Displaying pictures of artists?

[Lakorus]

Hello Simon,

is there a way to show thumbnails for the artists in the home container? If not, do you have any plans to include this option?

Best regards
Lakorus

[simoncn]

(07-03-2015 21:02)Lakorus Wrote:  Hello Simon,

is there a way to show thumbnails for the artists in the home container? If not, do you have any plans to include this option?

Best regards
Lakorus

This isn't possible and I don't currently have any plans to add it.

[audio_elf]

(08-03-2015 00:03)simoncn Wrote:  

(07-03-2015 21:02)Lakorus Wrote:  Hello Simon,

is there a way to show thumbnails for the artists in the home container? If not, do you have any plans to include this option?

Best regards
Lakorus

This isn't possible and I don't currently have any plans to add it.

Simon, are you suggesting this isn't possible with a UPnP server generally, or just saying it's not possible in MinimServer? I've just noticed that the Plex server provides artist thumbnails while browsing and actually liked the appearance.

Is there no possibility of providing a thumbnail / images facility - perhaps having a "images" folder; then a "Artists" sub folder and match a .jpg / .png to the artists name. With the same working for Composers and Conductors, etc? Could also then add an image for "Artists" browse tree so that all the icons aren't identical.

It would obviously be up to the user to manually add the images.

[simoncn]

(27-03-2015 14:37)audio_elf Wrote:  Simon, are you suggesting this isn't possible with a UPnP server generally, or just saying it's not possible in MinimServer? I've just noticed that the Plex server provides artist thumbnails while browsing and actually liked the appearance.

Is there no possibility of providing a thumbnail / images facility - perhaps having a "images" folder; then a "Artists" sub folder and match a .jpg / .png to the artists name. With the same working for Composers and Conductors, etc? Could also then add an image for "Artists" browse tree so that all the icons aren't identical.

It would obviously be up to the user to manually add the images.

I meant that it isn't possible with MinimServer.

MinimServer provides special treament for album art images but it doesn't provide special treatment for any other types of images (artists, composers, conductors, orchestras, soloists, instruments, etc.)

Previous requests for this capability have been for the specific case of artist images. I don't feel comfortable with making some special provision for artist images without also enabling this for other types of images.

It's reasonably straightforward to locate album art images because these are either embedded in the album's track file or located in the same folder as the album's tracks. For other images, this is much more difficult because they would need to be separate files that might be located anywhere in the user's library.

Requiring these images to be located in an "images" folder (presumably directly underneath the content directory) would make it easier to implement this feature. As the user can specify up to 8 content directories, this would require searching up to 8 different locations but this would be more manageable than searching the entire library.

A slight difficulty with this approach is that some artist (etc.) names might not be valid filenames, so some kind of aliasing scheme would need to be devised.

These images would be shown in the MinimServer index when making selections such as Artist > The Beatles or Composer > Beethoven. They would not be visible anywhere else.

I would be interested to hear the views of other users about whether they would find such a scheme useful.

[stampie]

I do see how this could be fraught with difficulty in getting coverage for 100% of scenarios.

One alternative might be to be very prescriptive in what Minimserver will work with. We all know that album art (if not embedded) only works if the image file is named Folder.jpg (+ specified allowed variants); so why not take the same approach, such as folderartist.jpg must be in the containing folder. This could be extended to cover further roles as required.

In terms of benefits, it would certainly improve the look when scrolling through artist lists in control points, but doesn't have any real functional benefit that I can think of.

Personally, I think there are other improvements that are on Simon's list that would be of more benefit.

Thanks for all your hard work Simon
Nick

[simoncn]

(27-03-2015 21:45)stampie Wrote:  I do see how this could be fraught with difficulty in getting coverage for 100% of scenarios.

One alternative might be to be very prescriptive in what Minimserver will work with. We all know that album art (if not embedded) only works if the image file is named Folder.jpg (+ specified allowed variants); so why not take the same approach, such as folderartist.jpg must be in the containing folder. This could be extended to cover further roles as required.

The problem with this is that there is no "containing folder" for an artist (unlike an album).

Quote:In terms of benefits, it would certainly improve the look when scrolling through artist lists in control points, but doesn't have any real functional benefit that I can think of.

Personally, I think there are other improvements that are on Simon's list that would be of more benefit.

Thanks for all your hard work Simon
Nick

Thanks for the feedback!

[Lakorus]

Hello Simon,

as I opened this thread, I would appreciate such an option very much, though it's mostly a cosmetic thing. For me, a solution similar to the one you have for album art would be perfect:

For example:
First look into the MP3's current folder if there is a jpg that is named exactly like the artist is.
If there isn't any, use the album art in the artist's first album (alphabetical).

Best regards
Lakorus

Edit: Obviously, I was a bit slow in typing. Stampie covered it pretty well!

[simoncn]

(27-03-2015 22:05)Lakorus Wrote:  Hello Simon,

as I opened this thread, I would appreciate such an option very much, though it's mostly a cosmetic thing. For me, a solution similar to the one you have for album art would be perfect:

For example:
First look into the MP3's current folder if there is a jpg that is named exactly like the artist is.
If there isn't any, use the album art in the artist's first album (alphabetical).

Best regards
Lakorus

Edit: Obviously, I was a bit slow in typing. Stampie covered it pretty well!

Thanks for this feedback!

An artist would typically have tracks in a large number of folders. If each of these folders specifies a different image for the artist name, it isn't clear which image MinimServer should use.

It also isn't clear how to extend this to support other image types such as Composer, Conductor, Soloist, Genre, Instrument, etc.

Because of issues like these, this approach would be more difficult to implement than the design that I described.

[audio_elf]

Simon...

This is a bit me thinking allowed but here goes.

I was imagining you could have a scinereo where within the <music root> was a folder called images of the structure...
<music root>
.... Images
........ Artists
............ Artist1.jpg
............ Artist2.jpg
............ Artist3.png
............ Artist4.jpg
............ Etc
........ Composers
............ Composer1.jpg
........ <other indexed tags>

(Does that make sense)

It would be up to the end user to create the files named correctly.

It would be nice if we could have (for example) an Artists.jpg file which would show up in the root rather than the generic folder logo.

[simoncn]

(28-03-2015 02:17)audio_elf Wrote:  Simon...

This is a bit me thinking allowed but here goes.

I was imagining you could have a scinereo where within the <music root> was a folder called images of the structure...
<music root>
.... Images
........ Artists
............ Artist1.jpg
............ Artist2.jpg
............ Artist3.png
............ Artist4.jpg
............ Etc
........ Composers
............ Composer1.jpg
........ <other indexed tags>

(Does that make sense)

It would be up to the end user to create the files named correctly.

It would be nice if we could have (for example) an Artists.jpg file which would show up in the root rather than the generic folder logo.

It does make sense. I would change the Artists and Composers folders to Artist and Composer so that they match the tag names exactly.

For the root icon, I think it would make sense to use the special filename Artist.jpg or Artist.png. This shouldn't conflict with the name of any real artist.