I don't want album art

[cliveb]

In a reply to another posting, Dean said:


On Oct 10, 2007, at 10:19 AM, tyler_durden wrote:
> I can't
> figure out how you'll keep track of all the random feedback that comes
> from these forums, but maybe it's too early to worry about
> fine-tuning.

Now is the time.
I take that to mean we should start posting about minor issues.

Here's mine: I don't use album art, so I'd like to see an option to eliminate the default "music symbol" and "question mark" icons that get displayed in various lists. As well as getting rid of the pointless icons, it would free up some additional real estate for the text.

Obviously I appreciate that plenty of people use album art. I'm not suggesting getting rid of it - just make it optional.

[andyg]

On Oct 10, 2007, at 2:45 PM, cliveb wrote:

>
> In a reply to another posting, Dean said:
>
> dean blackketter;234132 Wrote:
>> On Oct 10, 2007, at 10:19 AM, tyler_durden wrote:
>>> I can't
>>> figure out how you'll keep track of all the random feedback that
>> comes
>>> from these forums, but maybe it's too early to worry about
>>> fine-tuning.
>>
>> Now is the time.
> I take that to mean we should start posting about minor issues.
>
> Here's mine: I don't use album art, so I'd like to see an option to
> eliminate the default "music symbol" and "question mark" icons that
> get
> displayed in various lists. As well as getting rid of the pointless
> icons, it would free up some additional real estate for the text.
>
> Obviously I appreciate that plenty of people use album art. I'm not
> suggesting getting rid of it - just make it optional.

Say what? One major feature of Jive is so you can view album art!
Why don't you like artwork?

[cliveb]

On Oct 10, 2007, at 2:45 PM, cliveb wrote:
Say what? One major feature of Jive is so you can view album art!
Why don't you like artwork?
Yes, I realise that lots of people like album art. Just could never see the point of it myself. Surely I'm not that weird in this respect? All I'm asking for is an option not to display it.

[nicketynick]

Hi Clive,

I think the main thrust of the question is: what do you find are the benefits of the JHB over the old remote? ie. do you use it much where you don't have the player display in your line-of-sight? Is menu navigation better? If you don't want artwork, is there possibly a Harmony remote that better meets your needs?
I do think that perhaps you are a fringe case in terms of user profile......(at least as far as the product development guys have been thinking)
An option to turn off artwork would really speed things up, so probably not a bad idea!

[OffColour]

I'm with Clive. Album Art has been pretty pointless ever since the demise of 12" vinyl :-)

[nicketynick]

I'm with Clive. Album Art has been pretty pointless ever since the demise of 12" vinyl :-)

I agree, and that's one of the reasons I was unhappy with CD's! I hated sticking CD's in a shelf or rack with only the spines visible. I always had a space-intensive flip rack or two around for 'current listening' CD's. Having started with LPs, music selection has always included the visual cues of cover art, especially when I wasn't sure what I wanted to listen to. Thus, with the SB3, I almost always gave up and just used Random Album. With the JHB, I am enjoying the return to picking music with visual cues.
Which reminds me, I'd like a 'Browse by Artist/Album' option, so that it wasn't absolutely necessary to drill down another level to browse albums (when browsing by artist)
Gotta run - hockey time!

[vrobin]

Yes, I realise that lots of people like album art. Just could never see the point of it myself. Surely I'm not that weird in this respect? All I'm asking for is an option not to display it.

put a 1x1 transparent folder.gif in every folders in your collection...?

[peterw]

Say what? One major feature of Jive is so you can view album art!
Why don't you like artwork?

1) Fetching album art is a pain. iTunes spent hours looking for art for my MP3s, and failed on over a third of my music. I've looked up a number of software packages for pulling album art (especially recently, in hopes that some day I'd have a JHB kit!), and it just looks like a major hassle.

2) Information density. I'd rather see more information about a recording or playlist than a postage stamp rendition of the CD cover. Images of elaborate LP cover paintings render poorly on small screens like the 5/8" square that my iPod's Apple firmware allocates. (It took me years to get used to LP art being reduced 80% for jewel cases!) Simpler covers like the photojournalist-style artist pictures that are often favored for record covers in the post-LP marketplace look better, but I don't really want to look at a tiny photo of the artist.

