I’ve noticed today that in a number of cases, Roon has replaced the cover art I provided (from scanned/touched-up images) with lesser quality images. For example, I have 6 albums of Beethoven symphonies under Roger Norrington; it appears Roon has replaced every one of them with much less good cover art. (And I don’t appear to have the .jpg files any longer, so all my work will have to be repeated.)
Under what circumstances does Roon do this? I want to prevent it: When I supply – via Album Editor/Album Artwork – an image for an album, I want Roon to keep using it, forever.
roon is set to prefer the artwork it deems better - but it seems the decision depends only on the pixel size of the image not its quality (like compression) - maybe you need to check the preferences here.
The albums switched from unidentified to identified and the cover art was added before identification. While roon states it always respects user made changes I got the impression (in my case with artist pictures) that this is not always the case.
To be on the save side I’d recommend to save custom covers in the respective album folders (as cover.jpg for example). That way you won’t have to worry about losing your custom made covers.
Going through my albums, I am finding more and more switches. I went to a great deal of trouble to scan/touch up images, and Roon switches them! Eg, from roughly 2600x2600 to, say, 500x500.
I keep going and keep finding changes. Just now: Maazel/Cleveland Orchestra’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Roon was displaying a 355x355 image, when it showed 2 other images (the same picture) at 1280x1280. And I’m certain I previously scanned the cover at something like 2800x2800. What’s going on?
Another example, just found: Conlon/Orchestre National de France’s “La Boheme,” which Roon chooses to display at 255x255, when it also offers (same image) at 1080x937. And, again, I’m sure I scanned that cover and supplied my own.
It means either artwork stored as metadata in tracks, or a jpg (usually called folder.jpg) in the album folder. You say you have been providing your own artwork - where are you putting it?
Below is an example of something I would never, never pick: A photograph of (maybe) an LP on a table. Where is Roon getting and choosing junk like that?
Roon will get its coverart from a variety of sources, including fanart.tv.
If it’s a rare recording, it could well be the only image available to Roon is a photo someone has snapped of an LP cover on the kitchen table and submitted to Fanart.tv. If you’ve got something better, you could always upload it to Fanart.tv and help the wider community.
My practice until recently (3-4 weeks ago, maybe) was to use Album Editor to Add Image: I would find the touched-up .jpg and choose it. Most recently, I decided (having lost touched-up .jpg files due to disk corruption) to copy the .jpg to the album. Usually – but not always – Roon would somehow notice the .jpg’s presence in the album and automagically select it. When Roon did not do that, I would use Album Editor/Add Image to choose the .jpg in the album directory.
It’s an unidentified album so roon did most likely not provide the artwork. My bet: it comes from the file (embedded artwork). Tagged with the help of discogs I’d guess.
OK, I think I shot myself in the foot. I now suspect – eg, on the basis of the Rimsky-Korsakov I showed above and on the basis of other albums – that JRiver (which I use in parallel with Roon, since it has some things I like; but all my playback is through Roon) has been adding folder.jpg to various album directories (I’m not sure how it’s choosing the albums). I suspect (1) that originally I used Album Editor/Add Image to choose the touched-up .jpg in its original location (that is, without copying the file to the album directory) and (2) that Roon “noticed” the folder.jpg in the directory and started using it, throwing away what I had chosen earlier via Album Editor/Add Image.
I apologize for drawing the wrong conclusions about Roon’s behavior.
But here’s a question: Is it possible to extract an image that Roon had got by my use of Album Editor/Add Image, without the .jpg having been in the album directory? If so, I may be able to use a Roon database backup to go back in time, extract relevant images and start to repair things. I did do some research of this question earlier, but the need is now a lot greater.
My advice would certainly be to copy the image art that you want to preserve to the album folder, rather than using the Roon Album Editor to add the desired image to Roon. Having the image file in the folder alongside the track files means that you will have a backup of these files along with your music files as part of your music library backup. You do make backups of your music library, don’t you? And these are different from database backups that Roon itself makes…
In Roon you’re going to choose a preference, meaning “if Roon finds cover art in our metdata service, and there’s also cover art with your files, this is the art that is preferred”. The default is to always use the highest quality cover art, and if only one is available, we will always use that.
If you go into Settings > Library > Import Settings and choose “Prefer File”, Roon will use the highest quality local art we can find (in file tags, folder, etc), assuming we can be sure it’s the front cover. We require that it be the front cover because we’ve seen cases where people include high res liner notes or back cover art, and if we’re not sure it’s the front it causes all sorts of ugliness.
If you have things setup as described above, and you’re not getting what you expect, please let us know some examples, including the name of the album and where the art is stored. We can definitely look into this for you, James.
Yes, I back up my music library. I’ve got burnt several times in arriving at a (let’s hope!) good technique (eg, I ran into the Windows pathname/filename limit issue and lost directories in backups).
And these are different from database backups that Roon itself makes…