Published on September 29, 2007 By KillmAll In DesktopX
Hello, I'm pretty new at this, and I don't know how to do the following:

I just made a iPod gadget for my desktop, but I would like to add album art to it,
but how do I do that??

Please reply if you can help me, thanx
Comments
on Sep 29, 2007
Displaying the album art of the currently playing album? I think it'd depend on what mediaplayer you use...
on Sep 30, 2007
The iPod gadget I made uses windows media player and I want it to display the album cover of the currently playing album.
on Sep 30, 2007
Does WMP have that function natively?  Can you find a script on the web that leverages that function?
on Sep 30, 2007
I think this may be very easy. Particularly if you use DesktopX. You just need create the object like desktopx.object("image") and aply some image to its default state.

Then you need make a simple code with File System Object (FSO) that will find and extract the Album Art pictures from media folders you play music files. Hereon the picture must be applied to your object:

desktopx.object("image").picture = "path to the image file in your music folder".

I have already tried this and got a positive results:

desktopx.object("image").picture = "D:\WMP Music\Deep Purple\12 Slaves & Masters (1990)\AlbumArtSmall.jpg"

Works good...   

on Oct 01, 2007
I think I know what you mean Vad_M, but I want the gadget to download the image from the internet automatically. Haven't been able to find a script on the internet yet.
on Oct 01, 2007
The first part could use the FSO as well but, this would work on the assumption that the user's music library is set up in traditional way. eg. My Music\Artist\Album\song1.mp3

This code uses the FSO to retrieve the Album & Artist information. What you need to do then is probably to pagescrape the album image from what ever database you use to get the Album image.

IMO it's probably better to pull the album/artist information directly from the song.

Code: vbscript
  1. Dim objFSO, objFile, objPFldr, objAFldr, oAlbum, oArtist
  2. Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
  3. Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile("C:\My Music\Artist\Album\song1.mp3")
  4. objPFldr = objFSO.GetParentFolderName(objFile) 'will get the path to the Album folder
  5. objAFldr = objFSO.GetParentFolderName(objPFldr) 'will get the path to the Artist Folder
  6. oAlbum = objFSO.GetBaseName(objPFldr) 'gets the Album name
  7. oArtist = objFSO.GetBaseName(objAFldr) 'gets the Artists name
  8. msgbox "The CD is: " & oAlbum & vbcrlf & "By: " & oArtist
  9. Set objFSO = Nothing
on Oct 04, 2007
Don't know if I did the right thing, but I made a new object, copyed the vbscript into it, and made the parent file the iPod object.

When I change the line Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile("C:\My Music\Artist\Album\song1.mp3") to D:\Multimedia\Muziek\Beastie Boys - Solid Gold Hits\01 So What'cha Want.mp3, a popup opens displaying the artist and album name.
How do I get this script to load the album image from the internet and automatically get the album information from the music currently playing???
on Oct 04, 2007
So, basically it sounds like you want someone to do this for you?

Look for the Windows Media Player SDK and/or an external com object. Also, maybe check out some of the media player widgets in the gallery.
on Oct 07, 2007
That basically is the question, I have no experience in making scripts, so I would'nt know where to start.

I tried 'steeling' ideas from the few media player widgets that display album art, but they just take the picture from the folder wich contains the music files, not from the internet.

So, if anybody wants to make this script for me, please let me know!
on Oct 07, 2007
1. To make this script we need know an url - where your player retrieves information about the music albums. I already studied how WIndows Media Player work with this data and have a severals ideas... But I never used iTunes and iPod. So send me the url if you know where your gadget must get the album art.

2. You must understand that a lot of similar information is protected by copyright. Please be attentive! We must respect the copyright law.
on Oct 11, 2007
The only url I can think of is: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-7745319-7911367?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=