Having used iTunes 7.x to fetch some cover art for MP3s, I must admit that Cover Flow's mimicry of a CD jukebox is a nice way to browse a collection. I suspect my wife, who really missed flipping through her jewel cases when we only had one Squeezebox[0] (but doesn't miss that as much now that we have several Squeezeboxes), would really like a snappy art browse mode on a Jive remote -- if it could be as snappy as iTunes on a desktop computer. But most reports I've read suggest that cover art on the JHB is sluggish, and therefore probably not worth the hassle of extracting the iTunes images and fiddling with other software to find art for the hundreds of records iTunes didn't know. Perhaps if the final hardware has an SD slot or enough onboard storage to cache thumnails that would improve.

I'm with cliveb, nicketynick, and OffColour -- the Jive (and SC7 web) interfaces should offer an option to use layouts that ignore cover art. I started to suggest something like Apple's iPod Video firmware, which dedicates 40% of the horizontal song info space to a thumbnail if and only if there's art -- otherwise allocating the full width to textual info. But that wouldn't work well for UIs that list multiple recordings on different rows. So just let users choose a "no cover art" layout style.

...but here is an image idea for you -- associating pictures with playlists, especially if Jive could browse through playlists with images fairly quickly. I think I'd find it more appealing (and it would make the Squeeze platform feel more comfortable, familiar, and personalized) if I could do things like associate a snowy winter picture with a Christmas playlist.

-Peter

[0] No, I didn't hide her CDs. She just found the idea of the Squeezebox scrolling interface less desirable than handling physical CDs.

[tyler_durden]

I'm with Clive. Album Art has been pretty pointless ever since the demise of 12" vinyl :-)

Yeah, and just try separating seeds and stems in a CD jewel box...

TD

[Craig]

1) Fetching album art is a pain. iTunes spent hours looking for art for my MP3s, and failed on over a third of my music. I've looked up a number of software packages for pulling album art (especially recently, in hopes that some day I'd have a JHB kit!), and it just looks like a major hassle.


Have you tried Album Art Agregator? It has a 'get all' function and works very well.

Craig

[cliveb]

I think the main thrust of the question is: what do you find are the benefits of the JHB over the old remote? ie. do you use it much where you don't have the player display in your line-of-sight? Is menu navigation better?
There are two basic benefits of the JHB for me:

1. Browsing is much easier than with the standard remote. Being able to see several artists at a time on the screen is better than one at a time on the SB display. (In contrast, if I know exactly what I want to play, it's quicker to get there using the standard remote, especially via Lazy Search).

2. My eyesight isn't great and the SB display is about 14 feet from my listening position. Even with the display on max size, sometimes I have to squint a bit to read it. Having a display in the hand is easier to read.


If you don't want artwork, is there possibly a Harmony remote that better meets your needs?
I've never handled a Harmony remote, so couldn't say. But I get the impression that it isn't going to present the browse list on its screen like the JHB - if that's the case, then it's no better for me than the standard SB remote.

[adamslim]

Say what? One major feature of Jive is so you can view album art!
Why don't you like artwork?

I also don't use artwork. I have mostly classical music, and I split albums up into works; each work has its own folder, so even if I used it, I would need copies.

But most importantly, random pictures of some old fart just doesn't do it for me, so I'd rather have more screen space allocated to the text like Clive.

Simply the option of whether to show art in menus or not is all that's needed.

Adam

[peterw]

Have you tried Album Art Agregator? It has a 'get all' function and works very well.


After that encouragement, I tried it last night. It is better --and worse-- than iTunes. It's better in that it did find art for more records. It's worse in that it grabbed the *wrong* art for a number of records (iTunes didn't do that). It's worse in that it doesn't use ID3 tags, but depends on directory naming (and I don't have a simple SingleFolder/$artist/$album layout). It still didn't find art for a large number of albums. I spent hours double-checking its work and searching Google images -- and still I'm only half-done.

