Fetch Art Blog

Fetch Art 2.6 stopped working November 2011

2011-12-19T19:57:00.000-08:00

Amazon once again changed the calls I have to make into their servers to get album art. The change went into effect at the end of October. From that point on Fetch Art 2.6 (the current version) and any previous version will not function.

I plan on updating Fetch Art to support the new calls but I ran into the problem with the latest XCode no longer supporting PowerPC Macs. I'd like to keep PowerPC support but will have to try to get the older XCode up an running again in order to even compile a new version of Fetch Art.

I'll keep you posted of my progress here.

Let me know how important PowerPC support is in the comments.

New 2.6 Version Released Fixes Bug With Latest iTunes 10.2

2011-03-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

Ok well I was able to use my Developer account at Apple (your donations help to pay that $99 a year fee I have to pay to Apple for that) and download the older version of XCode that supports PowerPCs.

So that means I was able to create an updated version that still supports PowerPCs.

You can grab the new 2.6.0 version here: Fetch Art on MacUpdate

REQUIREMENTS:

This should work on Intel or PowerPC Macs.

This should work on iTunes 7.0 or higher.

This has been tested and verified on Mac OS X 10.4.

This has been tested and verified on Mac OS X 10.5.

This has been tested and verified on Mac OS X 10.6.6.

This has been tested and verified on iTunes 10.1.

This has been tested and verified on iTunes 10.2.

How would you feel about losing PowerPC support?

2011-03-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

Ok so you might be wondering why I'm several days past my deadline with a new release.

Well the reason is the version of XCode that I have has dropped support for PowerPC. I've been trying to work around this issue but so far I've been unsuccessful. So I'm curious how many users would be affected if I dropped PowerPC support?

Basically moving to the newest XCode makes it difficult to support even Mac OS 10.4 on Intel let alone 10.4 on PowerPC.

So I'm curious what version of OS X you want support for (10.4 and newer, 10.5 and newer, or 10.6 which is the current version) and if you need PowerPC support?

Update Coming Soon

2011-03-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ok so iTunes 10.2 broke Fetch Art. The good news is I've been able to find the source of the bug. I have to make changes to several parts of the code as well as add logic to still work with older iTunes (I experimented with a quick fix and it worked for 10.2 but broke Fetch Art for any older versions of iTunes.) This should only take me a couple more days but I might not make my deadline of Monday March 20th for release. That's still my goal but I thought I'd be a little closer to the final fix by now. I'll keep updating the information here and have a new release soon. BTW might be a good time for feedback... do you think I should release Fetch Art in the Mac OS X App store, and if so for free or for a small fee?

Fetch Art NOT Compatible With Latest iTunes

2011-03-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

Well I've been getting emails about error -206 with the new version of iTunes 10.2. This was a minor update to iTunes so I didn't test it right away but sure enough, they've changed something in how art files are copied in and it's broken Fetch Art.

I'm pretty busy but I'm going to look into this. It could take about two weeks however before I have time to fix this, test it, and create a new installer.

Sorry for the delay and thanks for the supportive emails!

Fetch Art 2.5.4 Released

2009-09-16T23:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the installer still has some issues.

Here is 2.5.4

I've tested this on iTunes 9 and 8, and Mac OS X 10.5.8 on Intel and PowerPC Macs.

Let me know if you have anymore problems.

New Fetch Art 2.5.3 Released

2009-09-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

Changes this version:

Fixed the preferences to actually save what you choose.

Rebuilt the installer from scratch. Hopefully this will end the occasional installation issue that has been reported.

Improved handling for extended unicode characters in song names. If you get any errors related to accents or special characters, please take a screen shot and report it to me.

Improved automated version checking. It should notify you if a new version is available.

You can download it here.

Fetch Art 2.5 Released

2009-08-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

CHANGES in version 2.5.0:

Added support for Amazon's new Web Services. As of August 15 2009, any version of Fetch Art prior to 2.5.0 will stop working as Amazon changed how their servers worked. This requires encrypting part of the call, which does slow each call down a little bit over the previous version.

Added more logic in constructing the query to Amazon to improve search accuracy and speed. It can often find album artwork now even if the album name is spelled wrong and it requires fewer calls to the server to find it.

Added a debug logging mode. This mode is off by default, but when activated will save a detailed log that you can send to me for support if you are having problems.

Added an option to turn off extended searching. Previously Fetch Art would try to find art for any album even if it found the wrong art. Now that level of searching is off by default. It may not find as much are, but accuracy should improve. You can turn it back on in the preferences if you like.

Added an automatic check for new versions.

Improved error handling.

You can download it here.

Fetch Art 2.5 will be released by 10pm PDT

2009-08-17T17:19:00.001-07:00

Check back here after 10pm PDT as Fetch Art 2.5 will be available for download.

Version 2.5 Estimated Release on August 17

2009-08-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

I expect to release a new 2.5 version of Fetch Art by August 17.

Amazon has changed their search service so that all versions of Fetch Art prior to 2.5 no longer work.

Keep checking back here for updates.

Working on version 2.5

2009-08-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

I wanted to let you know I've been spending a lot of time on a new version 2.5 that will make sure Fetch Art keeps working beyond Amazon's latest changes. On Saturday, August 15 Amazon will require encrypted signing of all calls to their web services that Fetch Art uses to get album art.

My goal is to have a new version 2.5 available in time for that change.

Thank you for all the emails requesting to participate as a beta tester. I have enough beta testers now for this version release, so please don't be offended if you didn't get chosen.

And remember Fetch Art is free, but there is the ability to make a donation to show your support.

On August 15th Amazon will kill all previous versions of Fetch Art

2009-07-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

Amazon is changing how applications can interact with their Web Services.

On August 15th 2009 Amazon will make changes to how calls are made to get album art. This change is big and will completely break any software that is not updated to the new calls. This of course, includes all previously released versions of Fetch Art including the latest release version 2.1.

I am working on a new version to address these issues. Amazon has posted some information on how to use the new calls. Unfortunately they are not supporting AppleScript (the language Fetch Art is written in.)

I am working on some changes to Fetch Art that will allow it to work with Amazon after the 15th of August, however, these are not small changes.

Keep checking back here for updates. My goal is to have a new version available by August 15th when Amazon will disable the old calls. Due to my work schedule and the short amount of time, I may not make this deadline.

Also, Amazon is slowly rolling out these changes leading up to the 15th, so you can assume the current version of Fetch Art will start having more and more issues, until it finally stops working on the 15th. Amazon has said during the following dates and times, Fetch Art may not function:

First Round: One in five unsigned requests (selected randomly) will be rejected.
- In all regions (NA, EU, and JP) starting Monday, August 3rd 2009, 6 PM GMT/UTC for 24 hours (that is 11 AM PDT and 3 AM JST).
Second Round: all unsigned requests will be rejected at these times:
- Europe (UK, DE, FR): Monday, August 10th 2009 from 2 PM to 4 PM GMT/UTC
- North America (US and CA): Monday, August 10th 2009 from 11 AM to 1 PM PDT (6 PM to 8 PM GMT/UTC)
- Japan (JP): Tuesday, August 11th 2009, 10 AM to 12 Noon JST (1 AM to 3 AM GMT/UTC

Tutorial for using Fetch Art

2009-02-28T12:47:00.000-08:00

Ok many of you have asked for a tutorial since Fetch Art doesn't work like a standard Mac OS app (this is because it runs as an iTunes Script.) Let me know what you think.

YouTube video (lower resolution but more compatible and quicker to load)

Hi resolution QuickTime movie (might not work in all web browsers)

Fetch Art 2.1 Verified iTunes 8.0 Compatible

2008-09-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

As soon as iTunes 8.0 was released I started testing Fetch Art 2.1 with it.

The latest version of Fetch Art is compatible with iTunes 8.0.

Often updates to iTunes will require Fetch Art be updated. Thankfully that isn't the case this time.

Enjoy!

Fetch Art 2.1 Released, Adds iTunes 7.7.1 Support

2008-08-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new version of Fetch Art. This is the first "non-Beta" release in the 2.x series.

CHANGES in version 2.1.0:

1) Modified the code to fix a bug introduced by Apple in iTunes 7.7.1. Now this works with iTunes 7.7.1.

2) Added more logic in constructing the query to Amazon to improve search accuracy.

3) Amazon changed some behaviors with empty keywords, I've eliminated the existence of empty keywords in the search.

4) Prioritized album art so that it should find the correct album art before single releases. Earlier versions were returning singles instead of the album.

You can download it here: DOWNLOAD 2.1

NOTE: For the first 10 hours after this post, the download was still pointing to an installer that installed the older 2.0.0 version. I've fixed that now. If you are still getting errors in Fetch Art, check to make sure you have the latest 2.1.0 version.

iTunes 7.7.1 Introduces AppleScript bug that breaks Fetch Art 2.0 and Earlier

2008-08-13T20:52:00.001-07:00

With the latest release of iTunes, Apple introduced a bug. AppleScript code that previously returned a track object now returns a list of tracks (it should return a track.)

I spent a bit of time narrowing the issue down, only to find Doug had already documented the problem here: AppleScript Bug or Feature in iTunes 7.7.1 I sure wish I had found that before I spent a while blaming my own code and debugging.

