Is it possible to disable caching of cover art?

[DacianDraco]

Hi all,

I'm on Win 8.1, but i don't think this is an OS prob, and i have an issue with cover art pictures (in left corner quadrilateral) while tracks from different artists are in a folder. To be more specific: on a mix that has several tracks i have manually tagged different cover art corresponding to each artist in the mp3 metadata, and for all tracks i have set album name to something like "summer 2014", same as the folder they are in. And once i play any track from that folder it catches the cover art from the first played track to all tracks in that folder (i believe because they all share same album name or folder), which i feel it shouldn't. I have used in the run command %appdata%\vlc\art to go and delete cache but it keeps making new one each time i play a track, and caches the pic from the played track to all tracks in that folder and i don't feel it's right. So i'd like to know if there is a way to disable caching of cover art, i don't want to turn off the cover art feature, but i think it would be great if it read "live" the metadata of tracks and display the cover art corresponding to track, not cache it for the folder or album or even each track. Tho the option for each track is also fine. Is there such an option?

Thank you for reading.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You shouldn't have agreed to it when VLC asked at the first start... You can get the dialog back by resetting the VLC prefs and restarting it.

[DacianDraco]

Hi Remi,

Please tell me what exactly shouldn't i have agreed with? Because i've uninstalled VLC and installed it again and unchecked the "retrieve cover art option" (i don't remember the exact name, it's one of the 2 checkboxes when you start VLC for the first time). If this is not it, please tell me the option's name that i have to look for. Thank you for your time.

[Ludrax]

again ticket 5298

And once i play any track from that folder it catches the cover art from the first played track to all tracks in that folder (i believe because they all share same album name or folder), which i feel it shouldn't.

[DacianDraco]

No, i don't think so, if all tracks have at album name the same metadata it doesn't create cache in arturl folder for any track in my mix folder. Only in artistalbum/foldername it makes 1 according to first played track (either track 1 or 2 or 3 or any i play first from the folder after i delete the cache), and since all tracks have metadata with same album name it shows that cached picture for all tracks. If i remove the album name metadata for all tracks it shows the correct picture for each track and now it caches in arturl folder each picture for each track, but if i put back the album name metadata for all tracks it goes back to showing the cache of the folder (artistalbum/foldername) even thou it has done cache of each track.

[mshlick]

The album art caching feature actually is very annoying when the tracks in an album have a different picture in each of them. The VLC uses the same cached picture for all the tracks ;-(
A quick and dirty workaround for me was just to add numbers to the album name in each track, so VLC treated the tracks as different albums, but of course then I can't choose them by selecting the album name.
Please please please provide and option to disable the album art caching feature, even if only by adavnced setting.
Thanks,
Mark

[WieboJW]

To the VLC DEVELOPERS Rémi Dennis-C. - Last request of mshlick (Mark) has not been answered.
" Please please please provide and option to disable the album art caching feature "
This counts for me too. I had 12 Mb of A COUNTLESS number of .jpg files in the art folder (in 2 month time).
This slows down a lot if things. Start up (due to register lines and defragmentation), internet connection and ...
So a disable option would be VERY welcome.
(BTW - When you give us a way to manually change the register to prevent it, it's alright too)

[WieboJW]

You shouldn't have agreed to it when VLC asked at the first start... You can get the dialog back by resetting the VLC prefs and restarting it.

Remi, the question still is not answered.
see my comment 2017 july 02 please

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

yes, I did answer the question. If you don't understand, I can't help you.

[Cache-cache]

I have never activated network access to metadata, yet %appdata%\vlc\art gets populated by album art extracted from the music files themselves (not from internet), and this art stays there forever unless I manually delete the art files.

An extra reason why there should be an option to prevent that happening (maybe either by never storing extracted art into disk files or by cleaning it after no longer necessary, for instance when VLC closes), is that it is sort of a local partial history of files read in VLC, those that have art inside at least, and I don't like my system logging my activities forever, especially without informing me explicitely. A bit similar to keeping last read files in the menu (but this is not hidden to the user and has an option for disabling). CCleaner deletes that %appdata%\vlc\art data and is right to do so in my opinion, but an option in VLC instead would be great.

Anyway while I'm here a big thank you to all VLC developers, this is a great software !

[Gingercat]

This is still a problem here in December 2019. I'm running into the issue because I'm listening to a live-action podcast series that uses different album art embedded in each MP3 file.

VLC still caches the first one opened, and unless this cache is manually deleted, the same art is used for every MP3 regardless of their actual contents. Since each MP3 has a different filename, I don't understand why VLC would insist on using the cached art instead of just loading it from the MP3 on open. Why cache it at all? It wouldn't exactly be a huge timecost to load art from the file when it's opened.

This needs to be addressed. This sort of issue shouldn't be a problem four and a half years after first being reported.

[pjs]

A workaround is to change the permissions of the art folder. I did this in Windows 10. It might apply to other versions as well.

