Slideshow of artwork from album folder in Now Playing View

Feedback Feature Suggestions
1

Hi,

I am trying out Roon for the first time and one of the features I am looking for is to be able to play a slideshow of all of the artwork in the album folder in the Now Playing view. Is this possible with Roon? As far as I can see, all of the artwork shows up in the Playing Now screen but I have to manually change the image.

Ideally I would like each image in the folder to show once per track played. So if a track was 4 minutes long and there were four images in the folder, each image would play for 1 minute and there would be a transition between the images.

I’d be glad to know if this is possible.

Thanks,

Nick

1 Like
3

Hi @nickharambee,

Welcome to the forum!

The behavior you are requesting does not exist at the present time, so I have shifted your post over to the #roon:feature-requests sub-section of this site.

While we can’t give a definite yes/no answer at this time, the product team keeps a close eye on this section for ideas on how to further improvements to Roon, so thanks for making this suggestion!

If you have any issues getting up and running with Roon or are in need of technical support, please feel free to reach out to us in #support, thanks!

4

Hi @noris,

Thanks for your reply. There is quite a bit of history to this request, as I will explain, and my decision as to whether to sign up for Roon in the long-term may well depend on the perceived likelihood of being able to experience something along the lines I have requested.

About 15-20 years ago I decided to rip my whole CD collection and scan all of the artwork from the CD booklets. It felt important to me to keep more of the feel of the CD, by saving high quality images of any good photos from the booklet, the back cover, etc. The plan from the off was to find a way of being able to view this as the music played.

At the time I was using J River Media Centre on a PC or on a Mac with Parallels installed. One of the third party plugins for J River allowed for a slideshow of art from the album folder.

Then I decided to just stick to the Mac and at this time there wasn’t a version of J River for the Mac, so I went back to iTunes, and was able to develop, with some help, a quartz composition that could be used with an iTunes plugin called iVisualise, to create a slideshow of folder artwork that included tag info. This was perfect for my needs and I’d still be using it if it wasn’t for the fact that iVisualise was discontinued, and the last version stopped working with iTunes sometime ago.

So since this time I have been stuck. My most recent plan, until I learnt of and started testing out Roon, was to pay someone to develop a standalone Mac application, built using AppleScript, to build the slideshow from the path to the file and the tags. I have been led to believe this is possible, but haven’t had the free time to invest in this yet.

So, when I saw that Roon was able to display all of the artwork from the album folder on one of the Playing Now views, albeit manually, I got excited and hoped I had found an application that would meet my needs.

What I can say about the slideshow, when I had it working with iVisualise, is that it augmented the listening experience in a great way, bringing the music/artist more to life. Everyone who saw/experienced it said so. Hence my continuing interest in getting it working again. Yes, it depended on scanning artwork, but I always thought it could be extended to automate the process, e.g. by downloading artist images from the internet. It could also be made to work with the PDF booklets that are increasingly issued along with downloads.

In an ideal world then, there would be a lot more customisation of the Playing Now views in Roon. From something like the current Album image view, but with a slideshow along the lines I have described above, to a more minimal slideshow either with just images, or images and more minimal text - perhaps just the artist, track, album and release year in white text against a black background.

I hear that this isn’t in the scope of Roon at the moment, but given that Roon already pulls in all of the artwork from the album folder, and the images can be changed manually, I imagine it wouldn’t be that difficult to make it work as a slideshow, or to have an option to switch the view to a slideshow?

Given that this isn’t on the Roon roadmap at the moment though (as far as I am aware), I wonder whether this is something that could be done with a Roon extension, and if so, how much work would be involved in this? It looks like there isn’t an AppleScript library for Roon, meaning that I wouldn’t be able to build a standalone application to work with it - hence my hesitation in moving forward with Roon, when I could do this with other media players.

I am also wondering if there is a system in the Roon community for specific developments such as this - i.e. people pledge money to support the development of a feature, with developers who can dedicate time to this?

Mainly though, I am thinking that this would be a great feature to add to what is clearly already very well designed software. It would definitely add to the aesthetic experience. :wink: And, if I felt that, by one route or another, this was a viable option in the not too distant future, I would gladly sign up for a lifetime membership, probably two!

Thanks for reading!

Nick

2 Likes
5

Hello @nickharambee,

Thank you for providing that additional context for your feature request.

I agree that this would be a good idea, I’ll flag our product team regarding your request and ask them to take a look to see what’s possible in the future.

