Cover TAG for Winamp5

Display a cover picture and show TAG information

Version for Winamp5. It uses the Video window to show a cover picture and TAG information. By using the Video window it is very nicely integrated into Winamp.


The cover picture is search in many places, starting in the ID3V2 TAG and going for different separate files.

Staff review

Uses id3 tag info to locate cover image for currently playing song, and then displays it in the Winamp video window. If the id3 tag info isn't complete, then Cover TAG will search by other means (file name with jpg extension, folder.jpg, etc.).

Comments

SO GLAD it's working again with v5.51+ - I've used this plugin for years & couldn't imagine Winamp without it...even the new cover art features in v5.51 can't compare IMO. So I was frantic, trying to figure out why it suddenly stopped working.Thanks Nohart1, for contacting the author & posting the updated dll. That was my next step, but you beat me to it.Also a BIG THANK YOU to Joerg (author) for updating Cover & Tag...I was starting to think this plugin was abandon ware, since it hasn't been updated in quite a while. I even sent a wish list of additional features to Joerg a year ago. They were never implemented, but at least he replied to my email, which is more than you can usually expect.Now that the plugin is active again, I'll repost my 3 feature requests, in the hopes that Joerg may consider them (hint, hint).1) Seperate the comments from other fields with a blank line so all the text doesn't run together in the video window.2) Make better use of the video window space by offering an option to wrap the comment text around the cover art (instead of the default of right alignment in a straight vertical column).3) An option to use a different color for the comments, so they are seperate & distinct from the other text. - December 27, 2007 by Terry Korensek

Simple, does just what it designed to do - Cover&TAG is here:http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/Update:The author has kindly allowed me to post a link to update Gen cover.dll.http://rapidshare.com/files/79000763/Gen_Cover.zipAfter installation of the plug-in v3.30 replace Gen cover.dll to fix errors. The file is usually located here: C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins - December 25, 2007 by No Hart

Great plugin! - this was just what i was looking for. an easy way to view cover art and ID3 tags in a window.but this does not work in Winamp 5.51. might need to wait for an update to the plugin. - December 20, 2007 by Meez Meez

Great, I was looking for just this!!! - If you take all the work to embed the cover into your mp3 files you want to see it if your run Winamp.This plugin is just doing this and your able to display some additional information!Hope the creator is going to continue the development!Keep up the good work! - November 27, 2007 by Bruno Baumgartner

Love it.... - Exactly what I was looking for. An essential plug in to display cover album art until Winamp can support that (like many other audio players already do....ie: Musicmatch). Hope that's on the wish list. Looks great. - August 4, 2007 by Kevin Kryvenchuk

Too bad... - ...the tag format can't be customized, looks a bit chaotic the way it is at the moment (Version 3.3.0). Besides that, a very nice plug-in. - April 2, 2007 by Abi S.

Newer Version - I found that a newer version available at http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ fixes the resizing bug I mentioned previously, so I will now give it five stars. - February 23, 2007 by Christopher Brammer

Great (one minor bug) - This is exactly what I as looking for. There was only one minor bug I saw: If you resize the picture or start a new song the background is not refreshed/blanked out first. Basically the old picture and text become the new background and so you can see the old text and picture underneath the new text and in the background around the picture. Also it would be nice if you could make CoverTAG the default instead of the visualizer. I am using Winamp 5.32 Thanks for the Plug-in. - February 21, 2007 by Christopher Brammer

Great plugin - Hi Jörg, I would very much like to see that you update this plug-in to a full unicode standrad. With Winamp 5.33 supporting unicde I would love to see the artitst & song titles shown correctly in unicode as welll (I like a lot of Ukrainian and Russian artists who all use Cyrillic). Other than that this is a terrific plugin; Winamp should consider taking it over for the full bundle. - February 17, 2007 by az frankie

Spot on... - Excellent piece of kit - integrates very slickly with Winamp. I had a problem at first with desktop showing through the video window, but changing the background colour in the .ini file fixed that. I store my music on my server and use a syncronised folder on my laptop to listen to music on the road (must be the heaviest MP3 player around) and I had a problem with garbled Album, Title and Artiste text when playing tracks in the syncronised folder. I looked through the other reviews and found a link to ver 3.3 (thanks to Super Freak) which fixed the problem. - December 11, 2006 by Alex Tippitt

