Bizarre Cover Flow behavior

I downloaded all the available cover art last night and this is what I woke up to:
That's right -the "cover flow" display shows a screenshot of my iMac. Even weirder is that the display updates dynamically. That is, as the iMac screen changes, so does the displayed cover art! It's not just the one in the foreground that changes - way over to the left you can see another album that appears as an iMac screenshot.
There's nothing wrong with the thumbnail in the bottom left corner; that's correct as it always was.
Some of the albums display correctly, others don't. The artwork which I've provided by scanning myself doesn't appear to be affected, but I've only scanned my own for CDs that aren't available from iTunes. Other than that there is no uniformity to the phenomenon that's apparent to me, althought if there is no cover art for a particular album, the normal "blank" cover art appears.
I never had much use for cover art before the ability to download it from Apple, so I never used "view cover flow" much, so I don't know how long this phenomenon has been around. I did a search for this phenomenon here and could find nothing right away.
I've logged in/out, restarted, etc to no avail. At this point it's more of a curiosity than an annoyance to me, but it would be nice to know how to fix it.
This is iTunes 9.0.2

Ceremonial 11 day bump.
Any ideas???

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Strange cover flow behavior

Just got a 32 GB iPod Touch, and I'm encountering an odd bug with cover flow. For example: say I want to play Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black". If I choose the album from list view, the correct artwork comes up. If I flip horizontal and look at cover flow, for some reason it displays the cover of Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Complete Recordings. If I then tap in the info button to see the song list, the miniature version of the cover art in the upper right hand corner is the correct Amy Winehouse cover.
The iPod seems to have a perverse sense of humor ... it has assigned the Sex Pistols's "Nevermind the Bollocks ..." the cover of the Beatles' "Rubber Soul"!
Again, this is only when viewing in cover flow ... the miniature version on the info page is fine, as is the artwork that displays when the ipod is vertical.
Incidentally, I also have an iPhone, with some music that is on both ... and the problem does not occur with cover flow on the iPhone. Weird, no?
Any ideas? I've tried copying over the correct artwork doing a select-all in iTunes, but no joy.

I have the exact same issue, and a cover art variation on my 8gb touch I got in September.
It ****** me off enough to restore my iPod, restoring it to defaults fixed the messed up artwork, but I don't know how long it will stay. However, it also created a new problem of some artwork not syncing at all.

Cover flow lion finder window

Horrible horrible horrible feature of Lion:
iPhoto is occupied iwth a large upload of images to flickr.
I want to review some more of the images I shot today in thumbnail to
open and start working on them in photoshop without waiting for iPhoto
to finish (this is reason #6099 why I do not let iPhoto control the
location of my photos on the drive, so I can access them without
opening their specific iPhoto library).
I open the enclosing folder for the images, click to view by icon,
enlarge the icons, then click to sort the photos by date, and....COVER
FLOW! they've Cover-Flow-ized the icon view when you do any kind of
sort except by name.
I cannot say how much I hate cover flow--nausea-inducing for the
motion sickness prone, nasty vile scheme in general--and now, it's
dropped the images I can see in one glance at the screen in this icon
by date view of the finder window to ONE, and I can't turn it off. I
do NOT have coverflow checked in view options.
Is there any way to kill coverflow completely in every place they've
put it?
(Feedback already sent to apple, BTW, if you have this problem too, and there's no solution offered by one of the bright folks on this board, please send them some at apple.com/feedback--the place to put feedback for programs like finder that don't have a 'send feedback' menu item))

Support call gave the solution: instead of 'Arrange by', use the 'clean up by' command under the view menu in Finder. This does what arrange by used to, and while the menu options are more limited than 'arrange by', it doesn't default to the cover-flow behavior that is so irritating.
If you hate cover flow like I do, please send them feedback. If enough of us complain about it, maybe they'll stop putting it all over the place.

Deleted files still have preview in cover flow in finder window

After I delete files while in cover flow view mode in finder, the preview and filename do not match. In fact the preview of the deleted file remains when a different file is selected. Every file below that shows a different preview. It resets to normal if I close and reopen the folder.
edit: Upon further investigation I see I am not alone. Someone else even posted a link to report the bug, which I did.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
Message was edited by: Ravenkeeper

Support call gave the solution: instead of 'Arrange by', use the 'clean up by' command under the view menu in Finder. This does what arrange by used to, and while the menu options are more limited than 'arrange by', it doesn't default to the cover-flow behavior that is so irritating.
If you hate cover flow like I do, please send them feedback. If enough of us complain about it, maybe they'll stop putting it all over the place.

