How to link alternate takes to a recording

MusicBrainz
21

May be something for the software crew, I think.

23

https://ia801609.us.archive.org/9/items/mbid-18d82808-8348-411b-85e2-0e19dd36b6f0/mbid-18d82808-8348-411b-85e2-0e19dd36b6f0-35543120438.jpg (the original file) contains image data that’s rotated 90 degrees clockwise from the correct orientation and an EXIF orientation of Rotate 270 CW (to get it back to the correct orientation).

https://archive.org/download/mbid-18d82808-8348-411b-85e2-0e19dd36b6f0/mbid-18d82808-8348-411b-85e2-0e19dd36b6f0-35543120438_thumb500.jpg (the ~500x500 thumbnail that gets shown on Release “3 Essential Albums” by Herbie Hancock - Cover Art - MusicBrainz) has image data that has been rotated to the correct orientation, but it still has its EXIF orientation set to Rotate 270 CW, so it ends up being rotated incorrectly after the EXIF orientation is applied. I think that all of the other resized versions have the same problem.

If I had to guess, I’d say that this is a bug in CAA’s thumbnailing code. I suspect that it’s applying the EXIF orientation before scaling the image data but then failing to remove the EXIF orientation when writing the file, resulting in the rotation being performed a second time when the scaled image is displayed later. I could be wrong, though.

2 Likes
24

Thanks for the detailed analysis, but it’s too much technical jargon to me. Don’t even know what CAA means.
But I’m interested where and how you see the image information you are talking about.

25

CAA is https://coverartarchive.org/, the joint MusicBrainz / Internet Archive project that hosts cover images uploaded to MusicBrainz.

To see the EXIF orientation value, I downloaded the image and ran the exiftool program on it (on Linux, but it looks like exiftool also works on Windows and macOS):

% exiftool mbid-18d82808-8348-411b-85e2-0e19dd36b6f0-35543120438_thumb500.jpg
ExifTool Version Number         : 12.16
File Name                       : mbid-18d82808-8348-411b-85e2-0e19dd36b6f0-35543120438_thumb500.jpg
...
Orientation                     : Rotate 270 CW
...

Then I ran exiftool -Orientation= mbid-18d82808-8348-411b-85e2-0e19dd36b6f0-35543120438_thumb500.jpg to remove the orientation value and viewed the image to see how the original data was oriented.

1 Like
26

Thanks for the explanations. It works, but I had to install it first.
Now I have ‘exiftool (-k)’ on my desktop and can drag and drop images to the symbol to get the data. :+1:
EDIT: the ‘Rotate 270 CW’ comes from MS Photos where you can only rotate in one direction, while in MS Explorer left and right rotation is possible.

2 Likes
27

I think you just hit [MBS-12116] Cover art thumbnails with rotation metadata display with wrong rotation - MetaBrainz JIRA :slight_smile:

4 Likes
28

You’re welcome :wink: