Is the album art only working for autoDJ options? I just installed the new v3 over the last few days and I have clients streaming from there SAM on their computer and the start page is not showing any album art. I was under the assumption that the new 3.0 would fix this issue.

I have all the last.fm and amazon info set up, but nothing. Am I doing something wrong?

Same problem here. Only works with autoDJ...

Hello

Cover autoDJ work ? Yes and NO!

With iTunes librairies, The covers are not the good ones all times!!

I wait for the possibility to use my covers file  and in any case an iTunes or Amazon or any others commercial librairy...

thank you

Patyan

This is not a bug and thus has not been "fixed" in v3.  Centova Cast pre-fetches the album covers when you first import the media into your library so that it can serve the covers immediately as needed.  With live streams that is of course not possible and thus you don't see covers with them.

We're looking at adding live album cover support in a future release.  The main reason we've avoided it is because the Amazon API can be painfully slow, in some cases (although not always) taking 10 seconds or more to return a response during our tests.  That will cause the song update to freeze in the browser while waiting for the cover, which makes it look like Centova Cast is locking up... which we'll inevitably be blamed for, as a bug.   Really, we can't win.

Steve B. I am by no means an expert coder, however I was able to code a simple "on air" script using last fm that shows album art or artist art if a album was not found and the currently playing info. Loudcity offers this exact same type of set up standard. So this isn't something that would require the slow response of amazon and waiting for the "soon to be released V3" that took several years saying that it would have working album art only to find out it has patchy multiple sized album art for auto DJ and absolutely no support for live stream when it seems to be a very easy thing for others to achieve is not an exciting answer to find.

Between iTunes, Amazon, and last.fm (being the most promising) One should be able to assume that we would already have consistent sized album art for both Auto DJ and live streaming. I certainly hope that the wait for this "update" doesn't take another few years.

Hi,

I also use SAM Broadcaster for live shows. A workaround that I found is that if the songs used in the live show have been previously uploaded to the Centova Cast media library, the album art will be shown corectly.

Steve B. I am by no means an expert coder, however I was able to code a simple "on air" script using last fm that shows album art or artist art if a album was not found and the currently playing info.

The difference there, though, is that the last.fm API is fast.

To be clear, there is no technical reason we can't implement this (it's not hard to do) it's just that we are at the mercy of the remote API server (Amazon, etc.)  If it's slow, we can't do anything about that... Centova Cast just has to wait, which leads us to the issue I described in my previous post.  Granted I haven't benchmarked it in quite some time so they may have worked out the kinks, but when we initially implemented album cover support in v2, Amazon integration just wasn't practical to use on live streams.

saying that it would have working album art only to find out it has patchy  multiple sized album art for auto DJ

Sounds like you're using a dated build.  You can update to fix your image daemon.

and absolutely no support for live stream

We never claimed this would be added in v3.

when it seems to be a very easy thing for others to achieve is not an exciting answer to find.

Again, I don't think you read what I wrote, and again, I never claimed it was hard to do.

The difference there, though, is that the last.fm API is fast.

To be clear, there is no technical reason we can't implement this (it's not hard to do) it's just that we are at the mercy of the remote API server (Amazon, etc.)  If it's slow, we can't do anything about that... Centova Cast just has to wait, which leads us to the issue I described in my previous post.  Granted I haven't benchmarked it in quite some time so they may have worked out the kinks, but when we initially implemented album cover support in v2, Amazon integration just wasn't practical to use on live streams.

Then use last.fm API as its fast, or put in a switch to turn on or off the album art. So if people aren't happy with the response time they can deactivate the images. As you said it's not a hard thing to do and those of us who use Centovacast want to be able to offer this type of option as most of our competitors do. Keeping up with the "Jones'" in this industry is a must not a luxury.

Sounds like you're using a dated build.  You can update to fix your image daemon.

I had updated that same day, but had yet to test it on a clients account. After doing a manual library update it would appear that the few album arts that do load are all the same size as each other now.

We never claimed this would be added in v3.

