Per track and per album cover

[Absinthequ]

I'm around 13000 songs and no crashing ever.

I would say it could be the types of phones you may be using may not have the memory to run a large scan. When an android maxes out ram/CPU it tends to kill the app or crashes. I'm running a Sony with octacore and 2gb ram for reference  

[null]

Just now, Absinthequ said:

I would say it could be the types of phones you may be using may not have the memory to run a large scan.

My moto e⁵ can most definitely do the scan.

 

Anyways Max helped me. The SD card was faulty, I checked with my PC. It's good to know that SD cards can do that. to a phone when they're old.

[TheFish]

I would like to add my interest in being able to separate song art from album art. After setting the album art, I cannot get just the song art back (clearing album art cache does nothing). I also,don't know why it doesn't check for a cover.jpg to use as album art separate to the embedded song art. Would anyone be able to help?

[andrewilley]

@TheFish Automatically downloaded artwork is stored in a folder called album_art, or one called selected_aa if you manually chose it. If you delete the matching JPG file(s) from that location, Poweramp will revert to using the original embedded images for a song or album - or it will try to download new cover artwork again if there isn't anything present. Those folders can be found on your local device storage in Android/data/com.maxmpz.audioplayer/files/ on Android 11 (and sometimes Android 10) or Android/data/_com.maxmpz.audioplayer/ (note the underscore) for installations on older versions of Android.

That said, I do agree that the cover art download screen would be a lot more helpful if it had a tickbox to indicate whether you want a new image to be applied to the whole of the current album, or just an individual track.

Andre

[Absinthequ]

I am someone who likes to use multiple covers in an album (especially songs that were released as radio singles with special artwork) just like Genius.com does. I'm also super OCD about seeing the right cover for the album as the thumbnail/placeholder.

Putting a jpg in "album_art" ensures you see the correct thumbnail for an album and I currently have 1648 jpg files in that folder. But, I'm finding it difficult to keep up with because Poweramp doesn't use the first song of the album like I originally thought, it seems based on the oldest file added to the library of that artist+album. Which causes you to delete all existing files for that album, full Rescan, send a song with the correct cover first and then do another full rescan. 

These are the scenarios I've ran in to:

Scenario #1: When a new single comes out and I add it to my phone it usually has a single cover. Then weeks/months later the album comes out and I add the rest of the album. Poweramp is stuck on that single artwork as the album thumbnail because it was the oldest song added to the library for that album.
Scenario #2: When a Flac/Hi-Res version of an album comes out and I decide to upgrade only a couple of songs from that album and for whatever reason I upgrade track 1 and not track 2 which has a single cover, after I do a full rescan to flush the songs that are missing from the library, now Poweramp sees track 2 as the oldest song of that album and shows the single artwork as the thumbnail.
Scenario #3: Changing random tags of songs from an album in Poweramp causing it to not be the oldest song anymore, do a full rescan at some point, now Poweramp sees a song with a single cover as the oldest song and changes the thumbnail.

It's a lot to keep up with to try to have the right cover as the thumbnail/placeholder of an album using multiple covers.. I think this is a good request for the option of folder.jpg/cover.jpg to be shown default as the thumbnail for the album like V2 used to.

[andrewilley]

I think the most robust answer is to embed artwork into the files in the first place. The auto-download feature tries its best for non-tagged files, but it's always going to be a backup option rather than the primary mode.

But that still doesn't help if you want to have individual images for each track, but also a separate overarching album cover.

Andre

[MotleyG]

3 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I think the most robust answer is to embed artwork into the files in the first place. The auto-download feature tries its best for non-tagged files, but it's always going to be a backup option rather than the primary mode.

But that still doesn't help if you want to have individual images for each track, but also a separate overarching album cover.

Andre

I agree with the embedded approach, especially @Absinthequ if your requirement approaches OCD levels.😀

But PA like most (all?) other players will only show one cover, even if several are embedded. Although strangely most show the first cover embedded, PA strangely shows the last one for some reason.

[Ash Roarshock]

On 7/10/2021 at 9:35 AM, MotleyG said:

I agree with the embedded approach, especially @Absinthequ if your requirement approaches OCD levels.😀

But PA like most (all?) other players will only show one cover, even if several are embedded. Although strangely most show the first cover embedded, PA strangely shows the last one for some reason.