Anyway, the next version of Fetch Art will contain a fix for that AND I wrote the code so if Apple changes the behavior back in a future version of iTunes, Fetch Art should still continue to work. It will handle the return object whether it is a track or a list.

Stay tuned for the new 2.1 version update. It will be available soon.

Fetch Art 2.1.0 Nearing Release

2008-08-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

With the release of iTunes 7.7.1 Apple changed something in how you can reference a track by ID. This has broken all previous versions of Fetch Art.

I'm testing a new 2.1 version that addresses some of the bugs that have been reported as well as this issue.

Fetch Art 2.0 has been working for many people prior to iTunes 7.7.1 and I've gotten feedback that will help improve the accuracy of the Album Art.

It will be a few more days before I can solve this issue.

Check back here for updates and thanks for the great feedback!

Fetch Art 2.0 Released as Beta

2008-06-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

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

Fetch Art 2.0 Being Released...

2008-06-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

I'm currently updating the files on my server. The new 2.0 version will be available for download within the next hour.

Fetch Art 2.0 to be Released in One More Day

2008-06-22T23:30:00.000-07:00

I still have to build the installer and update the files on my server, but the new improved Fetch Art 2.0 should by out by late Monday night (June 23, 2008) I'm in GMT -7:00 time zone (that's Mountain Standard with no daylight savings) and that's Monday night, my time ;-)

Stay tuned right here...

Update, no new version yet, but coming soon...

2008-05-26T19:22:00.000-07:00

As you probably read in my previous post Amazon pulled their older Web Service interface, and upgraded to the new Amazon Associates Web Service 4.0. This of course broke all previous versions of Fetch Art.

Initially I figured this would be a quick fix, and estimated maybe four weeks of development (understand I have a real paying job during the day, and a family, so my time to work on Fetch Art for free (donations accepted ;-) is limited.)

However as you can see it's been seven weeks since my initial announcement about Amazon taking down their older Web Services and still no fix has been released. Well the reason is the change hasn't been as simple I as expected. This is both good and bad.

It is bad, because it means more work for me, and more time you have to wait. However it is good, because it is forcing me to really rewrite some large areas of the code that have caused bugs and performance issues in the past. So when the new version is out, it should be better then ever.

I have completed a lot of work, and developed a prototype that is successfully getting art off of Amazon. However, because of my changes, I have to rewrite the code that saves the art to iTunes now.

The big question of course is... when will a new version (even a beta) be available?

My target release date (may be a beta, not a final version if I run into unexpected problems) is for June 23rd. If I have enough time to get some of the new features I want into the code, I may call this version 2.0, however, if I don't get everything in there in time, I'll probably call it 1.5.

What are some of the changes I'm working on? I hesitate to list them, because if some of them don't make it you'll be disappointed, but since I cannot offer you a working application, I'll go ahead and list them. Just understand, I may not be able to get all of these changes in time for the next release. These are the current features I am trying to include while I am re-writing the software:
1) Faster performance by improving the AppleScript code
2) Removing Perl code (which has been a source of bugs and incompatibilities with Mac OS X updates) should increase reliability across future versions of Mac OS X
3) Support for searches on Amazon Japan, France, and Canada as well as the ones the previous version supported which was U.S., UK, and Germany
4) Better support for unicode characters

Sorry I don't have more to offer you right now. Just know that any extra time I get, I'm working on this.

Amazon Pulls Web Service Fetch Art Uses

2008-04-07T22:26:00.001-07:00

Well, Amazon has disabled Fetch Art starting in April 2008.

You can see their message here.

So in order to get Fetch Art working, I have to migrate to their Web Service 4.0 interface.

It will take some time to migrate the code to the new Amazon Web Services, however, I do plan to work on it ASAP.

Thanks for your support!

New Fetch Art 1.4 Compatible with iTunes 7.5 and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

2007-12-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

I just completed work on fixes for the latest Mac OS X 10.5 and iTunes 7.5.

Download the latest version from VersionTracker here.

FetchArt incompatible with iTunes 7.5

2007-12-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

Ok, I've been getting some comments and email asking when the new version of Fetch Art will be out that is Leopard compatible.

I did spend some time over the past weeks debugging the issue. It all comes down to a simple line of AppleScript that as far as I can tell based on the Leopard developer documentation, should work just fine.

The is the line that should work:

     set data of front artwork of trk to imageData

To test this, we can try this tiny AppleScript I wrote below. If you want, you can just copy and paste this into a new script file in the AppleScript Editor (don't even need to use Xcode.) This small code sample was modified from an example provided by Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes.

