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List:       kde-doc-english
Subject:    [kde-doc-english] JuK Cover Management documentation
From:       Michael Pyne <pynm0001 () comcast ! net>
Date:       2005-10-09 0:47:47
Message-ID: 200510082047.50877.pynm0001 () comcast ! net
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As suggested by Philip Rodrigues, I've gone ahead and compiled some of the new 
features from the JuK Cover Manager that will be in KDE 3.5, which I have 
recently blogged about.

My non-marked-up version is attached.  If anyone has questions or needs 
clarifications, please let me know.  Also please CC: me, as I'm not 
subscribed.

Regards,
 - Michael Pyne

["juk-cover-manager-docs.txt" (text/plain)]

NOTE: I've tried to use __foo__ to mean underline and //foo\\ to mean emphasizing to \
make markup easier.

-Cover Management with JuK 2.3:

JuK 2.3 (part of KDE 3.5) includes improved cover management code with introduces \
some new possibilities for users compared with JuK 2.2 (which was shipped with KDE \
3.4).  It also can change the workflow slightly for you if you are used to the way \
covers were handled in JuK 2.2.  So first, let's review how things used to be.

-How Covers worked in JuK 2.2:

In JuK 2.2, the cover for a track was strictly tied to its Artist and Album \
information. Although this proved useful enough, and had a few advantages, it wasn't \
a great way to organize the covers. If you wanted to use a cover for a different \
track, you either had to rename the tags in the track, or you had to duplicate the \
cover, wasting hard disk space. And if your track had no Artist or Album information, \
JuK would prevent you from setting a cover since it had no information to go by. It \
worked, but it could be better.

-How Covers work in JuK 2.3:

In JuK 2.3, the code was redesigned to add a core component responsible for dealing \
with cover art.  Instead of looking on disk for a picture file with a specific name \
like JuK 2.2, the Cover Manager in JuK 2.3 associates every cover with an \
identification tag, and then uses the tag with your music.  It's still not perfect, \
but it works, and it can save you time while allowing you to do more.

-Examples of adding covers:

So just as an example, let's say you wanted to set a cover for tracks you just ripped \
off of your CD. We'll use __Alabama - Greatest Hits III__ for the sake of discussion. \
In JuK 2.2, you could simply select any one of those tracks, and import a cover from \
the Internet by right-clicking on that track, and using the Cover Manager -> Get \
Cover From Internet command. As a side effect of the way JuK worked, the cover would \
then be immediately applied to *all* of the __Alabama - Greatest Hits III__ tracks, \
//whether you wanted that or not\\.

In JuK 2.3, the procedure is exactly the same, with one exception: You should select \
all of the tracks you want to apply the cover to first. So you would select all the \
__Alabama - Greatest Hits III__ tracks before using the Get Cover From Internet \
command. Or if you only wanted to set cover art to half of the tracks for some \
reason, you'd only select half the tracks before running the Get Cover From Internet \
command. Don't worry about duplicating covers, either: JuK is smart enough to re-use \
the same image, so you won't get 14 duplicate .png images cluttering your hard drive.

-Reusing old covers:

But what happens if you forgot to select all the tracks you wanted to tag? You could \
select them and repeat the process, but that would leave a duplicate cover on your \
hard drive because JuK can't quickly tell that the cover you've found is the same as \
one you already have. But that's alright, because you can tell JuK to use the cover \
from another track.

There are two ways of doing this:

1. Open the Cover Manager dialog using the Tagger menu (Tagger -> Cover Manager > \
Show Cover Manager). The Cover Manager will display a list of all the covers JuK \
knows about on the right, and after they have loaded you can quickly pare the list \
down using the search line at the top, or by using the list of Artists on the left. \
Once you see the cover you want to use, you can drag-and-drop the cover onto a track \
to apply it. It should happen nearly instantaneously since JuK is reusing the same \
cover (and you'll see the cover while you're dragging it as well). Unfortunately, it \
can take awhile to load the covers in the first place, and the Cover Manager isn't \
really useful for much else besides.

2. I prefer to use this method because it's rather easy. All you do is double-click \
on the track that has the cover you want, in order to start it playing. This will \
cause its cover to show up in the Now Playing bar, and you can drag-and-drop the \
cover to the track you want to change exactly as you would for the Cover Manager.

-Dragging covers to more than one track at once:

Also note that you can use drag-and-drop to quickly apply covers to more than one \
track. Just select the tracks you want to apply a cover to, and drag the cover onto \
any one of the selected tracks.

-What happens to my old covers?

You may be wondering what JuK will do if you already have covers from JuK 2.2.  What \
happens is that JuK will automatically convert the old covers and merge them into the \
cover management system.

Because this is a time consuming process, it does not happen all at once.  Instead, \
the old cover is only converted when the cover needs to be shown on screen.  As the \
conversion process is happening, JuK will recognize what tracks would have shown the \
cover being converted, and will automatically apply the new cover to those tracks.  \
The end result is that there should be no visible changes: JuK will keep the same \
cover on your tracks that they've always had, except that now you can immediately \
take advantage of the new cover management features.

-Removing covers:

Another side effect is that you can now remove a cover from a track without \
simultaneously removing it from all other tracks with the same Artist and Album.

In JuK 2.3, the Remove Cover command now only removes the covers from the selected \
tracks.

-Suggested uses:

1. You can now apply the same cover to tracks with Albums that have (Disc 1), (Disc \
2), etc, which you couldn't do in JuK 2.2 without duplicating the cover.

2. Applying a "generic" cover to tracks if you simply must have a cover on every \
track, or if you have music that wasn't released as an album but fits a genre well.  \
You could make yourself a cover for that type of music and apply it to the songs in \
question.


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