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In playlist, album art missing


RBEmerson

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In a playlist that uses albums with existing album art, the art isn't displayed. Attempting to define album art for the playlist, "Data not available" is displayed briefly. Why is that, and is there a fix or work-around?

 

Build: 875-876

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Playlists don't contain albums, only a series of individual tracks. You can define artwork for a playlist by using the three-dots menu icon > Album Art, and PA will try to find some suitable online images based on the playlist name (or you can manually pick something from your device's Gallery). You can do the same for any track in a playlist, optionally choosing to use the selected artwork for the overall Playlist too. Could you elaborate on what you are trying to do?  

Andre

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Yes, that is what already happens for Playlists. By default, PA will pick artwork to be used for a Playlist from one of the songs contained within in it. The 'Zap' logo is only used when no cover art is available (for example if none of the songs have embedded artwork, and nothing has been matched online by the auto-download process). Or you can select artwork manually if none of the individual covers describe the entire playlist.

For example:

image.png

 

Could you explain what part of this process is not working for you?

Andre

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The work flow is:

Current screen is "Zap", title to play (at bottom of screen) is from the playlist. Tap the ... choose album art and "No data".

Based on what you've said, I don't see a way to assign, at any point from choose playlist to play track, a default background. 

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I'm not sure about doing screen grabs from the phone. 

If I tap the playlist and try to apply album art at that point, I can select the art. When I tap a specific track in the playlist, I"m back to the zap screen. In short, nothing seems to associate art with tracks. Almost all of my lists have the same artist, with tracks in the desired order. I thought artist art, at least, might appear. 

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Songs can have their own cover artwork, as can playlists (normally a playlist's would initially be based on the embedded artwork from one of contained tracks).

If a song is properly tagged (i.e. with its Title and Artist name, and possibly an Album name too) but contains no artwork image, then PA can also auto-search the internet for appropriate artwork to match the tags, if you have got that feature enabled.

If there is no artwork assigned for the current song (which has nothing to do with playlists) then you will see that 'Zap' image as a placeholder on the player screen. You can long-press on the Zap/cover area in the main player screen and select Album Art to choose some artwork for that track, which should then be visible in the player screen and in any lists you add it to.

It's hard to offer much more advice without screenshots (all devices should be able to take a snap of the screen, but the method varies a bit by manufacturer - Samsung for example you can palm-swipe in from one side of the screen, or press the Volume-Down and Power keys at the same time) 

Andre

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Assume the tracks are properly tagged, PA goes to the Internet for each track in a playlist?? One of my gripes (posted earlier under feature request let the user assume more control over searches) is some search results produce artwork 100% irrelevant (dunno how that happens). Going to the internet for, in some cases several hundred tracks, is ...um... odd. Particularly if the art is just flat wrong. 

Is there no way to simply refer to the existing album art associated the track's album of origin?

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Poweramp doesn't care what's in a playlist, it's just a list of audio files that are already contained in the Library database. If a particular song already has embedded artwork, PA will use that cover anywhere that it needs to display that song (including in a playlist). If there isn't any embedded artwork, which would result in a song showing the 'Zap' icon, then PA can search online to see what it can find - assuming you have that option enabled in Settings > Album Art. If you are not happy with what it happens to find (and I agree that fuzzy logic in search engines can sometimes throw up some strange results!) just use the manual download feature for that track. The best and most accurate answer is to have the correct artwork embedded in each song file in the first place though.

When you add songs to a playlist, normally the artwork for one of those contained songs gets used to represent the overall list. Again, you can override that choice using the three-dots icon > Album Art. The title wording for the playlist will be used as the search criteria (again, PA has no control over the suitability or otherwise of the images returned by the external source) or you can select something manually from your device's Gallery. That artwork is only used in the Playlist's category view and list header though, the individual songs shown in the list and the player screen still use their own artwork.

Andre

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33 minutes ago, RBEmerson said:

Is there any way to get to the albums' artwork?

Tracks use the same cover artwork however you display them - in Albums, Folders, Artists, Genre, etc or in Playlists.

Images are cached (such as for downloaded artwork) within the folder /Android/data/_com.maxmpz.audioplayer/

Andre

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Sorry, by "get to them" I mean assume I have an album with no artwork, or the internet search didn't produce anything useful. I have a useful image of the artist, and I want to apply that to the album with no artwork. Or... apply that same artist's image so it's used in the playlist. 

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To assign artwork to an album which doesn't have any images saved in the files, go into that album view and choose a track. Long-press on the missing artwork area in the player screen (or use the three-dots menu) and select 'Album Art' (or do it from the list). Pick your favourite image from the auto-downloaded selection, or select from your own Gallery if you have some other image file that you'd prefer to use. That image will then be applied to the current song and any others within the same album (assuming that all the relevant tags are present in the files of course). If your tags are missing or not generating many matches, you can try enabling Settings > Album Art > Also Search by Title/Filename.

This is only an internal Poweramp database connection by the way, the actual audio files themselves won't be modified. I often use www.albumartexchange.com to find better images, which seems to have almost everything that I search for (you need to create a free account to get non-watermarked images). I much prefer to search on my PC and insert the artwork that I find directly into my music files, so my chosen artwork is then available anywhere I might want to listen, not just in one phone app. Auto-downloading images within one app is only an attempted fix for missing data that really ought to be in files in first place.

Andre

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