You need to do two things to run this script. Start up iTunes and select a track, any track. If it doesn't have any album art already, that is probably better. You'll also need a .pict format picture file. Not sure if you have one? Here, grab this file.

Then when it asks you to pick a file select your .pict format file.


try
 set ourImage to read (choose file) as picture -- must be a pict file
 try
  tell application "iTunes"
   set ourTrack to item 1 of selection -- need a track selected in iTunes before running this
   tell ourTrack
    set data of artwork 1 to ourImage
   end tell
   display alert "it worked"
  end tell
 on error
  display alert "Error copying artwork to iTunes." as warning
 end try
on error
 display alert "Error reading file." as warning
end try

You can also just download that script from my server here.

I foolishly updated all of my computers up to iTunes 7.5 (even the two that I did NOT install Leopard on) and this script will NOT run correctly on any of them. So it appears to be more of an issue with iTunes 7.5 then Leopard.

If anyone who still has an iTunes prior to 7.5 can test this script and let me know that it actually works, I'd love to get that feedback. It's possible I've introduced an error in this script, since I cannot test it myself.

If any developers know why this line of code has stopped working, I'd love to hear that as well.

For now I'll be doing more testing, and posting to the developer forums, etc. to try and resolve this. I may even submit this as a bug to Apple.

Fetch Art Not Yet Compatible with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5

2007-11-11T20:07:00.000-08:00

Just to follow up. I finally got Leopard installed on all of my Macs, including my only Intel one generously purchased through donations. And I can say that Fetch Art does not work with Leopard.

It will take me about a week (with Thanksgiving coming up, maybe a bit longer) to debug and release a new version.

Keep watching this space for updates.

BTW for those of you like me who hadn't updated Adobe Phototshop since version 7, well it doesn't appear to work under Leopard either, so I guess all of us holdouts will be buying that Photoshop 10 (CS 3) upgrade.

Fetch Art Not Yet Tested with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5

2007-10-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

Just a quick heads up to all my users, I have the new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on order from Amazon, however, I haven’t received it yet.

Because I don’t have it yet, I cannot verify if Leopard breaks anything with Fetch Art. I’ve gotten a few emails from users who have had trouble running Fetch Art after upgrading to Leopard.

So… until I can test it out, I cannot say if Fetch Art is compatible with Leopard yet.

Please feel free to leave comments on this blog reporting success or failures with leopard and as soon as I receive my copy of Leopard I will post here with my findings as well.

Want to beta test?

2007-08-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

With my last release, version 1.3.11, almost all users have reported that Fetch Art is working for them.

A few people, however, are still reporting errors. If you are interested in beta testing the next version AND you currently have a problem running the 1.3.11 version, then you can try downloading my new 1.3.12 beta version.

If you are able to run 1.3.11 fine, then do NOT try this beta version. It may contain new bugs, and it may download inaccurate art.

If you install this and get an error message, please try to email me a screenshot of the error. I really would like to see the name of the track it was attempting to download as well as the error message, so try to move the error dialog up or to the side so I can read both dialogs if they overlap.

If you see the unicode error (i.e. tracks that have special characters or accents) on the 1.3.11 version, please try this new beta version and if you still see the error, send me a screenshot that includes the track name. One of my goals with the next release is to fully support all characters and accents supported by iTunes.

Thanks!

Beta download

New Version 1.3.11 Fixes PowerPC Issue

2007-07-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

It took me a lot longer than I thought it would but I finally got the Universal Binary version to work on both Intel Macs and PowerPC Macs.

You can get it here: Fetch Art 1.3.11

Thanks to those who beta tested the intermediate versions.

Error on Unicode/Extended Characters and Accents

2007-07-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

There is a known bug right now dealing with accents and unicode characters in song files.

If the artist or album contains a UNICODE character you will see the following AppleScript error:
Can't make alias "..." into type string. (-1700)

and

NSContainerSpecifierError (2)

I've had a hard time getting this bug fixed. The work around, is to only select songs for download that don't contain these errors.

So if you see an AppleScript error, check the song it was on and see if it contains any extended characters.

Strange Things...

2007-06-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

In order to make a Universal Binary, after several failed attempts, I decided to completely rebuild from scratch the XCode development project.

Now, if I take my project directory and build it on my Intel Mac, the application works fine on Intel Macs but crashes on PowerPC Macs.

If I copy that same project directory to my G4 PowerPC Mac, and compile it, the app works fine on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. Very strange.

Expect a new version in the next couple of days to improve functionality on PowerPC Macs and keep the compatibility with Intel Macs. The 1.3.0 version works on both my PowerPC and Intel, however, some reports I've gotten say it does not work correctly on all PowerPC Macs.