I just resynced my SVN checkout and restarted SC7, pinting at my small test collection, which includes MP3s with embedded art, traditional "cover.jpg" images (thanks to last night's work), and some free (yes, legal) downloaded singles. I don't like the look on the web UI. The covert art that's there is shrunk into tiny squares, and the musical note image for other recordings does not look good to me. When I select an album with a normal 300x300 image, all I see in the left pane is the cover art; I have to scroll to see the song listing. I downloaded extra software last night, spent hours using it, and still I don't like the result.

Please, give us an option to skip all the cover art decorations.

-Peter

[JimC]

I just resynced my SVN checkout and restarted SC7, pinting at my small test collection, which includes MP3s with embedded art, traditional "cover.jpg" images (thanks to last night's work), and some free (yes, legal) downloaded singles. I don't like the look on the web UI. The covert art that's there is shrunk into tiny squares, and the musical note image for other recordings does not look good to me. When I select an album with a normal 300x300 image, all I see in the left pane is the cover art; I have to scroll to see the song listing. I downloaded extra software last night, spent hours using it, and still I don't like the result.

Please, give us an option to skip all the cover art decorations.

-Peter

For SqueezeCenter, in the left pane you can use the drop-down menu to select "text only" to see the traditional SlimServer presentation of the album listing. The drop-down menu is on the right side of the "Album" header bar.

For the right pane, there's a toggle in the footer that allows you to turn off the cover art display.

Currently, there is no option within Jive's UI to disable cover art (at least there's none that I know of). It's something that's worth discussing, though, so I will speak with engineering today and see what they think about both the feature and the level of work needed to accomplish it. No promises, but I think the request is entirely reasonable.

-=> Jim

[pfarrell]

I like Album art, and love that it can be displayed on the JHB.
But, with the current version of SC - 13775 - Debian and Jive 1r687, its way too slow.

The "browse by album" which is my favorite takes forever to download the art. Without instrumentation, no idea what is slow, but it would probably help to have jhb.jpg in each folder already small for the JHB display.

More importantly, the lists need to be smarter, with caching, remembering where you are in the list, background fetching of art ahead of the scroll, etc.

I've been without the JHB for a couple of weeks with the chose player buglette, and I'm just back alive. It may be a bit better now than before, but its still not crisp and responsive.

[pfarrell]

Don't know if there have been attempts to speed up art, again I have recently gotten back on the JHB world, using SqueezeCenter Version: 7.0 - 14144 - Debian - EN
withSqueezeCenter Version: 7.0 - 14144 - Debian - EN 1r749

its still way too slow to work well.

[Ken Rahaim]

For SqueezeCenter, in the left pane you can use the drop-down menu to select "text only" to see the traditional SlimServer presentation of the album listing. The drop-down menu is on the right side of the "Album" header bar.

For the right pane, there's a toggle in the footer that allows you to turn off the cover art display.Add my voice to those who would like an option to completely turn off album art. Looking forward to SqueezeCenter. Thanks!

[opaqueice]

Don't know if there have been attempts to speed up art, again I have recently gotten back on the JHB world, using SqueezeCenter Version: 7.0 - 14144 - Debian - EN
withSqueezeCenter Version: 7.0 - 14144 - Debian - EN 1r749

its still way too slow to work well.

I second that. I'd be happy with the album art being displayed if it wasn't unbearably sluggish. It would also look quite a bit nicer if the screen were bigger.

[haunyack]

Yeah, and just try separating seeds and stems in a CD jewel box...
TD

Time to change dealers with all the hybrid available.
I love Eureka California just for that reason!
I do miss the album covers however.
About the time the covers disappeared...so did the chaff.
Don't miss the chaff...except in spring.
;-))

Yes, I think cover art should be an option in SS for those without the coveted Jive remote.

.

[patrija]

Interesting thread, I was at a house party last weekend and the thing people loved was the iTunes/AppleTv integration that had "flying" artwork displayed on the TVs.

