Valence Art Director in Roon

Bruce_Orr · January 24, 2022, 3:18pm

Agree with comments suggesting separate photos for avatar vs. Banners. Could this be handled more easily by these suggestions I’m hearing:

Avatars and Banners default to Roon selection. If you manually edit, the photo added will change ONLY the banner and the avatar continues to use the default
All approved photos in the Valence cloud library could remain available as fodder to be used for manual editing of banners. In this case, the avatar remains the Roon default. Currently Roon allows cloud photo to be be opened in a new browser tab where they can easily be captured with a screen shot and used to edit an artist banner photo.
The only functional issue I see with this is an instance when Roon does not have the artist in its inventory - therefore there’s no properly configured Roon avator default. Maybe Roon could approve the user submitted photo (or come up with one they like better) and add to its Library. The avatar becomes the default for the community.

When trying to submit artist photos to VAD, I was reminded there are artists Roon does not list. In the strangest of coincidences, the name of the band I tried to upload - but which Roon did not list - is The Valence Project. All sorts of Twilight Zone sounds are still going off in my head.

Thoughts on above suggestions?

Trickydickie · January 24, 2022, 3:25pm

I’d really like to see a skip option in Art Director. Currently I refresh the page but sometimes I’m asked to do the same thing a few tasks on.

The reason is that sometimes I’m not familiar with an artist which could be either a band or group as the name doesn’t really suggest either. In these cases I’m reluctant to make a change that is wrong and would prefer to just skip over rather than submitting a mistake.

alec_eiffel · January 24, 2022, 4:07pm

Plus 1
Lke we have in the translation tool “Skip translation” if one does not feel comfortable

danny · January 24, 2022, 6:03pm

Yes. Huge amounts of traffic.

We just deployed something to make it much faster. We need more db query caches and more powerful servers. Give it a bit to roll out, but you should feel the effects shortly.

Trickydickie · January 24, 2022, 6:09pm

Already much quicker, thanks!

Trickydickie · January 25, 2022, 2:49pm

I’ve been doing some adjustments over today and am seeing the same images come more than once for adjustment.

I’ve just had this come up

And the image already shows as done - I Remember cropping it to remove the projector.

danny · January 25, 2022, 2:57pm

To speed things up, we do the expensive query and then have a cached set of results… which are then sent to you quickly.

I fear there is some issue here. we’re on it.

Trickydickie · January 25, 2022, 3:01pm

Thanks, I’ve noticed quite a few recently.

Niccolo_Terzi · January 25, 2022, 3:18pm

I have many many artists with no “Improve this photo” button:

noah · January 25, 2022, 3:33pm

Should be fixed now thanks for the heads up please let us know if you run into this again!

Trickydickie · January 27, 2022, 4:23pm

It certainly seems better but there’s still an issue. I keep being asked to choose the best ‘Big Sugar’ avatar!

noah · January 27, 2022, 4:52pm

Should be fixed now, working on speeding this side of things up as well.

danny · January 27, 2022, 8:17pm

I’ve been assured a fix to this is getting rolled out soon. A permanent fix.

Daiyama · January 27, 2022, 9:06pm

Sounds a bit like a threat.
You will kick all artist with no „improve this photo“ button.

Bruce_Orr · January 29, 2022, 9:35pm

Several of us have had issues using Chromecast with the new 880 upgrade. I took some more time and hopefully what I’ve observed is helpful. Some of the issues seem to have gone away (thanks, Roon), but overall here’s what I now see.

Everything works fine on my Core (iMac) and Remote (iPad). On both, Now Playing displays the artist’s featured photo (equivalent of the what is displayed via Valence or edited into the artist image slot provided by Roon). Things get messy when Chromecasting from the Remote iPad to the TV, although the mess is contained to the artist photo display and rotation of any artist photo gallery that has been created, or exists organically.

The big thing I notice is Chromecast will not pick up different photos identified as the same artist. This was not the case in earlier versions, and it also was not a problem with the Beta. I do not rely on Valence AD for images. All are edited into Roon.

Below is the LZ iPad Remote Displaying the designated photo for the band that appears first before
any other photos. You can see there are 15 photos - 8 photos identified as LZ; 2 Jimmy Page, 3 John Bonham, 1 John Paul Jones and 1 Robert Plant. All of these rotate fine on the iPad.

Below is the Chromecast Display that appears for comparison to the Remote display above.

It does not lead with the group photo shown on the iPad. Instead, it jumps over it and picks up the Plant photo listed next to last in the larger gallery. From here, Chromecast displays other photos, but only if photos are identified differently from those already applied. So in this case, it picks up one for each band member and then the band photo in the slot created by roon. But, via Chromecast, it is presented last instead of first.

I have other instances where Chromecast does not sense the different artist names in the gallery, and presents just the primary artist photo for display, ignoring all others by the same name AND any other differently identified photos in the artist gallery. The iPad display below shows 7 photos - 4 identified by the group name, and 3 as the lead singer. All rotate as expected on the iPad.

15614BF7-ACBF-4C0F-AF32-C2D2C93EB9B7_1_101_o2160×1620 313 KB

In the Chromecast display below the correct primary photo is displayed, but none of the remaining 6 are rotated regardless of the name.

In other cases Chromecast displays no artist photos. For example, Zelma Stone - Dreamland album. On the iPad remote display below, you see 8 photos were edited into Roon with identical artist names, and do not rely on Valence. The gallery rotates perfectly.

You also see the primary artist photo which is shown first. All rotate as expected on iPad

However, the Chromecast display that appears at the same time shows no primary artist display, nor any others. No Valence used, only edits.

Let me know if this provides any new news, and anything I can do help resolve things.

Thanks,

Bruce

danny · January 30, 2022, 4:54am

See above:

Winter_Fleury · January 31, 2022, 3:54am

I have a preference for logos it seems most do not, I am fine with either though as I have stated. I just want my collection to look good hence roon, so why is someone removing logos, marking them as the wrong group when there are no photos there. I don’t t want to open roon and see a lot of place holders.

Michael_Harris · January 31, 2022, 8:41am

I thought that the logos were for when there were no photos, and were to be voted up on being the best logo.

I would rather a good photo over a logo, but would prefer a logo over a badly fitting or poor quality photo

Winter_Fleury · January 31, 2022, 8:57am

Well someone is marking logos as “this is not the right artist” even though it is, where there is no other photo. Therefore you get a gray circle with the first and last letter of the word. Would you do that. I don’t mind if it’s not what I picked or uploaded but to have nothing. Thought the whole point of this was to stop that.

eye · January 31, 2022, 9:05am

Yeah, it seems like someone is removing logos, even when there’re no artist picture. I’ve also seen other pictures removed without any apparent reason.

I do, however, think that the logo should always be an established logo, and should not be used whenever there’s a decent artist picture available, unless the logo is more iconical.