I would suggest a tick box that allows you to choose which of the covers for that album to display as the main cover. But, I think the simplest answer is for Poweramp to show folder/cover.jpg that that file is in as the thumbnail cover for the album.

[andrewilley]

6 minutes ago, Ash Roarshock said:

But, I think the simplest answer is for Poweramp to show folder/cover.jpg that that file is in as the thumbnail cover for the album.

Only if you tidily organise your music in suitably named folders. A lot of people don't.

Andre

[MotleyG]

26 minutes ago, Ash Roarshock said:

I would suggest a tick box that allows you to choose which of the covers for that album to display as the main cover. But, I think the simplest answer is for Poweramp to show folder/cover.jpg that that file is in as the thumbnail cover for the album.

Versus and embedded cover that was already stored? How would that be better?

[Ash Roarshock]

On 7/24/2021 at 8:33 AM, MotleyG said:

Versus and embedded cover that was already stored? How would that be better?

I don't think you understand what we are taking about. We are taking about when you have multiple embedded covers in an album and Poweramp chooses the wrong one as the main thumbnail in album list. The only way to bypass the one Poweramp had chosen at main and still keep the individual different embedded covers is currently is to go deep into Poweramp folders and manually place a jpg. Versus having a tick box or folder.jpg like v2 used to. 

[MotleyG]

39 minutes ago, Ash Roarshock said:

I don't think you understand what we are taking about. We are taking about when you have multiple embedded covers in an album and Poweramp chooses the wrong one as the main thumbnail in album list. The only way to bypass the one Poweramp had chosen at main and still keep the individual different embedded covers is currently is to go deep into Poweramp folders and manually place a jpg. Versus having a tick box or folder.jpg like v2 used to. 

I understand fully, but you have suggested that besides embedded images that a manual download should be added as well. I was making the point that if someone already has embedded artwork, that should be the priority and not require Poweramp to even have to search externally. Assuming of course the embedded covers would already be the user’s preferred art.

Regardless almost all players, certainly in the mobile environment, can only show one cover even if they are embedded. Most that I have used tend to show the first saved image. For some technical reason, Poweramp shows the last image in the stack. I do agree that when there are multiple embedded images, the cover selector should show all of these and have a check box to choose the preferred one, that would be ideal. Only if there isn’t an embedded cover should PA then provide a web search and choice for additional cover choices.

[heidl]

Hello 

I just registered at the forum because I have the same problem with wrong album artwork, hoping to find a solution here.

I use embedded artwork exclusively and am extremely picky about it. Many of my albums have one or more individual tracks in which I've embedded a different artwork. Unfortunately, Poweramp sometimes picks these individual artworks to represent the album in the album view. By my logic, the artwork of track 1 should be used as the album artwork, but Poweramp apparently uses a different method and I wonder why? In the screenshots below, for example, it is track 2. I can't see any pattern to what PA is doing here and it's a bit of a lottery every time I update my media library with new covers.

 

I even tried @Absinthequ's hack from April last year where I put "Artist - Album" named JPGs in the album_art folder, but that doesn't work for me either (see screenshot).

 

I'm on a Samsung S8 with Android 10 and I wonder, since the original question is already over 1 year old, will this issue ever be addressed?

[andrewilley]

@heidl AFAIK, PA doesn't make any particular decisions as to which embedded artwork to use as an overall cover. It's probably related to the sequence in which the files get read in from the underlying storage, and each new image one overwrites the previous so the final one gets used?

If you are on Android 10 or 11 (and PA was installed on that version fairly recently, rather than gradually updated) the cache folder structure may be in the newer required folder format which does not use the underscored subfolder name, thus it might be Android/data/com.maxmpz.audioplayer/files/ . The older system would have been: Android/data/_com.maxmpz.audioplayer/ . The album_art subfolder is used for auto-downloaded images (which won't override all of the individual track covers, so this is the one you want to use) while and selected_aa is for manually downloaded files (which also overwrite individual embedded covers inside the album). Most special characters (brackets, exclamation marks, etc) need to be replaced with underscores in the image filenames - the naming system is designed for app use, not really for people. A FULL Rescan is a good idea after making manual changes to folder contents.

