Jukebox home page

[Noddy]

I wanted to check if this was already possible before adding it to the feature request thread?

My mame cab hasn't been online for ages so I thought it was time for an update and clean up. I've updated my music and added album covers for albums (not artists) so it all looks sweat when in the BY ALBUM section and using thumbnail pictures. Of course when it switches to BY ARTIST or anything else it all gets messy again So I wanted to check if there is any way to set it so that BY ALBUM (and in thumb view) becomes the jukebox home page and is the first screen you see when you open it?

Also is it still impossible to edit and delete options from the taskbar?

I'm using an updated gameex and carbon and steel 2 layout.

Thanks

[AlphaUMi]

Interesting question, although I have no idea of a possible answer. Are you thinking: "why do you bother me writing here", don't you? .

Well, I would add a little question related to this: Where GameEx takes the album pictures from, exactly? From the ID tag, or from the Folder.jpg, if present?

[Noddy]

It doesn't detect the embedded artwork, which I realised after spending a few hours updating everything in WMP . When gameex downloads the covers it adds them to the gameex/media/album folder but because I have a lot of individual songs I made up some mixed albums (70s, 80s etc) using MP3Tag, remade all the music folders by album not artist and then added an album cover jpg to the album folders (jpg renamed to album).

[Adultery]

That's a shame that it doesn't read IDv3 tags. Also explains why my own mixes and tracks I produced refuse to display the artwork even though I embedded and tagged it by hand. Oh well, maybe in the future.

To answer your question, doesn't it 'remember' how you left it when you exit the jukebox? Or does it default to something else? I don't use this feature that often so I never really took note.

[Noddy]

I use the jukebox more than mame, I actually thought that it reverted back to songlist/text when you exit the jukebox but trying it again and it seems it does remember it as long as you don't leave gameex.

Restarting gameex sets it back to songlist/text.

That's not too big an issue (its all about keeping it simple for friends to use) but it's also why I asked about it being possible to edit the taskbar options. At the moment BY ALBUM doesnt show up on the home page, you have to select another option like artist/album (which is odd not just for lack of artwork but the writing is all vertical) and then BY ALBUM is a taskbar option. If I could edit the taskbar to hide options like genre,changeview, artist/album then people notice and use the BACK button a lot more and I'd get a lot less "What did I just do?" questions when I'm chasing after kids or sitting on a good poker hand .

[Adultery]

I fully understand. However what you're trying to do isn't possible at current, so you're gonna have to put in that feature request I'm afraid. Add reading IDv3 tags to that mix while you're on it.

I'll happily +1 this thread... not that I can do anything about it! LOL

[Noddy]

Thanks for the replies, that answers my main question which was if it was already possible and I just suck at setting up these things

Once I finish with the tidy up I'll add a post to the feature requests.

[AlphaUMi]

Thank you for your answer Noddy.

+1 for all your requests from me too, I completely agree with you.

[AlphaUMi]

Well... I'm almost sure (and I say almost) that the album pictures are downloaded directly from the internet. That's why sometimes they don't correspond to the ones I have in my folders and why sometimes I don't get any image even if I have one in my folder that WMP and other programs can see....

Now adjusting this thing, I'm going to create image files for GameEx, thanks again Noddy for letting me know how to look for files....

EDIT: It doesn't work following the scheme Band_My Album Name (Band). Something is wrong here. Additionally, checking the files in MEDIA\Albums proves that they aren't the same files. WMP resizes Folder.jpg to 200x200 when you scan your catalog. The images in the Album folder are often greater (which is better, obviously).

I would let this discussion prosecute before posting in the Request thread, suggesting the following:

1) Make GameEx check if you have a Folder.jpg in your folder (indeed!) and, if present, download it from the server anyway (it could be a better image)

2) Make GameEx check if you have a Folder.jpg in your folder and, if present in your folder but not in the server, use the one in your folder.

I hope I've been clear.

[Noddy]

WMP embeds the jpg I think, MP3Tag detects them but GameEx doesn't. And yeah WMP downloads all info even for legit albums which seems silly, not everyone is online all the time and I'm sure the titles etc used to come directly from the cd?

GameEx downloads to Media/Albums but for some reason it didnt work when I tried to add my own (could be something as simple as misspelling, I only tried a couple) but if there are any jpg's in the music folders these will override images in the gameex folder.

That's handy if your GameEx is usually online and you don't like an album cover GameEx found, if you delete it GameEx will replace it but put your choice of cover in the music folder and that one will always show regardless what's in gameex's Album folder.

I went looking through some old threads when I was trying to figure out the best way to do album covers and that's where I noticed someone say put them in the music folders and rename to album... Somewhere it said rename to folder but that never worked and calling them Album works fine. (No need to resize either, I've got everything from 150x150 to 600x600 depending on what I could find ).

At that point I didnt know what was where so thats when I used the MP3Tag actions to recreate my music folder completely, taking only the mp3s and leaving any jpgs behind (except whatever was embedded), I let GameEx find what it could (another one for the feature thread would be a scan all option rather than having to highlight each one) and then tided up the rest myself.

[AlphaUMi]

I have a Folder.jpg in every artist and album folder of my music library, but GE doesn't visualize them all, Windows and WMP do. I think it can be due to some sort of algorithm the jpg uses (not all the jpgs are the same). I had a similar issue in the past embedding the album image in the mp3s.

Do you say that renaming Folder.jpg in Album.jpg resolves the issue, so that GE read them all?

[Noddy]

Should do, all I know is when I tried to name them folder.jpg it kept saying there was already a file named folder but when I renamed them album, they showed straight away and like I said before they also seem to be gameex's first choice and will show instead of anything gameex downloaded.

[AlphaUMi]

Should do, all I know is when I tried to name them folder.jpg it kept saying there was already a file named folder but when I renamed them album, they showed straight away and like I said before they also seem to be gameex's first choice and will show instead of anything gameex downloaded.

all I know is when I tried to name them folder.jpg it kept saying there was already a file named folder:

This is because Folder.jpg are system files and are hidden by default. When you put a Folder.jpg in your album folder, this is the file used to preview that folder. Try to select Visualize --> Preview in Explorer and you'll see your folders filled with the album image. Very useful.

When you scan your library with WMP, it set those files (if found) to system files, and create a second file (smaller) called AlbumArtSmall.jpg., so they get hidden by default after a scan with WMP. If you unblock the option to hide system files you should be able to see them.

Album.jpg does not work the same way, actually it does nothing. It's just a file putted there. Neither Windows Explorer nor GameEx see it.

So I hope for a fix that make GameEx directly able to read the album folder for Folder.jpg if the file isn't found on the server.

[Noddy]

Thought I checked folder options for hidden files but will have to remember to check later. The files I renamed to album were just the covers I downloaded from google pics, sorry if I was wasnt clear about that.