I don't remember it saying "only for auto dj" either. It simply said it would have working album art as we lost the amazon option years ago after we were told that amazon had changed their coding and since v3 was "soon to be released" it would be fixed with v3. After a few years of waiting needless to say I'm sure I'm not the only one disappointed on that technicality.

Again, I don't think you read what I wrote, and again, I never claimed it was hard to do.

I don't see anything in what I said that would make you think I was saying that you did claim it was hard to do. My main issue here is I've waited a few years now for v3, I've seen many competitors offering live streaming album art and I've had to code up a little "on air" script for those clients of mine who were making a big deal about wanting that. I had truly hoped to see something useful in that area when v3 came out. As I said before those of us who use Centovacast want to be competitive in our market, having features that keep us competitive are important to all of us. So getting that option in there would be an awesome thing to have. Being able to activate or deactivate this option would take care of anyone who feels like the connection takes to long and make the rest of us happy. Using last.fm would keep things moving fast too.

So I hope to see this option in the near future.

As stated in the other post I am not hear to argue or be an a-hole so hopefully you understand I am simply having a conversation with you and not trying to argue or be sarcastic. Just an old man trying to get some work done..lol

Actually I take back the album art being different sizes. The last fm images pulled in are larger then the itunes ones. Is there something else I'm supposed to do in order to get them to reload properly?

Hi,

I'm in the same situation as Sleeper. I guess if we have all possibility to check the album picture form itunes, last fm or what ever else, than why not proposing to do it. As sleeper propose, put it as an option on stream for those who find that the picture is taking to much time to be showed, but at least we can use it if we found it ok with the last fm reaction time.

up to your own decision you decide to not implement this feature, this is not fair, basically it's up to us (user) to check if it's acceptable or not.

I could anyway suggest to have a common System folder where you copy the picture on a song , so that the request is done only the first time a file is played on itunes or last fm, and later on , if same song is requested, you will use the system album cover cache to take the picture from there. In this case, if I have several client using the same audio in the stream, only the first request will be "slow" , the next time the same song is played, it will be really quick, because taken from your cache....

Is this not a fair approach of mixing a cover automatically downloaded from Itunes or last fm and a quick display if the album cover exit in the cache !

if you check the song Artist-titel on itunes, you can anyway after the first download store this one on the same way in your local system cache and do a first check there and after in the order defined int eh settings .

I could appreciate a release V3 having these features

Thx

Dominic

I think saving the images to a catch would just be way to size consuming. These options work just fine for thousands of users across the web when using normal streaming and there are several options out there that provide coding to show album art. There is just no good reason why Centova should not include this as part of the options.

To be competitive a host must provide options that customers want and can get elsewhere. Something as simple as a small box that can be used either as an iframe or a pop up with the current song info, album art and integrated flash player is something that almost everyone wants and one would assume would be an option in something so widely used as Centova.

However as you can see there hasn't been a response in over a year so they aren't in a huge hurry to implement anything at this company. Main reason why I haven't purchased the full licence yet because I'm always on the edge of me seat on if I'm going to continue using them or not.

HI, appreciate this is an old post but...

Does anyone know where the code for the recently played tracks resides in the Centova code? I've already written something in PHP that does this and i'm wondering if I can port it to Centova to make it work on a live stream.

Was wondering if there has been any progress on making album art available for live streams.  It appears all of the chatter on this subject has died down.  It's a darn shame that Centovacast won't implement a feature that is obviously wanted by the users, because they might be blamed for "being slow."  I have used the Amazon API for nearly two years and it really zips.  I occasionally have an issue with it pulling the wrong cover (i.e., a greatest hits cover) but it has NEVER been slow.

So the choice for Centovacast is :

Implement the feature and POSSIBLY be blamed for being slow

or

Don't implement it and have the reputation of not caring about what features are important to users.

Ideally, I think it should be implemented, and simply put a disclaimer on it that says something to the effect of "If you use Amazon API, you may risk slow load speeds, preferred is Last FM" or something of nature.

Bottom Line- If I can't see album art for my Centova cast Panel, I'm disappointed.

I'll see if i can find where the code needs to sit, see if it can be implemented into Centovas code. I've already got in int standalone PHP but would be great to get it into my Centova Cast build to offer to customers.