Under Preferences / Album Art / Reading Options I could not figure out with the various options how to make WacUp find the graphic files in my album folders, which are named like "Artist - Album.[PNG|JPG|etc]". As a workaround, I created Hardlinks named "Album.[PNG|JPG|etc]", so that WacUp would find and display my files without my changing their names.
A Hardlink is a directory entry that points to the same file data as another directory entry. Any given file-data can be pointed-to by some number of directory entries. Each Hardlink directory entry is a reference count to the file-data. Each additional Hardlink pointing to a file-data takes up zero extra storage space on disk; of course it does take up an entry's worth of space in the directory portion of the filesystem. Hardlink directory entries look like separate files; they all report the same filesize. So when you add another Hardlink pointing to the same file-data, the total of filesizes in the folder gets larger, but the bytes-free remaining on disk does NOT get smaller! Hardlinks are a feature of NTFS; they cannot span across to other volumes. Annoyingly, most backup and directory comparison programs don't know about Hardlinks, so they treat each additional reference as a separate file. Thus, backup folders will contain duplicate copies of the same file-data but having different filenames, even though the source folders have only one copy of the file-data.
The command built in to Windows for creating Hardlinks and related stuff is MkLink. The utility program I use for reading them is the commandline Ln.EXE from
https://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html#hardlinks The GUI way of creating them is built in to xplorer² from
https://zabkat.com/x2facts.htm This terrific replacement for Windows Explorer easily displays the reference count for hardlinked files, in the form of a file property named 'Links'. More great explanation at
https://www.zabkat.com/blog/20Feb11-symbolic-links.htm and
https://www.zabkat.com/blog/11Feb07.htmTo illustrate, compare the attached screenshots. The first screenshot shows the Reading Options configuration. The next screenshot is a directory listing of normal WacUp operation, using "NFO file with same filename as an image file in the containing folder". In other words, a "pointer" file named
"Graphic Filename.NFO" tells WacUp to search for files named
"Graphic Filename.<supported_image_format>". The NFO file contents are irrelevant, so the file is best left as empty/zero length.
The last screenshot is a directory listing of the Hardlink workaround in action, using "%album%.<supported_image_format> in the containing folder".
Topic: Album Art workaround: Hardlinks (Read 3464 times)