Music library management

This week's release improves memory usage further. When bliss runs it builds an 'index' over your music files. This is so it can easily and efficiently work out where, for instance, all music files for a particular album are stored, all the tracks by a particular artist and similar information. Before, this information was all stored in computer memory. Now I have moved it onto your hard disk. For large collections of, say, 100,000 files, this yields a saving of about 70MB. Meanwhile, more memory work has been ongoing to make libraries of theoretically unlimited size to be supported. This work will hopefully be released next week.

In addition I tweaked how the size rule worked. Before, size was 'approximate'. Not only would bliss look for art +/- 10% of the rule size, but also it would resize down art to 10% over your stated maximum size. For the latter, it made little sense to resize to a size larger than you decreed, so instead for matters of compliancy all sizing is now 'strict'. The sizing is still approximate, however, for online searches, just so you can capture good art that is a few pixels too large/small.

The new build can be picked up at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html.

This week's release allows a backup of existing art to be taken when new art is chosen by bliss. This is useful where bliss has judged your art to be uncompliant (e.g. it's too large) and has decided to fix this (e.g. shrink it). If you have the backup option activated, the original art will be saved in the same directory as the music, and then the resizing will proceed.


This is the "Add option to save preexisting cover before overwriting" feature suggested on our UserVoice forums. Thanks to everyone that voted.

The new build can be picked up at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html.

This week's release adds the current art into the change art screen. I implemented this because our users had said they wanted to compare the current art to the alternatives bliss has found.

I also squashed a few bugs. There was an issue where, after changing art from one picture to another, bliss would show the old art, even though it had successfully changed the art as requested. That's fixed.

I also improved the page navigation links that were introduced last week. I now show graphical buttons, show the progress through the list (e.g. 0-12 of 394 albums) and disable buttons when they make no sense, e.g. disable the previous button when you are at the start of the list.

The release is available at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html.

This week's release adds in pagination for the web UI. I added this in for two reasons.

First, a customer was experiencing memory problems because his library was so large that bliss was running out of memory just rendering the Web page! So I fixed that by breaking the UI into pages of twelve albums per page, with links to move left and right.

The second reason is that it makes the browsing view easier to navigate and less overwhelming.

I have a feeling some users may want to be able to view more than twelve albums at once. If so, add the suggestion to the bliss UserVoice page!

The new release is available at the download page.

This week's release fixes a problem where the cost, in terms of number of fixes, was being counted a little, er, 'eagerly' when performing manual changes.

It can be downloaded, as usual, from http://www.blisshq.com/download.html.

The recent blog posts may have hinted at this, but I've also been doing some background work on file organisation compliancy. This allows you to specify, in a rule, how your music files should be organised and it will tell you when they are uncompliant against that rule and, optionally, will automatically move/rename/whatever your files to make it compliant again!

The most obvious changes in this week's release are bug fixes, but in the background I've begun work on a file organisation rule (hence the recent thoughts about how to organise music files!).

The first bug fix was annoying glitch in the way IE8 rendered new albums on a blank page - it would render them all in one column. This is now fixed.

I also improved the detection of multiple instances of bliss running in Windows 7. Before there was opportunity to launch multiple versions.

Finally, I improved the recognition of 'album directories'. Before, if the artist name was in the directory name in addition to the album name, the directory would not be considered an album directory. It does now.

The new release is available, as ever, at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html

A few minor-ish bug fixes this week.

I introduced the 'why?' link to the album grid a few weeks ago. Before, when revealing the details of what made an album compliant, the details inherited the tick or cross icon from the overall compliancy. Now, the tick or cross is related to the detail. Generally speaking, if just one detail has a cross (is uncompliant) then the whole album is.

I also did some work to improve the startup experience for VortexBox users using bliss. VortexBox is a home jukebox appliance. Andrew at VortexBox has set bliss up as a beta integration. With just a couple of commands you can add bliss to your VortexBox, and have it managing its album art. Read more here and here.

The new versions are available in the usual place!

This week's release has some improvements to make bliss's Web based UI a lot more efficient when viewing large music libraries. Before it would consume a lot of memory and CPU power on the computer where bliss is running. This can be a problem where people run low power servers. Now, bliss should take less CPU power when the Web interface is being viewed, and a bit less memory too.

Also, this release has the fix for iTunes libraries I described a week or so ago. Remember that after using bliss to embed art in your music files, iTunes must be told about the new art. The easiest way is:

1. In iTunes, select each album whose art you installed/changed
2. Right click and choose 'Get Info'
3. Click OK on the resulting dialog box (don't click any of the check boxes)

This has the effect of forcing iTunes to re-read the embedded art from your music files.

Download the latest build at blisshq.com!

I just got back from Venice in time to release a new version of bliss!

This version has some improvements with the way bliss handles music collections with large folders with hundred of tracks in.

There are a number of UI cleanups after last weeks new 'compliancy' changes. For instance, I made sure the 'why?' link only appears when assessment is complete.

Miscellaneous tracks stored within a folder were previously being reported as uncompliant, because we couldn't save a separate file for the track as well as embedding art. I fixed that, so now it will be reported as compliant - if the track is in a directory which cannot be ascertained to be the canonical directory for the album then bliss will not consider this when assessing compliance.

Also when resizing art bliss wasn't doing it proportionally, so I fixed that.

A user asked me to make sure that even when an album's art isn't compliant, the art is still shown. I added that in.

Get the new download from http://www.blisshq.com/download.html!

