Monday, June 23, 2008

Fetch Art 2.0 Released as Beta

Hi all.  I wasn't able to test the new version of Fetch Art enough, so I am releasing this as a beta.

If you encounter any problems please report back to me whether you are on an Intel Mac or not and the name of the song that caused the issue.  If you can include a screenshot of the problem, do that too!

Email me at aric@aric.org for support.

Also if you use it without any issues, I'd love to hear back from you.  Post to this blog with your comments.

You can download the new beta version here.

CHANGES in version 2.0: 
1) Fixes for compatibility with Amazon's new search web service. 
2) Improvements in accuracy logic in searching for art.
3) Added the option of skipping tracks that already have art 
4) Improved Unicode/extended character support 
5) Removed dependency on Perl which has caused problems when Mac OS X updates caused changes to Perl 
6) Increased performance by removing dependency on custom C application for image conversions. 
7) Added support for searches on Amazon Japan, France, and Canada as well as including the ones previously supported which were US, UK, and Germany


25 comments:

Peter said...

Hey just tried out v2.0 - worked flawlessly on my macbook pro intel - added art for about 10 new albums - speed seemed good, and it correctly recognized songs that already had artwork and did not add them to the list. The only odd thing I noticed was a blank dialog box that popped up a couple times during copying the art, but it didn't seem to affect anything and went away on its own (it could have been a slow-to-render itunes progress box I suppose and not a fetch art one) - anyway great job, missed your awesome app a lot!

israellebanon said...

works awesome. great work

ouriel
techcrunch

Marya said...

I downloaded the newest version of Fetch Art -- I have never used this program before (didn't know it existed), and would like some directions. For future users like me, will you please consider adding a quick user's manual?

Also, I got an error message when it opened (ITunes got an error: unknown object type. -1731). I have an iMac G5 Power-PC, in case you need that information.

Aric said...

Thanks for the comment Marya.

Yes, I should write some sort of user's guide. I'll do that soon.

As for the error, I've got one other person reporting a similar error.

I'll try to debug the problem and post a solution.

Aric

Anonymous said...

I've just tried Fetch Art and it sometimes finds the wrong album cover, most often by the same artist but sometimes by a different artist completely. In the first case, perhaps that same song is on several albums; in the second -- I don't know!

It would be good to show some choices, for example other albums by the same artist that contain that song. That's how I do it when manually searching on Amazon.

Otherwise, nice piece of software that replaces Clutter, which I was using to do the same job but which stopped being supported.

Aric said...

Hey stuart hertzog, if you want to email me at aric@aric.org the album name, artist name, and song name of the ones where it gets bad artwork, I'm willing to try and tweak the search algorithm. Sometimes amazon simply returns bad artwork but sometimes changing how I call their service I can improve the accuracy.

If there are spelling errors in the album name or artist name that can also throw off the search.

Unknown said...

iTunes got an error: Can’t get track 1 of item 1 of every library playlist of item 1 of every source whose database ID of it = 3841. (-1728)

^^got further than the last release though, and much quicker!

Unknown said...

The fetch art concept is fabulous - and for someone like me who's digitized his entire vinyl collection, a must have! Trouble is, for me anyway, the program bombs more times than not

I'm not sure if it's the way I'm using the program or my computer itself,but the fact fetch sometimes works and sometimes doesn't makes me think it's the computer more than me

FYI: I'm running an iMac G5 with an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor.

antonyh said...

Hey, seems good to me. I've just tried it on 3100 songs whilst syncing with a new ipod, on a iMac PPC G5 (10.4.11), and it went a bit mad... I did ignore the warning for over 500 songs though.

Smaller batches seem to work properly.

Thanks,
A.

Peter said...

I just noticed that it doesn't seem to be getting artwork anymore (tried on 2 different macs) - did something happen to Amazon's web services again? Was working fine for me a few days ago

Aric said...

Hey Peter, I just tried it out and it was able to get some new artwork for me.

I've gotten a lot of feedback from users with no issues, but of course, from the comments on this blog some users are having trouble.

It's difficult for me to solve the errors when I am not able to reproduce them, but I do hope to have a new version out in the next two weeks that will work better for all users.

If you are interested in beta testing it, email me or post here.

effemmeffe said...

Same here: I tried with a song from an album present on Amazon.com, but I didn't get any cover.
The song was La vie en rose by Edith Piaf from the album Mes amours.


I also got an AppleScript Error.

The first error was:
NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError: 4 (1)

And then, each time I tried to click on Fetch Art window, I got another AppleScript Error:
NSContainerSpecifierError (2)

I wasn't able to quit Fetch Art and I had to kill it.

HTH

effemmeffe said...

I forgot my environment:
OS X 10.4.11
iBook PowerPC G4 1.33 GHz
1.5GB SDRAM
iTunes 7.6.2 (9)

Peter said...

I'd be happy to beta test -

Peter

FlyingDog said...

I had been using this beta release for a while without trouble but as of a few days ago it is no longer able to find artwork for any album (around 10) that I've tried. I'm guessing Amazon messed things up again.

REYEZ! said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
REYEZ! said...

Hi there,

Great solutions for missing artwork!

But it looks like it'snt working at a iMAc with Mac Os X 10.5.4 and iTunes version 7.7 (43)

This is the error: Finder got an error: Insufficient rights (-5000).

Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

Unknown said...

It seems to me that it is finding artwork for the song title and not the album title. Often times it returns the album art for the single instead of the album.

marcus said...

Hi
didn't work for me. How do uninstall it, many thanks

Michael said...

I have the same issue as ty - it's searching for the artist and song title, not the album title. Thus, it's returning the wrong results all the time. Is there a setting in iTunes that could be causing this? Let me know what info you need or anything to figure this out.

Regardless, thanks for your hard work on the program, it is appreciated.

That Jack said...

This app only searches via artist name and song title. So if the album does not have a song of the same name, you're out of luck. I tried finding art for Red Hot Chili Peppers, and all I got was the "single".

Also, there is no way to clear the search and try again. I have to Quit every time I want a new search, that sucks!

And what if I want to apply the art to multiple tracks?

This thing is supremely buggy.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

With iTunes 7.7.1 (11) and MAC OSX 10.5.4 error when I copy image:

"ERROR COPYNG ARTWORK FROM (name file) TO ITUNES"

Unknown said...

I get this error:

iTunes got an error: Can't get track 1 of item 1 of every library playlist of item 1 of every source whose database ID of it = 14431. (-1728)

Aclares said...

meisgs said...

I get this error:

iTunes got an error: Can't get track 1 of item 1 of every library playlist of item 1 of every source whose database ID of it = 14431. (-1728)

Copy your ipod songs to your Itunes library and use Fetch art, then delete all the songs from your ipod and copy it again brom itunes library.