Excellent plugin - but..... - Hi, I've been using this plug in for some time to display folder.jpg images in my music collection. I populate each album folder with a high res image so i get something similar to the madonna one in the download image (although i actually have my video window set a bit larger). The problem is that something (windows or wmp maybe?), keeps writing over my own folder.jpg files with much smaller and very low resolution folder.jpg files with the 'hidden' attribue set. at the same time the files 'albumartsmall.jpg', 'AlbumArt_{76D1B037-A778-4D37-927C-128AE98F2405}_Small.jpg and AlbumArt_{76D1B037-A778-4D37-927C-128AE98F2405}_Large.jpg appear. If I put the hi-res image back, then sometime later, it gets automatically overwritten again. Its very annoying. Anyone any ideas how to stop this?? Using Winamp 5.24 Using Cover art plugin 3.2.2 Thanks Mark - November 5, 2006 by Mark Edwards

DL the 3.3 not the 3.2! - That's what I was lookin' for... for 6 hours... a useable cover plug-in... I had to try all that crapped ones, thanx. Now the latest v3.3 should be listed here, not the older v3.2, since that one is buggy with the v5.25 WinAmp. Thanx for the link someone metioned here prior to me... uninstalled the old one and reinstalled the latest. Brrr, this winamp site should be refreshed occasionally... - August 16, 2006 by Super Freak

ESSENTIAL!!! - TO ME COVER TAG IS A MUST HAVE PLUG-IN!!! THANK U MR RICHTER! ;?)) - June 11, 2006 by matef matef

Simple, and that's good - I tried numerous other plugins to try and get what this plugin delivers. No-nonsense cover display of the album being played. If you are using Winamp 5.2 you may have trouble with this plugin not rendering the video window correctly. Until the author reposts the fixed version (3.3) here, you can get it here: http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ - May 21, 2006 by Chris Hughes

Essential for my Winamp - This is one of my must have plug-ins for my Winamp..It runs flawless for my Winamp. For those having problems with it, try getting the latest version. It should solve most of the problems. - May 9, 2006 by Soon Hong

Great !!! BUT ... - It's a great plug-in for me. BUT I found it CAN'T work with some other languages plug-in (such as Traditional Chinese, Sim. Chinese) after several tests in these days. Just set language to English will be okey if the error "Fatal Error: Winamp Video Window not found" occurs. - March 15, 2006 by Chiachou Hsieh

Skipping Tracks - A very good cover display, but I've noticed that in some cases the track following a video is skipped and tha track after it plays next instead. This didn't happen prior to using this plugin so I think it must be the cause - but nobody else has mentioned it so maybe not. It does not happen with all videos and I've been unable to see any connections between those it happens with. Also, I sometimes have a song playing and clear the playlist completely (including the playing songs entry) leaving the song playing. On adding anything back to the playlist, the top tracks cover is displayed even though it is not yet playing. - March 7, 2006 by Adam Cadamally

Go get the new version 3.22 - http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ - January 31, 2006 by James Hsiung

This plugin rocks - Still have a problem with winamp v5.112 : the tag is not displayed (or read) but the cover from the folder is OK. - January 15, 2006 by Ben GoTen

Good, but only supports mp3 tags - Lack of support for other audio formats tags prevents me giving it a higher rating-- wma, aac are the two most important. The world is moving beyond mp3. Time for winamp plugins to move as well. - December 27, 2005 by Steven Quinlan

Doesn't work without major effort - This plugin is a great idea and probably works really well for people who understand how to write and configure things. But for anyone who is just a regular computer user must stay far away until this plugin installs and works without needing to edit config files. I myself am not one of the people who can do this sort of thing with experience. So I can't recommend anything but to keep your sanity and stay away from this unfinished plugin which might turn out to be good one day when it is really finished and made to work immediately after installation like all good software is supposed to do. - December 15, 2005 by David Marshall

typo!!! - Yes, it's great, but it doesn't work anymore! I have Winamp 5.111 and when trying to install it it says, "Couldn't open the file: "C:\Program Files\Winamp\\Plugins\Gen_Cover.dll" for writing. Notice the "\\" before plugins? I bet that's the problem. Please fix!! - December 6, 2005 by Michael Crook

