VLC displaying wrong album art

[nickhamer]

When I play an audio file which has no associated album art, instead of the orange traffic cone appearing on screen, VLC displays album art from another album I have on my system. It's always the same album art that is displayed.

I imagine that somehow I have replaced the default album art.

I have de/reinstalled VLC and selected the option to delete the config files, but the problem is still occurring.

Any ideas how to correct this?

Many thanks in advance,

Nick

[Lotesdelere]

It also happens to me from time to time. We need to find out what is going wrong but in the meanwhile a workaround is to delete the Art folder from the user's Home directory.

On Windows: %appdata%\VLC\Art

[nickhamer]

Thankss for your reply... no joy unfortunately, this didn't make any difference.

The only way I can alter what it shows is by changing the "visualisation". What I really want is a black background, or the picture of the cone.

I don't really understand why it's picked out the artwork for this particular album to display the whole time either, it's really weird.

Any other ideas??

[upallnight]

The most annoying aspect I've found with version 1.1.2 is the wrong album art displayed. I can't get the stupid album cover to change! It displays the same picture no matter what I do. (not including using a visualization). I DONT WANT TO LOOK AT A PICTURE OF LEONARD COHEN WHEN LISTENING TO BACH. Something must be done! (I'm not really that mad, I just want a solution)

Anyone? Anyone?

[goombapatrol]

same issue here.
i noticed that after i changed the artist from [blank] to 'testing' then it worked.
might have something connected there.

also, what determines if a thumbnail is shown? i noticed that after changing the artist that the icon's picture disappeared.

[Chesterton]

Has anyone found out how the thumbnail is chosen. I have a couple artists that get a different image, but it's always the same wrong image. I have even overwritten with the right image, but the next time I opened VLC, it changed back to the wrong one.

[morning-max]

You know, I like the feature that VLC shows album arts. NOW make it work please or else I'll go crazy. Seriously this is so annoying...

I'll try to help to fix the issue but in the meantime, why don't you add an option (err.. make it default too) to simply not store/cache the pics in the appdate folder in the first place? What's the point of it? It's stored within the song anyway... why do I need it twice on my hdd? My C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\vlc\art folder actually is 20 MB large and I know this might sound weird to most people, but I always try to save every kB possible and 20 MB actually is a lot (about a whole extra song in Flac format).

Now anyway, the arturl folder contains 3 subfolders with 3 pics which are the 3 album arts that always show up for songs that actually should have a different album art. These 3 seem to randomly overwrite or be preferred over the album arts in the artistalbum folder (which btw has so much outdated, long deleted or renamed entries -.-). I'll try to delete all of them now and I'm pretty confident it will fix it... but it's probably just a matter of time until for unknown reasons some other random cover will be saved in this folder and then show up for various other songs instead of their real album art.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Patches are welcome.

[gorlando]

Hi,
I join this forum because when I load a folder or a play when Johann Sebastian Bach is in the Artist ... album picture show some zombie, dark and honestly is offensive.

Where are located on the Web ... these album picture ... so we can remove it!
Thanks,
Giovanni.

[carvin]

I too find it extremely annoying to have incorrect album art displayed. I have written and recorded my own songs, put in the correct id3 tag info, and still get album art for other bands, or just some random pictures from who knows where?

[thomast77]

I have found that vlc displays the wrong artwork if there is no artwork saved in the tag of the audio file you are playing. If you use itunes or some tagging software such as mp3tag to save the artwork in the file it displays the correct album art. So I suspect that vlc is getting this info from somewhere when you have no album art saved in the file. And it is not very good at it.

[dreison27]

I too find it extremely annoying to have incorrect album art displayed. I have written and recorded my own songs, put in the correct id3 tag info, and still get album art for other bands, or just some random pictures from who knows where?

I just registered just to let everyone know in the internet that this problem really occurs and really really offensive.

I have mixed 3 Christian Dance Songs for my youth dance group who will dance on the Church. I have exported the project file from audacity to mp3 and entered the metadata (Id3tag) especially the ALBUM (album and not album art). I entered on the ALBUM ---> GFC 2011 Dance this is the exact thing I typed and saved on the meta data of the mp3. And then I tried playing it on vlc so the group can practice the mixed dance song I made. And to my surprise it showed an album cover(album art) of a naked woman(PORN) and text reads "I'm Hornie". I was really shocked and thought that it might be a problem with audacity or it has some virus of some sort, And so I tried using id3 tag editor and found out that when I remove the album name GFC 2011 Dance it disappears and I tried to type another word like my name Jayson and saved it. This time it showed another image, not porn but another image like a reggae guy with dread locks.

Its a good thing I tried to play it first on vlc and discovered this. Imagine the embarrassment that might have taken place on me when I played it unknowingly that it has that problem at the Church service with the Audio visual equipment and people will see this.



