CoverArt allows you to treat your Media Browser primary images for movies, TV, Trailers, etc. with custom covers or other effects without having to run a separate process or any other effort on your part. It will treat all items whether you have local images or not. This means it will work on trailers and, with the auto-refresh functionality that was introduced in 2.2.2 (codename Thunderblade), your items will appear in MediaBrowser with the cover treatment you want almost immediately after they are added to your file system.
This plugin is created and maintained by ebr. Visit his website at www.ebrsoft.com.
- This Plugin is in the default repository.
- Plugin Installation instructions can be found here
Configuration options
After you’ve installed the plugin it will work immediately with a default Profile with corresponding Image Sets.
However, this plugin offers a lot of customization options in it’s own configurator (often referred to as the CA Configurator).
On the Plugins tab, highlight the CoverArt plugin and click the Configure button. A new window will appear.
There are a lot of settings you can configure here. It’s recommended to read through this CoverArt setup tutorial to get an idea of how things work.
How it works
It’s important to understand that CoverArt processes your images only when they are cached. It modifies the original image and then stores the modified one in the cache. Your original image is left un-touched (if you have local images). This design allows CA to apply the treatments only once – not every time an image is displayed. Therefore, CA does not have a performance impact on the normal use of the system. This design also allows CA to process images that are not local.
This is why images may not update immediately after configuration changes. If you make changes that will affect just a few images, you can refresh them manually (Ctl-R or “record”). If you make changes that will affect the bulk of your images, you should clear your image cache to force them all to re-build and see your changes. There is a button on the CA Configurator to clear your image cache.
Tips & Tricks
Ignoring Box Sets
If you use Scenario B of the Box Set Collection setup with custom Boxset Icons, you would want CoverArt to ignore those folders. Since the Boxset folder itself doesn’t contain a movie it is considered a folder. Therefor you can set the Image Set for “Folder” to “ignore” in the profile you’re using.
Trial version, Donation and Registration
As of CoverArt 1.2, this plugin is donation based. Donations are the only way the developer can keep investing his free time into supporting this plugin. After you first install the plugin, it will work for a trial period of 14 days. During this trial period you can use every feature of the plugin with no restrictions.
After the trial expires, new images will not get treated by the plugin, but your existing images will still have the treatment (until they are re-cached).
As of CoverArt 2.3.1 all registrations are handled through the new Media Browser Store.
Update As of 10-2011 all previously registered keys have been migrated to a MB supporter key. If you can’t get an old version to recognize its registration status, use the lost key link on the MB website (www.mediabrowser.tv/lost-key) with the email you used to originally register CA through ebrSoft to retrieve your MB key. If you already have an MB key with that email, it should just work. If you have a different MB key, they can be linked at www.mediabrowser.tv/link-keys.
Additional information
- For more detailed information about CoverArt, visit http://www.ebrsoft.com/coverart/.