Great after some trying - When I downloaded the plug-in from the Winamp site, it didn't work, even after several restarts, re-installation, changes in the params etc. After reading the reviews, I found out one user downloaded the plug-in from the site of the author directly: http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ I likewise did, and it worked immediately!!! Btw, I use winamp 5.094. 5 stars for the plug-in even if the installation took a while. Keep up the good work! I love Winamp!!! - November 27, 2005 by Guy Calomme

Stopped working - This plugins works great, but since i updated to Winamp 5.10 it stopped working. So I downgraded to 5.08 and now it works fine. - October 7, 2005 by Jan deGroot

Updated my review - I thought that this plugin had a problem, but learned that it's necessary to carefully read the gen_cover.txt file for info on how to set the .ini file parameters. Now it's perfect for my use in Winamp 5.09. Thanks for the great plugin Joerg. - August 29, 2005 by Warren Koch

Simply amazing - I never got used to displaying album cover art while playing music because the plug-ins that I had tried were either too ugly, user-unfriendly or unstable. You probably already know that those days are over for me, I've found my cover partner: Cover&TAG. After typing a lot of crap to request a feature, I found a 'PicParent' variable in Gen_Cover.ini, defaulted to 0. After changing it to 1, Cover&TAG started behaving exactly how I wanted it to. Please don't ever remove this feature. Requests: * Documentation on Gen_Cover.ini's variables. * An option on the configuration dialog that lets you enable/disable the displaying of the cover art in real-size, or in a specified size, upon user request. I guess mouse middle-click button would be good for this task? * Reordering of shown ID3 tags. Thank you for your effort, this plug-in rocks and should never cease to be improved. - July 29, 2005 by Angel Olivera

Just what I've been looking for! - I've been looking for a plugin like this for ages. I've always wanted to see the CD cover in Winamp, like other programs do and the video window is ideal for it becaues I doubt anyone realy watches videos in Winamp anyway. It works perfect, but there are a few things I would add like an option to have the picture streched to the entire size of the window without the name and size of the picture displayed in the bottom. Also, with some pictures i get an annoying white outline. Besides that it's great and i hope it gets updated soon. If you download the plugin from http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ it works perfect with Winamp 5.093. - July 18, 2005 by gregory finster

5.09 doesn't work - I have the latest version of winamp and this plug will not show anything, used to work but no more. Any ideas? It's a great plug and I'd love to have it working again. - July 15, 2005 by Jordan Trais

Pretty good - After using Foobar/iTunes, I figure I really like the cover art display idea. But Winamp never had it :( Until now :D As for now I have used two different plugins for cover art, one being CoverTAG for Winamp5 and the other is Now Playing Plugin. This plugin is definitely better than the others since it displays the art in a separate window which also shows ID3tags which is great :D The only down side at the moment is that it isn't very configurable ie: Can't change which tags to show, can't add/del different tags / notes. But that should change in the coming versions, which I bet we're all looking forward to :) All in all, great plugin! - June 7, 2005 by Mike Dexter

Still a problem with 5.09 - Works great right through Winamp 5.08. Fix for WA 5.09 still has a problem. Cover picture displays for a few seconds and then reverts to the default picture that is used when there is no cover picture in the MP3 metadata. - May 22, 2005 by Warren Koch

doesnt work at all - this plugin simply doesnt do anything at all on my machine, i'm running 5.09 (which is supposed to be supported) but it just never shows anything. - May 13, 2005 by eric neuman

ok with W5.09 - It's ok now, it works very good with winamp 5.09. Thank you to the autor ! - May 10, 2005 by Guret Nicolas

Fixed! - The autor already fixed the problem. You can download the corrected plugin here: http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ - May 9, 2005 by Samuel Viana

Problem with Winamp 5.09 - Too bad, this used to work nicely up to Winamp 5.08, but doesn't function anymore in 5.09. Will this be fixed? - May 8, 2005 by Dave Fenner

fantastic but.... - It was my main tool but ends with 5.09. I prefer switching back to 5.08, waiting for this problem to be solved. - May 7, 2005 by frank filippi

