Generaic background question: origin of ``thumbnail art''?

[martinsteffen]

My question is not really a question for “trouble shooting” or ``bugs’’ in audacity (and thus probably indepdent from the OS).
But since quite some time I am wondering about: I have a number of audio-files, which I transferred and “cut” with audacity.
When playing them with an audio player, specifically VLC, there is some thumbnail pics.

Where do they come?


I realize that it may perhaps not originate from audacity but perhaps
there’s ``expertise’’ in the crowd here to shed some light resp. direct me to the right direction…

The thumbnails really puzzle me for quite some time. The ogg files are no binary download from somewhere (I realize one can add graphics like cover art into audio files), But they
are kind of “home made” in the following sense. As said, those are not downloaded, some of them are originally taped from radio (some even from FM radio and originally really taped on a magnetic tape ,
Later I transferred them to minidisc, finally ``recoding them’’ via audacity, playing over the sound from the minidics, and then cut them/exported them into individual ogg files.

Now, what spooks me: in quite some cases (but not all), VLC shows some moderately fitting thumbnail pictures!. Sometimes the resolution is rather coarse grained (as
if there’s noise in the picture), but I can’t imagine where those pictures come from.

I doubt that the pictures can somehow be secretly have been hidden in the source, as the source sometimes
had been (non-digital) radio. I doubt that there is a “data base” of pictures that has been looked up to make the connection, as the sound files are not popular music stuff,
just some radio features (kind of like podcasts).

So: has it been injected into the oggs via tools like audacity (but then again: how)? Also that seems strange as I did the following: first I transferred the complete file (with differrent
features and potcast into digitized format. So that file contained different “topics” in one big audio file. Only afterwards I cut it up into individual ``podcasts’’ like 30 minutes worth
of an ogg-file, and it’s those pieces which are shown with a (sometimes) characteristic thumbnail.

Or is it tools like VLC that figure it out? Perhaps it’s even just based on the file name. As an example: I have a file like “borgiapopes.ogg” which contains
an old feature about the Renaissance-popes from Florence and VLC shows the coat of arms of the those popes!

Which tool was smart enough to figure such a fitting illustration in such an esoteric piece of sound (if it was not secretely hidden in the ``original’’ sound file)? It cannot be a coincidence.

Cheers, Martin



It spooks me

Thanks, Martin

[Gale_Andrews]

So that it is clear, Audacity does not support images in audio files. If the file had an image on import, it would be removed on export.

VLC is probably connecting to the internet to search for images that relate to the file, but for support with VLC, please contact VLC, not Audacity.


Gale

@martinsteffen

My question is not really a question for “trouble shooting” or ``bugs’’ in audacity (and thus probably indepdent from the OS).
But since quite some time I am wondering about: I have a number of audio-files, which I transferred and “cut” with audacity.
When playing them with an audio player, specifically VLC, there is some thumbnail pics.

Where do they come?


I realize that it may perhaps not originate from audacity but perhaps
there’s ``expertise’’ in the crowd here to shed some light resp. direct me to the right direction…

The thumbnails really puzzle me for quite some time. The ogg files are no binary download from somewhere (I realize one can add graphics like cover art into audio files), But they
are kind of “home made” in the following sense. As said, those are not downloaded, some of them are originally taped from radio (some even from FM radio and originally really taped on a magnetic tape ,
Later I transferred them to minidisc, finally ``recoding them’’ via audacity, playing over the sound from the minidics, and then cut them/exported them into individual ogg files.

Now, what spooks me: in quite some cases (but not all), VLC shows some moderately fitting thumbnail pictures!. Sometimes the resolution is rather coarse grained (as
if there’s noise in the picture), but I can’t imagine where those pictures come from.

I doubt that the pictures can somehow be secretly have been hidden in the source, as the source sometimes
had been (non-digital) radio. I doubt that there is a “data base” of pictures that has been looked up to make the connection, as the sound files are not popular music stuff,
just some radio features (kind of like podcasts).

So: has it been injected into the oggs via tools like audacity (but then again: how)? Also that seems strange as I did the following: first I transferred the complete file (with differrent
features and potcast into digitized format. So that file contained different “topics” in one big audio file. Only afterwards I cut it up into individual ``podcasts’’ like 30 minutes worth
of an ogg-file, and it’s those pieces which are shown with a (sometimes) characteristic thumbnail.

Or is it tools like VLC that figure it out? Perhaps it’s even just based on the file name. As an example: I have a file like “borgiapopes.ogg” which contains
an old feature about the Renaissance-popes from Florence and VLC shows the coat of arms of the those popes!

Which tool was smart enough to figure such a fitting illustration in such an esoteric piece of sound (if it was not secretely hidden in the ``original’’ sound file)? It cannot be a coincidence.

Cheers, Martin



It spooks me

Thanks, Martin