Inconsistent selection behavior when deleting files in Cover Flow

I love browsing through my pictures folder using Cover Flow. However, I've noticed that deleting a file by pressing Cmd-Delete produces inconsistent selection results. Sometimes Finder will select the next file down the list, and sometimes it will select no file at all. However, the Cover Flow portion of the window will always show the next file.
It is misleading when Cover Flow shows the next file, but the file selection pane shows no file selected. I often hit the down-arrow (or right-arrow) key, expecting to skip to the next file, but the first file in the folder gets selected, Cover Flow re-winds its view, and I have to re-find my last position.
There is also no way to select the current file by clicking on the Cover Flow preview currently showing. I have to click some other file and re-browse to the current file in order to sync up the two panes.
Is this a bug? Does Apple know about it?

As mentioned, cover flow does not change the basic Finder operation. Return allows editing the name and Cmd-O or Cmd-downarrow opens the item. It also functions similar to the list view, when you open a folder, the subfolders are added to the cover flow; they do not replace the cover flow icons.

Can Cover Flow view be limited to playback of only one album at a time?

Hi all,
I've been using the Cover Flow view in my iTunes Library more and more lately (after years of suffering owning a slow machine). But there has been a question regarding playback that has been slightly nagging me for a little while. I couldn't come up with effective search results, so I'll pose the question to the masses.
Cover Flow playback (by default) seems limited to playing through one album and jumping straight into the next album in the Library without stopping. Scroll through the track listing in the lower screen and you'll notice that iTunes lists every track from every album in your Library.
(picture one of those digital bar jukeboxes and an unlimited bankroll...)
Conversely, when clicking the album's title in the default List view, iTunes will only play the tracks in that particular album's playlist, and stop playback once this is finished. I have grown used to this option when desiring to fall asleep to one particular album only... and not the 476 albums which follow it.
Is there a workaround in place to emulate this "List View" playback behavior for Cover Flow playback?
Just curious... if not, it isn't the end of the world - List View will still continue to serve its specific purpose for my needs.
I just have a thirst for knowledge.
Thanks,
Steve

Hi Jeremy,
Conversely, when clicking the album's title in the default List view, iTunes will only play the tracks in that particular album's playlist, and stop playback once this is finished.
I'm not sure I follow you here — if I click a track in list view, iTunes always goes on to the next track when it's over (assuming Shuffle is off). If that's the next track on an album, great, but when I come to the end of an album it moves on to the next one.
Or are you talking about the Browser? Selecting an album in the Album browser pane will indeed produce the results you're describing, since the rest of your library will be excluded.
Yes that's correct - my apologies, I was at work at the time and was working from memory. I've had the Browser enabled since day one that it almost becomes second nature.
My iTunes interface, while displaying in List mode with the Browser active, limits the upper display fields to only Artist and Album panes.
And exactly as you said, once the album finishes playing, iTunes ceases playback.
Is there a workaround in place to emulate this "List View" playback behavior for Cover Flow playback?
Yes, but it's a bit clunky: use the Search box to narrow down your library until only one album is displayed.
Yes you are correct - it is a bit clunky. But it does work for the most part, provided that the album title is unique from a song title on another album.
Thanks for the info Jeremy!
Steve

Cover Flow

While using cover flow if I drag the finder window larger the image area at the top of the window gets larger but not the text list of the files. Can this behavior be changed?
TonyTony

Yes, choosing list or column maybe helpful but the bigger problem is when you resize the window the image area gets bigger not the file list area. Don't really need to see a bigger image when you have Quicklook but I do want to scan the list of files.
TonyTony

Cover Flow, Finder, Get Info icon dilemma

I was using Cover Flow to look at some photos. I clicked Cmd-I to Get Info in order to use the drop down menu there to change the default application to open one of the images from Preview to Photoshop. Once I did this the photo no longer displayed in Cover Flow. What I saw instead was a default jpeg icon. The icon of the image also changed in the Finder from an icon of the actual image to a default jpeg icon.
Seems like there are some glitches here. Can anybody duplicate this problem. Is there a known fix? Thanks.

