Official moOde 8 support thread

[jenzd]

I've gotten to this item on the TODO list and I have some comments and questions.

Comments:

Since the aspect ration of these DVD style covers is portrait the way to format them so they can correctly be displayed as Album art is to actually add letterboxing on the sides using an image editor In my case using Pixelmator I would expand the canvas horizontally to match the image height and then fill the new empty side spaces in the canvas with black or gray. I end up with a square image after doing that and it appears correctly in the WebUI.

If thats not done and instead the CSS is modified as @Nutul suggested we end up with oddness in several areas:

1. In Album view the (...) menu icon is halfway outside the cover image
2. In Playback view it just looks odd seeing a DVD sized cover :-0
3. In Playbar, Folder view, Queue, etc the small thumbs are already square but the image is heavily distorted. It may be some upstream CSS that making them square or possibly something in the Thumbnail generator.

Question:

How many of these types of covers are we talking about in a typical music collection?

Adding a letterbox to the sides of these images with an image editor would be a workaround, of course. On the other hand it might be nicer, if the UI would directly get along with portrait style images (if this does not compromise the way standard images are shown).

1. I think Album view already handles these images perfectly in version 8.3.7. The images are embedded in a square canvas (adding some space on both sides). Of course the menu icon appears slightly outside of the image. I wouldn't mind though, since it stays in the same place (lower left corner) relative to the square canvas - so just were it could be expected. No side effects for standard covers as well.

2. In playback view a square canvas could solve the issue in the same way. It would also prevent portrait style images from being displayed much larger than standard covers. An alternative possibility could be to define a maximum height (rectangular canvas?) to just prevent the song & album title below the image from being moved outside of the visible area.

3. For locations like the queue, where just the small thumbs are shown, distorted images could just be acceptable as they are. Even with the distortion it's still clearly visibile which album it is - and apart from this, there is not much to be seen at this small image size anyway. :-)

In my collection there are just a few of these covers, of course. Examples:

• Opeth - In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall (2 DVDs + 3 CDs)
  
• Pain Of Salvation - "Be" - Original Stage Production (DVD + CD)
  
• Sophie Hunger - Supermoon (book-style digipack)
  
• Genesis - Archive 1967-75 (box set)
  
• Genesis - Archive #2: 1976-1992 (box set)
  

Best regards
Jens