VLC displaying wrong album art

[SDM71]

So after a brief test of blocking all access to VLC/art in Windows, I discovered something else:

VLC won't use the embedded art at all. If it can't extract it and write it to VLC/art/artistalbum, then it'll just be the cone.

It looks like after 6 years, all that's left is a series of workarounds, from which we all need to choose our own, personal, "least-worst" option.

[perzaklie]

Here it is, May 6, 2018 and the problem still persists. I have Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. I have tried every single workaround listed in this forum and NONE work. Some strange album art still shows at the beginning of EVERY video I play with VLC. This album is not on my PC, never has been, and I've never even heard of the artist before in my life. All the references to album art folders and files do not exist on my PC. VLC Metadata access is unchecked. My question is this, Since this problem has persisted for over 7 years, why can't it be fixed? I support financially every open source program on my PC. We will not have an effective open source community without support but I am having a problem justifying the support to VLC if some simple problem like this cannot be corrected. I am not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination but I cannot believe the solution can be that difficult. What do we as a user community, have to do to get this corrected? Can/will a person with authority within VLC please respond to the public? Do we not deserve an answer?

[n3pla2000]

My problem is two fold. I even tried adding "fingerprints" to the mp3 to correct this... But my problem is worse, Why I have two instances where bands used the name previously used by another band. "Copperhead" was a band that released music and albums in the early 70's, and had a self-titled album called "Copperhead". The years later in 1992, another band also used the name "Copperhead", and they too released a self-titled album called "Copperhead"!!! You see this was NOT the only time this happened two other bands had a similar issue. There were two bands called "The Arrows" one was from Canada, and the other was from the United Kingdom! VLC should ALWAYS pull the album art from the mp3, flac, or what ever... I can edit those files to include album art, ID3 tags can retain that data without ever needing to connect to the internet. I can see VLC asking internet site for album art IF there is none in the music file, but to do so otherwise??? Also if two files are in the same directory and same album name and artist name, then they could possibly use the same album art, while not the correct thing it is better than assuming all songs with the same album name use the same album art. How many "Greatest Hits" albums have been released (often by the same band), if not one for ANY band with a little longevity!!! Let's get real what if the internet is down? No cover art? No using metadata in the IDtags is the smartest thing to do. why have a database for cover art when the file already contains it? PLEASE VideoLan fix this problem.

[BaumschulenElrik]

I really don't know if this is still of interrest, but if you have trouble with faulty coverart I recommend doing the following. It does not fix vlc's issue but enables you to use your own coverart.

1. go to preferences -> Interface -> untick "allow network access for metadata"

2. go to your %appdata%/vlc folder and delete all preexisting/faulty coverart

3. place a .jpg image in your albums directory called "cover.jpg"
This image is going to be displayed everytime you use vlc to play one of the audiofiles inside the directory. If you don't place an own image, the vlc cone is going to be displayed.

[perzaklie]

Ok, thank you. I really am not interested in album art. As a matter of fact, I prefer not to have it at all. I followed your suggestion to locate coverart and there is none there. I created a blank black jpg image and placed it there. I will watch and see what happens in the future. Actually I just tried it and nothing happens now but the VLC cone.

My problem is/was this one strange album art pops up from time to time on totally unrelated media playback. I cannot locate the stranger, if I could I would delete it. The album referenced on the art is not on my PC nor is any media by the artist. I have no idea where it came from.

[Quilvis]

This might be a solution:

As previously suggested,

"Tools > Preferences > Interface > (Tab) Privacy/Network Interaction > (untick the box) Allow metadata network access."

Also, what I did was, take out all the songs in a particular folder (in Windows) and put them in a new one. The album art didn't come back!

I think VLC sees a particular Windows folder with songs in it, and treats it as an "album"

[perzaklie]

Thanks. First suggestion I did first off. Didn't change a thing.

I have hundreds of folders. The art that VLC is displaying is for an artist and song I've never heard of and is not on my PC anywhere. I have searched for jpg, gif, png and tiff files less than 100k and it is not found.

Interestingly, sometimes it appears every time I open a song then for a month or two won't appear then starts appearing again! I have decided that my PC is haunted by the ghost of this album. Somewhere, sometime in history, I must have offended this album and it is getting revenge by irritating me!

[Quilvis]

Hi perzaklie,

I have to update and say, that it's still a problem!

[mkapex1]

hello all I know this is a month an a half old thread. however. this isnt a vlc problem as I started to notice this also on windows media player. in your downloads folders if you click view and go to options, change folder and search options. go to the view tab, and uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended). you will then notice in downloads the album arts as folder.jpg and albumartsmall.jpeg you want to delete both of these then reapply Hide protected operating system files (Recommended). and restart your media player.

if the file is not there go to local disk and search folder.jpg

[unidan]

Hi, if you want to delete them, you can find them in %appdata%/VLC/ folder.