I'll keep you posted.

Version 1.3.0 Fixes a PowerPC/Intel Issue

2007-05-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

This Intel compatible version also works with PowerPC Macs. I'm not sure why yet, but the installer builder for 1.3.1 did not build my installer correctly. I'm making the 1.3.0 version available for download right now. Report back if you have any problems with it.

Here it is, version 1.3.0.

New Beta Version Compatible with Intel Macs!

2007-05-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is. The first version that brings compatibility to Intel based Macs.

This is the 1.3.1 release. I'm releasing it as a public beta. You can download it here.

PowerPC and Intel users, please report back to me successes or problems.

Thanks again to all who donated to make this happen!

Good Progress Being Made

2007-05-23T22:06:00.000-07:00

I'm making good progress. I've found some (possibly all) of the problems and am investigating multiple ways to fix them.

I should have an Intel Mac compatible beta version out in about a week. In the past, I've always had private beta tests (where only selected users would be able to get the download through email) however, this time I plan on holding a public beta test.

I'll post a download link on this blog, once I've got a beta installer going. I'll need PowerPC testers too to make sure I didn't break anything that used to work.

Thanks again for all the support, and check back here in about a week from now for the beta download!

Working on an Intel Mac version of Fetch Art

2007-05-11T20:25:00.002-07:00

Well I've been super busy with work and even did some traveling but I've found some time to work on an Intel Mac version of Fetch Art.

Currently I just finished getting Perl updated and installed with all the dependent libraries I need from CPAN. One struggle I had was that they broke the Perl Packager (PP) out of the PAR distribution, and I didn't realize I now needed PAR::Packer as well, which I didn't need the last time I setup my dev. environment.

So now development is proceeding. I'll keep posting progress as I make it.

Fetch Art Uninstallation Instructions

2007-05-11T20:25:00.001-07:00

So let's say you've installed Fetch Art and now you want to uninstall it.

It's really quite simple. You will find files installed in two locations.

The application itself should be installed at:
[your hard drive]/Applications

The script that appears in the iTunes menu bar is at:
[your hard drive]/Library/iTunes/Scripts/

If it was the only iTunes script you had, you can delete the Scripts directory and the script menu in iTunes should disappear.

Alternately you could go in the Finder, go to File->Find... and search on Fetch Art to find the locations of the files and simply delete them from the Find results window.

Fetch Art Manual Installation Instructions

2007-05-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

The most common support email request I get is with help installing Fetch Art. I'm not sure why, but for some users the installer does not successfully put the files on the user's hard drive. This may be a permissions issue, or possibly a bug in the Apple Installer (the Fetch Art installer, is actually just an installation script that is used by the Apple Installer application).

Installing Fetch Art manually is very simple, and solves most reported problems except for Intel Mac users. Fetch Art doesn't work yet on Intel Macs. I'm working on it (See donation page.)

To install Fetch Art yourself, without the installer:

1) Place the Fetch Art application in your Applications directory:
[your hard drive]/Applications
You can get the Fetch Art application here.

2) Place the Fetch Art iTunes script in your iTunes script directory:
[your hard drive]/Library/iTunes/Scripts/
Note that if you haven't installed any iTunes scripts before, you may not have a Scripts directory. That shouldn't be a problem, just create one and put the Fetch Art script in it.
You can get the Fetch Art iTunes script here.

Donation Target Made, new Intel Mac Purchased.

2007-04-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here's the Mac mini that Love bought.

Thanks to all who donated! Didn't know you could donate? The page is here: Donations Page

Anyway, we met the goal and I purchased a new Intel Mac mini (refurbished) from the Apple Store. I'll be installing the developer tools, moving my Fetch Art development files over and starting on development of an Intel compatible version of Fetch Art ASAP.

Thanks again for your generous donations. I put in a little over $130 of my own money too to get a slightly upgraded Mac mini. If you wish to donate, additional funds I receive will go to upgrading the RAM and CPU.

I've unpacked the new computer (as the picture shows) and am currently running software update to get the latest updates from Apple.

www.aric.org offline temporarily

2007-04-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

My primary server is being moved (for more storage and bandwidth). However, that means www.aric.org will be offline.

I see GoDaddy has put up a generic "parked" page temporarily.

Anyway, have no fear that once the DNS and server settings are all completed, Fetch Art will be available for download again, and I'll be releasing more news about updates!

UPDATE: 4/23/2007 aric.org and Fetch Art have been moved to my new servers and are back online.

Initial Post

2007-04-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Updates coming soon. This will only be here until I've got my files moved to my new server...