Write embedded cover art to music files

[bertusw]

my squeezebox touch music player can display the cover art thats inside the music flie MP#/FLAC

would be nice if strawberry can place them in the music file.

thanks for the good music player, was using clementine all the time nog i got a good replace ment.

[v-fox]

Although, this should not be always-enabled-by-default or as simple as putting first found cover into the file because putting shared full-sized png covers from their directory into every file would bloat them significantly. There needs to be a priority for what way of saving cover is preferred (such as "always external/per-directory, external when missing, internal when missing, always internal/per-file") and compression (such as lossless:[png/webp] with compression strength, lossy:[jpeg/webp] with quality / loss threshold).

However, why are you calling external files "embedded" ? It's literal opposite of what they are. The whole point is for them to become embedded by… embedding.

[breversa]

This is one of the most/longest-requested QoL feature missing from Clementine : https://github.com/clementine-player/Clementine/issues/1176

I'd love to see it implemented into Strawberry, even if it means bloating the files' size. This is 2020 and space isn't as much an issue as it was in 2013 (though I agree that is goes against digital sobriety).

[v-fox]

I'd love to see it implemented into Strawberry, even if it means bloating the files' size. This is 2020 and space isn't as much an issue as it was in 2013 (though I agree that is goes against digital sobriety).

Not an issue… unless you're sticking full-screen or print-quality pngs into >50-track albums of giant FLACs in a collection that is already measures in hundreds of GBs.

[bertusw]

Although, this should not be always-enabled-by-default or as simple as putting first found cover into the file because putting shared full-sized png covers from their directory into every file would bloat them significantly. There needs to be a priority for what way of saving cover is preferred (such as "always external/per-directory, external when missing, internal when missing, always internal/per-file") and compression (such as lossless:[png/webp] with compression strength, lossy:[jpeg/webp] with quality / loss threshold).

However, why are you calling external files "embedded" ? It's literal opposite of what they are. The whole point is for them to become embedded by… embedding.

that easy in the tags if all album names are the same only one file is needed, and can be external. if different album names than the need to be internal.

[bertusw]

I'd love to see it implemented into Strawberry, even if it means bloating the files' size. This is 2020 and space isn't as much an issue as it was in 2013 (though I agree that is goes against digital sobriety).

Not an issue… unless you're sticking full-screen or print-quality pngs into >50-track albums of giant FLACs in a collection that is already measures in hundreds of GBs.

i think a config setting for 300x300 or 600x600 can be a option

[breversa]

@bertusw : I'd love a bigger picture's size, so it'd be great to make it user-customable instead of fixed. :)

[jonaski]

I'm almost finished implementing this. It was a huge job, because album cover handling is done so many places in the code, and all methods were based on saving to file. I also had to move the cover album editing in the tag editor from "summary" to "tags" tab to integrate it better with saving to tags. Album cover will no longer be applied immediately like before, it will only be applied once you click save. There are 3 options for saving album covers: 1. cache directory, 2. album directory, 3. embedded. I also moved the lyrics into it's own tab to make it easier to edit lyrics and give more room in the regular tag editor.

There is a global setting for automatically saving album covers for the cover manager, and also individual settings for saving album covers in the right click menu on the album cover while playing, and in the tag editor. So far I've implemented saving of album covers for FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and MP4/AAC. But that should cover the most used formats. For other formats it will fallback to saving to cache.

Here is a screenshot:

[jonaski]

This is now done. The changes are not only bringing support for saving embedded covers, but also greatly improve the whole cover management.

Development builds should be available in a few minutes. Appreciate testing.

Some improvements done:

• The cover management will load the raw image data in addition to loading it as a QImage, this way it can directly save the original image data (either to embedded in the song, or file), without the conversion. If the image is not JPEG, it will use the converted QImage instead.
• The cover editing done in the tag editor will never save anything before you hit save button. So you can cancel anything without making any changes.
• The tag editor will clearly show where the image was loaded from.
• There are 2 new options in the right click menu, "clear" and "delete". The delete option will delete the files from disk, and remove any embedded cover in the songs. The "clear" option will only clear the associated cover art for the songs in the DB, without marking it as "unset", the purpose, for example is that you can re-trigger the cover search while the "unset" option will not.
• In the collection settings there are 3 different options for saving album covers now. But there is a setting in addition in the edit tag dialog that can override that, the checked state there is based on whether the songs have embedded covers from before, or if the setting is set to embedded covers in the collection settings.
• The text underneath the albums in the cover manager will show "artist" - "album" when all artists is selected, when an artist is selected it will show album only.