Try to edit the Album id3 tag with this word and confirm if it shows porn ---> GFC 2011 Dance

[maxxyme]

Patches are welcome.

Come on...
Do you really think we are able to provide patches, while we're only users and not even able to code...?! This must be a joke...

I also face the problem when watching television streams from the French ISP Free, e.g. first channel France 2 has not even its own logo as "album" art picture!!!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Patches are welcome.

Come on...
Do you really think we are able to provide patches, while we're only users and not even able to code...?!

It's not written on your forum profile that you cannot provide patches.

This must be a joke...

No. If you don't provide the patches, who do you expect will?

[avguy]

I had been having the same problem as everyone else in having VLC display the album art wrong for mp3 files but it was happening only for certain files so that was confusing me for a while as the "good" and "bad" mp3 files appeared to be identical for everything that I thought would matter.

I tried deleting the "%appdata%\VLC\Art" folder because I found that the picture being displayed for the bad mp3 files happened to be in that folder. But when I deleted that folder VLC just switched to displaying a different fixed picture for the "bad" mp3's, but the problem was the same - rather than displaying the album art embedded in the file, it was displaying some random file that it gets from who knows where. All VLC preferences were set to default and I'm using the standard skin - i.e, VLC is pretty much just as downloaded and installed. I'm running Windows XP SP3 but I doubt that matters.

All my mp3 files had been cleaned with "MP3 Diags" so there are no funny streams, multiple embedded art images, etc. All have album art embedded in ID3 tags and the type is set to "Cover (front)". Everything else likes those files just fine, even my LG Blu-ray player acting as a media server over my home network (and that device is VERY picky about MP3's and won't display album art at all if ANYTHING is funny). But in comparing the "bad" and "good" files (according to VLC), I noticed that all the "bad" files had a blank "Album" entry. So I changed "Album" to "unknown" and then VLC displays the album art correctly! So that's the bug in VLC - it should be looking for ID3 tags with album art and if it doesn't find one, just display the cone (or better yet, add a preference item to add a path to a fixed image to use if no album art is found). I can't think of a single reason why the text contents of the "Album" setting should matter at all for mp3 files. So now as a workaround until VLC fixes the bug, I'm going through my entire MP3 database and editing properties.

[avguy]

Well, my previous post may have been a bit too simplistic. What I suggested (adding non-blank text in the "album title" field) fixed more than 90% of my mp3 files but there were a few that STILL didn't display the art correctly. What I think may be happening is that when VLC plays a file, it caches the artwork (probably in the "%appdata%\VLC\Art" folder) then when it plays a new file, if the "Album Title" text in the tags of that file has exactly the same text as that associated with some art in the cache, it ignores the ID3 tag artwork in the file and just picks the art out of the cache instead. Pardon me but can anyone tell me why this done? If VLC finds art in the ID3 tag of the file it is trying to play, that should be IT, just display that, no matter WHAT is in the text of the album title or in the cache. If there is NO art in the file, THEN VLC can look in the cache and see if there is art there that matches the "album title" field and display it if it finds one. The way it is set up now is just stupid IMHO.

The way it is now, to work around the bug, I have to put some sort of unique text in the 'album title' field of every file to keep VLC from pulling up the wrong art. Many of my songs are individual downloads that were never on any album (or at least not that I know of), but I now have to make up some sort of bogus album name (such as copying over the song name) just to get the art for the song to display correctly, thereby implying that the song WAS on an album of that name (which is probably not true in most cases). So I need to come up with some sort of naming convention that allows me to figure out later whether the album name is real or not. Then later if I find that the song WAS on some sort of album, I can correct the album name.

[yinch]

Hi Team VLC,

Firstly, I want to congratulate you on making the VLC media player so, so very awesome! Truly a superb achievement.

However, I think that the default album art behaviour is flawed.
I strongly believe that the assumptions, on which the code was designed, do not reflect the needs of the majority of users.
And that the changes listed below would make the software more "helpful"

I have seen the
"delete %appdata%album/art"
recommendation and yes that works

I have seen the
"Choose manual download during installation"
recommendation and yes that is also good advice.

However, I think the VLC would be greatly improved with a number of changes to the way to handles album art:
1. INSTALLATION
The "download album art policy" option should be REMOVED from the installation process. Novice, casual, mainstream vlc users will have NO idea what the option does. Choosing the "automatic" option (most likely since casual users don't like manual) will make VLC display all manner of ill-judged, inappropriate and (as noted in other threads) pornographic image results when playing MP3s without album art.

The policy should be set to "Never download" on every installation, and power users can navigate their way to the correct place in the preference to change it back.

