Covers in MV

[DJ_Sandstorm]

I was very happy to see the covers are back into MV Producer. BUt they are not 100 % ok. i have a cover foto in every of my 14000 tags. maby 10 % of them show up in MV . On the others, i just see the MV Logo. Do I make a mistake or is there something wrong? By the way, I would love if it would be possible to show a little image of the covers in the players in Producer in one of the next releases. But MV 7.4 is very stable and i love to perform with it.!

[Support@MixVibes]

There is a bug there MV7 read front cover, but not back covers and others.

[DJ_Sandstorm]

Does MV7 only read linked or also embedded covers? Because all of em are marked as "Cover Front" but not all ar linked and embedded. Some are just embedded. Or does MV7 need the Cover.jpg in the files folder too?

This Morning I made an excessive Test of the Cover / ID3 Functinos in MV. There are some solved and some unsolved Problems. I use Mediamonkey 3.2.4 to Manage my ID3 Tags. In MM as well as in MV i have selected the Option "Use ID3 V 3.1 and 3.2". So both Programs should use the same Kind of Tag. I have a Coverfoto labeled as "Front Cover" in each of my Sound Files (inside of the Tag), most of them have the same Picture as "Folder.jpg" also in the Folder (linked to the Tag). All Files are Reated with the Stars in Mediamonkey.

So, i opened a complete new Database in Mixvibes and imported all of my Files there. I see that none of the Ratings is shown in the Mixvibes Tag. The Field Rating is empty. I also see that a lot of the Genre Fileds are empty. Some of them are labeled correctly, even if i use own labels in Mediamonkey. But about half of em is missing.

OK, lets look at the Covers. In Grid View, about 10% of the covers are shown. Some of the ones with the MV Logo have a link to the Folder that you can see in the "Artwork" tab, but do not show the Cover. So i tried to insert a folder (with the add folder Button) and selected the according Folder: Nothing happens. MV Does not link the just selected Folder (i did it several Times, nothing happened). Strange thing is, that sometimes you got discrepancies even in one Album, like 10 of 12 Covers from the same Album are shown, the rest is black).

Well, lets get back. I analized some of the Albums. I then entered the Rating in Mixvibes itself. Then i saved the ID3 Tag back. Now in Mediamonkey, the BPM is showing up. Thats a good thing, because I need the BPM's in MM as well. But MV overwrites all of my Ragins in Mediamonkey with the empty tag, so in every Tag i wrote back there is now a bomb (for no rating) showing up instead of the stars I had before. So i had to rerate each of the Songs in MM.

So Covers dont work at the moment. Ratings dont work either. Whats ok now is the import and export of the BPM. Also the BPMs i had calculated with my Cross Demo have been taken into MV correctly, thats something that was wrong a few releases back.

So its getting better, but there are still lots of little bugs that make it hard to use the mediabase (especially if you use it with an external Mediabase like Mediamonkey). I dont want to loose one of both programs, so i hope there will be a way to bring em closer together soon.

At the Moment if you want good results in both progams you need to do the following:
Edit your tags in Mediamonkey
Import the Files to MV and analyze them, add the Rating in MV
Resave the Tag
go Back to MM an correct the Rating. Export the Coverpicture
Import the Coverpicture in MV.

Very complicated, but the only way at the moment to have correct Results on both programs. I wont do this for all of my >10.000 Files. But i hope the Mediabase will get better soon. The one in Cross is already very promising. Hope MV produce will hit the same level soon.

[barren fell]

Hello Sandstorm,

I don't know Producer but I guess the latest version handles covers like DVS 7 (from the Ultimate pack) does. Since importing cover by cover is a real pain I wrote a little tutorial for the cover issue.

viewtopic.php?f=207&t=18580

For MixVibes covers must have the extension *.mvcover"... but see the tutorial...

Regarding tag editing: MediaMonkey is not quite a good choice (it's the worst you can do - to be honest) to do tag editing since you're working in a kind of "black box". It messes up with composer, Producer, mixartist, and so on.

The only really professional tool to do such editing is - as far as I could evaluate - MP3tag by Florian Heidenreich. It is freeware but better than any commercial app I know.
You need to see/know the "source code" of the tags you want to modify. If you're doing this editing properly everything will be displayed correctly in MV.

[DJ_Sandstorm]

Thanks for the Reply. its worth a try I would say. The real Pain is that i have about 1200 Subfolders, because I store Music by Artist.
So i try that ID3 Editor. I hope it will also repair ID3 Tags if you open them an re-save them...

[barren fell]

Hi Sandstorm,

you're right, having so much subfolders gives a headache. It surely is possible to automize even this, but I didn't look into that.

But why staying with this subfolder structure? I gave up this data handling years ago since it may look good for our eyes and brains in the Windows explorer... but it's a horror to administrate. ID3 Tags are doing the job perfectly, once you have tagged carefully your songs.

On my hard disc all songs are stored in folders directly in the hard discs root, each containing exactly 1000 songs. It looks like:
E:\Vinyl000, E:\Vinyl001, E:\Vinyl002, and so on.

Since I also have a lot of other DJ apps this is the best solution to me. I always refer to the same pool of media and I use tags that are read by Traktor Scratch as well as by Torq, Cross or MixVIbes.

When I move on another computer (e.g. on a notebook), I move the complete disc content and always keep the latest editing. In other words: There is always only one big "data structure" containing tagged music files that is "moving" around. It grows with songs and editing; and all "updates" are copied to every PC with a "music hard disc".
It's not so much administration as it sounds - just a bit contenance. To me a subfolder-monster is more demanding.

Just a suggestion to manage a music library. One advantage is that new songs are always in the latest folder - you never must touch older ones, once they are carefully tagged...

[DJ_Sandstorm]

That sounds good. I have to think of that, because right now, all my Songs are correctly tagged and I should find them even if they're in on folder. Usually, i not bother about file structure, as i use Mediamonkey (i know, not the best solution, but i like it) for that. I keeps it all organized and does the folders and subfolders for itself.

I found out that with Trixmotos Album Art tagger, i could even extract all Cover Images, store them in the correct Folders, resize them in just one step. So now i have 13.000 JPG in their correct folders and only have to think how i could edit the endings at once, also in all of the Subfolders. But look that i am a big step closer to a good library as well in MV as in MM than yesterday! Thanks for your help. And i'll think over that new file structure...

[barren fell]

Ahh...I see Sandstorm, good to hear that your that familiar with MM to use some smart scripts; so no need to give advices .

I'm just curious since I often hear about guys doin' editing with iTunes LOLOLOLOL and then reporting of "strange" behaviour
Don't get me wrong. I use MM as player for audio books, and I prefer it compared to WinAmp & Co.

Did the cover import to MV work? If you have questions or some hints to make it more understandable, don't hesitate.

[DJ_Sandstorm]

Morning.
IT WORKED!!!! Wow. I found some freewartool (RenPhonic) that works in Vista. So I could rename all of my .jps to .mvcover. Its just great. Now i have all Covers (well almost, about 500 are missing because they had some problems with the length of the name). But they are easy to import manually, compared to all of the 13.000
So thank you very much for the Help. Well I could say then: MV also works with Mediamonkey if you know the trick it needs a bit getting used to that MV uses its Shadow library with its own files to display the cover art, but i could live with that. I know now, that if i import a new album into MM, i just export the Covers at the same moment.

Thanks very much for your help. Just deleted my demo of traktor, because now I've got all that i need in MV no mor evaluating of another tool...