Bug #54: Synergy incorrectly prioritizes downloaded art over embedded art

Comments

1. Greg Hurrell 2004-12-05T11:02:47Z

   Thanks for submitting the report. I know you phrased it as a request ("Show iTunes artwork instead of artwork found using the internet"), but I've reworded the summary because I actually qualify it as a bug (or at least a bad design decision).

   Synergy already does work very close to the way you request, so let me explain the details:

   1. Synergy first checks to see if there's any art in its cache and uses that if available. 2. If no art is available it asks iTunes. 3. If iTunes has no art it searches the Internet.

   It works this way because Synergy introduced support for album art before Apple released iTunes 4, the first version to support cover art. In other words, Synergy only ever used to use steps "1" and "3", and when iTunes 4 came out I added step "2".

   It usually works quite well, but it's not ideal. For example, if Synergy downloads the wrong art and

   • then* you add the correct art to iTunes, Synergy will continue using the wrong art, because that is

   what's in its cache. Solution is to delete the wrong art (click "Show Album Covers Folder" from the Synergy Global Menu when the pertinent track is playing and a Finder window will open with the incorrect cover selected; it's then fairly easy to just trash the file); Synergy will then grab the right art from iTunes.

   Needless to say, in Synergy Advance I haven't repeated the mistake of that 1-2-3 sequence above. Synergy Advance uses a plugin architecture and the user can rearrange the order of preferred album cover sources by drag and drop. Obviously by default it's good to have embedded art near the top of the source list, and things like Amazon search as a last resort.

   The challenge for Synergy Classic is how to redesign that 1-2-3 sequence without inducing too much of a performance hit (querying iTunes for art is pretty costly). It's also hard because I didn't design it with enough foresight. If you look at the version history you'll see how the program has grown in ways I never anticipated and didn't really prepare for (this is the whole reason I started writing a brand new app like Synergy Advance from scratch).

2. Greg Hurrell 2004-12-14T20:30:53Z

   • ** Bug 76 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

3. Greg Hurrell 2005-03-04T06:59:13Z

   • ** Bug 120 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

4. Matthew Hanson 2006-03-02T12:45:18Z

   Is there any chance you could add an option to disable the artwork cache under advanced preferences? I don't mind the small performance hit. This would also resolve issues with tv shows, where you might have a value set for the album field (Season 1, 2, etc) while each video has its own artwork (posterframe). This leads to an issue where all of the episodes of a given season show the posterframe of the first episode from that season that you play.

5. Greg Hurrell 2006-03-09T11:38:15Z

   • ** Bug 379 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

6. Greg Hurrell 2006-07-05T02:03:28Z

   Changing assignment to reflect my new email address.

   https://wincent.dev/a/news/archives/2006/05/change_of_email.php

7. Greg Hurrell 2007-01-29T12:55:55Z

   • ** Bug 537 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

8. Greg Hurrell 2007-02-10T18:23:33Z

   • ** Bug 544 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

9. Peter 2007-05-01T06:50:03Z

   Synergy will fetch the wrong album art over the Internet, ignoring the correct artwork already in iTunes. Usng Synergy 3.1.2b and iTunes 7.1.1 (5). UK localisation. Running on a 20 inch Intel iMac.

10. Joshua Gitlin 2008-05-02T08:48:44Z

    A temporary workaround for this issue that I have been using: Use an outgoing firewall like Little Snitch to prevent Synergy from connecting to any host except wincent.dev. Then if artwork isn't displayed you can go to iTunes and fix the artwork there.

    http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

    I had to upgrade to Synergy 3.2.1b for this to work. Once I did, artwork works flawlessly :-)

    http://wincent.dev/blog/synergy-3.2.1b-and-3.5a7-now-available

11. Greg Hurrell 2008-05-02T12:07:07Z

    Neat idea, Joshua. Hadn't thought of that one.

12. Greg Hurrell 2009-10-25T17:33:41Z

    Plan to have an option to address this issue in version 4.1.2. See related tickets like ticket #1148 and ticket #1426.

13. Greg Hurrell 2009-11-01T09:03:44Z

    4.1.1 final will be rolling out soon, so I will be able to get started on this shortly.

14. Greg Hurrell 2009-11-01T09:03:56Z

    Status changed:

    • From: new
    • To: open

15. Greg Hurrell 2009-11-29T12:31:42Z

    4.2 will be out soon with a checkbox to turn Amazon searches on and off independently of the Floater's cover art graphic setting.

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