MediaMonkey forum

I have made the comment before and it still stands, Album Art is important.
It is a fantastic record of artistic change over the decades, as well as, in the case of the vinyl albums, a great look and read.

I love seeing things happen on my screen when I am playing music, I like the album art to pop up, info' about the album and artist and visualisation activity as well.
Digital music is a multimedia experience.

Have you tried the MonkeyRok script? It gives nice details for the current playing song and includes album art.

I have tried MonkeyRok, but although I thought the coding was amongst the best I have seen on MM Scripts, I didn't like it's sliding motion which kept changing size.
I like a docked panel that stays put. I have looked at the code but even though the skins say "animated & basic" which I assume relates to the resizing motion, I can't get it to sit still!

What is changing size? The panel or something inside the panel?

Yep both. The actual panel expands or contracts depending on the amount of data available for each section to display. I would prefer the panel remained constant and a scroll bar pop up when there is more data than can be shown in the panel size as set by user.

I don't have that happening. But I have it occupy a complete verticle column in MediaMonkey without anything above or under it.

Anyway you're out of luck with this script as the developer has indicated lack of time. Anybody that wants to continue this script can continue developement though.

Hmmm, seems iTunes is doing the "Album Cover Art Game" as well.... it DOES work!

Here's a cut'n paste from Wired:

As Steve Jobs demonstrated Tuesday, users of iTunes 7 can now flip through their music libraries visually, using a new navigation scheme called Cover Flow.

Cover Flow is strongly reminiscent of the old CD jukebox down at the local dive bar, the one with the left and right buttons for flipping through a stack of CD covers.

Just as it's easy to see quickly what the jukebox has to offer, it's now easy to see what's been hiding in your ever-growing digital music collection.

As Jobs mentioned twice during his Tuesday presentation, a visual navigation scheme makes a big music collection much more accessible.

"It's a wonderful way to rediscover your music library," he said.

Note that Jobs said "rediscover." Just like everyone else, Jobs is out of touch with the music he already owns.

There's a bunch of music sitting there in his iTunes library that he's forgotten about, and even if he did scroll down the long, long list of albums, he'd probably miss some gems. But not if he has a picture of the album's cover.

Remember flipping through a big stack of cardboard LPs, looking for something to pluck out and listen to? Remember how fast you did that, and how quick your visual recognition was?

Notice the stuff in bold

It's relative. I have no memory of cover art so for me it's not a way to rediscover my music. For me auto-playlists are the way to rediscover music.

That doesn't mean that I don't want an album browser mode in MediaMonkey. The main question is how it will be implemented. It seems that having a simple version for WIN XP and lower and a advanced version for WIN Vista would be the best way to go. The new graphics capabilities should be able to create interesting solutions that still are fast enough to be usable.

@paulmt

By chance I happen to work with the guy who wrote the MonkeyRok plugin (he uses linux and amarok now which is why he stopped). I've asked him to bring the code in so I can take over the project I would be happy to add some functionality (like fixed heights). If you want anything else, leave a post and I'll see what I can do.

Richard

My main wish for MonkeyRok is that it would check the cache for album art for offline files.

How do you mean? It caches the resized images already?

Yes it does that part. But when it shows the artists albums it will not show that chached album art if the songs are offline (on disconnected external drive). As I normally work away from the external drive I always have the no album art image showing.

Just a comment to a post earlier.

MM choose Cover.jpg over Folder.jpg

I have wasted a lot of time with that issue. I could understand Cover.jpg being used if MediaMonkey was a multi platform software, but I cannot understand why cover is used on a Windows Only system.

Windows use Folder.jpg, and that's that.

DiddeLeeDoo wrote:Just a comment to a post earlier.

MM choose Cover.jpg over Folder.jpg

I have wasted a lot of time with that issue. I could understand Cover.jpg being used if MediaMonkey was a multi platform software, but I cannot understand why cover is used on a Windows Only system.

Windows use Folder.jpg, and that's that.

YEP, this ONE thing is my biggest gripe with MM. All my albums (which are seperated by folder) have album art named "folder.jpg". I just wish this would be fixed in MM 3.0. I can only hope.

The "folder.jpg" is useful when viewing in Windows Explorer through the thumbnail view.

I think this is probably a feature that we should be looking at for MediaMonkey 2.6 (i noticed that we have been doing a fair few bug fix cycles, which is a good thing, but I am waiting for some new features to dig my teeth into).

Although, we have to make sure that mm doesnt just become a WMP or iTunes clone, and that it still works effectively.

And remember, if you want something that *looks* pretty, by all means, go for WMP or iTunes, but if you want something with plenty of features and that actually works effectively, stay with MM. After all, organising music libraries is what MM does best.