[oldProgrammer]

As long as there is the directory "vlc/art" there is an excellent chance for wrong album art, and I waste time ere I start VLC deleting everything there (and on starting VLC wastes time setting up a directory for every file in my playlist). There is no reason for that directory if album art is found amongst the sound file s metadata, and only if one checks "Allow metadata network access", is there reason, and that is a bad idea. Furthermore, if there are metadata in the sound file with no picture, the best conclusion is that no picture is to be associated with the sound file—but I have in this case no objection to "Folder.jpg" if I control it (sometimes when I use WMP that is randomly changed). As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to fetch any picture from the 'Net unless the file has no metadata AT ALL.
I have found a curious bug in 2.2.3, that if in ID3 APIC follows empty WOAR, WOAF, WOAS (which, by the way, violates the ID3 rules), VLC ignores the APIC, although no other metadata that it handles. I believe that some versions of WMP put such empty frames into the ID3 section.

[oldProgrammer]

I found a new problem in my 2.2.3 under Windows, that if in an M3U file the full soundfilename is followed by space, the file is played, but the metadata are not shown, as if one process read the filename for playing, and another for the metadata. Considering the great lack of punctuation in an M3U file, I consider dropping the space for playing the bug, not keeping the space and not finding the metadata.

[kozna]

funny thread, assuming (you) did all the other solutions go to:
tools>show all settings>interface>main interfaces>Qt>uncheck display background cone or art.
restart vlc
i tried all the solutions in the thread + this and it worked.

[jfhenault]

Hi there folks

I have good news/FIX

AS YOU KNOW
THIS NO LONGER WORKS/IS PRESENT
"On the Interface tab, under Album art download policy, select Manual download only."

BUT

THIS IS THE NEW SOLUTION

1. Step: delete everything from this folder "%appdata%/VLC/art/"
2. Step: Go to Tools > Preferences > Interface > (Tab) Privacy/Network Interaction > (untick the box) Allow metadata network access.
3. Step: Save

PS: It would be so much nicer if these folks from the VideoLan fixed this issue permanently/once for all
BUT
for now this worked for me

Enjoy

Thank you so much!!

[davidrmoran]

Can you or anyone give full correct Win10 path? I am not finding

"%appdata%/VLC/art/"

and the frontslashes make me think this is linux

I have only

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC

and no art folder ...

tyvm!

[lukpac]

THIS IS THE NEW SOLUTION

1. Step: delete everything from this folder "%appdata%/VLC/art/"
2. Step: Go to Tools > Preferences > Interface > (Tab) Privacy/Network Interaction > (untick the box) Allow metadata network access.
3. Step: Save

PS: It would be so much nicer if these folks from the VideoLan fixed this issue permanently/once for all
BUT
for now this worked for me

Enjoy

That doesn't work. I just played two FLAC files from the same album with different art. When I played the first file, the cover was loaded into the art folder, and when playing the second file, the cached art from the first file is used.

Can you or anyone give full correct Win10 path? I am not finding

"%appdata%/VLC/art/"

and the frontslashes make me think this is linux

I have only

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC

and no art folder ...

tyvm!

%appdata%\VLC\art\

As noted, it doesn't actually fix the issue though.

[the_durkster]

With Windows 10 and the current version of VLC 3.0.8, the album art saves within the folder of the music album you are listening to. You will need to click on the 'View' tab inside the folder and then on the 'Options' drop down arrow on the right hand side. Click on 'Change folder and search options' and then on the 'View' tab of the Folder Options Dialog Box. Scroll down and click on 'Hide protected operating system files (recommended)' to unselect the arrow. Answer yes to the pop up warning and then on 'Apply' and 'OK' to close the box. You may also need to delete the 'Art' folder which is found in 'your_profile_name\AppData\Roaming\vlc\'. The long path is: C:\Users\your_profile_name\AppData\Roaming\vlc. So, while the system files are being displayed, follow this path and delete the 'Art' folder if one is found there.

All of the files to do with playing the music and displaying the art will now be seen within each folder of your music files. Look for an image file called 'Folder.jpg'. This is the file you will need to replace in order to change what displays within VLC while your music is being played. I found the proper album art by simply going to Google, searching for the album by name and clicking on 'Images' when the search page comes up. This displays all of the images Google has on file for the particular album you're searhing for. When you find the proper album cover look for the size of 500 X 500 or 600 X 600, if available, and click on it to display the full sized image on the right side of the screen. Right-click on the full sized image and click on 'Save Picture As' and save it to your music folder as 'Folder.jpg'. When the Pop-up asks if you want to replace the image 'Folder.jpg' click on 'Yes'. The proper Album Art will now display within VLC while your music is playing.

(Remember to reverse the process and turn off displaying hidden files and folders before finishing or else you will see them being displayed everywhere including your desktop)

Please remember that VLC is Open Source, free software so we need to be sensitive to the fact that every feature will not always be functioning exactly as everyone wants it to. So, sometimes it will be up to us to figure these things out, and then post the answer when we get a solution to the problem at hand. Hope this helps.

[gazooka]

It seems that VLC sometimes automatically creates the Folder.jpg Albumartsmall.jpg in the folder where the music resides in case it doesn't find any other album art to be displayed. These files were what caused the same album art to show up all the time in VLC regardless of what song I played.

However it may not be enough to untick the 'Hide protected operating system files (recommended)' in order for the file to show up.