Well, that is certainly strange! I tried it and sure enough I got exactly the same results. Which is truly weird because I have many Photoshop jpegs that do not have custom icons, and they display an icon in Finder perfectly well. And, of course, so do generic jpegs. But if you change a generic jpeg to open in Photoshop Finder stops drawing the icon. Furthermore, when I changed it back to open in Preview it did not recover--it continued to display the generic Photoshop jpec icon. Nothing I did would make Finder display a custom icon for the file. I even quit and relaunched Finder to no avail. The only thing that worked was to use my Automator workflow to give it a custom icon. Looks like a bug to me. Send feedback to Apple:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html/
Truly odd behavior.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Annoying bug: Duplicate albums in the Cover Flow view

When viewing my music via the Cover Flow view (sorting Album by Artist) I frequently come across an album that appears twice. For example, I see two copies of Florence and the Machine's "Lungs" side by side. The first copy contains the first track on the album and the second copy has the remainder of the album.
My first thought was "Oh, I must have mislabeled the album field of that first track so it's being saved as a different album... maybe I put in an extra space or something." But when I view the album in the Finder, all the tracks are in the same album folder. Just to be sure, I selected all the tracks on the album in iTunes and made sure the Album info field was correct, checked the checkbox, and clicked OK. Still nothing changes.
I was finally able to fix this by selecting all the tracks on the album in iTunes and changing the Album info field to a completely NEW name (in this example "Lungs TEMP", then selecting them all again and renaming them BACK to the CORRECT name (Lungs). Ta da... Yea. Now there's only one "Lungs" album in Cover Flow.
No big deal if I only had to do this once, but this bug exists all over the place! 11,000 songs is a lot to sort through. It's almost like iTunes is caching bad data somewhere, but I don't know how to delete this cache.
Ideas? Anyone else seen this behavior?

It happens... See http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp for more.
tt2

Changing background color in Finder Cover Flow view possible ?

Hi,
is there any possibility to change the color of the background in the Cover Flow view of Finder ??
Thanks for some answers

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=290539
If you search for "osx change finder window color" you will find a method (mentioned in the linked topic but not detailed) for doing this in Panther, but it may not work in Tiger. It also requires some pretty basic surgery on the OS files which is inadvisable unless you really don't care if you hose your system. Then there's Shapeshifter mentioned in the link. Again, these kind of things are trying to play with the OS at a basic level and are generally ill advised unless you really don't mind experimenting with your computer and don't care if you have to reinstall all your OS and files at some stage. They can cause unpredictable behavior with upgrades and I would not use them without regular backups.

Finder slow to show items in column, icon views (OK in list, cover flow)

I'm seeing new perplexing slow behavior on our three-month old iMac running 10.5.5: when in column view and selecting (or in icon view and double-clicking) a folder, there is an initial five-second lag before items will appear in the next column or window; meanwhile, the bottom of the window will only show the space available until items appear and only then will it list the number of items along with space available. It's enough to make you wonder if there actually is anything in the folder while you wait. I say "initial" lag because on subsequent selection, the listing is instantaneous. However, if you log out and in again, it's back to the delay while waiting for initial listings. None of this behavior happens in list or cover flow views, but column view is my routine, so I'd like to make it snappier.
I've gone through some basic troubleshooting steps (repairing permissions, checking Console and Activity Monitor) to no avail. I haven't run into this behavior on my 2-yr. old MBP, so I'm not sure what to look for. Any thoughts?

Get a utility such as TinkerTool System, Onyx, etc. that has a feature to remove all .DS_Store files. If they get corrupted this could cause the problem you describe. I would also consider disabling the View preference to Show Icon Preview. Use the Show View Options in the Finder's View menu. With Leopard you may need to do this for each new Finder window you open (press COMMAND-J to open the preference dialog for the active window.) Do the same for the Desktop. Show Icon Preview can slow down the content display in the Finder initially. Once the information is cached it displays much quicker. Hence the observation that you described.
It also may not hurt to delete the /Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file in case there's problem with it. Then relaunch the Finder - open the task manager (COMMAND-OPTION-ESC,) select the Finder task and click on the Relaunch button.

Stop Cover Flow from enlarging?

Hi,
Is there a way to disable Cover Flow from enlarging the view when you click and drag or expand the window in the Finder? I'd rather expand the list of items and keep the Cover Flow icons the same size.
Thanks for any help you can provide.

