MM5 Uncontrollable Selection of Album Art From Metadata

[JXABC]

Not sure whether bug or feature request. Windows 11 version. I only use artwork from embedded track metadata tags, 1 image per track (not auto-tag lookup nor folder images). With MediaMonkey 3 & 4, the album artwork is from the track artwork of the first listed track, which is manageable (my tracks within an album may have different artwork images from each other). However, with MediaMonkey 5 (currently 5.04.2692), it appears to be somewhat correct, but as soon as a Rescan is done, album artwork selected by MM5 chooses some other track artwork (not the first listed) and cannot be fixed even after deleting all entries from MM5 and rescan.

The view I use is Album, sorted by Album Artist, My albums can contain a mix of related Podcasts, Music, Music Video (some with all three, or two, others just one type). The appearance achieved with MM3 & MM4 is Album Artwork display in the leftmost column, and selecting any one of its tracks show the track artwork (e.g., cover image from the Released single, or Video Screen Capture, or whatever) in the Selected Window on the right. Inability to specify or determine how MM5 chooses which track metadata art ruins this view completely. I tried different approaches including:
- which track is first or last
- which track is scanned is first or last
- deleting the other tracks (retaining the desired track with the proper artwork for Album), and re-scanning the others back.
- deleting the track that MM5 used for Album art
- Image type specified for the various track artwork
- deleting all entries in the Library and re-scan them back
- Manage database - Rebuild database
- Checkbox "Update file info from tags when rescanning files, cleared checkbox Only for files with changed timestamp or size
None of these approaches worked.

[Lowlander]

It sounds like you set MMW4 to Selected, but MMW5 to Playing, maybe?

In no MediaMonkey can you choose what Artwork will be cached for an Album. Generally all files on an Album would use the same Artwork (cover), thus this normally works really well. When you use different Artworks for different files on the same Album there is little that can be done as it's not designed to be used in that way.
Do you have Podcasts, Music Videos on the same Album?

[JXABC]

The Album list view (Show Art with Details) I use in MMW4 is to include everything associated with the Album (various songs directly off the released Album, song version from the released single(s) of one or more of those songs, related music videos, concert clips, etc.). I add a dummy Podcast MP3 entry (0.00 seconds), listed first, which contain the Album Artwork image for the Album; the other tracks may have the same image, or cover image of the released single, video screen capture image, movie poster image (if theme song), etc. For example think of an instrumental album of movie themes, where Album artwork is the music album cover, and each track's own Artwork is the movie poster of that movie.

This is the MMW4 view mentioned in my original posting, with the album first entry's Artwork used as Album Artwork in the leftmost Column "Artwork" (and Column 2 with "Summary", Column 3 with track "Title", etc.), and the currently selected track's Artwork + lyrics showing in the Selected window on the far right sidebar window.

I wanted to upgrade to MMW5, but MMW5 thus far refuses to choose the Album artwork (displayed in Album list view Column 1) in any consistent manner that I can figure out.

[JXABC]

Further to my example of instrumental album of movie themes, in addition to viewing individual artwork of Selected track, on playback the "Now Playing" window shows artwork of the specific track currently playing (the associated movie poster of that track), not the same boring Album cover for every one of its songs.

[JXABC]

Another example of why I want individual track artwork is an instrumental album of Beatles songs, or an original Beatles album containing multiple hit songs, each track shows the artwork of the released singles cover, not the parent album artwork. Track artwork is the same as the album artwork only for those songs not released as a single, or in some cases for singing albums, different photos of the performing artist per track rather than the album cover image.

[Lowlander]

Are you saying that playing a file with Preview set to Playing it doesn't show that files Artwork?

[JXABC]

No,

Point 1
I am saying there are many reasons (good reasons from my perspective), why a track has its own unique artwork that is different from its parent Album cover. Thus my earlier examples of movie posters, artist photos, etc. DLNA playback shows the artwork from each playing track, not their parent album cover (I don't want the same album image shown for a multitude of its songs during playback on MM nor DLNA nor the Plex Media app etc., thus each track contain unique artwork).

Point 2
The desired MMW4 Album Summary view of the tracks in Point 1, including an Artwork column and Summary column, and sorted by Summary, the image shown in the Artwork column is from one of its tracks, which I call the Album Artwork (even though there is no such metadata field). In MMW4 I can control WHICH track's Artwork in metadata is used as the Album Artwork (dynamically the first listed track). By default MMW4 dynamically list Podcast entries of the album first, hence I use a dummy (0.00 sec) MP3 file as the album art Placeholder.

Point 3
In MMW5 the Summary column cannot be sorted, so I sort by column Album Artist instead. The image displayed in column Artwork is not based on on the first listed track, but from a MMW5 cache somewhere that remembered what that Album image is from when the Album was first created (and perhaps superseded later under some circumstances). The steps to create this view is:

3a) execute Manage Database -- Clear database

3b) scan in only the PC source folder containing the Placeholder MP3 entries, as type "Podcast". This establishes the initial set of "Album Art". These entries are set with the required Album and Album Artist, blank Title, blank Artist, Track# "x". The blank Title and blank Artist is for a cleaner appearance in the listings, distinct from my normal music entries. Track# with the single char x cause MMW5 to list them first (MMW5 does not default Podcast entries first).

3c) scan in the PC source folders containing normal MP3 or FLAC music files, as type "Music". The reason why previous Placeholders are set as Podcast is MMW5 appear to retain the previous "Album Artwork" is my added Music files will not supersede the previous Podcast "Album Artwork" in the vast majority of cases (less than 1%). If my Placeholder type was "Music", there is a MUCH higher % where one of the newer Music entries in the Album replaces previous "Album Art". Don't know why Podcasts take precedence and why a handful (1%) of Music files (and consistently the same ones) still supersede anyways.

3d) scan in the PC source folder containing videos, as type "Music Video". These music video tracks WILL ALWAYS replace the Album Art of Podcasts, UNLESS there are already Music entries already in existence in the Album, which is why I apply step 3c) Music before 3d) Music Videos.

It makes some difference (for the worse) if I tried making the Placeholders as Music Video, or Video, or Video Podcast, etc.

The described MMW5 behavior above is very complex vs. MMW4, currently not 100% reliable, and presumably unsupported in MMW5 and can change in future releases.
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Haven't written all this up here, I decided to try a few more approaches with MMW5, and finally found a solution which appears to work consistently. I set all my Placeholder entries with Track# 0 (rather than # x), and all music tracks as Track #1, and all music video tracks as Track #101. After executing Manage database - clear database, I scan in the Placeholders, Music, Music Videos in different sequences and it seems to work 100% of the time for what I want. Without scanning in the Placeholders, the MMW5 chosen artwork appears to be based on alphanumeric order of the Title field (first entry of apha-numeric order), regardless of the value in the Track# field, however it must have a value in the Track# field to be included in the Title sort. My previous usage of "x" in the Placeholder Track# field works in the views, but must have been treated as a null (blank) value during Scan processing. Now with a Placeholder having Track #0 and a blank Title field (first in alphanumeric sort of Title), the Placeholder Artwork is consistently appearing as the image in column Artwork. Some other Scan processing logic must be kicking in to (randomly?) select artwork if all Track# fields are blank, but that is not critical to me now.

So thanks for reviewing these Posts, which prompted me to try some more approaches. Hopefully future MMW5 releases do not change this re-scanning logic. To be clear, I am using Media Monkey Gold 5.0.4.2692