Andre

[heidl]

😃

Your hint of using underscores instead of the brackets in the filenames made the difference! It's actually working now and I'm finally, finally able to fix all incorrectly displayed album artworks.

Sure it'll be a grind, but my cover arts OCD will be pleased and I'll finally be fully pleased with Poweramp as a whole. 

THANK YOU GUYS 🥰

[andrewilley]

@heidl Glad you've got it sorted. A couple of characters can be used verbatim (dollar sign springs to mind) but most need to be changed to underscore.

Hopefully at some point Max will be able to add a tickbox to the Album Art download screen to indicate whether you want the newly-found image to be used for the Album view only, or also applied individually for every song in the album.

Andre

[jivemelon]

as someone whose only device for obtaining and using music is a phone running android 10 (with the notorious music metadata bug), being able to select per track cover art for singles in app would be spectacular. I've given up on trying to fix this issue on my own since I don't currently have a PC to edit the metadata properly and I'm not trying to source releases with the individual covers already imbedded. minor feature request but it'd be very convenient, so bump (if that's a thing here)

[andrewilley]

@jivemelon I agree it would be helpful for people who don't have access to computers/etc for the Download Cover Art screen to offer a tickbox option to apply the new image to either just the current track, or the whole current album.

Andre

[Eckless]

A little late to the party, but THANK YOU for the solution in this thread, of putting album arts in Android/data/com.maxmpz.audioplayer/files/ under album_art. Note that accessing this directory is getting more difficult with each Android iteration (on 12, I had to hook my phone up to my PC, but it worked).

I'm one of the types who has "albums" that are made up of multiple "CDs", each with their own art. I want the album art for each track to be that of the CD it's on, while the album art for the "album" in the album to be the main album, rather than using the art of one of the CDs. Putting each CD into a separate folder with its own album art, then moving the "album album art" to the album_art directory was exactly what I needed.

[Ash Roarshock]

I have found this becomes an ongoing process if not set up correctly in the beginning and it seems like the solution may be easy for the dev.

If a song was used as a single, I always embed that artwork. So if I only have one song from that album, I'll throw the album cover in the album_art Poweramp folder and a folder.jpg in that album folder (since I structure my folders by artist then album).

Sometimes a single will come out long before the album artwork and the rest of the album would get added later and it will always maintain the single artwork. I've found that Poweramp doesn't select the first track or at random. It's always the first file created for that artist+album. Which is sometimes the first track (if you uploaded the entire album at once and the filenames include numbers) or sometimes by track title (which depending on how the files are named, they are structured by title first). 

So if Poweramp is always selecting the artwork on those parameters, (the album art by the first file created for that album) it should be able to be recoded to be selectable rather than automatic. So by selecting any song in that album and checking a tick box to choose that embedded artwork as the album list view cover. Then maybe Poweramp embeds that selected cover into the album_art folder. Rather than have to upload an image into the Poweramp folders manually.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Ash Roarshock

[andrewilley]

6 minutes ago, Ash Roarshock said:

I've found that Poweramp doesn't select the first track or at random. It's always the first file created for that artist+album. Which is sometimes the first track (if you uploaded the entire album at once and the filenames include numbers) or sometimes by track title (which depending on how the files are named, they are structured by title first).

It would be the first item presented by the operating system in an unsorted directory request. Usually that would be the first item originally placed in a folder, but index table entries get reused as files get deleted and replaced so there's no way to predict with any certainty once there's more than one possible file present.

As mentioned previously, the safest way to do this is to embed the cover artwork within the tag data of each audio file, that way it will always be correct.

Andre

[Ash Roarshock]

That sounds like your opinion is everyone should use the main artwork for each song and that is the correct way due to limitations if the app. That answer kind of defeats the purpose of feature requests and dismisses this as a bug in the app.

Many people believe the artwork the band created for each song is the correct artwork for each song embedding, and the album artwork is the correct artwork for the album list view. It is after all an "album" of songs. Just like in a photo "album", you may have one photo on the cover and many different ones inside. I know many musicians and they consider themselves Artists, naturally. I have looked at how some of them have organize music on their phones and many of them insist on using single artwork in their albums. It takes away from the individuality of the art for each song to discard it.

