The prefer file album art setting isn't working. I have FLACs where I've embedded very specific album art into each file (say a picture of a DCC Gold cd that I've ripped). When you view the FLAC files in any FLAC editing/metadata tool you correctly see the custom artwork that's embedded. But in Roon after importing those FLACs, when I edit the album and choose Metadata Preferences and set Artwork to "Prefer File" and save, the album artwork that's using is the standard matched art, not the art that's embedded into each file. I don't think that Metadata Preferences is actually saving, though, because after I select Save and see that the art is still the matched art and I go back into Edit -> Metadata Preferences, there is nothing selected for Artwork (or anything else, actually); no radio button is selected for anything. I would expect to see the radio button for Artwork -> Prefer File selected. FWIW I also have a copy of the unique artwork in the album's folder named "folder.jgp".
Describe your network setup
A mix of wired (TP-Link switch and patch panel) and wireless (Google Nest). Roon Core and most endpoints connected via ethernet.
After saving, what I see in Metadata → Artwork (no radio button selected) with the matched artwork instead of my custom file/folder artwork visible behind the window:
The picture is so small I, and probably anyone else, can’t see anything.
That is what that is for (to set preferences) …
and not to show you preferences (or their current sources) as they can be mixed (hint: multi-selection)
Please use “Edit Album” to inspect/set metadata for single tracks/albums/artists/…
Use “Metadata Preference” for quick-set (mainly for) multi selections only
I’m not following. To set the album art to the art that’s embedded in the file, I open the album, click Edit, choose Metadata Preferences, select “Prefer File” under Set preferences for 1 album -> Artwork, and the result is that the album artwork is the matched version, not the version that’s embedded in the file. Is there another way to end with the result being the album artwork shown in Roon is the artwork embedded in the file (or the default folder.jpg in the album’s folder)?
This used to work as expected; I do (or did) this all the time with personal rips of Japanese or other non-standard CD’s.
Yes there is another way, sort of, that I already described to you – seems you didn’t even try. Use Edit Album instead of Set Preferences to inspect and change the current metadata of an album (interactively). Or use that screen at least to check the result of your changed preference. Doing so may make things more clear to you as there you can not only inspect the available sources but also their content. If you do that and things are still unclear, please provide screenshots from the Edit Album screen to help depict and describe your issue.
PS: As you talk about albums, please note that there is no more than one album cover per album supported in current Roon (where an album may consist of more than one track/file which each may have an individual embedded artwork).
Understood on not supporting more than one piece of art per album, that’s all good. In my case I’ve embedded the same art in every track using xACT. Here’s an example of where this used to work (full sized ), from an album I ripped years ago and changed the art w/in each track:
On your walkthrough though, that’s the comment I was referring to as not following. When you say use Edit Album, from where? I believe that I am editing the album:
I open the album (in this case from Home → Recent activity → Added)
I click on the three dot action menu and select Edit
I navigate to the 2nd tab, METADATA PREFERENCES
Set Preferences are accessed from the Edit Album section. And when I load that screen no radio buttons are set at all, so I’m unable to check if it’s working b/c that page isn’t showing anything set. I know it’s not working because Empire uses the generic album art even though the DCC cover is embedded in each track and I’ve chosen Prefer File for artwork metadata. But it was working b/c I’ve done this same process for years for versions where I want to show an alternate album cover (per the WYWH example).
The last album I added where I went through this same process and Roon did change the album art to Prefer File was added on April 4th. At some point after that with a recent update the behavior changed.
Ah, was thinking it was somewhere outside of the Edit box, thanks for the pointer. I actually use this tab religiously for changing Live and Compilation status but totally forgot that you can also force the album art (b/c I’ve never needed to do it outside of Metadata Prefs). But now that brings up another issue:
In Edit Album, the options that are showing aren’t correct. This is what I see in Edit Album → Album Artwork:
There are two images in the folder directory, though:
ls /Volumes/roon-music/Music/Queensrÿche/Empire\ \[2000\ DCC\ Gold\]\ \[FLAC\]/*.jpg
-rwx------@ 1 user staff 102042 May 14 16:27 /Volumes/roon-music/Music/Queensrÿche/Empire [2000 DCC Gold] [FLAC]/cover.jpg*
-rwx------@ 1 user staff 89863 May 15 08:33 /Volumes/roon-music/Music/Queensrÿche/Empire [2000 DCC Gold] [FLAC]/folder.jpg*
folder.jpg is the DCC art, cover.jpg is the original cover art.
Maybe Roon is incorrectly pulling cover.jpg as the art for Prefer file? cover.jpg in my dir is 600x600 so that lines up. If that’s true, then did the behavior change so that Roon is pulling a file from the dir rather than from the embedded art in the file itself?
Roon (always?) for as long as I know it supports the standalone cover/folder as well as the embedded pictures. As I already wrote, there can be only one album cover though. I don’t know how simple or complicated Roon’s algorithm to select the picture for the file preference is when there are various differing pictures available (but I’m pretty sure they don’t do a visual comparison and just assume that they are all the same). Maybe it is as simple as “the biggest wins”. It was potentially pure luck if it worked as expected every time in the past (or the cases weren’t as complicated as this one [visually different pictures]). See also:
From your current screenshot it is clear that there is nothing wrong with the prefer file option and just, for some reason still unknown, the picture for prefer file is the same as the one provided by prefer Roon too. You can check the embedded file (maybe it’s in an unsupported format) and experiment with/without standalone pictures and also changing their names in the album folder while you wait on Roon Labs to pick-up your case and potentially provide insight in their algorithm.
IMO you’re just asking for trouble though, using all the supported ways of providing album cover art but providing visually different ones (and expect Roon to correctly guess which one is “the right one” in any case).
Why would this be incorrect? Roon supports cover.jpg and folder.jpg, but if both exist it must choose one of them. Maybe it prefers cover.jpg based on the name, even if the folder.jpg has higher resolution (which is not the same as having higher quality!).
I believe that if either file exists, it is preferred over embedded art. (I suppose maybe because a single file could be expected to have higher quality than embedded ones?)
), from an album I ripped years ago and changed the art w/in each track:
