Automatically get Cover Art

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EvilDude

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Program now released to do this! Scroll down a bit and read post for more info... get it here
http://www.ipodsoft.com/index.php?/software/iart

---old post---
Hey.

I was wondering how many people would be interested in a program that would *attempt* to get the cover image for songs in their iTunes library.

I would like suggestions on:

where to get art from > I'm thinking amazon or allmusic.com
any other specific features.

and whether anyone would like to help. I would program in VB6...

So basically, show your interest in the application here, and if people actually like the idea, then I will code it :)
 
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noogabooga

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Currently there are very few (if any) windows programs that does this so if u can pull it off, quite a few people would be interested.

Are you thinking of making an iTunes plugin or a totally separate program?

If an iTunes plugin then, you could select a number of songs, then click a button and the plugin would search for the cover art pics, download them, then insert each into the selected songs. There should be an info screen that shows how many songs have been successfully had covert art added to and how many failed (and why).

If its a separate program then its prolly not possible to automatically add the cover art to the songs right? So instead, the user could specify a folder containing the songs files and the program would download the cover pics to a specified location. Its then up to the user to insert those pics into their songs as cover art.

You might want to check some similar programs available for the Mac. Would give you a few ideas.

Amazon.com is a better place to find cover art I believe - bigger selection and better quality images. But u could use multiple sites in the search with priority given to one site.
 

EvilDude

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I would work on a program that would access the iTunes DB [which I know how] so that no drag and drop etc needed. I would probably start with amazon only, but would add support for adding modules to support other sites.
 

EvilDude

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A little update:
I have just spent a while coding a way to actually get album art, and after learning Amazon's interface, and learning VB's XML stripping capabilities, I have finally gotten somewhere!

I have been able to get the album art by artist and album name. It searches amazon, and matches up the album with amazon's product name. And... it actually works! So in a few days, expect to see betas of being able to get album art for songs very easily!
 

EvilDude

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Hey guys

I am almost done! I am actually using the program right now to download art for all my music. It takes about 10 minutes altogether I think, coz it's almost done, and it's been about 5 to 10 mins. It searches Amazon, and downloads everything automatically.

Right now, before completion, there is one thing to fix. The program appears frozen while downloading. There is no refreshign of window etc. I am working on multithreading or something to download etc while interface still works. Once this is done, I can release it tomorrow, and I know the program works, coz i'm using it, and it works pretty well, as long as your tags are clean.

The artist tag should be very good as it's the most important, followed be either album/song name. Tries album first, but if there is no album with that name, or there is no album tag, then it searches for which album has the track name etc..

So hopefully by tomorrow, you can have all your music get any missing artwork like me! :)
 

EvilDude

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Hey guys

A [beta] version of the album art adder is available! I have tested this with my library and it doesn't have any problems, and works very well with properly tagged libraries.

You need iTunes 4.5 to use this. VB runtimes are required, but if you can install iTunes, then you already have them...

Here are a few suggestions : Make a new playlist, and put a few albums to test into this. Now run the program, select this new playlist, and see the results.

Get it here: [Right click link, save target as]
http://www.geocities.com/iliveherealone/iTunesCover.zip

If it doesn't work, email me, and ask for a copy, and I will email you back with one. Any problems/suggestions can also be emailed to me. My email is:
[email protected]

The people who want to help test, please download and post results of testing here. Right now, only Amazon album download is available but I might add more if people are interested in app, and amazon doesn't have enough covers etc...

Enjoy ;)

Remember, I'm not responsible for anything that happens etc..
And also, iTunes is copyright of Apple. I don't own any of that stuff etc.
 
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mikePod

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Just ran the program/plugin and tested it on a selected list of songs. The program appears to crash at random points (it could have downloaded lots of art or no art). Also, following the crash, iTunes warns that something is still using the iTunes scripting interface.

Other than that, the interface is very intuitive and easy to use.

Win XP - Fully updated
iTunes - 4.5.0.31

(let me know if you would like the errors/screenshots sending/posting here)
 

EvilDude

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wow, quick reply. thanks for telling me this. this *could* be the multithreading. I will disable multithreading for this version actually. Can you redownload, from same site, and tell me if it still crashes (it will apear to hang in this version as no threading is used)
 

EvilDude

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Thanks...glad it works
well I'll try to implement another "multithreading" solution without actually using multithreading as the hang look isn't the best solution, and random crashing isn't much better.
 

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SUGGESTIONS

Just a quick suggestion:- you may want to ignore words such as 'the' and 'from' when searching the amazon database as they don't always include them in the artist/song name. For example, the band called 'The Hives' have an album called 'Your New Favourite Band' but it is indexed as 'hives' 'Your New Favourite Band'. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005QC3J/ref=sr_aps_music_1_1/026-6634330-7975663).


PROBLEMS

During the complete test of my songs ~11Gb, the list showing the cuurrent album froze about 4/5 of the way though the task, even though it continued to download the art.

*updated*
 
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EvilDude

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Thanks for suggestions. I addd the ignoring 'the ' and 'a ' for now, and will add more common ones as necessary.

Also, could you explain what you mean by froze on 4/5? If program seems hanged, try this:
just open program, wait about 20 seconds max, and program *should* respond in one way or another.
 

mikePod

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I could send you a screen shot over msn if you would like. the status bar is still moving along the bottom of the screen so i know it is still working, therefore i am reluctant to restart the program

Another suggestion is that the program could update the ID3 tags of the songs if it found an album match (could also update the year field if this is easy to strip out of the amazon code)

To help and debug, could you create a feature to allow the error screen (displayed at the end of the process) to be saved, complete with the error(s)
 
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EvilDude

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The "error" screen at end isn't really a error screen, only notificaion of why some songs didn't work.

About new features --> album info done
Am working on year feature, so once it adds it to first song of album, it also adds to all songs of that album.

I'll put a new version up in a few minutes (hopefully under 10 mins)
 

mikePod

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Another problem seems to occur if the album has several CD's (e.g CD1, CD2) and the CD name is refenced in the ID3 Tag. I dont know if you could find a way of ignoring this piece of information, as well as the possible '/' or '-' that occurs before the CD number.

The last modification did allow the program to download additional tracks, although it didn't solve The Hives exaple given earlier :confused:

By scanning though iTunes i have noticed that some of the albums have blank artwork (a little square is displayed). These files are all 807 bytes long, once the program has completed it's search would it be possible to delete these files (say anything <2Kb?) incase another version of the program manages to find a match.

Also, where is the iTunes version of the artwork stored? i noticed that the iTuesCover is stored in the temp file which could be wiped if people clean thier temp files directory (lilke me)
 

EvilDude

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New version uploaded. features new include:
Now multithreaded again, but it's stable now (well should be at least)
Adds year downloading support.
Adds missing album name if found.
 
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