I have been looking for a solution to this for a long time [the whole day] and have come to a conclusion that microsoft resizes ALL the artwork that is pasted in WMP11 to 200x200, no matter it the orginal size is; 500x500 or 1000x1000, still it will resize it to some crap quality art covers. IF you use VMC and you are viewing "Now Playing" you know the cover art is really Crappy. , 500x500 covers that get resized to 200x200 is a big amount and you might have noticed the pain, just to let people know how BIG of difference it makes here is a screenshot: [left is a 500x500 image, and on the right is the resized art in VMC]
SO WHAT IM ASKING IS:
If anyone could find a way to change the "resize" size of the ArtWork that gets resized by WMP11 to something higher than 200x200, I would really apriciated SINCE I use this a lot and i'm really tired of the quality..
thanks for any hints/tries and corruporation --slig--
It cant be true that there is no one out there that doesnt know what can be done, or someone that has the same issue!
please people! ;]
You can try looking in registry but As far as I can tell resizing is hard-coded ;[ and the workaround I know of: "Using Folder.jpg 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"
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, I will pass it on eveywhere else this post is posted.... so I will try to keep all the therds on different fourms in SYNC ;]
TheDigitalLifeStyle.com the home of The Media Center Show! Microsoft MVP
Yay, finnaly someone who also feels the pain ;] .. and it just happens to be Ian ;] So are you telling me that you might have an idea on what could be done in order to "rise" the 'resize' size? MY GOT IAN, YOU"RE GREAT!,,,...,,, Im so glad I joined the MediaCenter Community ;]
UPDATE: I [mostly 'ryan_hurst'] found a workaround, however this requires you to have artist/album folders and folder.jpg ---> maybe this will ring a bell as to what can be done to "rise" the resize size.... im hoping for it ;]::::::::::::::::::::
1) create artist\album based folder
2) put folder.jpg you like in there
3) open mce or wmp so it can create the guid based file
4) once guid based file is reated copy filename into clip board
5) rename folder.jpg (really you want ot have a copy of it to rename) to the guid based name
6) make sure the new guid file is hidden and system
HERE is a script thet 'ryan_hurst' created: what it does: , i found this whole workaround overwelming in manual work, and will not convert my DB this way...
'''''' This script makes sure that all of the folder.jpgs are the same as the AlbumArt_{[GUID]}_Large files.'''' This script assumes a folder layout of drive:\root\music\[album]\[artist].'''' Anything not in this folder layout will be ignored or missed (more acuratley).'''' You will also want to delete the C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS content.'''' You will also want to make sure the AlbumArt_{[GUID]}_Large files are not hidden or system, will need to do this in the shell'''' This will fail on permission denied for files that are in use or you do not have permissions for.''''
Dim FileSystem, oMusicFolder, szMusicFolder, szFolderFQPN, szTargetFQPN Dim ArtistsFolders, ArtistsFolder, AlbumFolder, AlbumFolders, File, FilesDim iEndOfShortFileName, szFolderJpg
Set FileSystem = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")szMusicFolder = "e:\music"
'' Snag the music folderSet oMusicFolder = FileSystem.GetFolder(szMusicFolder)
'' Get all the artist folders Set ArtistsFolders = oMusicFolder.Subfolders
For Each ArtistsFolder in ArtistsFolders
'' Get the albumn folders
Set AlbumFolders = ArtistsFolder.Subfolders
For Each AlbumFolder in AlbumFolders '' Find the AlbumArt_*_Large file, asume only one match. Set Files = AlbumFolder.Files
For Each File In Files Select Case LCase(Right(File.Name, 10)) Case "_large.jpg" 'Wscript.Echo File.Name szFolderFQPN = AlbumFolder.Path & "\folder.jpg" szTargetFQPN = AlbumFolder.Path & "\" & File.Name
'WScript.Echo szFolderFQPN
' if folder.jpg exists delete file.name and replace it with it. If (FileSystem.FileExists(szFolderFQPN)) = True Then WScript.Echo "Updating the AlbumArt_{[GUID]}_Large for " & AlbumFolder.Name FileSystem.CopyFile szFolderFQPN, szTargetFQPN End If End Select Next NextNext
RESEARCH & WORKAROUNDS:
Hi Ian, I have been wonking on this for most of this evening, i read your blog @ http://thegreenbutton.com/blogs/ians_digital/archive/2007/03/08/174545.aspx, i gave "Art Fixer" a try to see it it will work: Here is what I got, compare it to waht you found out while using it:
1. Fixing the cover and replacing the 200x200 with "Art Fixer"., VMC and WMP will read it and open the 500x500 image..that sould be an ;] ... RIGHT!
2. That is if you DONT TOUCH the folder [thumbnail views included so is making a new folder in that directory] .. i also dont know what happens after restarting, it might change it as will
3. Until the folder is 'TOUCHED' the GUID, AlbumArt, and folder (all ____.jpg) are all visible [not hidded] and becasue they fit the COVER format they are steamed into VMC and WMP
4. my guess is that when the folder is open Windows ID's the files by its filenames and makes those hidded and secured files, which goes through "resizing" to 200x200 ;[
-if you dont get it dont hesiate to post, i will try to explain it further --> Its obvious that all the workarounds take you on a long journey for a result of resizing
PS:
-Im looking for a tool/patch that would put all of my artist/albums into seperate folders. Since now ALL of my music is in one folder and thats a mesS! ....just like "Art Fixer" does for each of the albums, but for a whole directory, not ablum by ablum baceuse that would take me forever... and making the folders myself, i would never get done with my collection! so if you know of such a tool, could you please post it .. thanks ;]
-Ian, since you are a MVP, do you have a bigger word compared to the public? If so is there any way you can contact M$ and report this as something that no one is happy with. I can contact them too, but all I will get is "thank you for contacting microsoft, we apreciate our users opinion and will use your [users] feedback for further developing of our products"
--slig--
Regarding the 200x200 size, developing a UI that performs requires making some trade offs and image size and dpi ends up being one of them.
I am not saying a better image size/dpi couldnt have been chosen but instead pointing out that your likley running into a by design issue to make the gallery perform for large collections.
I did a quick registry monitor amd I see no values that sugest they are relied upon to determine what settings to use on the re-size, the other option would be to patching the mce binaries to change these values which would not be advisable.
That leaves updating the cached copies of the images to resolutions you are happy with, the script above should In theory do just that although I didnt test it much; the biggest issue with the above script IMHO is that it too doesnt re-size the images; this could totally be added but unless there is clear value to the community I wont bother.
Without re-sizing the images there is a chance that the ui will become slow and posibly not responsive if the images are too big.
ryan_hurst - www.unmitigatedrisk.com