No work with Winamp 5.09 - This plugin no run with Winamp 5.09. - May 7, 2005 by Daniel Del_Pino

it was great... - "Fatal Error: Winamp couldn't find video window" or something like that... was my welcome to cover&tag for wa5, but I must say I was using the last version for wa2, and it was great!... unfortunatelly when I upgraded to last version (cover&tag v3.2 I guess), it died. I use wa5.09, video included, so I don't know how to fix this... I surfed around all the web, but my old plugin disappeared, and it seems nobody cares, 'cause everybody but me, they're happy with their fully-functional plugin! My solution: please Winamp 5.1 MUST include this feature (and winamp lyrics explorer as well) as part of the full package. Thanks for your time. PS: Anyway, it was the most awesome plugin ever written! - May 6, 2005 by Patricio Bustamante

Problem with Winamp 5.09 - I use this plugin since a long time ago and realy enjoy it. It give better look to winamp and it is very efficient. But, since I instal the new realise of Winamp (5.09) it doesn't work. so, i return to winamp 5.08e. I hope a new realise of the plugin will solve this problem .... - May 6, 2005 by Guret Nicolas

Very nice, but... - ... why only jpg support? If you could implement more image formats for future versions... =) - April 15, 2005 by neekee siou

:) - very very nice :) - April 6, 2005 by bonias bonias

nice feature - Should be built in. Not sure why the staff is so incensed by cover art. - March 18, 2005 by Bruce Morgan

WMA support - This is a great plug in. I love it but I can only give it 4 stars because it lacks support for WMA files. It does not show the album cover for WMA files. Could this possibly be fixed? - January 21, 2005 by Matthew Malicoat

Super!!! - This is really great plugin. I missing only one thing - possibility to see a whole comment tag field. - January 7, 2005 by Miha Kuhar

Multiple pix support - Oops ! But this was not my fault: when you download the plug-in from this site, you'll get version 3.0.4 without this feature. You may want to get this updated. Now, after having downloaded the most current version from your site und having fiddled around a little bit, I confirm: yes, Cover & Tag also has multiple pix support, which I appreciate. With regards to some minor bugs I'll take the liberty to contact you offline - December 10, 2004 by Norbert Zeder

Multiple pix support available - Multiple pix support is available since a couple of month. You can define the number of seconds when it shows the next cover and you can define a couple of patterns to search for covers. BTW, latest version is 3.1.3. - December 9, 2004 by Joerg Richter

Why just one single pix ? - Sorry, but I can't share the enthusiasm of the majority of reviewers here. The plug-in shows ONE and only one picture, no matter where it was found. I've been using the good old 'Showcover' plug-in since years which triggers a slide show, and being organized that way I have dozens of pics in my resp. artist folders which show up one after the other while a tune is playing. Thanks to the Nullsoft guys (they really take compatibility for serious) this plug-in runs smoothly in the most current WinAmp5 version. Only drawback of 'Showcover' is that it displays Id3v1 info only and the brilliant guy who wrote this apparently is not willing to change this. So, maybe Joerg will come up some time in the future with a 'multiple pix' feature as described above. Till then, I'm sorry to tell you that I'm going to re-install my 'Showcover' again. By the way, I found a small bug which per se wouldn't bother me too much: if you've changed the description of the comment field in your file, the first letter is truncated in the video frame display. - December 1, 2004 by Norbert Zeder

Finaaallyyyy!! a real cover art Display - It works really good. It displays in the video window. any image you have in the folder! I just love it. I was looking for something like this for ages. - November 19, 2004 by e2 luispa

Great Cover-viewing Plug-in - I tried a couple different plug-ins to show covers, and this is by far the best. I've been using it for a while now, both with Winamp 2, then with the old Winamp2 plug-in in Winamp5. Now with this version fully integrated into winamp5, it couldn't be better. - November 4, 2004 by Darren Stewart

nice nice nice... - I been using Cover & Tag since it's out. The new version for Winamp 5 is really "upgraded". It's a MUST plugin. Well organized mp3's ( with cover/s and and full-tags ) are shown nice, nice, nice... First I was irritated by the changing covers ( if you have the single-cover in the tag & the album-cover in the path ), but now it's really a great pleasure to look at . tip: on partys fullscreen..and a little avs-window over it.......... - November 1, 2004 by Jean-Ortwin Stahlhut

