Add and manage album art
One of the functions Soundbase provides is the searching and adding of album art. You can add or extract art to/from the song mp3 tag, as well as store the image in the directory the album is stored. The functionality is available through the tab "ART Info". All functions are stored in the toolbar buttons, and although most buttons speak for themselves, please find below a small explanation of the current toolbar buttons. Doubleclicking the image filename will also open the file in an editor.
How does Soundbase find the album art
By default soundbase has two ways of identifying album art that goes with your album. The first one is simple, the album is located in a directory and it is the only album in that directory. In this case any image that Soundbase finds in this directory is associated with the album. The second situation is a little more complex, there are multiple albums in one directory. Only the first album Soundbase finds is associated with all the images in the directory, all other albums are only associated with images that uniquelly have the albumname in the filename, for instance only images that are called <albumname> - front.jpg, etc.. If no image is found then Soundbase leaves it up to you to find an album image yourself. Soundbase allows to automatically create a folder image (see options) if the album is uniquelly in one directory. This way other players, like windows media player can take advantage of the images Soundbase creates and collects.
Search the internet automatically
The first button will try to automatically search the internet for album art. If it finds an image it will add it to the current directory and rename the image to <albumname> - front.jpg. Soundbase does allow also to use other names and we will get to these functions later.
Search the internet on preset websites (amazon, cdbaby, cduniverse, discogs, yahoo)
The second button will open the album art select screen, Soundbase automaticaly starts searching on these 5 websites for album images. When found, Soundbase will allow you to select one of these images. The screen also allows you to change the search criterea and the way the images is stored, fixed size, always as jpg, etc..
Browse the internet and automatic album art retrieval
The 3rd button will allow you to browse and search the album on the internet. By default Soundbase uses your default internet browser for browsing. The dropdown will give you access to some settings. It allows you to set automatic retrieval which tells Soundbase to try to find your album art automatically as soon as you change album. If this fails you will have no choice other then to find the image yourself. There are many other resources available on the internet that provide information that we did not interface with!
Please note, Soundbase is drag and drop sensitive, so if you have found an image in the internal or external browser, and you want to add it to Soundbase, you can just drag and drop it onto the panel and it will be added to the directory of the currently selected album. There is one situation though that you need to be aware of: if an image is also a link to a new webpage, then you can't drag it! You will need to use the context menu (right mouse click) and select copy from the menu. Right click in Soundbase on the panel to paste the image. Worst case the creator of the webpage has disabled any drag & drop and context menus. The only way to get to the image is to open the source window in notepad (right click on the webpage and select open source) and find the link to the image in the text.
Thorough searching your directories for art
The next two buttons are to (re)initiate the default album art directory search and to do a thorough search. The dropdown on the button allows you to search for different selection criteria. These criterea can be used in larger unsorted directories with multiple albums. In this case you can actually search for images that were saved or created on the same hour, day etc. as the original mp3 was saved, and mostlikely will allow you to find the images that belong to the album. After finding these images the next step would be to delete them if not needed, or to rename them so these albums are recognized the next time.
Delete or rename you art files
The next group of buttons on the toolbar allow you to delete the selected images, or rename them to preset image names. You have to rename an album to ensure it contains the albumname if you keep more then one album in a directory. We recommend that you keep your collection clean and keep only one album in one directory (see our organize functions for more detail on achieving this).
Replacing or deleting the image in the database
The database image that is displayed in the album listing on the left side of Soundbases screen is a compressed image stored in the database itself. A big disadvantage is that it will increase the size of the database, on the other hand there is no cluttering of cached images or otherwise, and it is lightning fast to display. The image is sticky, so if it is added it will stay in the database until you remove it or until you replace it. You can use the two buttons to delete the images from the database or to add the current selected image file to the database. Theimage is automaticall replaced the moment the first file is added to the directory, or removed if no image files are found in the directory!
Adding images inside your songs MP3 tag
The last buttons on the toolbar allow you to add images, delete images or extract images from inside the selected mp3 tag. The buttons for deleting images are only available if there is an image inside. You can add as many images as you want, but SB will display only the first image it will find.
Edit image: just doubleclick on the image!
By doubleclicking the image you can open the image with your default editor or with Soundbases internal editor. The internal editor will give you some essential tools, save with different size, remove borders, remove white space, cut a part of the image, which will come in handy when downloading files from the internet. You can switch between internal or external editor in the dropdown on the third button, were you also can set the internal or external browser.