Album art association with USB files

[tommyQ]

I'm new to the forum but I have tried very hard to check previous posts for this topic. Apologies if I've missed this one.

How does MoOde figure out which image to associate with an album or indeed an individual track?  All my music is on a USB stick. Albums are in seperate folders. Some have a
large.jpg,
a small.jpg and things like
AlbumArt_{B5020207-474E-4720-6CE2-8E2C9820BE00}

But lots of entries in the UI seemto have invalid art files associated.

How can I debug this please?  How does the indexing of the file system /media/'MOODE MUSIC' work/progress. 

My end game here is simply to see each folder on my USB stick look like a single album.  Where the same song exists on a compilations album, I'd just like that album to be seen as it is.   I've seen stuff on tags, but a) I can't see how I can set this for my choice and b) I think some of the information MoOde seems to gather must come from the internet?  I dont see the likes of artist names anywhere in my files.

I do have some more qiestions, but I'll split them to keep things clear.  I hope I'm posting in the right area.
Many thanks.

[Tim Curtis]

I'm new to the forum but I have tried very hard to check previous posts for this topic. Apologies if I've missed this one.

How does MoOde figure out which image to associate with an album or indeed an individual track?  All my music is on a USB stick. Albums are in seperate folders. Some have a
large.jpg,
a small.jpg and things like
AlbumArt_{B5020207-474E-4720-6CE2-8E2C9820BE00}

But lots of entries in the UI seemto have invalid art files associated.

How can I debug this please?  How does the indexing of the file system /media/'MOODE MUSIC' work/progress. 

My end game here is simply to see each folder on my USB stick look like a single album.  Where the same song exists on a compilations album, I'd just like that album to be seen as it is.   I've seen stuff on tags, but a) I can't see how I can set this for my choice and b) I think some of the information MoOde seems to gather must come from the internet?  I dont see the likes of artist names anywhere in my files.

I do have some more qiestions, but I'll split them to keep things clear.  I hope I'm posting in the right area.
Many thanks.

Be sure to read Menu > Quick help. It has important information on the Library, metadata tags, cover images, etc. Keep in mind that the Library in moOde is based on track metadata tags so be sure that important tags like Artist, Title, Track, Album etc are populated correctly and consistently for best results. moOde does not parse file names to automatically populate these tags.

1. How does MoOde figure out which image to associate with an album or indeed an individual track?  All my music is on a USB stick. Albums are in seperate folders. Some have a large.jpg, a small.jpg and things like AlbumArt_{B5020207-474E-4720-6CE2-8E2C9820BE00}

It looks for the image files below and if none are found then it looks for any file of type image in the album directory. It's best to consistently use one of the file names below. Menu > Preferences > Cover Art has options that control how cover art is handled including embedded cover art and artist covers.

/var/www/util/thumb-gen.php and /var/www/coverart.php

Code:

    $covers = array(
        'Cover.jpg', 'cover.jpg', 'Cover.jpeg', 'cover.jpeg', 'Cover.png', 'cover.png', 'Cover.tif', 'cover.tif', 'Cover.tiff', 'cover.tiff',
        'Folder.jpg', 'folder.jpg', 'Folder.jpeg', 'folder.jpeg', 'Folder.png', 'folder.png', 'Folder.tif', 'folder.tif', 'Folder.tiff', 'folder.tiff'
    );

2. But lots of entries in the UI seemto have invalid art files associated.

See #1. 

3. How can I debug this please?  How does the indexing of the file system /media/'MOODE MUSIC' work/progress.

The Update or Regenerate library functions do the following:

- MPD scans the directory tree and extracts the metadata tags from the files to create or update its database (tag cache). The file is /var/lib/mpd/database.
- At the same time the thumbnail generator runs and scans the directory tree looking for embedded images or cover image files. The last track in each album directory is used to look for embedded cover art and see #1 for how cover image files are handled.
- Then when Tag or Album view is opened moOde reads the MPD database file and creates the "Library tag cache" located in /var/local/www/ which is used to populate Tag and Album views in the WebUI. The Library tag cache contains enhanced metadata thats not available in the MPD database. 
- Note that Folder view queries the MPD database directly and does not have access to the enhanced metadata and other features of Tag and Album views.

4. My end game here is simply to see each folder on my USB stick look like a single album.  Where the same song exists on a compilations album, I'd just like that album to be seen as it is.   I've seen stuff on tags, but a) I can't see how I can set this for my choice and b) I think some of the information MoOde seems to gather must come from the internet?  I dont see the likes of artist names anywhere in my files.

A common directory tree is below. For compilation albums set the Album Artist tag in each track to a consistent string for example "Various Artists".

root/
Artist/Album/Tracks
Compilations/Album/Tracks

root directory tree
   

Compilations directory
           

[tommyQ]

Your replies are already helping my understanding - thanks! I've made some progress. I have re-read the quick help but I'm still a unclear of a few things tag and metadata related.

1) I see how you can modify what you see in the album view via the preferences section, but I'm not sure if you can set or change a tag value? Perhaps for the case an attribute value is not set? For example, when I look at the library in terms of Tags, I can see things like 10cc for the Artist but no corresponding 10cc for Album on the RHS of the screen. Does that mean the album tag is blank? I'm not sure how/where the tags are collected/generated and if tags are equivalent to metadata. I assume much of this mist be in the music files if not in the folder where the music resides.

2) When you talk about the cover art being the last one in a folder, how would I do this in Linux? Can I just use the touch command to have it with the latest modification date? I used Linux for 30 years but I never considered file ordering. How mad is that. I've checked one album where there was a cover.jpg and the art work wasn't picked up still.

3) Also, when I was looking at the advanced search, there doesn't seem to be any way to clear the effect of it except. I do see the clearing of the fields. In my case to be able to see all the albums again, I told it to search using Folder=USB.

Thanks again. Sorry to be a pain - Regards Tom.

[Tim Curtis]

Tags are short for "Metadata tags"
- Tag maintenance is not included in moode because there are already many fine tag editor utilities to do this.
- In Folder/Tag/Album views click the track and select Audio info to view the tags
- The tags are embedded in each track by whatever utility was used to create the track

Cover art
- Cover art can be embedded in each track or it can be a separate cover art file in the Album directory. The thumbnail generator looks in the last track in the Album directory for embedded cover art. Track files are almost always named starting with the track number thus the last track in the Album directory = last track in the Album

Search/Filter
- In Tag or Album views clicking the main "Browse by" header resets any search or other filter. Clicking the genre, artist or album header resets those filters.

[tommyQ]

Tags are short for "Metadata tags"
- Tag maintenance is not included in moode because there are already many fine tag editor utilities to do this.
- In Folder/Tag/Album views click the track and select Audio info to view the tags
- The tags are embedded in each track by whatever utility was used to create the track

Cover art
- Cover art can be embedded in each track or it can be a separate cover art file in the Album directory. The thumbnail generator looks in the last track in the Album directory for embedded cover art. Track files are almost always named starting with the track number thus the last track in the Album directory = last track in the Album

Search/Filter
- In Tag or Album views clicking the main "Browse by" header resets any search or other filter. Clicking the genre, artist or album header resets those filters.

Thank you again.