2. CACHED vs EMBEDDED album art **BUG**
As of version 1.1.9 (windows vlc) , the player appears to still prioritise cached album art above album art that is held in the tag space of the mp3. I can understand that it would choose cached results (in album/art) over re-requesting a URL - but it make NO SENSE to choose a random cached result above album art which is stored WITH the MP3. There is no scenario under which the cached google image result would be preferable to the embedded album art.

Whenever this is raised in forums, posters are directed to "point 1"

3. FLUSHING album/art
Having striven to make VLC such a useful and friendly piece of mainstream software - it seems a glaring oversight to not have a "Delete album art cache" button somewhere prominent.
Coupled with Point 2 (Cache vs Embedded Bug), the lack of this button makes VLC incredibly unpredictable when playing MP3s.
On many occasions, the chosen automatic art has been dramatically inappropriate. To the point that it would dissuade users from ever installating VLC at all.

So although automatic MP3 album art is a minor feature - it has the potential to make users REJECT the whole package entirely.

I hope this changes make it into the VLC features list soon.

yinch'11

[qliq]

PLEASE VLC TEAM,
There is a lot of VLC Player users that compain about that issue as mentioned above, and especially well-resumed by yinch's post above.
For my own case, after having used VLC since many years, I uninstalled it permanently, and now get back to WMP(which doesn't have that wrong album-art cache issue).
Maybe it's time for you guys to react, as this issue has been mentioned since many previous versions of VLC, and never been solved so far!!!

I hope you guys will find a quick way to resolve this in next version of VLC, to prevent definitive disappointment from users, and spread bad reputation against VLC Player!!!!!!!
Good continuation for you all.

[bat999]

Until somebody comes up with a patch...
With Ubuntu there is a folder .cache > vlc > art.
I've emptied this art folder and changed 'permissions' to root.
Now there's a padlock on it. No more cover art, just the cone.

[qliq]

Until somebody comes up with a patch...
With Ubuntu there is a folder .cache > vlc > art.
I've emptied this art folder and changed 'permissions' to root.
Now there's a padlock on it. No more cover art, just the cone.

Unfortunately same result with Windows 7 (64bits)
VLC won't display any cover art at all if it has no permission to write inside the cache folder

[ariebombarie]

Solution

I have discovered that in the pad C:/%username/Appdata/Roaming/vlc/art/ exists two folders, in my case: 'artistalbum' and 'arturl'

In the folder 'artist-album' there are folders with 'artist-names' then the 'album-name' and finely the image which belongs to the audio-file.

In the folder 'arturl' there are sub-maps like '254ee9553243878e0f06dfea051798eb' and finely an image (the problem-makers)

The files that are corresponding with the 'artist album' will the VLC-player loads perfectly with the right image..... but why?


When I take a close look to the file-list attributes like 'name' , title', 'date', artist-name', and........ 'ALBUM' (windows explorer, maybe you have to change file display-options, choose with the right-click on your mouse for extra attributes) I noticed that the files who has nothing filled in for 'ALBUM' will mess up the album-arts as soon the files are loaded in the VLC-player.

As soon as I filled-in the NAME, ARTIST and ALBUM, (in my case with Itunes) I saw in C:///vlc/art/artistalbum/ popping up with a new 'artist-name/album-name' and the best of all: The VLC-player now will load the audio-file with the same image as you see in the windows-explorer.

[frabjousdei]

I've had this problem for ages and finally got around it

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 Mp3Tag, http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

[frabjousdei]

OMG

OMG

IT STILL DOESN'T WORK

THIS IS INCREDIBLY ANNOYING

[Lotesdelere]

In the folder 'arturl' there are sub-maps like '254ee9553243878e0f06dfea051798eb' and finely an image (the problem-makers)

When I take a close look to the file-list attributes like 'name' , title', 'date', artist-name', and........ 'ALBUM' (windows explorer, maybe you have to change file display-options, choose with the right-click on your mouse for extra attributes) I noticed that the files who has nothing filled in for 'ALBUM' will mess up the album-arts as soon the files are loaded in the VLC-player.

As soon as I filled-in the NAME, ARTIST and ALBUM, (in my case with Itunes) I saw in C:///vlc/art/artistalbum/ popping up with a new 'artist-name/album-name' and the best of all: The VLC-player now will load the audio-file with the same image as you see in the windows-explorer.

Well spotted, and confirmed, I think you have found it out.
The corresponding ticket 5298 has been created.

[Cocofang+]

Additionally VLC only seems to be able to "remember" one album cover per album title. If songs with the same album have different cover arts, VLC displays only one single art for all of them (usually the first it finds in alphabetical order).

I am no coder but wouldnt it be possible to have VLC read the album art directly and individually from and for every file, instead of it creating a folder for every album?