Album Art Problem/VLC Start Up

[SWyvern]

I recently found a nifty program with which I can add cover art to the metadata of my mp3s. The program is called mp3Tag. It also has a feature with which you can add your own pictures to the mp3 if no cover art can be found by the program on its own. I recently used this to change the cover art of a few songs because the art the program was finding is referred to as the "alternate version" and although it's what was on the American version of the CD I want the original art. So using this program, I did so. HOWEVER, everytime I open up the song in VLC it doesn't seem to matter that I've changed the art... VLC still shows the alternate cover. I even tried shutting off my wireless card so it wasn't receiving information from the internet, created a copy of the mp3 that had no tags what so ever (no artist, no album name, no cover art, nothing), entering in the information, and adding the cover art I wanted. When I play the song without an album name, it shows my art but the moment I add in the name of the album, VLC seems to hate me and go back to using the art it deems as the correct one. I even tested the song (with full tags) in other players and it showed up as my art. I'm going a little insane here... can anybody tell me what I can do about this?

On a completely different note, I am also having a problem with VLC starting up slowly. For whatever reason, ever since I downloaded the latest version VLC takes quite a bit to load up. I'll double click on a singular song or video but the player doesn't start for a few minutes. I looked up one solution that suggested to turn off the option of using media library but that still didn't help.

Thank you for your time for reading these paragraphs and I hope you may be able to help me.

[yinch]

Hi VLC forum,

I have experienced a similar problem with VLC displaying apparently random album art when I play MP3s that have IDtags but no album art specified.

Looking at the VLC message in verbose, I can now see that VLC sends out a request to google's image search and uses the first search result to display when running MP3s

It appears to send a query of the form:
images.google.com/images?q=<all-your-IDtags-separated-with-spaces>' + "%20cover"

Now, this is extremely arbitrary behaviour, and I realise it is possible to turn off album art fetching at installation time or after installation - but imho, this feature needs to be DISABLED BY DEFAULT.

I have had MP3s with perfectly prosaic tag IDs returning adult-themed graphics and photos of injuries as album art.

Using such an uncontrolled source as Google image search is not a good idea. In fact, this feature alone makes it difficult for VLC to be recommended to mainstream and casual users. With all the effort that has clearly gone into making VLC an excellent,powerful and user-friendly piece of software - this album random image art feature is a step backwards.

I think VLC is a superb piece of software and use it a great deal. The VLC dev team are to be commended on the wonderful product they have made. I humbly request that the "google image album art fetch" be defaulted to "OFF" in all installations - and leave it to power users to activate it ("opt in") when they need it.

EDIT:
Have now tested the MP3 album behaviour using an MP3 track that DOES have album art.
It appears that the embedded album art is only used if the "google image search fetcher" returns no matches.

Suggestion: why not give the embedded album art precedence over the image search result? So that the image search is only attempted if no album art is found embedded.
Even with this modification, I still think that the image search should be off by default - not presented as a choice at installation, but instead switchable within a VLC control panel/dialog window.

yinch'10

[elixirsol]

First time poster here,

I have to say that I am ABSOLUTELY LIVID!!!

Having spent several days spent recording, producing and uploading a batch of MP3's to my mother's website (who teaches shorthand to journalism students), it now apears that the "album art" currently being chosen by VLC for the tracks is of an extremely pornographic nature!!!

The image chosen is absolutely nothing to do with me, my mother, or her website. Yet, I am having to re-tag (despite the existing tags being completely harmless) and upload the affected files - not what I wanted to be spending my evening doing, after a tiring day at work. I cannot afford for my mother or her website to be in anyway associated with the image being displayed!!
Of course, even by re-tagging, I'm not guaranteed that some similarly offensive image won't be schosen again, at some point in the future...

In my opinion, this "random" selection of image is ridiculous...

GRRR...

Gareth

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Just deactivate it in the preferences.

[dreison27]

The same thing happened to me. Mixed a dance mp3 and exported it and added the tag to the album name to ---> GFC 2011 Dance and the album art showed a porno image when played.

Just deactivate it in the preferences.

Well this doesn't solve the problem. It should have been tested thoroughly before it was released.
Or the random album art thingy on the preferences should be default to not to show random album art.

[frabjousdei]

Hi bros and girls and fellow VLC addicts.

I've had this problem for ages and finally got my head around it. Hope this helps:

Alternative Solution A:

Resise the VLC window amd hide the entire Media Browser bar, removing the album art window as you do so

This isn't really a fix however, so try this:

Alternative Solution B:

1. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\default user\Application Data\vlc\art
2. Delete it all
3. Go to preferences in VLC. Then: Interface, Privacy, Album art download policy
4. Uncheck the boxes and select "manual download only". This stops this imo ridiculous practice of VLC getting album art from the net, especially from google images and the equally irksome practice as a default of "remembering" the last art displayed

If you want some help adjusting the art work in the ID3 tags of the media files themselves, i recommend http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

VLC asks whether you want to download art the first time you start it, if only for obvious privacy reasons. So I wouldn't really call this "ridiculous" a practice. There is however a problem that Google images yields a lot of bad results.

[SWyvern]

Alternative Solution B:

1. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\default user\Application Data\vlc\art
2. Delete it all
3. Go to preferences in VLC. Then: Interface, Privacy, Album art download policy
4. Uncheck the boxes and select "manual download only". This stops this imo ridiculous practice of VLC getting album art from the net, especially from google images and the equally irksome practice as a default of "remembering" the last art displayed

If you want some help adjusting the art work in the ID3 tags of the media files themselves, i recommend http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

OMG... this is the answer I've been looking for. Thank you so much for the reply and I didn't even see it until a month later. But better now than never! I was beginning to wonder how it was possible that I could constantly change the album art myself and yet VLC didn't recognize it. The only answer that really made any sense was that somewhere on my computer there was a folder that VLC was storing art for and thus wasn't caring about what I had just done. Anywho, thanks so much and I hope that others out there are able to avoid my frustrations.

[Sweet Memories]

The Art lives in your Music Folder(hidden)all you see are are your Music Files
I sorted mine out by going open your Music Folder go to Tools then Folder Options then the view tab change settings
1(Show Hidden Files)
2(Untick box hide exstensions)
3(Untick box hide protected operating system files)
Then before closing Folder Options Apply changes
Then go to your Music Folder you must change view details to thumbnails to see the art and scroll down till you see the album art that you keep seeing when you play music through your VLC Player and delete it
Then change settings back in folder options and that will sort it out ( It Sorted mine out) Hope it sorts yours out VLC is great thanks