I can’t make any hard guarantees here, but it does seem like a sensible feature request.

6

Thanks again @noris. Just to add, I think that what I was responding to, when I first looked at the main webpage that introduces Roon, was the desire to bring back the “feeling of excitement or engagement”. The image of the gatefold LP led me to hope that something like the slideshow feature I am requesting would be integrated. I am aware that a slideshow is more about engagement at a display level, rather than a browsing/magazine level, but nevertheless, it seems to me like Roon is attempting to develop engagement at both levels.

I’d be glad if you or someone else could respond to my questions about developing a Roon extension and/or users contributing financially to developments, whether these be in the form of a Roon extension or a core feature.

Finally, I am of course not expecting any definitive answer about this feature being implemented but, now that you have flagged the product team, I am wondering if there is a way of getting some idea in the near future of the interest in this feature? In a week’s time my trial will expire, and to keep using Roon from there onwards would be a commitment on two levels - both financial and also the time invested in customising my Roon library, getting albums to be identified, tagging, etc. As I am sure that, in the long run, I will be looking for a slideshow feature, it would be helpful to have a sense of whether your developers feel that this is something that could be developed and that they would be interested in doing at some point.

7

@noris. I do need to know more before I can decide whether to take out a Roon subscription and my trial ends in a few days, so I would be glad to receive a response to the specific points/questions I raised in my last post. Thanks.

8

Hi @nickharambee,

I appreciate your patience while I had a chance to bring this up with the product team. They have noted your request here, but like I said before, we can’t make any promises on what the product will hold in the future.

If the feature request gets the interest from the Roon community, we will consider making a change in this area, but if you wish to purchase Roon in the near future when your trial runs out, it would be based on the capabilities available today in Roon, not what we might add to the product in the future.

You’re always welcome to try Roon again in the future if you feel that the product does not satisfy your current requirements and we would be happy to provide another trial for you at that point in time. Hope this explanation helps!

9

Hi @noris. As I have said, I am not looking for a definitive answer as to whether/when a slideshow feature could be developed with Roon. I understand that it’s unrealistic to expect this so soon. I am just looking, before I decide on whether to pay for a year’s subscription, for answers to the questions about whether it’s possible for users to pledge to collectively fund specific developments, whether these be developments to the core software or developing an extension (is this something that you do?). I am also looking to know whether a slideshow is the sort of thing a Roon extension could handle - i.e. I am wondering how extensions are built (here I am thinking that there are two possible ways in which a slideshow with tag information could be developed in Roon - either in the playing now/screensaver view, or in the web browser view). I would have thought that it’s possible to have clear answers to these questions, before I make a decision.

Thanks,

Nick

10

@noris Let me add to this request the ability to add images (and PDFs) to streamed albums, which do not have folders.

It is possible to add a single image to the database for streamed albums and artists, but not multiple.

1 Like
11

@noris. Unfortunately I am going to have to cancel my subscription. It is disappointing that I wasn’t able to get a simple answer to the questions above. It doesn’t give me confidence in this application.

12

Hi @nickharambee,

No, funding specific aspects of Roon is not possible. Priorities of the company can change and we can’t make guarantees regarding specific capabilities in the future, but we do consider all feature requests.

The Roon API Documentation available to the general public, but I don’t believe there is such a similar extension yet or the possibility of creating one based on current API limitations. Extensions are generally developed by community members.

Sorry to see you go.

While I can’t comment on Roon capabilities in the future, if wish to give Roon another try later down the road you can either flag accounts down on the Community website with @accounts or send an email to contact@roonlabs.com and we can provide another trial.

Like I said, I can’t make any promises here for this feature request, but if this request does end up being a part of Roon in the future and you’d like to give Roon another try, we can certainly set that up for you.

13

Hello Nick (@nickharambee),

I know it’s been a bit of time since we last spoke, but I have some really good news for you!
We’ve implemented this feature request with Roon build 521 (which was released today).

If you’d like to take another look at Roon and see if it meets your needs with the additional slideshow capabilities, just let me know and I can flag down our accounts team regarding setting you up with another trial.

Full release notes are available here:

1 Like
14

Hello @noris. That’s great. Thanks for letting me know. I have had a look at the new feature and it is definitely a step in the right direction - it’s good to know that the Roon team are responsive to such requests - please pass on my thanks!

