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Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

Last post 03-07-2007, 2:53 PM by slig. 7 replies.
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  •  03-04-2007, 8:59 AM 173579

    Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    I have all of my Music covers are in high quality of 500x500, which is a very clear, detailed cover. but when i go into VMC and im in "Now Playing" the cover is very bad compared to the one i orginally had, here is a screen shot: [the VMC shot is to SCALE with the cover on left]

  •  03-04-2007, 10:54 AM 173611 in reply to 173579

    Re: Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    Is your coverart embedded?

    If so WMP11 will have extrcated it and saved a 200x200 Folder.jpg image which will be crap quality.

    ... and simply using a hires folder.jpg image doesn't work properly in VMC as it displays for the 1st track only. This is a known bug (apparently)

    for more info see http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/155576.aspx

    bottom line it sucks and we may have to wait to SP1 for a satisfactory fix.

    However if you re-rip all your CDs in WMP11... (it adds new WM tags to identify albums)
    Delete all the automatically retrievied artwork and caches
    replace with folder.jpg images in the appropriate folders.

    Then things can be sweet.... but thats alot of work...

     

     

     

  •  03-04-2007, 11:27 AM 173623 in reply to 173611

    Re: Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    yup I "paste" the cover art ... so if WMP11 saved the art to 200x200, even after they "fix" it I will have to go and re-"paste" all of my covers that were placed before the fix.

    And i am not planning to re-rip all of my 1,500 songs ... i guess ill be stuck with crappy 200x200 for now... ohh and microsoft is getting another "bug" report today ;]

    ohh and i dont do no more "folder.jpeg" , i used to in XP but it was too much work for vista... and its not required isnce the acover art is saved as "AlubnArr***************" i just "paste" the cover art inside of WMP11

  •  03-04-2007, 3:51 PM 173666 in reply to 173623

    Re: Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    Yup... you will have to do it all over again....

    Having messed around with this a bit what seems to happen is...

    1) Pasting or dragging artwork onto WMP11 does not embed the artwork in the MP3 files but creates 200x200 Folder.jpg and AlbumArt**** files. Regardless of the quality/size of the orginal image it gets scaled down to 200x200 and looks crappy. This is NOT a bug but is how MS wants it to work.

    2) Using the advanced tag editor in WMP11 to embed cover art into the actual MP3 files also resizes the image to 200x200 before actually embeding the art. Again this is how MS wants this to work and does not consider it a bug.

    3) Using a 3rd party tool such as Mp3Tag to embed artwork will add the artwork at its orginal size without any resizing. However, when WMP11 scans and builds the library it will extract the image and resize as a 200x200 file named, as in point 1. It also create a cache with 200x200 images in the WMP11 artwork cache which it will use in preference to the actual image in the file. By deleteing the cache and the created albumart and folder files you can force VMC to use the actual embeded artwork, but i find that it is not displayed when the track starts playing but only if you skip back and forth between tracks... although others have not seen this behaviour.

    4) Using Folder.jpg images created by yourself should work but doesn't... this is a bug and will be fixed at some point. But will only help those who prefer the manual folder.jpg creation method.

    5) Ripping with WMP11 works perfectly at this time, and although it does create 200x200 files these can be replaced with files of your own and will still continue to work. (Although media center artwork cache needs to be cleared before the your new files will be used.)

    All in all, not very satisfactory... MS has a fixation with 200x200 images which look crap, add to that the fact that WMP11 does not embed the artwork that you tell it to without first rezing it MS have kinda bodged the whole artwork thing (IMHO)

      

  •  03-04-2007, 4:32 PM 173671 in reply to 173666

    Re: Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    TNX for investigating on this ... if this isnt a bug and M$ wants it like this..there has to be a way to pass/change it. Right now i cant but when i can i will look for a solution, in the meantime  I ask if someone could, could you please make [if possible] a patch to allow orginal sized art work, instead of resizing it to 200x200. also this could be just to change some settings/ or registry ... THNKAS A LOT!

    any help appriciated

    --slig--

  •  03-05-2007, 4:48 PM 173952 in reply to 173671

    Re: Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    Does any1 have an idea on how to change the "resize" size that the artwork is being resized into?

     

    thanks

    --slig--

  •  03-06-2007, 4:44 PM 174236 in reply to 173952

    Re: Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    As for as I could go so far is that Rezizing is "hard-coded" ... its confirmed that there isnt anything in registry that can help, feel free to look at it ;]

    So as I said before, THERE IS NO WAY TO HAVE "HD QUALITY" images ... only when you consider 200x200 to fit in HD category ;/

    SO IT REALLY SOMEONE FINDS A "POSSIBLE" WAY or HAVE AN IDEA PLEASE POST AND YOU WILL be genious!, even a hint is a huge step....THANKS FOR EVEN READING THIS ;]

  •  03-07-2007, 2:53 PM 174458 in reply to 174236

    Re: Big Cover Art = Bad Quality in VMC

    One great microsoft MVP, Ian [The Media Center Show, visit his community:  http://thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/ and discuss this topic @  http://thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/forums/2344/ShowThread.aspx#2344] is offering to find a way to "rise" the resizing size with help of other MVP and us, users so please if you could please comment with tips and offerings to help ;]

    again and again, thanks to everyone looking and helping

    --slig--

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