Folder.jpg not being used consistently

Hi. I’m a new user, first day of the roon trial.

I have written my own metadata editing program that includes the ability to make OBI-type left borders with frames around the “folder.jpg” files. It renames the original to “folder-noborder.jpg”.

roon is picking the folder.jpg or folder-noborder.jpg files seemingly at random. I haven’t delved into it deeply enough to see if it is choosing the file with the largest size or largest image dimensions, but it seems about evenly split.

Here’s an example, resized down:

I’ve been using my program to edit and standardize metadata and cover images for years. (It also removes embedded images).

I would be grateful to have more control over the file name as suggested above. If more control is added to the product, it would be great if artwork could be re-scanned and updated per the current option.

Thanks,

  • Eric

Hi, @support,

Lack of control over how Roon picks image files for album covers is close to being a deal breaker for me.

Can you either

  • explain how your code chooses the album covers from the image files in the album folder when “Settings | Library | Import Settings | Artwork” is set to “Prefer File”, or

  • provide a workaround?

I’m willing to rename files to, say, numbered files with no other text (while keeping the file extensions) if that will cause Roon always select “folder.jpg”.

Hi @ezman

Mike wrote this earlier (back in March) in this topic:

Roon does allow one to select from the list of files to change which file is being used but it is performed by editing each album individually … it works but is a lot of effort.

As a workaround, assuming you want Roon to select cover.jpg … how about temporarily renaming (programmatically) all the non cover.jpg image files to say .jpgXXX then let Roon import. Then once complete rename those files back.

What I’m not sure about is whether on renaming back, or a file re-scan, Roon would still revert to using the largest file… so best to try with just a couple of albums first.

Let’s see if @Mike has any more thoughts on this.

Hey @ezman – can you zip up a folder for an album where folder.jpg isn’t being used?

We give preference to cover art we believe to be the front cover, so if your files have no embedded cover art, and if you’re renaming the original art to folder-noborder.jpg, I’m surprised we’re not consistently picking the right art here.

If you can PM me a Dropbox link for an album that’s not working as expected, we can take a look. Thanks!

PM sent 1010101010

Hey @ezman – we took a look at the files you sent. As I mentioned, we give preference to art we believe is the front cover, and we select the highest resolution front cover file by default.

In the files you sent, I see this:

We’re going to consider three pieces of art here to be potential front cover images:

  • Buffalo-Front.jpg
  • folder.jpg
  • folder-noborder.jpg

So, by default Roon is going to select Buffalo-Front.jpg since it’s the biggest front cover available, and since it’s bigger than what our metadata service has retrieved:

So, this all appears to be working as I would expect. Feel free to check out for the #roon:feature-requests category if you’re interested in more fine-grain control at the library level.

As a workaround, you should be able to rename Buffalo-Front.jpg to something our system doesn’t recognize as a front cover – I just renamed it - Buffalo-full.jpg and I believe I am getting the behavior you’re looking for.

You can also select new front covers on an album-by-album basis from the Gallery by clicking the cover, and choosing Set As Album Cover under file info:

2 Likes

Thanks for the update, @mike. Can you tell us the file name patterns that roon considers candidates for cover art? In the example we’re working with, it seems the patterns might be *folder*.jpg and *front*.jpg, both case insensitive. What others do you consider? *cover*.jpg maybe? And which file extensions?

If you could provide a definitive list, perhaps a list of regular expressions, that would help me write a bullet-proof script to rename everything necessary to cause roon to use folder.jpg for every album’s artwork even if it isn’t the largest image.

Also, will roon automatically choose folder.jpg once I rename other files that it had already chosen? File dates probably won’t change, nor will file content, so I’m unsure if your file change detection code will notice that the files that were previously chosen have been renamed, triggering it to reselect the album art.

Manually updating each album’s artwork isn’t a viable option here. Roon has chosen a file other than folder.jpg for perhaps half my albums.

Thanks,

  • Eric

We look for image files whose name contains front or cover or folder when determining which images we consider to be the front cover.

It will update as soon as we notice the new image files. Some storage configurations may result in this being picked up more quickly than others, but you should always be able to re-scan and have the new art picked up immediately.