Album Art Improvement

[danhackley]

Hi - first off I've been using MM for some time now and well done too all who contributed.

In my opinion the album art feature needs some improvement. Below I list ways in which the album art handling should be improved (in descending order):

1. In the album art window, there should be some indication of what album art is present for that album. Currently, one needs to right-click on the album art to see a list of different images. It would be preferable to have small icons for front, back, cd, etc so you can see at a glance which covers are available.

2. It is only possible to see one album art item at a time. It should be possible to have open front and back covers simultaneously. This could be done by allowing 2 integrated album art windows, or by allowing the single window to handle multiple images simultaneously. The reason for this feature is that it looks a lot nicer to see the front and back of the cover art whilst the tune is playing than just the front.

3. It would be nice to have the option to display some details of the album art next to it. For example, size of the art could be displayed, so one knows whether it is worth maximising the image or not.

[danhackley]

I notice that the point 1, being able to see what album art is there, is included with the new media manager called Helium.

[Peke]

I written down your suggestions into http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5609 to see what can be improved in future MM versions.

Feel free to comment.

[danhackley]

Excellent work Peke, you sum it up pretty well there. I would say that definitely most users are catching on to having album art for their albums, and many more serious users/collectors have scans of the booklet, CD and rear cover as well.

A graphical interface is always more appealing than one without, therefore I think that increased emphasis on the album art handling would be important. The Monkeyflow plugin which is available is excellent, though not perfect, and should be incorporated into the standard Mediamonkey install package. Most modern competitors (such as iTunes, Helium Music Manager, etc) have a coverflow feature built-in; why not Mediamonkey?

As regards your point 1 (1. Adding description below album art using mask "<Image Type> <Image Number>/<Total Images>), I think it would be useful to have buttons to click on for all available art (like Helium does), rather than just saying that the displayed image is image number 1 of 4 for example. So then you could just click on "rear" for example, without having to cycle through "image number"(s).

[Peke]

Isn't that covered in 4. ?
As this is preliminary input it is not as detailed as it should be like for example transparent Button that will revile small dropdown menu:
a) <Image Type> = Context menu with listing Front, Rear,...
b) <Image Number>/<Total Images> = 1. Front, 2. Rear, 3. Media label, ...

re coverflow: I've read somewhere that Apple has patented coverflow, so why be a copycat if we can add something different/new Especially if one feature is already available?

FYI Perfect apps ends as abandoned apps, so I would rather say that MM is not perfect, but almost perfect with each new version. I simply always find new bug even if there is no one

[danhackley]

Yeah I think you're right about point 4.

Why add coverflow? Because it's what everybody wants these days when browsing. Sure Apple may have patented the term, but there is plenty of software out there with a similar feature. And it doesn't stop you from having other new features...just make it an option.

And you're right when stating that MM is not perfect...I can suggest plenty of improvements

[danhackley]

Any progress here Peke?

[Eyal]

1. In the album art window, (...) Currently, one needs to right-click on the album art to see a list of different images.

Try the scrolling wheel on the mouse.

[danhackley]

The scrolling wheel on the mouse does not allow one to see a list of the available images either. It merely scrolls between them.

My point was that it would be nice to see what covers were available at a glance. For one, this would avoid having to scroll over/right-click the cover unnecessarily.