album art

Support questions for Neutron Player only.
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titanoman
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:02 am

album art

Post by titanoman » Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:09 pm

Only a few song selections display album art.
Any suggestions?
Thank you.

dmitrykos
Site Admin
Posts: 1914
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2011 6:15 pm

Re: album art

Post by dmitrykos » Sat Mar 10, 2012 12:57 am

Neutron detects album art in 2 ways: inside folders with music, extracting it from metadata of files. It does not use Android OS media database and if by chance you had album art there Neutron won't see it.

titanoman
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:02 am

Re: album art

Post by titanoman » Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:08 am

dmitrykos wrote:Neutron detects album art in 2 ways: inside folders with music, extracting it from metadata of files. It does not use Android OS media database and if by chance you had album art there Neutron won't see it.
Oh..Okay. Thank-you.

titanoman
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:02 am

Re: album art

Post by titanoman » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:09 pm

Hi, me again. Sorry to bring this up again. I know you already answered me once. In another post, you said something about cover art downloaders. I'm kind of new to the whole computer and Android worlds, especially files and formatting and tech talk in general.
My music seems to be in a couple different folders in mnt/sdcard. Then I think some of my music goes to my external card but most of it's in my phone I think. I get lost and confused in Astro File Manager.
Power Amp has never had a problem finding cover art. I have 200 songs and they all have cover art (I've had PA about a year. Neutron is way more awesome IMO, even w/o art).
I've been playing with PlayerPro for a week or so. It pulled up all my music, but was missing most off the cover art. So I installed a Coverart Downloader and it seemed to work for PlayerPro. It's only missing a few, and a certain album cover is showing up here and there in the library.
But installing the art finder (I tried CoverGrabber too) didn't help Neuton find anything. I tried the "embed in music folders" option because you said something about that.
And I installed some Id or tag app that said it can fix messed-up art and and tags, which I guess mean the song info.
Am I supposed to get Neutron to re-scan (or re-build?) after I install the Cover art downloader. Do I do the embed cover into the music folder or file?
How do I know if I should try the Tag app (most of the album and song information is correct).
I've been trying for many, many hours to figure this out.
I'm going to keep Neutron as my favorite player because it sounds better than anything else and I really like the looks of it.
I will live without the art if I have to.
But, if you have just a couple of minutes, is there anyway you could tell me, step by step, how to get some artwork for my music, I would really appreciate it.
I'll even download each album cover one by one, but I don't know how to get it on Neutron. Do I move the downloaded image from one folder to another and then click "refresh" or "rebuild" in Neutron Settings? Or will it do it by itself after a re-boot?
Sorry to take your valuable time.


In Neutron's album list, a Pretenders cover fills in many of the album listings, and the rest are just blank. And there's never anything on the big screen.
I tried embedding t
Last edited by titanoman on Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

titanoman
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:02 am

Re: album art

Post by titanoman » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:17 pm

Sorry that last post just kind of ends suddenly. I don't know how to edit it (I'm writing this from a phone and it's almost impossible to edit. I guess there isn't a mobile version of this forum.

Thank you.

dmitrykos
Site Admin
Posts: 1914
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2011 6:15 pm

Re: album art

Post by dmitrykos » Wed Mar 14, 2012 3:42 pm

Hi! :)

Android OS has its system media database where it keeps tags parsed from music files and also stores album art. Most of cover art downloaders have option, enabled default, to download album art and register it in Android's system media database. Majority of music players are working with Android's system media database. Those player take metadata, album art from there. So, when you install one player and change to another when both of them are using same system media database you will notice that album art is present in all of them, as well as same tags with same errors and sometimes mess. Android system won't register music files of audio format it does not support.

Neutron supports many more additional music formats and also parses tags on its own. Thus Android system database is not suitable. The only thing will be missing is album art stored in system media database.

Cover art can be stored in form of JPG, PNG, BMP image inside the directory where you have for example music files of the same album, like: /Music/My Album/cover.jpg, /Music/My Another Album/cover.jpg, and etc. This is suitable only when you have music sorted by folders.

If music is not sorted and stored in one folder then the only way is to embed cover art into tags of each music file. For that you could use Cover Art Downloader -> Settings -> Embed cover art (it is paid feature in this app, so you could try looking for other apps which do it for free). Embedding cover art will work 100% on any music player and not only in Android but the drawback is increased size of each file by the size of embedded image.

Once you did above actions you need to refresh database inside Neutron. It is better to do full rescan (currently it is: Bindings -> long-press binding entry -> REBUILD, but since next version it will be: Sources -> long-press source entry -> RESCAN). After this operation completes you shall notice cover art in Albums section and when music is playing.

Nostrovia
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:50 am

Re: album art

Post by Nostrovia » Tue Mar 20, 2012 1:30 am

Hello all,

I'm quite interested in the number of posts that refer to cover art. To me it is quite unimportant as I always tag my flac files on my laptop including cover art, prior to transferring to my phone.

I'm not saying that either I am brilliant for doing so or on the other hand that other people are not so if they don't, I've simply found it interesting!

Either way, I do think it is far easier if files are tagged correctly prior to importing. Of course that does not help those who download music directly to their phone.

I suppose with the ever increasing use of tablets this might be a moot point as those might be using that device as a music server or main hub as I do with my laptop for digital music. Still, I like playing my vinyl collection & soon plan to record many in 'high rez' as soon as I purchase an appropriate interface & dac.

Maybe I'm still rather 'old school', but I still would have thought for those with lets say 200 files of varying artists, rather than full albums it would still be easier to export back to a computer & tag appropriately using one of the many free programs that are available for this purpose? Batch tagging, larger interface etc would make this task much simpler.

Again, I'm not trying to sound better than anybody else here & respect the fact the people do things differently, I'm just curious as to their methods. Indeed maybe I have much to learn & may find I can do things in a more simplified manner.

Cheers! :)

dmitrykos
Site Admin
Posts: 1914
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2011 6:15 pm

Re: album art

Post by dmitrykos » Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:55 pm

> would still be easier to export back to a computer & tag appropriately using one of the many free programs that are available for this purpose?

Batch processing using PC version is indeed much easier and faster. There is free and powerful app Mp3Tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) which does re-tagging and album art look-up. Moreover it provides many options to convert tags to different versions and types. None of mobile apps could compete by a number of options and capabilities. So I would advise to copy music collection to PC, check/fix/get cover art for it, copy it back to mobile device, rescan Source entries in Neutron and everything will be just fine!

titanoman
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:02 am

Re: album art

Post by titanoman » Thu Mar 22, 2012 3:37 am

Some of us don't have a computer.
But anyway, I guess Neutron doesn't find stuff on the external sd card. The only art I have in Neutron are the 3 songs that are inmnt/sdcard/musicdownload. All my other music is in mnt/sdcard/ex_sdcard/musicdownload.
Oh well. I'll live.
Thanx for trying to make me understand what I need to do.
I bought the cover art downloader and did like you said, but nothing changed.

dmitrykos
Site Admin
Posts: 1914
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2011 6:15 pm

Re: album art

Post by dmitrykos » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:40 am

The art shall be found on external SD as well. If you got Cover Art Downloader, try going to its settings and enable 'Save cover art in folder' and 'Embed cover art'. When 'Save cover art in folder' is enabled album art file will be saved in the same directory where album exists and this is suitable if you have music sorted by folders, every album in its own folder. If music is not sorted by folders than suitable option will be 'Embed cover art'. Then when you got cover art downloaded and attached to music files/folders go to Neutron and make Refresh or RESCAN on Source entries. It shall show up then.

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