To get it close to the slideshow I built before, I would like to see additional features, which probably come in this order of priority for me:

  • upscaling of images (so images at a lower pixel count than the maximum area available on the playing now view are enlarged to fit the space).
  • fade between images in the slideshow (it looks much nicer!).
  • each image in the album folder is displayed once per track (the length of time for displaying each image is total track time divided by the number of images) - at the moment it looks like Roon changes the image every 22 seconds in the slideshow, regardless of how many images there are in the folder.
  • as I have a single cover art image embedded in each audio file, and the same image file in the album folder along with other images, the main (cover) image is picked up twice by Roon and displays twice in the Playing Now view. I’d like to keep the cover image embedded in my audio files, for when I synchronise music with my phone and DJ software and want to see the artwork there, but I would also like to have all the separate album art files in each album folder. So it would be great if there was an option in Roon to ignore the embedded artwork in the gallery. This would mean that I would only have the cover art once in the slideshow.
  • the ability to choose a black background in the playing now view - it makes the artwork stand out more - and the blurred background doesn’t look so good on my monitor - it looks like the monitor has a glare on it, or some light leakage, or something like that!
  • a more minimal playing now view, so that it just shows the artwork on a black background and basic information about the track in white text at the bottom of the screen - track, artist, album, year of release. So, this is just a display view - not a view with controls to interact with. I would control everything using my phone or another computer. I am aware of the web browser view option, so maybe this would be best implemented there, as it’s just a display view? But I would prefer it if it could be built into the main Roon application.

Would you be able to pass these requests onto your team?

Thanks,

Nick

1 Like
15

Hi @nickharambee,

Glad to hear that you’re enjoying the new feature!

I will note your request with the product team, but do know that the rest of the additional slideshow capabilities that you are asking for are feature requests, and as such I can’t comment on a timeline of when/if they will be added.

In any case, thanks for the feedback here and if you have any other suggestions feel free to note them in the #roon:feature-requests category of the website. Thanks!

16

WRT galleries, what is this “folder” concept you are referring to, as the place to put images?

Seriously, 99.5% of the albums I added in the last 12 months came from Tidal or Qobuz. There no folders. It is possible to add one image to streamed albums and to artists, neither of which have folders — they are stored in the database, in some way. But not PDFs or the multiple images of a gallery.

It is troubling to me to see really cool new features developed for the old world and not working for the new.

(This is based on what I have read here, can’t tear things, I am away from home; if I am missing something about this new feature I apologize, enlighten me.)

2 Likes
17

While you consider it the old world, I consider it the “safe” world. Having my music locally means I can listen whenever. Tidal / Qubuz may not be around next year. My FLAC files will be.

18

No criticism of the old world implied. Features working for FLAC is good.
I’m just saying that features should not fail to work for streamed content.
Because regardless of your choice, or mine, it is a fact that most people are moving to streaming and Roon should not miss this transition.
Of course Roon isn’t missing it, it’s to their credit that they have integrated it so well.
Features like this must participate.

1 Like
19

Thanks for these posts. For me 95% of my content will always be local content - I am used to owning media as I’m a DJ and so need the actual vinyl/CDs/audio files, and because I also like having all the artwork for an album, which, as I’ve said above, I have scanned and added to local album folders (artwork included with streamed files seems to be very hit and miss and is typically in PDF form, so wouldn’t work as an Album Art slideshow). I like using Qobuz as well, hence the move to Roon, so that I can integrate the two - for me that was the whole point - and I hope it will be possible to develop Roon so that it works well with both streamed and local content. Qobuz for me will be used mostly for exploring new music, which I may then go on to buy, either as his-res audio files or on CD/vinyl.

The fact that Roon pulls in all of the artwork from local album folders was one of the main reasons why I considered taking out a Roon subscription, as I was wanting to replicate a Quartz Composer visualisation that I built many years ago for use with iTunes, which no longer works, as it depended on another plugin which is no longer being developed. Since then I have been looking for a way to display all of the artwork in a slideshow as tracks play, along with some basic tag information and, now that the latest Roon update has added the option for automatically cycling through the artwork in the Album Art Playing Now view, I have this functionality again and have taken out a subscription for Roon. I would still like this view to be developed/improved in a few ways, as indicated above, but it’s good enough for now!

20

How do you get images that would allow the Slideshow to function
Ray

21

Hi Ray.

If you mean where do I get the images from, they are scans of artwork from CD booklets.

If you mean where do the images live, they are saved in my album folders and are autodetected by Roon for the slideshow. Artwork embedded in files is also autodetected in Roon.

Nick