Awesome! - Wow, I've been looking for this sorta thing since...forever! It's exactly how I wanted it - have it so I can put my own choices of pictures to specific songs. It really makes it more personal in ways, which is great. It's pretty easy to use too, so this is great. Thanks alot! - September 30, 2004 by Jonathan Quan

Definitively The Best! - Dear Joerg, THANKS ! You doing great work. This is definitively the best cover viewer on winamp. Just to mention one advantage: its updates regulary (see http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ ) ! My main reasons: it shows ID3 Cover and jpg-images in folder, with every name. And there is a slide show between different images :) - September 19, 2004 by Dr No

Not quite there yet. - If you've used M*sicM*tch you know what we want - just the cover art on the screen, plus maybe a little popup box with a title and picture in it when the track changes. You've gone this far Joerg, just a little bit more! Great at what it does so far, but the config box hasn't kept pace with prog development. It's good to find 'cover hunting' though. I'm just surprised that this has taken so long for someone to get round to. - July 21, 2004 by Lonesome Twin

Nice One - I used Cover & Tag with Winamp 3. This seems to be much improved, with more to come or at least promised. Only slight snag, I'd installed Winamp 5 without Video. Doh. An quick re-install had it working a treat. I prefer this to the info panel, which is a good thing, 'cos I've lost it! - July 8, 2004 by Stephen Prentice

Update available - There's a new version with support for font and colors available. http://www.angelfire.com/blog/richter/ - June 15, 2004 by Joerg Richter

Almost Perfect - This skin is great!!! It is exactly what WinAmp needed. Just one suggestion to make it perfect (and 5 stars)... Can you add support for other tags (like OGG and FLAC). When I play a FLAC file it will show the cover because I have it named folder.jpg, but not the tag info. - May 31, 2004 by Todd Berman

Like all things great, just requires one tweak ;) - I disagree with matt titchener's review. This plug-in is already outstanding! It delivered the one feature to Winamp that I found was missing. I had tried iTunes for Windows out of curiosity, and was surprised to find myself loving that bloated app simply because it would display the embedded album art. I don't need the plug-in to download the art, I want to embed them in the files from my own scans. The one tweak that I would love to see is resolution of the issue that seems to prevent video playback when using the DivX codec through DirectShow. I didn't notice this problem until I started using Winamp as my primary media player. It was then that I noticed that video playback from DivX encoded avi's would be blocked when "Cover TAG for Winamp5" was installed. I won't re-install "Cover TAG for Winamp5" until this issue is resolved, but I will continue to check for a new version! - May 24, 2004 by asera oeta4a

Does what it says - You know, this would be oustanding if it just included one extra feature: the ability to download the album art (in high-res unlike the covers displayed in the media library in standard WA5) from either the Amazon servers and/or the helium album art servers - a little disappointing that I have to manually place all my covers in the required folders etc. Other than that, does what it says. - May 23, 2004 by matt titchener

Just what I wanted - This plugin is fantastic. I have no suggestions just my thanks to the author. Perfect! - May 12, 2004 by Hawk .

Eventually I got use for the video window! - This is a really great plug-in - one of the things I miss in Winamp is the ability to show covers, but now that is solved! I've got some suggestions to make this even better: 1) Add support for GIF-images. 2) As it is now long song titles etc are shown on top of the cover - it would be really great if there were automatic linebreaks to keep the image free from text. 3) It'd be great if it could show even more song info, as kbps and sample rate. - May 5, 2004 by Love Eklund

Almost perfect. Definitely the best. - Of all the cover image add ons I have found, this is by far the best. I tried to contact the author, but no joy. Does anyone know where he is? The fact that it uses the video window makes it neat & it can mould to any skin too. What would I add? Only the ability to embed an image into an MP3 (either one at a time or en masse) really. Anyone managed to get the deafult image thing working? Dunno if it's a bug with winamp5.01 & 5.03. - May 5, 2004 by Andrew Gotteri

