[slinkelist] Someone working on another "Covers" program?

[Ken Geoffrion]

Okay, I'll admit it.  I'm working on a new covers program.  I have to laugh 
when I think about how much time I've spent versus using the "hammer" 
approach.  But, I'm using it as an excuse to learn Visual Basic, and 
enjoying myself -- so please don't lecture me for wasting my time. :>

The specific problem people are having with the program halting with an 
error is probably due to a title/artist with a ":" colon in the name.  It's 
one of the special characters that was omitted in the original program's 
filter.

My program is almost a total rewrite.  I'm trying to make it really 
intelligent, but there are SO MANY situations where the cddb names are 
really different than the CDNow database.  There are misspelled names, 
titles in the artist fields, etc.  Soundtracks, Various Artists, 
Collections, Greatest Hits, singles, obscure albums, special editions, etc. 
are the real problem cases.  Also, I've had really bad luck with getting 
hits on most of my classic albums.  Many times an album will be listed 2-3 
times in the results of the search -- some with a cover, some without.  I 
recognize this and keep searching.  Sometimes the cover chosen is not the 
original cover, or just a mistake based on very similar names.  I haven't 
devised a solution for handling that yet -- maybe an option to go back and 
browse through the list of selected covers giving the user the chance to 
manually change the cover.  That would be pretty simple to do.  Most people 
would probably just handle these manually by dragging and dropping.

I'm hitting over 90% on albums in the CDNOW database, where the names are at 
least close to what they're supposed to be.  I'm completely skipping the 
classical genre for now.

The are other locations that have covers (like Amazon), but the pictures are 
different sizes, so I chose to not pursue that.

One feature I've added that I really like is an Option to intervene when the 
program can't find a cover.  A mini-browser will pop up, that lets the user 
navigate to a page (if he can find one) that contains the cover, then click 
a button that says "use this cover", or just skip the album completely.  Of 
course, you can select the option not to do this so you don't have to sit 
there while it's going through your entire collection, then come back and do 
all the manual ones at one time.

I also generate a log file of all the errors (skipped, not found, no cover, 
etc), so the status can be reviewed afterwards.

I'm not sure what the original author's idea was in writing the program in 
two pieces -- a DLL and a driver program.  My guess is that he planned to 
(or hoped Colby would) integrate the calls to the DLL from CDJ, itself (like 
the calls CDJ makes to the cddb).  Either way, I've left the design that 
way, but I moved almost all of the intelligence to the DLL program.  
Previously the driver (TestICProj) would make multiple calls to the DLL for 
a single album, changing the parameters around hoping for a hit.  My DLL 
does all of that itself, trying many combinations of names.

I haven't yet learned how (technically) to package this into an installable 
"package."  But, I'm close (a few more days) to being willing to let others 
have a copy of the programs to play with.

Or, if anyone wants to email me his MDB file, I'd love to have more test 
criteria!


----Original Message Follows----
From: ofriend@ldd.net (ORAL FRIEND)
To: slinkelist@nirvis.com
Subject: Re: [slinkelist] Someone working on another "Covers" program?
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:32:15 -0500

I'd really like to see an update to the covers program, myself.  It crashes 
on me about 20-30 covers into it, with an INVALID FILE TYPE error, or 
something similar.  I've tried removing the Cd that I THINK it's working on, 
but no luck.

It works great up to then, but since I have 600 CD's to get covers for, it 
would be great to have it automated!  <g>



***************************************
Oral Friend  CNE
The M. Taylor Company
mailto:ofriend@mtaylorcompany.com
http://www.mtaylorcompany.com
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