I'm very rarely in SlimServer - almost never, so I have no need for artwork there. But I'm sure that I will want to see artwork on my Crestron devices.

More than that though I really like to see some kind of TV video output similar to escient, the "cheap" D-Link MediaLounge, etc. My wife really liked our 2 SB3s and Transporter, but now I get crap about the money spent there and "it doesn't show up on the TV".

[cliveb]

Interesting thread, I was at a house party last weekend and the thing people loved was the iTunes/AppleTv integration that had "flying" artwork displayed on the TVs.
Flash and trash. It's a good party trick, but ultimately a waste of CPU cycles - and probably the slowest way there is of browsing a music library.


More than that though I really like to see some kind of TV video output similar to escient, the "cheap" D-Link MediaLounge, etc. My wife really liked our 2 SB3s and Transporter, but now I get crap about the money spent there and "it doesn't show up on the TV".
If a video output were to be added, it better not be at the expense of losing the display. I personally find the idea of having to switch on the TV before you can select some music to play rather bizarre. (The only way I can envisage a display-less Squeezebox being usable is if the Jive handset can be made to work as reliably as the current standard remote+display. That day still seems a fair way off).

[patrija]

Trust me, I buy the slim devices story (and have spent plenty of money on their products) and I believe there will always be a niche for audio only digital transport. But there's something to be said for the "big boys" bringing converged multimedia into the home via tv/video control - I've even been thinking of a way to run my xbox360 amd ps3 through the transporter's DAC.

There shouldn't need be any correlation between a video out and having to lose a display. In fact for my personal setup, this could be entirely on the software side using video out of my computer into a matrix switch that distribute the video to any TV I want. Maybe I'll try that next.

[thomsens]

While I understand that some folks don't have interest in using album art, I also don't understand why it seems pointless to them either. The art evokes emotions toward the time periods and/or music contained on a release - obviously less so in today's buy/rip/put away or even buy mp3 online culture. I know that when I bring up moose and there are 50 album icons, I am sometimes drawn to a selection I wouldn't have otherwise chosen based on the cover art and what it represents to me. It's just another way to decide what to listen to. It also helps in the playlist display to see what the mood of the mix looks like very quickly (i.e., faster than reading it). Although, I do find it a little annoying when I'm playing a single album and the cover art is repeated for the whole list.

I do understand that collecting it is a PITA. Non standard sizes, it's just another file, etc. I actually manually go out to Amazon and find the highest quality one and size it to 500x500 and have done so for each rip. I handle this at rip time, so it's not so bad to keep up with. But like cleaning up tags, I don't blame folks for not wanting to do that. And, the automatic programs are a step in the right direction, but they are only marginally better than simply doing it manually if you are trying to standardize on a size. So, "not worth it" I understand, but "pointless" I don't.

[cliveb]

While I understand that some folks don't have interest in using album art, I also don't understand why it seems pointless to them either.
Not sure who this might be directed at. But as the person who started this thread, I'll comment:

1. On reflection, the title I gave to the thread is probably not quite right. It should have been "I don't use album art".

2. I certainly don't want to suggest that there is no point to album art. Many people like it, and I have no problem with that. It's just that I personally don't feel a need for it.

3. The point I was trying to make was that, for those of us who don't use album art, it would be nice if there was an option to just switch it off on the Jive handset - which would in turn release some extra real estate for the text. I would never suggest that it simply be ditched completely - clearly there are many people who enjoy using it.

[thomsens]

cliveb - understood...just adding to the discussion more than anything. There were a number of folks who were generally suggesting that album art has lost it's purpose since it's not physical and the size of an album any more. I personally disagree, although I understand the general notion that it's not the same as it used to be. But I also bet if someone went in and cleaned up their album art for them, they wouldn't mind using it every once and awhile too.

I'm totally onboard with the flexibility that you mention. There are many times I would rather have speed than pretty graphics. Particularly when it comes to a controller. The single worst thing any interface can have is inconsistent latency as you work it. It completely throws off your rhythm of working it quickly. I also generally think having a choice is the right approach. The challenge I have is sometimes figuring out which choice affects which display!