Having selected “Prefer track thumbnail” in the media provider settings, Symfonium now displays individual track artwork (so few players do!) but now ignores cover.jpg images inside the album folders intended for the album cover and instead defaults to the first track image.
Is it possible, for compilations and (in my use case audio dramas) to display individual track art but still use the cover image when displaying the album itself in the album list and information?
Logs:
debug-20251031_104453.zip
(may have uploaded multiple times by mistake, apologies)
Additional information:
Reproduction steps:
Create folder with multiple files (occurs with both mp3 and flac) with each file containing embedded album art and a single jpg image called cover.jpg. When the option to use individual art is selected, the cover will be ignored entirely rather than used in conjunction.
Actually there is that’s why it’s written everywhere that they are mandatory
There’s plenty of settings and versions and things that can influence what happens. Proper logs during a sync give everything and avoid me loosing time asking again for them and the details.
Hence why all the message everywhere, and why I’m here again asking for them loosing time as I would have loved to avoid.
Hi Tolriq, I apologise. Given that it’s a question about intended behaviour and where a setting might be that I could be missing I naively thought logs would be pointless. I’ll generate and add one
Very true, I’m sorry for not following your instructions and appreciate your help immensely. I’ve made a clean install, created a test folder and uploaded the debug log with screenshots
I’m sorry, I think I’ve explained my problem badly.
I want the cover.jpg to be used, but only as the album cover, and overriden only in Now Playing when tracks have their own covers.
If one has a compilation album, for example (like the “Now that’s what I call music” or a “best of”), the expected behaviour is for the cover.jpg to display in the list of albums but when you play it for each track to display their own art.
In my use case, this allows an album of dramas to have a boxset cover but each story track to have their own cover. The music player Pulsar, for example, does this. It’s default behaviour is to use the album art of the first track (as Symfonium does in current code with the individual track art option turned on) but if it sees a cover.jpg in the folder it uses this for the album cover only and Now Playing uses the cover embedded in the track.
I really want to move to Symfonium and so hope there’s a way to do this.
I’ve just uploaded an example video of how Pulsar handles cover art. It uses any cover.jpg file inside the folder as album art but tracks still use their separate embedded art in Now Playing.
This is the only limitation I’ve found in Symfonium, the app is simply incredible and I’d love to buy and use it going forwards if there’s a way around this
I perfectly understand the need and I think it’s valid, the issue is that you keep telling me that if you uncheck the option prefer track covers then the cover is used.
Since this is not really possible in current code, I needed to know how you reached that state before being able to make any changes.
And now to resume I’ve lost quite some time trying to chase something that actually is not the case ?
So let’s try again:
Can you confirm that the cover.jpg is never used if any song have a cover in an album ?
I’m really sorry, I think you’re right. While I thought this was the behaviour I was seeing yesterday (after my full library had scanned) I can’t see it today with the test folder. When the option is unchecked now the cover in the first track is used for both album and all tracks.
“Can you confirm that the cover.jpg is never used if any song have a cover in an album ?”
Confirmed.
Let’s assume I’ve been incorrect on this (scanning my full library takes some time to complete and prevented other apps accessing the SD card during the process so I can’t run the full scan until after work tonight), if it happens again I can make a new support ticket with the debug log of the scan and results. Truly sorry.
Is there an existing way to make a jpg in the folder show as the album art and keep individual art for now playing or would this need to be a new feature?
Currently this is not possible, embed images have higher priority. Next release will prioritize external cover when you enable prefer track thumbnail because it makes sense.
Thanks, then I’ll buy in anticipation of that and to support your app. Thank you for your time and for the work you’ve put into developing this player.
I’m sorry again for the misunderstanding. I’ll test with a full library tomorrow just in case
Could this be optional please? I use individual track covers but standard behaviour across all players is to prioritise embedded art and my library is set up this way.
I likely have some cover.jpgs strewn across folders that were included in downloads and this would mess things up in the cases where I’ve subsequently changed the album art or found a higher quality image and embedded that.
When I googled it it seems that there used to be a setting in the media providers regarding whether to use external covers, but I can’t find it anymore.
