This should have a whole bunch of script files in it, ending in .boo. If you don't have any, or only have util.boo, then try running the installer again and making sure that at least some Image Download Scripts are checked on the "Choose components to install" step.

If the .boo files are already there, then see if there is a file called "boo script cache.dll" in that folder. If there is, delete it, and it will be regenerated next time you start the program. If that file is not present, and doesn't get created when you start the program, then can you let me know whether the "compiling scripts" splashscreen with progress bar appears, and if so, whether any error messages are displayed before it disappears?

If the .boo files are present, but the .dll one isn't, then you could try running the program with administrative privileges once, to see if that will allow it to generate the .dll file. Once it's been created, it won't need to be recreated unless you add, remove, or change any of the .boo script files, so you should be able to run it normally.

All .boo files are present, but like you guessed, no boo script cache.dll file. The "compiling scripts" did appear, and no message error appeared. After running it once with Admin privileges, the file is created, and the scripts appear fine in all subsequent runs.
Thanks for the help!

And, while I'm writing a post, I figure I'll ask something else. My music collection is in a folder structure like this:


I know that the Artist and Album are available as parameters to pass to the program, but is there any chance to get the Year and First letter as well?

Great, I'm glad it's working now. Knowing that this was an Vista admin privileges issue I can try and put a workaround in for the next version.

For a path like the one you are using, I don't think Album Art Downloader will be able to save images to the right path automatically. For one thing, it won't have any information about the Year of the album! I suppose with titleformatting style scripting getting the first letter of the artist would be possible, but I have no intention to implement anything like that. In your case, you would be best off getting foo_run to just pass in the entire path to save the image to (/path $replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)folder.%%extension%% for example). If you then search for another album from within Album Art Downloader rather than starting from a track in foobar, you will have to right click on the result, choose Save As, and find the folder to save it to manually.

If you are using the file browser, use a relative path for the image, like the default of just "folder.jpg", for example. The browser will then look for that relative to the folder the audio file was in, and automatically populate that as the Save To location if you launch a search for it from there.

What must I add in a foo_ui_panels skin code to autodownload a cover for the current playing song in the background without user interaction?
Thanks

Well, one thing I can say about the program (at least in Vista) is that it's a HOG.
Right now, I just searched through my music library using the file browser. In a folder with 72 albums, while it's searching, it's taking around 65-75% CPU, with 776MB of ram. Now, while idling with only the File Browser open (with the search results), the program is taking 776MB of ram, and barely any CPU.
I'm guessing there is a memory leak of some kind...

nope thats not memory leak thats .NET... get used to it coders tend to like it very much... not caring about memory or resources .net just eat anything he want and release it if its forced to. just believe the memory will be released if its have to as rest of us

LOL... so I guess that's just how it goes with .NET. I'm taking a course in college about it now, it IS easier to program, but I guess it's pretty inefficient.

Depends on how you define inefficient, really. If the memory you want to free is in the middle of your allocated memory (and it usually is), then in order to free it, all the rest of the used memory must be shifted down to close up the hole. This is not an instant operation. If there is nothing else that needs memory at the present time, then it is more efficient to leave it where it is until it is needed.

Basically, the .NET garbage collection system is optimised towards having memory available when its needed, but preferring performance when it isn't. It is notably not optimised towards people watching the "Mem Usage" column in Task Manager (which is incidentally pretty meaningless data - the "Virtual Memory Size" column is slightly more useful).

On the other hand, 776 is not the sort of figure I would expect for browsing a folder with 72 albums - when testing on my PC I was getting less than 75 for 200 albums, so it's possible something is going wrong. If you check the Virtual Memory Size column, and it also shows a memory in the hundreds for just opening the app and doing a browse of 72 albums, and you would like me to investigate further, send me a PM with more details.

ive just download new versio and for the first time in my life ive tried XUI version and i like it pretty much... just one thing hits my eye... is it possible whne sorting by size to have largest images first? maybe i did something wrong or am i the only one who realy need to see the most promising results on first place?

Thanks, glad you liked it.

Where it says "Sort by" in the top right, click on it and choose Size (if you haven't already). Then click on the arrow just to the right of that so that it points up. The tooltip will then say "Descending". Art should then be sorted by size with the largest first.

oh that arrow was nearly invisible in ma VS thanks no ive found it
btw tried file explorer on whole collection (around 350 albums) and it eats around 150mb of ram... (but ive measured it just with taskman)

i tried the File Browser...looks quite good to me, but i found an issue that when you select multiple albums it wants to save the album art of all albums in to one folder (the one on top of the search list)

So if you press the save button it asks to overwrite the already existing album art and you have to manually go to the correct folder.

Oops, sorry. Thanks for pointing this out, I'll make sure its fixed in the next version.

question: is it somehow possible to control from commandline which scripts should run after albumart is launched? i dont need to run 15 searches for album covers when im looking only for artist pic (in that case i need only artis and google scripts to run)... and if its possible then how? i was trying to find some wiki or search this thread but only think i found was a msg that it should be possible but didnt find how

No help here?

Yes, you can use the command line parameter /sources to do this. For example: /sources "Artists.Trivialbeing,GoogleImage" should do what you are asking.