Afraid it is a two step process: resize the window, then resize the CoverFlow section by dragging the little parallel lines at the bottom of the CoverFlow section upwards. You might send feedback to Apple suggesting that it would be better to have the CoverFlow section stay the size you set it when resize the window.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
I think what you want would be better than the current default behavior.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Feature Request: Cover Flow for Selecting Desktop Picture

Cover Flow is a great way to scan through a set of images within a defined visual real estate. It would be perfect for the Desktop System Preferences, where we users have had to suffer forever with squinting at 72x51pixel images (at 1440x900 resolution) of our desktops. It's nearly impossible at this thumbnail size to tell what image one is looking at, and selecting to view it in the preview at 128x73 pixels is only marginally better. And of course, there's no way I know of to expand the System Preferences window to expand this whole scanario. It's the year 2009 guys; please give us your great Cover Flow to help us choose our Desktop Pictures in a reasonable way.

Hi Scott,
I know this isn't the best place, but Apple doesn't make easily apparent where to submit such requests, and I know its staff do occasionally visit these boards.
As to the appropriateness of the expectation, I have to disagree. I make my living in user interface and usability, and Apple has clearly set the expectation in the user's mind that System Preferences is the primary method for setting all sorts of Finder behaviors, including screensavers and desktop pictures. I see no reason for the user to either accept a substandard main method of setting this preference or have to learn a secondary one simply to avoid the main method.
As to the System Preference not lending itself to Cover Flow, there may be some underlying technology of which I'm unaware, but interface-wise, it seems to fit right into the Preference screen:
http://www.loungelife.com/DesktopSystemPref.jpg

Using cover flow full screen activates iTunes visualizer

After maybe 5 minutes the full screen cover flow is replaced with the visualizer. Pressing ESC returns to iTunes with the visualizer playing in the iTunes window. This is new behavior in iTunes 10.x and I'd like to make it stop. Thanks in advance.

I have a similar behaviour in iTunes 10.2.1 & MacOS 10.6.7.: Everytime I’m watching movies in fullscreen after 15 minutes my screensaver comes and disturbs my nonstop watching. I don’t have changed my system settings since I’ve updated to 10.6.7. and the previous MacOS version hasn’t this behaviour.

ANYONE HELP?????? Cover Flow not showing my artwork

I have the following problem but only with certain artwork, not all, I added images to all my files before and hardly ever did I get this problem(Cover Flow not showing my artwork), I usually added the same image or another image to make the cover flow "react", so to speak; the funny thing with my problem is that the files in question still have the artwork I put before in the Get info thingy, they appear whenever I see the info tab of the files, and when they're playing, the image shows at the bottom of the playlists list(above the repeat button and that), but the artwork doesn't show in the cover flow (-- =S ???--), no notifications show up about what's happening, and the image file I added is just a regular .JPEG from an album. In fact right now it's playing and the cover flow is still not showing the artwork, luckily this doesn't affect my iPod config and it shows there, but still it seems weird.
Now does this mean the iTunes is having some sort of behavior issues or it just fancies playing with me? =S

*Why is artwork not showing on my iPod when it's there in iTunes?*
iTunes will display a cover in many of it's views provided at least one track from the album has embedded artwork. The iPod appears to load only the artwork from track one to create the cover flow and album views which means that it can sometimes fail to display art for albums even when you can see the art in iTunes. Further, when tracks are played on the iPod, artwork is displayed if and only if it exists in the currently playing track, so track one may show art while track two does not.
*How to find tracks without artwork*
To find all the tracks without artwork so that you can update them you can try http://www.stum.de/itunes-find-tracks-without-artwork/ for Windows or http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=trackswithoutartwork for Macs. Use Google, Amazon, Discogs etc. to locate relevant images. Ideally these should be square, 320x320 pixels or above and borderless to give the best results in the various menus. If you have artwork for some tracks of an album, but not others, find the album in the main music folder, select a track with artwork, right-click (Option-Click for Macs) on the art & click copy, then select all the tracks of the album, use CTRL-I or Command-I to *Get Info* and then paste the image into the artwork box.
I say 320x320 because I believe (from using TouchCopy) that it's the size used in the iPod cache so if you're going to crop or resize you might as well work to that size. Otherwise 200x200 is probably good enough.
*Rebuild artwork cache*
Sometimes the artwork cache becomes corrupt and fails to show correct artwork, even when this is properly set up in iTunes. To rebuild the artwork cache, connect your iPod to iTunes. Locate the iPod in the Sources pane on the left-hand side, then select the Music tab. Remove the tick from *Display album artwork on your iPod*, sync the iPod, reselect the option & sync again.
tt2

Bizarre Cover Flow behavior

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