by joebob2006 on Sat Jul 21, 2007 5:34 am
what i suspect is the issue here, is that somehow the album art is not properly associated with each song in a way that Xlobby can recognize. perhaps it is failing to find any album art and is resorting to spidering for art itself.
it is possible, (though unlikely) that your program stores all its information in its own database instead of actually storing it in the individual id3 tags of each file (this would allow it to operate much faster, but it would also essentially nullify the purpose of the program). if this is the case then you should check your Mediamonkey settings for an option to write all data directly to the id3 tags.
Lets assume it does not do that.
As cmhardwick says, xlobby searches for album art in the same folder as the music files it is to be associated with, it simply does a raw search for any image files in the folder. this can be interesting if there is more than one image file present in that folder.
If, as cmhardwick asks, you store all your music in one mass folder instead of individual folders by album, then I would strongly suggest you begin the long process of puting each album in its own separate folder by album. It will really pay of as your collection continues to grow.
if you already do that, then check your Mediamonkey settings to see if it has an option of storing the album art as "folder.jpg" in each folder. Not only will this make your collection look great when viewed with the thumbnail option in a file browser, but it will make searching for the album art much easier for Xlobby. Also check that the art is not being stored in some wierd format, stick to jpg, gif, or png.
also, if you already do all of that i only have one more thought: have you ever used Windows Media Player to organize music or even just to get some data or album art? if so, WMP puts hidden files for album art in the folder and does various things to associate them with the music they go to. WMP may have produced incorrect album art, but since it is hidden you dont know about it. Xlobby sees all. To check for this kind of problem, enable "show hidden files" and "show system files" in Windows Explorer, then wander through your music folder(s) and see if any new files (with fadded looking icons) are there. for simplicity (and if you are confidant that you know what you are doing) i would suggest you delete any of these hidden image files. dont delete anything like "thumbs.db" or anything else; windows will either freak out or just hate you.
you will probably figure it out without having to go through all of this, but i just like being thorough (though im sure i missed something here).
