MusicBrainz album Covers are sometimes quite large (and take LONG to download)

Support
#1

Sometimes users have added rather large Cover images (e.g. png 18 MB, png 35 MB and so on) as the album's main cover image to the database mp3tag's MusicBrainz source is using. Downloading these covers takes very long, sometimes up to 5 minutes :frowning:

Would it be possible to check the file size before downloading the image and give the user an option to skip the download in that case?

Or: can the download be sped up?

(e.g. Release “Last Night” by Moby - MusicBrainz or https://musicbrainz.org/release/7bc2a3ab-a99c-4e3c-b152-7017dc3e7452)

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Mp3tag v3.12 released
#2

+1 :+1:

An option to choose the size of the cover would be nice too. At least MusicBrainz offers the cover art in 250×250 Pixels, 500×500 Pixels, 1200×1200 Pixels and the original size.

The picture name for the various available sizes only change in the additional MBID-250.jpg or MBID-500.jpg or MBID-1200.jpg

#3

Yes, maybe that's a nice solution. Right now it seems to always download the original size version…

#4

I automated an action in Photoshop to resize and save a 600x600 “web size” copy of the artwork for embedding.

#5

There is no need for Photoshop for this task. You can use the existing resize function in Mp3tag:

image

But the OP is asking for a faster DOWNLOAD. One possibility would be to DOWNLOAD smaller cover art. :wink:

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#6

Actually, in most cases when you do get these original sized images you NEED Photoshop. Because these mostly are completely unprocessed raw images from scanners / digital cameras. So just resizing them does not really help :frowning:

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#7

This doesn't happen in "most cases", but from time to time you find such a raw image.

This leads to another feature request:
Let the user choose the Cover Art TYPE
This way you could exclude the raw/unedited cover art that you need to manually crop first.

MusicBrainz offers this 14 Types:

I assume, that most of the users are only interested in Front Cover Art.

#8

Once you drag and drop artwork, you can right click it and designate type.

#9

I have a plugin for MusicBee called “Album Art Downloader”. It was a real game-changer for me. It allows you to search the sources you specify for the artist and album given. Using it, I rarely download from MusicBrainz. My typical sources are iTunes, Qobuz, and Deezer for the basic cover-art. I retrieve scans from discogs to ensure that they’re release-specific.

#10

Here is a thread on using Album Art Downloader with MP3tag:

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#11

This is getting rather offtopic :slight_smile:

There is a really easy solution to the problem. mp3tag stores the sources definitions in
.\AppData\Roaming\Mp3tag\data\sources\MusicBrainz.src

Just edit the file, find the code accessing the CoverArtArchive and replace
say "/front"
by
say "/front-1200"

to always get the 1200px files.

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#12

I've added an option to configure the MusicBrainz cover size via Tools → Options → Tag Sources with Mp3tag v3.11h.

3 Likes
#13

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