Go to the "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\vlc" folder.

On the "art" folder only: right click -> properties -> security tab -> Edit -> check every single "Deny" box for each group and username listed. Do not press Apply until every box is checked. Press Apply once all Deny boxes are checked. Press OK on the confirmation box and that should solve it.

Note: this will prevent album art from appearing in vlc at all.

***Be careful when changing folder permissions. Be sure to only edit permissions on that specific folder, the 'art' folder.

***If you want to delete the contents of the art cache, do so before applying the deny permissions as you will not be able to enter the folder once applied.

***If you need to re-gain access to the folder, or want album art back in vlc, remove the check marks from every Deny box but don't hit Apply until every single box is un-checked.

Hope this helps.

[TeaRipper]

Hi, i've been trying to do similar: eg, view different art for each track in the same album while playing them. (song lyrics in my case).
Each track of an album has a different picture embedded in its tag, i used the "tag and rename" program to add / change those.
After trying out all the suggestions here and elsewhere I have found a workable fix.

1) open the album / tracks in tag and rename or any good tagging program.
2) highlight all tracks and edit the tags: remove the album name (& optionally remove the artist too), then save the updated tags.
{VLC reads the art info from those 2 fields in the tag so if you remove the album and artist info VLC cannot tell if they are
from the same album or by the same artist, therefore VLC treats them as seperate entities and loads whatever art is embedded
in each mp3 tag. It's a bit fiddly removing the data from multiple albums but you only have to do it once.}
3) The art from each track is still sent the the art cache folder and I would suggest running a batch file weekly to empty that out.
I will add the contents of the batch file in my next post.

REGARDS and thanks to the VLC team.

[TeaRipper]

Copy the text below the dotted line and paste into a text file.
save it as vlc cleaner.bat
run it weekly/monthly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@echo off
cls
ECHO The author of this free program accepts no liability for any damage to systems.
ECHO The only area targeted by this program is the VLC cache.
ECHO There is no virus in this code.
ECHO Kind Regards x.
echo .
echo Empty your VLC art cache ?
echo .
pause
RMDIR /S/Q %APPDATA%\vlc\art\
RMDIR /S/Q %APPDATA%\vlc\art\
exit

[lost un]

To disable cover-art caching is a great good. When the cover-art that one wishes to see is stored in the sound-file being played there is no reason for setting a separate disk-file between the sound-file and the VLC window where it is shown. It makes no sense unless the picture was downloaded, and it looks as if the developers supposed that the usual case!
When I at last allowed updating my old version of VLC to 3.0.19 I found that, first off, when it started, it really hogged the processor, and afterwards that it had copied every picture from our extensiv Media Library (all sound) into its cache. Of course, I deleted the whole tree beginning at art. I had recourse the above-mentioned device, making an art with no directory access, but then, as above stated, VLC shows no album-art at all, and I wish to see it.
I uninstalled 3.0.19, and reverted to the old 2.2.3, and will, as I have been doing, regularly delete the to me useless cache. No new version is, to me, an improvement until there is at least an option to disable or remove the cover-art cache.

[awesk8]

Unfortunately this is still an issue 9+ years later, even in the VLC 4.0 nightly builds.

As many people here have pointed out, VLC does NOT correctly handle cover art, specifically when:
1. The audio file has an embedded cover, or an image in the same folder,
2. The audio file is part of an album, that is the "Album" metadata matches with other audio files in a playlist,

VLC incorrectly prioritizes the "album art" which is the very first file loaded as part of an album. This is because when VLC sees a new album, it will do the following:
1. Cache the "art.png" file in AppData\Roaming\vlc\art\artistalbum\<band>\<year>\<album>
2. Update cache in AppData\Local\vlc\cache

This has the unintended consequence of treating the first audio file loaded as the de-facto album cover art. This album art is prioritized even if the individual audio files have their own covers (either embedded or in same folder).

The fix is quite simple, prioritize embedded cover art over the album art.

To fix the caching issue is a bit more complex, VLC needs to appropriately handle caching of album cover art, in particular, no longer cache the first cover from a given album, especially when that is an embedded cover. This will likely have to involve looking at the cover type to ensure it doesn't break functionality in other common use cases.

For end users: The easiest fix is to delete the "Album" metadata field (or change so they are all different), because that is what VLC uses to cache the album art. If no album art is found, it uses the first cover it finds that is part of the album which is often the first track in the playlist. The reason is because VLC does not support albums with tracks which have their own individual covers.

I tried disabling the "Write" permission to the art folder, but even with "Read" access still enabled VLC was unable to load any cover art. This is another issue because if no album cover art is found, it should at least attempt to look for embedded covers.

It is quite unfortunate this issue has persisted for so long for what seems to be a fairly common use case. To add salt in the wound, other media players do not have this problem. I like VLC for its simplistic nature, but having outstanding issues like this drive the community away. Especially for something that should be a quick fix. Developers being dismissive, arrogant, and condescending also does not help.