Comments
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Greg Hurrell
Marking as ASSIGNED.
And for reference, here is the customer email that prompted me to open this entry in the database:
The reason of my writing today is an annoyance that's somewhat growing bigger by the day, namely,
the two folders Synergy keeps to store album covers: the album covers folder and the temporary album covers folder. First, I don't quite understand why two folders are needed.
The system works the way it does for historical reasons. Synergy had album cover support before iTunes did, so it has always had an "Album Covers" folder in which it stored covers downloaded from Amazon. When iTunes 4 came out (with album cover support), Synergy continued to use the covers it had already downloaded, but if there was no downloaded cover, it would try to get art from iTunes. It stored a copy of this art in the album covers folder for better performance (it's quite an expensive operation to retrieve art from iTunes via AppleScript), but at the cost of disk space. This is how it works to this day, basically searching in this order:
1. Look for art in ~/Library/Application Support/Synergy/ 2. Ask iTunes for art 3. Search Amazon for art
The fact that there are two folders is actually an improvement to the original system (in which all art went in the "Album Covers"). Under the new system, downloaded art gets stored in the "Album Covers" folder. Art borrowed from iTunes goes in the "Temporary Album Covers" folder. This folder is automatically disposed of each time you quit Synergy, so the duplication of art from iTunes is no longer a problem. Another improvement that was introduced at the same time was the use of JPEG as the preferred file format, which results in smaller files than the Cocoa default (TIFF) format.
Now, I know, these complaints have to do with Amazon and the way Synergy retrieves information
and that there is the option to switch off album covers in the floater and stop retrieving files from the Internet. Which is, you will agree, less nice to look at. The suggestion I'd like to make is the following: why not have a choice to switch off the retrieval of album covers from the Internet and show, if available, the artwork associated with the file inside iTunes?
There are currently three options:
1. No graphic 2. Synergy icon 3. Album cover
I think the best solution would be to replace those three options with
the following:
1. No graphic 2. Album cover (from iTunes) 3. Album cover (from Amazon)
Or, better, the artwork that is, if any, embedded in the mp3-file itself?
In theory, if the artwork is correctly embedded in the file, then iTunes will provide it to Synergy. (It should already be doing so, because Synergy does ask iTunes for art when it doesn't already have art on the disk).
But, as it stands now, I'm left with a) two growing folders of rubbish artwork or b) no artwork in my
floater.
Technically speaking, you're left with one growing folder, because the temporary folder is automatically deleted at the end of each session. There's absolutely no reason why you should have to go without art in the floater. If you've got all the art embedded in your mp3s, delete the incorrectly downloaded art and Synergy will ask iTunes for art, which means it will use the art that you've embedded.
Also of interest to you may be bug #8:
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Paul Kazmercyk
I strongly second the motion for this request for exactly the same reasons as the original requester.
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Greg Hurrell
- ** Bug 356 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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Greg Hurrell
Changing assignment to reflect my new email address.
https://wincent.dev/a/news/archives/2006/05/change_of_email.php
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patrickjoseph
I would also love to see this feature added. Specifically for the inclusion of podcast where you know it won't have a cover, though Synergy may make some word matches and give the podcast a cover anyway.
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Greg Hurrell
(In reply to comment #5)
I would also love to see this feature added. Specifically for the inclusion of podcast where you know it won't have a cover, though Synergy may make some word matches and give the podcast a cover anyway.
Good point. It might be good to have options for selectively turning off searches for some sources (podcasts being an obvious choice). I'm not sure if that should be under a separate ticket though.
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Delysid
I also strongly support this feature request, since it's the request I just came to the Bugzilla site to make myself. My main reason is that I like to add the best quality album cover image I can find for a track, with a reasonable amount of searching (i.e. a minute or ten, depending on track obscurity).
By best I mean an optimal combination of image quality (clarity, colour, tone) and resolution (highest available to a max of 550 x 550, which is what I scale larger images down to before embedding in a track)
Even when Synergy finds the right album cover for a track, it's often not the best even among those easily found. If I'm right in thinking Synergy only searches Amazon for covers, there are many albums for which Amazon only has a 300 x 300 image, and usually it's not hard to find a better higher resolution alternative.
As Synergy works now, if I turn Album Cover Display on for the Floater, then Synergy will often find and embed album covers for new tracks before I get around to doing it myself. Trouble then is that it's hard to tell just from the little album cover in the lower left corner of iTunes whether the image is a measly 300 x 300 one automatically downloaded by Synergy, or a 550 x 550 (for example) I found myself.
So I've been leaving the Album Cover Display feature off in Synergy, to avoid this problem. But then I can't see all the lovely album covers I've already embedded in other files. This is frustrating for those who are album cover enthusiasts, who incidently are in no way anal or obsessive. I know you were thinking it!
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