Some Album Art stops appearing

[jplowman]

Hello - having sort of a confusing problem, maybe someone can help me.

I like running MM with my entire library (about 19,000 files) visible, in Show Album Art mode. When I launch the program the album art images load fine - I can scroll through the entire library and view all images. Each time I scroll down, the next 21-28 album images load quickly, maybe a half second or less. Works great.

But after I use the program for a little while, there is a sudden change, and many of the albums do not show album art at all. I don't see any obvious pattern to which albums show art and which don't - maybe it depends on the image file size. This doesn't seem like a delay in loading the art - it just doesn't appear at all, no matter how long you wait. One thing that often triggers this seems to be updating the album art for one or more tracks. Once MM starts doing this, the only way I've found to resolve the issue is to close it and relaunch. This seems to happen pretty much every time I use the program.

I have "Scan track directories for Album Art" unchecked in Tools | Options | Library and all album art images are saved to the file tags. Any ideas?
My setup:
Win XP Pro
AMD dual-core 2.6 GHz
4 GB RAM (XP recognizing 2.75 GHz RAM)

[Eyal]

One thing that often triggers this seems to be updating the album art for one or more tracks.
Once MM starts doing this, the only way I've found to resolve the issue is to close it and relaunch.

Do you select the option to update the album art for all tracks of the same album? If so, the problem may be that these tracks have same AlbumArtist and AlbumTitle names, thus MM considers them to be part of the same album. That why it takes longuer than expected, and by interrupting the process, MM don't have time to replace new album art images. Resuting in empty images.

[jplowman]

Do you mean the "Apply to all selected tracks?" check box? If so then yes, whenever I am modifying the tag for multiple tracks I leave this box checked, which seems to be the default. Do you think it would be better to select each track separately and perform the same change? Seems time consuming, but in any case, I don't really understand how this would be causing the problem, can you explain it in different words? Didn't quite catch your meaning.

Also I should note that often I can update an album's art without triggering this problem, but usually when it starts, this seems to be the trigger.

[jplowman]

the problem may be that these tracks have same AlbumArtist and AlbumTitle names, thus MM considers them to be part of the same album. That why it takes longuer than expected, and by interrupting the process, MM don't have time to replace new album art images. Resuting in empty images.

On second read I think I understand what you're saying - that I am inadvertantly updating the album art for a large number of tracks without meaning to. Then I interrupt the process before it's done, and the tracks in question can't display album art. However I don't think this could be my issue. Firstly, MM is correctly identifying which tracks are part of the same album - I am not getting albums that have too many tracks or are somehow accidentally mashed together. Secondly, I am selecting only a single album's tracks - maybe 10-15 tracks at a time - when I update the images, so there's no reason it would try to update images for any other tracks, unless the program is really behaving oddly. Thirdly, I am not interrupting the process midway - I allow it to complete, but as the art is updated (when the issue strikes, which is not every time) I suddenly lose sight of the album art for maybe half my albums, in no clear order. (Sometimes it's been less, sometimes more that can't be seen.)

I know the images are still there, because if I select a track's properties I can see the image, and if I close the program and restart, they all come back. They are just not loading visually for some reason. Actually if I select a track, I can still see the album art in the album art window - it just doesn't appear in the Library/Album Art view.

Maybe it's a bug.

[Pete10]

Same problem, very strange. If I rightclick on the placeholder I can select the image and then it is displayed correctly. But when scrolling some are not loaded. Suggestions? Some cache problem in MM?

[Knight|GTR]

i've mostly same problem, i've uploaded the art covers, in the mediamoneky they appear perfectly, but when i synchonise mediamonkey with my ipod classic, some covers appear at the wrong albums. what shall i do?

[Pete10]

I noticed a setting in the local MediaMonkey.ini file:
DontUseCoversCache=0
Maybe setting this to 1 would help (also slowing down the display perhaps)?

[Knight|GTR]

i'll try it! thanks!

[jplowman]

I noticed a setting in the local MediaMonkey.ini file:
DontUseCoversCache=0
Maybe setting this to 1 would help (also slowing down the display perhaps)?

You da man! This seems to have resolved the issue. Since changing the setting I've had a little weirdness of a different kind (an album I updated wouldn't display album art in the album art window, though I could see it in the properties dialog) but no full-scale dropping of album art like before. I can't tell you how much more pleasant this makes browsing my albums.

[littlefield]

@Pete 10
I second jplowman "You da man!" I had the same problems for the longest time with album art, trying obsessively many ways to get all album covers to show, took away from what should have been the relaxing pastime of viewing my music library. Now it's perfect, MM should by default set that to "1". Thanks for the fix!

[Pete10]

Glad it worked! I suppose the developers should have a look at their caching implementation. I didn't notice a significant lag with the new settings either. In general, perhaps it is better to let the OS do the caching rather than implement it per program.

[gpzbc]

I wonder what the disadvantage is to not using the MM cache? I imagine it is there for a reason.
Can any Devs chime in?

[rovingcowboy]

the album art cache was put there for faster showing of the album art in the album art with details view.

but in using it monkey was making copys of your album art to put in that cache. so you if keeping your art in different folder from your music were ending up with duppies of your album art and taking up your hd space.
so they gave us control over the cache by telling us were to turn it off. but i have not see that line in the ini file as of late so they must have changed it again.?

but not using it just saved room on your system and took longer to show the covers in the album art with details view.



thought this was the same post about this as before. i just read it and found pete10 said he did see the line in the ini file so its still there which is good.

[gpzbc]

Thanks for the explanation.
I think I would rather sacrifice a few hundred MB of hard drive space to have it show album art faster. So I believe I will leave the cache on for now.

[Funkafonik]

I noticed a setting in the local MediaMonkey.ini file:
DontUseCoversCache=0
Maybe setting this to 1 would help (also slowing down the display perhaps)?

Thanks a million for that! That Album Art bug was driving me crazy! Glad to finally be able to enjoy all the work done tagging my library.