Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Fetch Art 1.2 for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Released by yours truly

Just a quick note, that I've taken over development of the excellent Fetch Art application by Yoel Inbar. I finally got a version working 100% with Mac OS X 10.4.

It's available on my website here: http://www.aric.org/fetchart/

18 comments:

MySchizoBuddy said...

this is a great app, considering its free and does the reqired job. just one thing, when the album is a compilation of various artist then the search should be based on the name of the album not the name of the artist or song name.

gr8 work, :)

Aric said...

hackit98@madebig.net said...
...If you don't think that you have time, since it has been a while from the initial 1.2 release...

Uh, it's been a long time since the 1.2 release? I released it on June 1st. That's like 9 days. I promise to have another version out before Microsoft ships Longhorn. ;-)

Aric said...

Gaspode said...
The installer of version 1.2 seems to be broken....

Yep, you are correct. I will fix that in the next release.

Aric said...

MySchizoBuddy said...
this is a great app, considering its free and does the reqired job. just one thing, when the album is a compilation of various artist then the search should be based on the name of the album not the name of the artist or song name.

That's a good suggestion, and I'll look into the query options Amazon.com gives you. I am constrained by what they provide as interfaces.

Christopher Davis said...

I've found a good way to "convert" a JPEG to PICT data suitable for handing to iTunes without uncompressing the JPEG. It involves using QuickTime calls to create a PICT which is just a wrapper around the original JPEG data.

This code is actually a command-line tool that takes a JPEG file name on the command line and dumps the PICT data to standard output; however, it should be fairly easy to repurpose it.

err = FSPathMakeRef(argv[1], &ref, NULL);

if (err != 0) {
return err;
}

err = FSGetCatalogInfo(&ref,kFSCatInfoNone, NULL, NULL, &spec, NULL);
if (err != 0) {
return err;
}

err = GetGraphicsImporterForFile( &spec, &importer );

if (err != 0) {
return err;
}
err = GraphicsImportGetAsPicture(importer,&pich);
if (err != 0) {
return err;
}

size = GetHandleSize((Handle)pich);
bytes = write(1,*pich,size);

Aric said...

moonchild, I think you are misunderstanding how to use this application.

1) It does do batch transfers for any playlists or selected tracks including albums. Just sort by album name in iTunes, then select the tracks from that album and tell Fetch Art to get them.

2) Not sure about how you reopen the main window. The script should be launched from iTunes. I haven't seen the applescript error you are getting.

3) Fetch art is made to get art for the currently selected group of songs/playlists. It's not a "real time" app that would grab art for every song as it is playing. To use it, select the group of songs (your whole library if you wanted) and tell it to get the art. It will get it all. Then if you add a new song, you would have to run Fetch Art again to get new art for the songs you added after the last time your ran Fetch Art.

Paul Kamp said...

First off, excellent application!!

Here are my comments after using it the first time:

- Every time I run the script it asks me where the application is. The script should know so I do not have to do the association.

- Some songs are available on different albums. It would be great if you added a feature that allowed the user to choose the album to associate with the song.

Separately, I wonder if Amazon is the only source for the album art. Perhaps if the script looked in multiple locations there would be a higher hit rate in finding the album art, I got about 90%.

Thanks again for this great app!

Bob M. said...

Originally posted over at VersionTracker before I noticed the blog link.

Haven't used the utility in ages (since previous development ceased), so nothing installed from other versions. Installed fresh with installer package (both from mounted DMG and from copied version on desktop). iTunes shows it in the script menu, but launching the script (or the app separately) results in the following error message:

"Sorry, Fetch Art requires AppleScript Studio 1.1 or later."

PowerPC G4 Dual 1GHz
1.5GB RAM
OS X 10.4.2
iTunes 5.0 (34)

Thanks!

mbaudis said...

script error comments:

itunes 5 converted some (maybe "not found") tracks to "streams" (additional stream icon with title). fetch art hangs at those.

a simple workaround when processing many tracks is to do a smart playlist, and exclude streams from it.

Aric said...

It's working fine for me with the latest iTunes and Mac OS X.

Not sure how to debug your problem as you didn't leave any more information.

matthk said...

Getting the same error:
"You cannot install this software on this volume . (null)"

Is there a fiux for this yet?
Someone email me!

Aric said...

For the record, it does appear Fetch Art does not work on the latest Intel based Macs. It should work with all other Macs with recent OS X and iTunes software. I will continue to debug the Intel mac issue, however, since I don't own an Intel Mac it may take some time.

Aric said...

Hello Marino.

I don't fully understand your question but if you want to remove the art, which is stored inside the music file, you need to go into iTunes, select a track with the art, do a Get Info, Click the Artwork tab, and Delete the art. As for what's stored in the library, the art doesn't get stored there permanently, only cached art files. The art itself is stored within the music file.

darth said...

hi,
as you noted in your own comments, it doesn't work on Intel Macs correctly-at least not on my MacBook and 10.4.7/iTunes 6.05(20). It will start processing, then locks up on certain songs. Force quitting, selecting quit from the Menu or Dock don't work. I have to go into Activity Monitor to kill the process.

How do I get rid of the script icon that you installed in the iTunes menu?

darth said...

nevermind, aric, found the link on your sidebar for uninstallation-thanks!

rjp said...

It dosent work on Snow Leopard so how do i get rid of the script icon in itunes? Theres no folder library.itunes.scripts.

rjp said...

How do you remove the itunes script icon out of snow leopard? The instructions for uninstall don't work.

Aric said...

It should be in Library/iTunes/Scripts.