
FetchArt Plugin
***************

The "fetchart" plugin retrieves album art images from various sources
on the Web and stores them as image files.

To use the "fetchart" plugin, first enable it in your configuration
(see *Using Plugins*). Then, install the requests library by typing:

   pip install requests

The plugin uses requests to fetch album art from the Web.


Fetching Album Art During Import
================================

When the plugin is enabled, it automatically gets album art for every
album you import.

By default, beets stores album art image files alongside the music
files for an album in a file called "cover.jpg". To customize the name
of this file, use the *art_filename* config option.


Configuration
=============

To configure the plugin, make a "fetchart:" section in your
configuration file. The available options are:

* **auto**: Enable automatic album art fetching during import.
  Default: "yes".

* **cautious**: Pick only trusted album art by ignoring filenames that
  do not contain one of the keywords in "cover_names". Default: "no".

* **cover_names**: Prioritize images containing words in this list.
  Default: "cover front art album folder".

* **minwidth**: Only images with a width bigger or equal to "minwidth"
  are considered as valid album art candidates. Default: 0.

* **maxwidth**: A maximum image width to downscale fetched images if
  they are too big. The resize operation reduces image width to at
  most "maxwidth" pixels. The height is recomputed so that the aspect
  ratio is preserved.

* **enforce_ratio**: Only images with a width:height ratio of 1:1 are
  considered as valid album art candidates if set to "yes". It is also
  possible to specify a certain deviation to the exact ratio to still
  be considered valid. This can be done either in pixels
  ("enforce_ratio: 10px") or as a percentage of the longer edge
  ("enforce_ratio: 0.5%"). Default: "no".

* **sources**: List of sources to search for images. An asterisk ***
  expands to all available sources. Default: "filesystem coverart
  itunes amazon albumart", i.e., everything but "wikipedia", "google"
  and "fanarttv". Enable those sources for more matches at the cost of
  some speed. They are searched in the given order, thus in the
  default config, no remote (Web) art source are queried if local art
  is found in the filesystem. To use a local image as fallback, move
  it to the end of the list.

* **google_key**: Your Google API key (to enable the Google Custom
  Search backend). Default: None.

* **google_engine**: The custom search engine to use. Default: The
  beets custom search engine, which searches the entire web.

* **fanarttv_key**: The personal API key for requesting art from
  fanart.tv. See below.

* **store_source**: If enabled, fetchart stores the artwork's source
  in a flexible tag named "art_source". See below for the rationale
  behind this. Default: "no".

Note: "minwidth" and "enforce_ratio" options require either
ImageMagick or Pillow.

Note: Previously, there was a *remote_priority* option to specify when to
  look for art on the filesystem. This is still respected, but a
  deprecation message will be shown until you replace this
  configuration with the new *filesystem* value in the *sources*
  array.

Here's an example that makes plugin select only images that contain
*front* or *back* keywords in their filenames and prioritizes the
iTunes source over others:

   fetchart:
       cautious: true
       cover_names: front back
       sources: itunes *


Manually Fetching Album Art
===========================

Use the "fetchart" command to download album art after albums have
already been imported:

   $ beet fetchart [-f] [query]

By default, the command will only look for album art when the album
doesn't already have it; the "-f" or "--force" switch makes it search
for art in Web databases regardless. If you specify a query, only
matching albums will be processed; otherwise, the command processes
every album in your library.


Image Resizing
==============

Beets can resize images using Pillow, ImageMagick, or a server-side
resizing proxy. If either Pillow or ImageMagick is installed, beets
will use those; otherwise, it falls back to the resizing proxy. If the
resizing proxy is used, no resizing is performed for album art found
on the filesystem---only downloaded art is resized. Server-side
resizing can also be slower than local resizing, so consider
installing one of the two backends for better performance.

When using ImageMagick, beets looks for the "convert" executable in
your path. On some versions of Windows, the program can be shadowed by
a system-provided "convert.exe". On these systems, you may need to
modify your "%PATH%" environment variable so that ImageMagick comes
first or use Pillow instead.


Album Art Sources
=================

By default, this plugin searches for art in the local filesystem as
well as on the Cover Art Archive, the iTunes Store, Amazon, and
AlbumArt.org, in that order. You can reorder the sources or remove
some to speed up the process using the "sources" configuration option.

When looking for local album art, beets checks for image files located
in the same folder as the music files you're importing. Beets prefers
to use an image file whose name contains "cover", "front", "art",
"album" or "folder", but in the absence of well-known names, it will
use any image file in the same folder as your music files.

When you choose to apply changes during an import, beets will search
for art as described above.  For "as-is" imports (and non-autotagged
imports using the "-A" flag), beets only looks for art on the local
filesystem.


iTunes Store
------------

To use the iTunes Store as an art source, install the python-itunes
library. You can do this using pip, like so:

   $ pip install https://github.com/ocelma/python-itunes/archive/master.zip

(There's currently a problem that prevents a plain "pip install
python-itunes" from working.) Once the library is installed, the
plugin will use it to search automatically.


Google custom search
--------------------

To use the google image search backend you need to register for a
Google API key. Set the "google_key" configuration option to your key,
then add "google" to the list of sources in your configuration.

Optionally, you can define a custom search engine. Get your search
engine's token and use it for your "google_engine" configuration
option. The default engine searches the entire web for cover art.

Note that the Google custom search API is limited to 100 queries per
day. After that, the fetchart plugin will fall back on other declared
data sources.


Fanart.tv
---------

Although not strictly necessary right now, you might think about
registering a personal fanart.tv API key. Set the "fanarttv_key"
configuration option to your key, then add "fanarttv" to the list of
sources in your configuration.

More detailed information can be found on their blog. Specifically,
the personal key will give you earlier access to new art.


Storing the Artwork's Source
============================

Storing the current artwork's source might be used to narrow down
"fetchart" commands. For example, if some albums have artwork placed
manually in their directories that should not be replaced by a forced
album art fetch, you could do

"beet fetchart -f ^art_source:filesystem"

The values written to "art_source" are the same names used in the
"sources" configuration value.


Embedding Album Art
===================

This plugin fetches album art but does not embed images into files'
tags. To do that, use the *EmbedArt Plugin*. (You'll want to have both
plugins enabled.)
