Per Track Animated Album Artwork on NPS

Feature requests
1

Feature description

I’d like to be able to utilize animated album arts per track / see animated & Static album art in the NPS for the same album.

With the current toggles in the settings Albums with multiple album artworks (Animated & static) can either be viewed in the NPS by only one animated artwork or purely by the static embedded images

Problem solved

In my case I tend to have multiple discs on albums where each disk / track may have different artwork. What I would love be be able to do in the NPS is have

Disc 1: Animated Artwork 1

Disc 2: Static Embedded Artworks (Per track)

Disc 3: Animated Artwork 2

Brought benefits

More fluid use of Animated & static artwork in the NPS

Device type

Phone

Additional description and context

My Testing
I took 3 tracks & placed each one in a separate sub-folder of a testing folder.
Track 1 in a Folder TEST 1 with a file cover.gif
Track 2 in a Folder TEST 2
Track 3 in a Folder TEST 3 with a file cover.gif

(Cover.gif is different for Tracks 1 & 3)*

My media provider has “Prefer Track thumbnail” toggled on

Album page has “Prefer Animated Art” Toggled on

In addition to the logs I have submitted the test files with the same description as the logs Cover Art Priority 2026

In my 1st test Track 2 Had embedded artwork, Tracks 1 & 3 did not
In my 2nd test All 3 Tracks had embedded artwork

My assumptions … & Results:

  1. Tracks with no embedded artwork should show the Animated artworks from their respective folders on the NPS & other UI this would exclude the main header of the album page which is set to “prefer animated artwork”. (FALSE)

  2. The animated artwork that appears on the album page will be the artwork from the 1st track of the album. (TRUE)

  3. Tracks with embedded artwork & no Animated album art in their folder should show the embedded artwork on the NPS & other UI again excluding the the main header of the album page which is set to “prefer animated artwork”. (TRUE)

For my 1st Test: In the UI all 3 tracks are showing the embedded artwork of track 2.
For my 2nd Test: In the UI all 3 tracks are showing the embedded artwork as expected

On the NPS the tracks always appear with the “preferred” artwork.
If “prefer animated art” is toggled on then all tracks will appear with the animated album art of track 1

On the inverse all tracks will appear with the embedded art of track 2 (1st Test) or they appear with their respective embedded artwork (2nd Test)

I searched existing feature requests

on

2

By default if you have 3 different folders this generate 3 albums. So not sure what you are trying to do here.

1 Like
3

The tracks in each folder belong to the same album. I split them because I planned to populate each track with its own animated art. To do so I need a cover.gif file next to each file so they must be in different folders. I wasn’t sure how else to accomplish this besides splitting up albums (via metadata)

My Second goal was to see if it were possible to utilize animated art for only a portion of 1 album. Unfortunately, by design. Using the “prefer animated art" toggle in the NPS means Symfonium will show only the first available animated art for the entire album. Not using the toggle means you’ll see embedded artworks only.

For the first goal

Symfonium would need to be able to look for multiple cover.gif/webp files in one parent directory that has its own subfolders

Ex;

Parent Folder: Album Name by Album Artist (2016)

Subfolder 1 - Disc 1

Subfolder 2 - Disc 2

Then we can specifically show the animated cover that’s in each track(s) directory. In this case subfolder 1 & subfolder 2 contain different cover.webp files so disc 1 tracks & disc two tracks should show different artwork

(if that’s possible)

For the second goal

I can think of two possible solutions

  1. A shortcut to the prefer animated art toggle on the NPS. Let’s say the user could long press the album art & the preference for animated art can be toggled directly from the NPS effectively swapping the artwork you see instantly. Maybe via utilizing bool1…bool5
  2. A priority switch, that is not as absolute or a change in the behavior of the app. Symfonium will try to populate an animated art for the currently playing track & if one is not available from the tracks directory (not a parent directory) then it will show embedded artwork instead.

Again not sure if that’s possible. The user may need to completely seperate tracks of one album into their own folders. So in the example from earlier Disc 1 & 2 would not be subfolders of the Parent (album) folder.

4

You select prefer track so it will use the track one if present and will animate if animated.

Just put the art you want in each songs and it will do that.

5

There’s no issue with the embedded covers per track, that works as expected, I can’t embed gif or webp though. So my only option is to put these files in the same destination as my track(s)

If I have a track with no embedded art Symfonium does not default to the animated cover

…Unless the toggle in the NPS is enabled to prefer animated art. Toggling this also means every track on the album (embedded artwork or not) will show only the animated artwork. (The caveat here is the app seems to only show the animated art associated with whichever track comes first numerically in the album)

  • is there a way to have 1 album where some tracks are showing Animated art A & other tracks are showing Animated art B in the NPS?
  • Is there a way to have 1 album where some tracks are showing Animated art A & other tracks simply use whatever artwork is embedded?

I have not been able to successfully do the above bullets without flipping the artwork preference toggles in all NPS settings.

6

Yes you can … The app may not animate them in all cases before beta 3, but it’s working fine and will properly fallback to non animated from the animated ones.

1 Like
7

That Is a Twist I was NOT expecting.

I’ll be patiently waiting for beta 3 then.

I had first tried embedding gif / webp & was only getting still frames so I assumed this was more a limitation of the audio formats / containers themselves

8

Hey @mista_j, can you guide me how to embed animated webp/gif to songs or the steps to do so? Thanks!

9

@ArmourArsenal I’m using MP3TAG on PC. This is more often than not the application I use to organize & tag my files.

Once you’ve got your files loaded in you can right click the album art (black box if there’s no art currently embeded) & then you can search your PC for the webp you’d like to embed.

For gif files I’ve noticed you have to get a little creative. You will instead need to go to

Actions, Quick Actions & then use

Import cover from file

Here you will paste the full path & Filename of the gif. Once you click OK mp3tag with embed that gif file

If you are unfamiliar with mp3tag here’s a relatively quick video that should help you get started. If you need any help pm / dm me so this thread isn’t getting longer than need be

10

Thanks a lot! Will try it out and experiment with it.

11

It’s seems the toggle to prefer animated artwork supersedes the prefer track thumbnail toggle from the media provider settings Unless the animated artworks are embedded. I’m finding even in beta 3 some issues with playback on animated covers. Some haven’t played & others play perfectly but they seem to delay the start of audio playback.

Outside of symfonium windows & MP3TAG don’t seem to be too happy with me embedding webp & gif which is on me to figure out.

Is there any way for symfonium to display animated covers only for tracks where a gif / webp is in the directory?

Ex:

-— Album Folder (10 Tracks)

— Sub-folder (2 Tracks) + cover.webp

In this scenario is it possible for the app to only load the animated cover when the tracks in the subfolder are played? If not I’ll make a separate request for a quick toggle of the prefer animated artwork toggle(s)

12

It’s seems the toggle to prefer animated artwork supersedes the prefer track thumbnail toggle from the media provider settings Unless the animated artworks are embedded

Should not, open proper issues I won’t change track artwork handling