Many places like Genius and Amazon Music are using single artwork (if exists) when viewing each song, and the main album cover on the album list page. Many people in the world have bought singles only and have never seen main album artwork and vice versa of course. The actual song artwork is just as important if not more important than having the correct song title, guest feature information, lyrics or composer information for many people.

Another good example is a soundtrack. If my favorite band has a song on a soundtrack and they created official artwork for that song and released it as a single. I really want to see the bands artwork when playing a song. But I really want to maintain that soundtrack info and the soundtrack cover in album list view. Especially if there is a second song on that soundtrack by another of my favorite bands. I really don't want the artwork of the one band showing for the other band in album list view. It really needs to be the correct artwork for each song.

One could easily argue lyrics, meta data, guest feature and composer info is not necessary. All you need is the main album artwork. But that's obviously just an opinion.

if you were using a photo album app, and it would never give you option to choose the correct cover photo and it always selected one file in the album that you had no control over, you would call this a bad design in the app. If your answer was to make every photo on the folder the same so the cover art was correct... Well you'd get laughed at. This isn't exactly the same as the main purpose is the audio. But the artwork should also be recognized as part of the package as it is up to the artist whether a song has it's own artwork or just uses the main artwork. You're really just trying to package the album as the artist intended and include all of the relevant info for each song.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Ash Roarshock

[andrewilley]

You were referring to each track in an album having its own artwork (which could be the case for compilation albums for example), which is what I answered.

As we have discussed previously, changing the artwork of a track within an album currently changes it for all tracks (after all, it is referred to as Album Artwork). But there is a Feature Request in place to allow changing only one track at a time, but we don't know when that might happen. To change the album art independently of track art, it would then be possible to use the Album Art feature in List Options at the album level, rather than at the songs level. But that's for the future I'm afraid.

Andre

[Ash Roarshock]

I think the last library/list feature that mattered to me was splitting Multiple Artists over a year ago. It seems the focus was on Android 12, streaming and audio features since then. I'm curious what the next big push is now that those appear to be stable.

I'm really hoping some of the long standing library/list feature requests will get implemented soon. Like customized library tier sorting, for example Genre by Artist-then album or even 2 tier sorting for song lists or files in folder view, hide artists with less than X number of songs, Year-Month-Day sorting, Embedded rating importation, etc. 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Ash Roarshock

[Karsten]

A workaround that works pretty well for me is to tie album cover art to a dummy mp3 file which is associated with the album.

This way I am not only able to maintain per track cover art and at the same time separate cover art for the dedicated album. It is also something that I can fully control from my PC, which hosts the master library for my mobile applications, like tablet/smartphone and car audio system. No need to patch anything on Android.

The dummy file is a 1-second silent MP3 file. See attachment.
Side note: for whatever reason, the workaround does NOT work with the 8 kbit/s silence files you can find eg on github.

Important condition, as per my observations:
For album cover art, Poweramp takes the first "track 1" file, in alphabetical order (in case there be more than just one track 1 file in the album).

I'm using file names starting with "00".
This works perfect for compilations with files in %track% - %etc% as well as %artist% - %title% notations.

These are the steps to include separate album cover art for an album with individual per-track cover art:

1. Copy the dummy file to the album folder.
2. Assign a name to the file so that it is first in alphabetical order.
3. Tag the file:
   - "Title":     determines how the file appears in a track (title) list
   - "Track":   must be "1" (or "01") !!!
   - "Artist":   the album artist displayed by Poweramp in album view
   - "Album":  album name, which makes this file actually part of the album
   - "Cover":  add the desired album cover art
4. Done!!
    

Side note, and request to Poweramp folks:

When applying this method to a big library with many different "Best Of" compilations, it is almost certain that you are making errors. 

I found it quite frustrating, that updating files from PC to Android, and re-creating the Poweramp library in many cases did not work to fix the problem. Poweramp seems to do caching, which survives the re-creation process.

The only method I found that worked safely, is

• to move an album folder out of the music library to a temp location
• wait until the change is reflected (album disappears)
• update the files in the temp location
• move the album back from the temp location into the music library

Would be great if next versions of Poweramp could avoid this tedious update process!