Retrieve artwork from ID3

[etsaman]

Hi dro, just quoting our latest PM discussion for easier follow up; let us know if you have a chance to look into it;
IE: remove the locking with taglib or add the option to save the current artwork to file via (prefs -> playback -> play tracking -> now playing) + command line control. Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

Me: 

"In order to retrieve artwork from ID3, the WACUP/Homeseer plugin has to access the currently playing file in the first few seconds; seems like this was possible with 5.666 but now the file would be in and out of a "lock" or "in use" state which sometimes prevents the plugin from showing the associated artwork.
Can you think of a workaround to accomplish this without impacting your platform? Or a different way to access ID3 embedded artwork?
I'm preparing a short demo for the Homeseer forum users to promote WACUP and Jon's plugin but I'd like to get rid of this bug so things look as smooth and bug free as possible Appreciate all your help and commitment to the WACUP project."

dro:

"Alas I'm aware of the issue from a thread by aminifu & a few others from a while back.

It's not intended behaviour as reading should be possible in a shareable state if it's just due to tag reading (which under 5.666 is using in_mp3 whilst wacup uses taglib to resolve crash issues that in_mp3 has) but I've yet to fully dig into the issue as my initial tests at the time couldn't consistently replicate the issue.

It might also not be related to that tag reading & could instead be something else as there's a number of aspects that depending on the skin & plug-ins installed that can be accessing the file.

The only obvious workaround would be try & add a command-line tag / artwork dump but that spawned instance could also then hit the same issue & if Homeseer is already processing the file metadata then that might not be the ideal &/or welcome solution to process something else.

Really I just need to allocate the time to look into what's causing the locking & remove that so there's no need for workarounds

[edit]
Just remembered something from a tweet I'd replied to a few days back, the option to log what's currently playing to a file (prefs -> playback -> play tracking -> now playing) also needs a complimentary option to save the current artwork if it exists to file. Maybe that's something which can be leveraged along with the ETSAMAN_ON/ETSAMAN_OFF handling to force it on/off as needed to simplify the handling. "

[dro]

The prefs -> playback -> play tracking -> now playing solution was implemented in 1.0.13.5860.

-dro

[etsaman]

Works a charm, thank you!

[dro]

That's good to know.

There'll be a change for the next build that gives some more control over the output (just requested via twitter) so it'll be possible to control how scaling works (it just does it if above the limit & anything below is left alone) as well as what the output size limit is (currently set at 600x600). That should make it more useful for a wider audience (ranging from just outputting it unchanged through to always outputting at a known size irrespective of the input size.

-dro

[etsaman]

Sounds good. Thank you!