Cover Art Naming

MusicBrainz Picard
1

I have been struggling with Cover Art naming for years and I would like to understand how the rules work better. I will summarize my understanding - correct me where I am wrong and I will update this post so it is accurate.

I prefer to embed the cover image in the music files, and capture all of the images in the folder for the album. Ideally, I would rely on CAA and local files for everything.

Cover Art Providers

The providers are searched in the order listed. The first providers that has any cover art is used and the provider search stops.

File naming

If you are trying to collect more than one image, the naming is important.
The key variables available for naming seem to be

  • %coverart_types% - multi-value collection of all types for an image
  • %coverart_maintype% - primary type for an image
  • %coverart_comment% - comment text with the image

image
In Options/Cover Art/Local Files, there is a regex for the local cover art files.

Here is the default (as shown in the image above)
^(?:cover|folder|albumart)(.*)\.(?:jpe?g|png|gif|tiff?)$

First, non-capture group: (?:cover|folder|albumart)

This is a non-capture group, so these will not get captured and the default (Front type) will apply.

For the second group: (.*)
This is the real capture, so if the names match any of the cover art types, they will be tagged as such.

Thanks!

1 Like
3

Thanks - I added it to the list.

4

I think I discovered the root of my problems!

image
In Options/Cover Art/Local Files, there is a regex for the local cover art files.

Here is the default (as shown in the image above)
^(?:cover|folder|albumart)(.*)\.(?:jpe?g|png|gif|tiff?)$

First, non-capture group: (?:cover|folder|albumart)

This is a non-capture group, so these will not get captured and the default (Front type) will apply.

For the second group: (.*)
This is the real capture, so if the names match any of the cover art types, they will be tagged as such.

The mistake I made was to add all the types into the first (non-capture) group. This means that all the regular file names were thrown into the Front type and caused havoc!

I’m writing this hoping that others don’t make the same mistake. I’ll update my top post with these details.

5 Likes
5

Thank-you for this. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to use this to update the documentation for this setting. In addition, I’ve entered a ticket to add a “sandbox” to the option page to allow testing various file names against the regular expression to show how they will be handled.

5 Likes
6

That would be great. I wrote it with that in mind as I try to collect my thoughts. Thanks!

1 Like
7

Thank-YOU. Improvements to the documentation are always welcome. The documentation project can be found on GitHub if you have any other suggestions. Updates to the .rst files or issue tickets are much appreciated.

1 Like