There are actually (at least?) two independent ways in which a file can be prevented from being displayed.

The first is if the 'Hide protected operating system files (recommended)' is ticked as described in several earlier posts.

The second is if the file has the system attribute set. Then it won't be displayed regardless of the setting of the tick mark mentioned above. In order to find out if this is the case you need to open a command line window, in Window 10 preferrably the PowerShell, by left clicking the Windows icon and selecting Windows PowerShell. This will open a command line window.

Change to the drive and directory where your music files are stored (cd path to your music directory including the drive letter, e.g. "cd d:\MyMusic".)

Now give these commands to check if the invisible files exist

dir -force Folder.jpg

dir -force AlbumArtSmall.jpg

If they exist you can now remove the problematic attributes by the commands. (Note that both the hidden and the system attribute must be removed at the same time.)

attrib -s -h Folder.jpg

attrib -s -h AlbumArtSmall.jpg

Now they should be visible in a normal Explorer window and can thus be deleted.

This at least prevented the same album art to show up for me all the time. Instead I got the VLC cone when using drag and drop, but double clicking a song to play it in VLC resulted in the correct album art.

[78rpmuser]

I maintain a folder with a jpeg image of every record label for each 78rpm song I have stored on my computer. When I use "Add Cover Art From File" and provide the proper file name within that folder, it initially is correct but subsequently, even sometimes while I'm still on the "Current Media Information" screen it changes to some other songs label or non record label image. What am I doing wrong? I would have thought my selected image would have been stored as part of the metadata, but an image from some other source often overrides it.

[shadowfax]

Hello,

I figured out a simple workaround by perusing this topic and the many others that have been posted on various forums over the years, so I wanted to share. I am using Windows 7 but hopefully it works for 10 as well.

In the art folder for VLC's AppData, each album has an "art" file. For me, there is no file type; it simply displays as a "file". Simply delete this file, download a picture of the album cover into the folder and rename it "art". Voila!

On a side note, it's bizarre that it's 2020 and this has never been properly fixed.

[mmortal03]

That doesn't work. I just played two FLAC files from the same album with different art. When I played the first file, the cover was loaded into the art folder, and when playing the second file, the cached art from the first file is used.

Same here. I listen to a podcast that has different artwork for each show, but VLC just pulls the artwork for the first show played, and then re-uses that for all the rest of the shows, unless I clear out the VLC album art folder for the podcast each time.

[78rpmuser]

Hello,

I figured out a simple workaround by perusing this topic and the many others that have been posted on various forums over the years, so I wanted to share. I am using Windows 7 but hopefully it works for 10 as well.

In the art folder for VLC's AppData, each album has an "art" file. For me, there is no file type; it simply displays as a "file". Simply delete this file, download a picture of the album cover into the folder and rename it "art". Voila!

On a side note, it's bizarre that it's 2020 and this has never been properly fixed.

Where do you find "VLC's AppData"? I found in Program Files (x86) under VLC, a folder lua with a folder art. I deleted the files shown and replaced them with my own art files. It still didn't work. So, I tried Program Files under VLC and found art folder in meta folder and did the same there. Still no success.

[Lotesdelere]

Where do you find "VLC's AppData"?

Type in this in the address bar of your file explorer: %APPDATA%\vlc\

[78rpmuser]

Thanks for the reply. That does seem to work.

[carajo]

After reading all the posts i get this conclusion:

1: If you edit your tags and covers with another tagger usually they will get embeded on the file.
2: If you start VLC and drop a group of files to the playlist, first it will create a hidden folder in Users/Your User/appdata/roaming/VLC/art/arturl with all the highres images named "art" in as many folders as files you dropped. Those folders use some algorithm to be named unique but we need to now the tags and order VLC uses to create the name of each folder.
3: When you save the playlist another folder is created with the short version of the images distributed by artists, etc.
4: I presume that this process has the intention to accelerate the reading of graphic metadata the next time you play the list.
5: If you next change the metadata of that files probably VLC will not actualize the current data stored (sometimes because that file comes from another source and windows prevents the system to do it as I discoverd in some of them).
6: The solution pointed here is to show hidden folders in windows, search for the folder "art" mentioned, delete it and empty the trust. This will force VLC to recreate the new data (you will need to drop all you files again (just pray to get only one playlist).
7: There is a bug here again (this is not mentioned by some people here because they didn't find the case) ...this is when you get different "Artist" but the same "Track name" or the same "Artist". The result in this case is that you will get the first created cover for both songs with the same image, independently of the "Artist".
8: So for me the solution exposed here is a temporary and incomplete workaround for the problem.
9: The solution may be to rewrite the algorithm employed to asingn the name of the folders data of VLC. May be it's looking recursively in the present metadata of the files to generate the name by "Artist" "Track Title" and probably "Album Title" if present (that's the reason of some people get solved when changed this label data) in the short version of the covers but in the folder "arturl" it is asociating the cover with "TrackTitle" and then "Artist". You can make the experiment with two different tracks with the same title or fifferent groups with the same name as I did.
10: Hope to see a new version to resolve this bugs, they are very annoying.

Sorry for my english, regards from Spain.