Exactly What I Wanted - I was afraid I was gonna have to write it myself, but I finaly found a plugin that will pull album art out of the album folder. Shouldn't be hard right? I mean the image is already there. Plugin works nicely, it could use a few more options for what information it displays, how it selects what image, but otherwise wonderful. - May 3, 2004 by alex faucher

"Fatal Error"-Problem Solved - Justed updated to Winamp 5.03. It was probably a problem with Winamp 5.02, 'cause now the Cover TAG plugin is working perfectly :) No more Fatal Error messages when lauching Winamp. It's a great plugin! Should be included in winamp by default. Suggestion: A simple discreet buttom for showing a "back.jpg" cover would be really nice. - April 1, 2004 by sylte _

Great Plugin - but performs a "Fatal Error" on startup - I really like this plugin. It has all the features I like (show a cover.jpg in a skinned window) and features I don't like can be turned off (such as TAG info). The only problem with the current plugin (posted 21 Jan. 2004) is that it performs a "Fatal Error: Winamp Video window not found!"-error. Maybe it is just my setup/configuration, since no other reviewers have mentioned this problem. To avoid the problem, I have to close the video window before I close Winamp. Then, when I launch Winamp, I activate the plugin by pressing "alt-v". Have anyone else experienced this "Fatal Error"-problem? If this little problem is fixed, I'll will for sure give 5 stars :) Keep up the good work! - March 20, 2004 by sylte _

Text covers picture! - I use Tag & Rename to tag my albums, often a review is added to the comment field and it's quite long. So the text covers the album cover! it looks really ugly! Please fix this or make it possible not to show teh comment.. - February 27, 2004 by Mattias H�llkvist

Super - I really like this plugin as an upgrade for WA5 from Joerg's previous Cover&TAG version. It works great for me, but since it uses the video screen for its display I found it important to get the video preferences set properly. I turned off "close the video window after the video playback ends" and "resize the video window to fit video". I also "detached video". With these settings the window can be docked as desired, and the Cover display doesn't interfere with the playing of videos (or visualizations). I particularly like the concept that the use of the video window automatically skins the Cover display. - February 25, 2004 by Warren Koch

great work - Great work, this plugin can be the ultimate solution for viewing covers! Integration in video view is a great idea. Just one thing is missing: a slide-show!If there are more than one image in same directory .. - February 22, 2004 by Dr No

Great Work - Great Work! Thanks a lot for your dedication! I do have one request that (I think) would not take too much work... I have lots of albums, each in a separate folder named: Artist - Album]. Inside the folder is the ArtWork named: Artist - Album - front.jpg, Artist - Album - back.jpg,... It would be great if the plugin could get this information (for the front cover) or even greater if it we could configure the name of the cover file. Best Regards. - February 16, 2004 by Ricardo Oliveira

Great!!! - I love how this displays in the video window instead of the Now Playing window. Now I can display lyrics in that window and the cover in the video window. Just what I needed! - February 14, 2004 by Jerri Blank

Almost Perfect - Would be perfect if it could do a manual slide show of multiple images, and if it allowed more control over which images to display if they exist in multiple locations, and assign a priority to these locations. - February 7, 2004 by Abarabusto Barker

Incredible - amazing... exactly what winamp needed... great job - February 2, 2004 by Tom Occhino

Wow! WinAmp 5 looks hot with this... - I said 5 stars, because with the AV component docked (with album and info) with th player It looks like a pimped and better MMJB I think MMJB blows WinAm RULES!!!!1 A with everything upgrades could be made (scrollae lyrics/ non id3 info) but bomb ass shit for the 1st try... PEACE - February 1, 2004 by Chris Sargent

elegant and smooth - Nice Plugin. Integrates smooth within winamp, easy to use. Works fine, except that it has problems with path-names that include \".\", like \"Dr. John\" - January 26, 2004 by Marty Marty

Excelente / Excellent - Problemas en idioma espa?ol. Bugs in language spanish. Thanks/Gracias Joerg - January 25, 2004 by Rafael Osegueda