This week's build adds some features to the way bliss reports 'compliance'.

bliss now says whether each album is compliant/uncompliant with respect to your settings in the album art rule, and why. For instance, the most basic aspect of the album art rule is 'there must be album art'. Therefore if there is none, and bliss can't find any it should install automatically, the album is marked as uncompliant and left for you to choose from the alternatives available.

Each album is marked 'Compliant' or 'Uncompliant', and if you hover over the album a little link appears '(why?)' which gives you more detail as to why bliss thinks your album is or isn't compliant.

Another aspect is the sizing of art. The current size is always included in the 'why?' list. If you have sizing enabled as part of your rule, and the art is outside of that size, you may see this marked as too large or too small.

I'm trying to further the idea that bliss understands your rules and can apply them to your library; it lists where music conforms to your rules (compliant) and where it doesn't (uncompliant) and where possible makes your music compliant, if it can find a way.

A couple of smaller fixes are in this build. I fixed a bug where the art resizer was not resizing proportionally. Also, I fixed an unsightly bug where some art in the change art screen was reported to have -1x-1 size.

The new build can be downloaded at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html. Existing licences apply!

After last week's lull we do have a release this week. There aren't any new features, but it includes a rewrite of the way bliss stores album compliancy to make it easier to implement new features like showing the current size of album art.

I have removed a couple of items: the 'question' choice in the drop down, which is no different to 'uncompliant', and the refresh option in the change art screen which was poorly explained and rarely used.

Pick it up at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html. As ever, existing licences apply!

A couple of new features this week. First I've added a 900x900 option to the art sizing options. A few people have suggested this size would be better when viewing art on their (upcoming) iPads!

Secondly, an option to control whether art is automatically overwritten if bliss decides existing art is uncompliant now means you can always choose to manually confirm art, if that is how you like it.

Finally, the tabs have been replaced with a drop down chooser to decide between all albums, just compliant or uncompliant ones. By default all albums, compliant or uncompliant, show on the home page.

Download from http://www.blisshq.com/download.html. Remember that all existing fixes transfer to this new version.

This weeks main new feature is the ability to update ID3v1 tags in your library to ID3v2, and have bliss install the album art it has selected. If you have selected to embed art, when bliss encounters an ID3v1 tag it will mark the album art as uncompliant because ID3v1 tags do not support embedded images. The album will appear in the 'Not installed' tab.

However, next to the album a new shortcut enables you to update the tag to ID3v2 and embed the art semi-automatically. Here's the UserVoice suggestion.

I also fixed a general problem with the Google search - this was manifest on Flickr results inparticular. Again, here's where it was suggested in UserVoice.

I also added an extra filter to filter by albums starting with non-alphabetic or numeric characters.

You should also notice the status indicator updates and appears a bit quicker after making changes to your album art rule.

Download from http://www.blisshq.com/download.html and remember that all existing fixes transfer to this new version!

This week's release concludes the work to reduce the memory footprint of bliss... for now. We can now comfortably support around 5000 albums. There is more work to do on this but for now it is 'good enough'. If someone has a larger collection that isn't working quite right, let us know.

We also slotted a UI improvement in - when you choose or change album art yourself, you are taken back to the previous screen, not the home page for bliss.

The new release can be found at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html; existing fixes still work!

This weeks build is an interim build which has lowered the amount of memory bliss requires when it runs.

No new features, sorry!

Pick up the new release at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html; remember your existing fixes apply!

Some more bug fixes and UI improvements here...

On the 'in progress' and 'installed' screens, the list of albums is now correctly ordered alphabetically when the page is first visited.

To improve the first-time experience, I added in a splash screen and improved the system tray popups.

I also added in another query to Google to capture a few more possible cover art matches.

The new release is available at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html and existing licences apply

Another set of predominantly bug fixes in this week's build...

I've improved the in progress screen so that when an album goes from in progress to asking you to confirm the album art it now updates live - there's no need to refresh the web page.

I made sure any long standing HTTP connections for looking up art are automatically aborted after a period - this allows all albums to be inspected and fixed more reliably.

I also made sure existing, incorrectly sized artwork already available in your collection is used and resized, rather than new art looked up.

The release is available, as ever, at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html and existing licences apply.

In this week's build we've 'turbocharged' the sizing options. These options now operate as real rules, governing how your existing art is stored as well as what new art is downloaded.

For example, if you have a separate collection for your MP3 player, which has a maximum size for art, you can tell bliss to monitor this collection and set the maximum size appropriately. bliss will resize any existing art. Any other art it needs to locate will also be within these size constraints.

Download it at http://www.blisshq.com/download.html

Enjoy!

This release contains some fine-tuning to various aspects of bliss.

We now show the size of the art when bliss asks you to confirm the art you want, or to change existing art.

bliss also reports the current albums that are being inspected and fixed.

We added an extra query to MusicBrainz to bring back a wider variety of results. These results are never applied automatically though, because although they are useful for badly tagged albums there's also a chance they won't be correct.

Also, previously ignored albums can now be refreshed and updated and bought back into cosy album art compliance!

I hope you find these little tune-ups useful!

This week's release turbo-charges the change art screen. For any album, we now offer the ability to choose from a range of alternatives bliss has found, provide your own URL, or ask bliss to refresh and have another go at picking (this could be useful if there was, say, a temporary problem with your Internet connection).

Check it out:
We also made some BIG improvements in the amount of data downloaded as bliss works. This amount should be much smaller now.