For more command line parameter information, pass the parameter /?.

Hope this helps!

rly thx

every time i play a track, fb2k displays the most recent cover that i downloaded in AAD for every file. Am i doing something wrong? (Im using CepiPerez's dark config btw)

Excellent tool, thanks!
I never get a hit on Google Images for even 'The Beatles'. But other sources pick up the slack.

Regarding memory usage under Vista:


CMD = "D:\Program Files\Album Art Downloader\AlbumArt.exe"
Curr Dir = C:\Install\
Path = D:\Program Files\Album Art Downloader\AlbumArt.exe
PID/Parent PID = 5660 / 1536
Virtual KB Curr = 233,352 Peak = 259,576
Working Set KB Curr = 59,008 Peak = 77,124
Page File KB Curr = 39,800 Peak = 59,312
System Pool KB Paged = 349 Nonpaged = 16
Private KB = 39,800
Handles Count = 501
Faults Count = 295,497
Objects = USER = 81 GDI = 146
Windows = 54
Reads = 133 Read KB = 216
Writes = 158 Write KB = 360
Other IOs = 29,101 Other KB = 8,609

What on earth, the new UI completely ignores the visual style

Could you please fix the bugs in 0.6 before you continue development with the other one? Thanks!

I think this is a WPF thing. It doesn't use the old windows GDI controls, so if you've a custom visual style then it won't affect how WPF draws. I'm not sure whether MS plans to have custom themes for WPF or not, from what I can tell you can fairly easily change the style of a single application, but there doesn't appear to be any way that a system-wide theme could be done. Even if they did, the theme would have to be written for WPF, it certainly wouldn't support themes that were written for the old GDI system.

Bad news for custom theme users, I'm afraid, as WPF becomes more mainstream.

Um, no, sorry. I looked at the source for the original one, and even poked in a couple of small fixes, but basically I considered it to be unmaintainable. That's why I decided to start a new codebase from scratch. I think its gone rather well, personally, but the original version is still around for those who disagree.

If david_dl, or Marc Landis are still interested in fixing bugs with the original version, then you might have some luck with them.

Alex

AlbumArt Downloader XUI v0.6 Preview Released

This version features the addition of a basic queueing system. By default, 3 search windows can be open at a time, although this number can be changed. If an additional search is made before one of these windows are closed, then instead of opening a new search window the search is queued up to be started once an open search window is closed. Using File / New Search Window will bypass this and always open an additional window, though.

Also in this release, I've changed the behaviour of the Script Cache DLL generation to be more Vista-friendly. Instead of creating the dll in the Scripts subfolder of the program folder (which requires admin privileges on Vista), the dll is created in a Scripts subfolder the app's local settings folder. If you are installing this version over an old version, and you are not using the installer, you should manually delete your "boo script cache.dll" file from the application's Scripts folder, otherwise you will see duplicate sources listed. The installer will do this automatically.

Download:
See main post for latest version

I can't seem to run Album Art Downloader.
Crash log:
http://pastebin.ca/559361

Edit: 0.4.1 seems to run fine.

That is very strange. I have had a look at the crash log you provided (thanks!), and I can't see any reason why that would happen.

If anyone else has had this error when starting Album Art Downloader, or if anyone else has successfully had it run on Win 2003 Server SP2 (which I don't have, so can't test myself), then I'd appreciate it if you could let me know.

It might also be useful to know whether version 0.5 works for you, Lunks.

Thanks,

Alex

I love this plugin, thanks for creating and maintaning it

There are a few sites i find useful for finding coverart that arent included in the current set of scripts. I'd be delighted to see them added.

http://rateyourmusic.com/
http://www.audiophileusa.com/

Extremely usful plugin -thanks al lot.

-but I got some problems with 0.6 alpha2.

With this command line I get an error message (illegal charakters or someting)

C:\Programme\AlbumArtDownloader\albumart.exe -ar "%artist%" -al "%album%" -p "$replace(%_path%,%_filename_ext%,)folder.jpg

With 0.6 alpha1 the same line works fine.

Furthermore album art downloader fails to save images with a Space in name when using the following command line:

C:\Programme\AlbumArtDownloader\albumart.exe -ar "%artist%" -p I:\Bilder\%artist%.jpg

The image is saved but is named only the with the first word and has no extension (.jpg)

For example: The artist-tag is "Frankie Goes To Hollywood" -so the image should be named "Frankie Goes To Hollywood.jpg" but its saved as "Frankie"

album art downloader also crashes when i doubleclick an image which is already in my folder (to easily rename it to folder.jpg)

Anyone else with such problems?

try XUI version its newer and its under development (version you are tryin is not) but if you dont want to use it here are some advise for you:

try:

C:\Programme\AlbumArtDownloader\albumart.exe -ar "%artist%" -al "%album%" -p "$replace(%_path%,%_filename_ext%,) -f "folder.jpg"

or skip -f paramter absolutly and setup "save to. toolbar" jast add new preset and name it "folder.jpg" teh save images through clicking on that icon in save to toolbar

try to use double quotes around -p parameter like:
-p "I:\Bilder\%artist%.jpg"

edit: minor typos