Album art problem

[recklessindian]

I have an old computer in my garage that I use as a jukebox.  I wish to upgrade the jukebox program to one that uses album art.  The problem is that I am unable to access the internet with this computer, and all of my music is on the jukebox only.  All of the album art grabbing software requires you to have the music directory on the computer attached to the internet.  Is there a way to do this without copying all of my music and putting it on my house computer, then transfer back? 

[MPTech]

What kind of connectio do you have to the internet on your house computer?

Wireless router perhaps?

Or take your jukebox in the house?

sorry if this is 2 simple and you've already considered it.

[recklessindian]

It is a very old 300mhz computer.  It was given too me because it has problems.  The on board video and audio do not work, because of this I do not have an available pci slot for a modem.  I guess I could remove the hard drive and temporarily install it in my good computer.  But that is not something I would like to do given the age of the machine.  Maybe I could manually download album covers in the house and install them on the computer out in the garage. 
  I read the FAQ on a couple of different album art downloading software programs.  Both of them said they attached something to the Id tag.  Is it possible to use album art without that?   With say just a folder of album covers independent of the songs? 

[GadgetGeek]

Can you pull the hard drive, put it in an external case and connect it to an indoor computer long enough to pull down the cover art.  Then reverse the procedure?

[Space Fractal]

most software use the same screme as Windows Media Player does, using a file named folder.jpg to search for the cover. Some may search for other files as well (cover.jpg, album.jpg and/or first found picture).

You could do 3 things to copy files:
- Replace soundcard with a network card (I may asume you have a PCI soundcard?) to copy songs over network (and change back after end).
- If your old computer have usb1.1 interface, you may use a usb-ethernet adapter as well, but it very slow.
- As you said, take the hd and move into your normal machine as a slave (or master on the second IDE controller).

[recklessindian]

I guess I'll have to pull the hard drive out .  Well that won't happen right away.  I have a bunch of other things on the go at the moment. 
  Space Fractal do you think my 300mhz computer will handle your new jukebox software? (Multijuke)
Thanks for your help everyone .

[Space Fractal]

I do not known yet, but I may guess not. I havent by now not tested on older machine, but I of course test on my second machine and see how it operate (it a AMD Athlon 1.2ghz, the olderst machine I have). MultiJuke is not very away for a beta release wich some features missing, so it should been released about a week.

Arcade Music Box should work on a old machine like yours, but MultiJuke may require more. I would do like to have some report, how it works on machine like that.

You should tryout minimum Wincab and SK-Jukebox, wich both should run very well on your old machine.

[DrewKaree]

You may be looking to add a feature that computer isn't equipped to handle.  300 mhz and album art sounds like you're close to the edge of usefulness.

Now that that's out of the way, it sounds as if you do not have any album art.  Since you need to match up the music with the album art, there ISN'T a way to automate this process WITHOUT being connected to the internet.

Further questions you need to answer (some have been asked and you haven't given a specific answer):

What OS are you using?
Do you have USB ports on this PC?
Do you have an optical drive on this PC (either DVD or CD)?
What are you using for software to play the music?

The best finder I've used is here: http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/

Requires you to be connected to the 'net OR if you already possess the album art, simply run the program and select the art on your hard drive to make it specific to that album

[Space Fractal]

Software is depend with sodtware he use. Some software is designed to run on lowend machine, so I cant see 300mhz is useless. He can only test these software out here and try them out (he have not choised software yet, since he wrote if my coming software, MultiJuke, could run on that).

Security is not a problem since it not connected to any network, so I can only asume Windows 98 is the correct OS on that system.

Yes I would even brougt a dvd-burner (if you dosent have that allready), so you dosent need to take out the hardrive to move the songs. It much easier.

[DrewKaree]

Some software is designed to run on lowend machine, so I cant see 300mhz is useless.

SF, please note that I didn't say a 300mhz machine is useless, I said it's near the edge of usefulness - it's still useful, but adding album art might not work with a processor-intensive program.

As you pointed out, it will be dependent on the software he chooses.  That's why I also pointed out that he hasn't said what software he's using, and why he needs to let us know that as well.

[Space Fractal]

you are 100% correct. We let see.

[recklessindian]

The software I am currently using on my old computer is Space Fractal's Arcade Music Box.
  The O.S. is 98SE
It has no usb ports.
It has a cd player.
And yes I have no album art what so ever.

I think a installing a cheap dvd burner would be an easy way of moving my music folders.  But every dvd burner box I read at Best buy says that my computer specs are way to low.  Along that same line, if the album art might be over load for this computer then I guess I need to look for a new motherboard/processor, or entire computer at a yard sale or the like.
  Thanks, Dean.

[Space Fractal]

use a cd drive to your old machine, and a dvd-burnder or such on your work machine, where all your files is.

You may use CD-RW medias to copy your files over. It may take some media, but you can write it over again and again.

I asume, your pc dosen't have a big harddrive.

[recklessindian]

I have less than a 5 gig. harddrive in the old slow computer. 
I just though of another issue.  My music folder is sorted first by genre, then by band name, also there are single songs by bands that I have only one song of.  I do not have them sorted by album.  I do not want to sort them by album, since I have my own version of bands greatest hits.   Some bands I would only have one song per album.  Either I need software that reads the ID tags (not sure right now if they are album tagged, I don't think so), or I need one album  cover per band.  And display the one album cover for every song by that band.  How does the one album cover idea sound?
  I would actually prefer to have the proper album cover displayed, but that could be the long term project, after I sort out ID tags

[Space Fractal]

ETC you have many singles, not albums?

Arcade Music Box does read ID3, but they would listed pretty the same as format would do, since it read pretty much Explore.

Arcade Music Box seen not been the right software for your needs (sorry).

If you want to sort artist without albums, you may need other software.

MultiJuke can do that (using singles, and use seperate Artist / Songs as list).

In MultiJuke, you may which to have albums as one library and singles on other library (2 dirs). Even you sorted your singles as Album, MultiJuke can still show them as singles, without using album tag (since it not used with singles).

Btw genre is not used now, but I plan to support genre/year filter, but  it does pull genre out and save to database now (without any use).

Since you have slow machine, you may wich to use 640x480 as max resolution, and disable background graphics, and use let it show few singles at the same time instead of many). You maybe even need to lowend the sound quality a bit.

FPS may been lowered than 30fps, but controls should been same.

[colonelsnow]

You may be looking to add a feature that computer isn't equipped to handle.  300 mhz and album art sounds like you're close to the edge of usefulness.

Now that that's out of the way, it sounds as if you do not have any album art.  Since you need to match up the music with the album art, there ISN'T a way to automate this process WITHOUT being connected to the internet.

Further questions you need to answer (some have been asked and you haven't given a specific answer):

What OS are you using?
Do you have USB ports on this PC?
Do you have an optical drive on this PC (either DVD or CD)?
What are you using for software to play the music?

The best finder I've used is here: http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/

Requires you to be connected to the 'net OR if you already possess the album art, simply run the program and select the art on your hard drive to make it specific to that album