I also fixed a few minor bugs I found worth mentioning:

• Before when the album directory save option was enabled but the "overwrite" option was off, and there was an existing cover in the directory, the new cover wouldn't be saved. It will now save the cover by prepending a "0" before the filename to assure the new cover is picked up before the old one.
• The right click save cover action for embedded covers wasn't working, it was saving the "no cover" image instead of the loaded cover.
• The temporary art saved to /tmp wasn't working properly, this is used by MPRIS2 for songs with embedded and remote covers.
• Disable cover actions in the right click menu when they can't be used. When a cover is "unset" it should not be necessary to save the "no cover" to file.
• Probably more that I don't remember, I have been working on this for several weeks.

[jonaski]

Some things that I will consider to add next:

• An option in the album cover manager to save all existing associated album covers as embedded covers to the songs.
• An option to pick what sizes are used for automatically saving album covers to songs, possible additional setting for embedded covers.
• Possible options for saving to different image formats than JPEG.

[jonaski]

If a few users can test the different changes, and report back I can do a new release sooner, but otherwise I want to wait at least a week, maybe more, there are huge changes done here, and so many different options to test. Unfortunately from prior experience there is little interest from the community for testing things.

[breversa]

I'll gladly test this new build later this week-end.

I also agree with @89z : this is such an asked-for feature in Clementine that I'd deserve it's own milestone and even full version number ! :D THANK YOU @jonaski !!!

[mtfurlan]

Builds and works as expected here, many thanks! I tested with mp3 and flac, and both the cover manager and the change art menu in the track information worked as expected and didn't cause issues.

[bertusw]

Awesome Nice work Jonaski and others. very good results almost 75% of al numbers i drop on it. found a problem searcing for a cover of (Commodores - Goin' To The Bank) strawberry could find the cover, i did found it on Discorg https://www.discogs.com/Commodores-Goin-To-The-Bank/release/689820 maybe the special character after the n

[jonaski]

@bertusw The problem with Discogs is that the API returns to many badly scanned covers, and sometimes the vinyl, CD or back cover instead of the front cover, so Strawberry specifically only keep the front ones, so the one for that album probably isn't marked properly as a front cover in their the API.

[v-fox]

@jonaski Is there an option to prefer external covers to embedded ones ? Latter always seem to be of much worse quality, so I have to strip them out of files. I prefer to keep external high-res lossless png or low-loss webp.

[bertusw]

Hi Jonas,

first what a awesome work on de cover seach manager. 80% of all my covers are found more than i expected. stil the 20% i find on Discorg, is it possible to scrap the page of Discorg to let me pick the richt one maybe with url to check. a lot of my tracks come from cd that original came from vinyl so no cd cover can be found :)

thanks Bertus van der werf

Op wo 3 mrt. 2021 om 22:13 schreef Jonas Kvinge @.***>:

@bertusw https://github.com/bertusw The problem with Discogs is that the API returns to many badly scanned covers, and sometimes the vinyl, CD or back cover instead of the front cover, so Strawberry specifically only keep the front ones, so the one for that album probably isn't marked properly as a front cover in their the API.

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[jonaski]

Thanks, what is Discorg?

[bertusw]

Hi jonas.Happy newjear.I mean https://www.discogs.com/GreatingsBertus van der werfVerzonden vanaf mijn Galaxy -------- Oorspronkelijk bericht --------Van: Jonas Kvinge @.> Datum: 01-01-22 00:39 (GMT+01:00) Aan: strawberrymusicplayer/strawberry @.> Cc: bertusw @.>, Mention @.> Onderwerp: Re: [strawberrymusicplayer/strawberry] Write embedded cover art to music files (#286) Thanks, what is Discorg?

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[jonaski]

Discogs has an API so no need to scrape, Strawberry already uses it but it has to filter out a lot of the covers from discogs because of poor quality.

[mintsoft]

@jonaski Out of curiosity is there any technical reason why Album cover editing is only available for collection songs. is it a case of "is just not implemented" ?

[jonaski]

Because album covers are updated through the collection: cover manager --> collection db --> playlist and there is currently no good way to update the cover directly to the playlist, but saving embedded cover could probably be enabled pretty easy.

[bertusw]

what i do is copy tile to album name and artist to album artist with easyTAG,(ID3tag editor) and most of my music wil be recognized. i mostly use it for drawers with various artists.

rips for vinyl old dance club classics recognized up to 80%.

im loving Strawberry musicplayer ;)