Beets: Fetch art is pixelated

[jef]

Setup

• OS: Docker image (linuxserver/docker-beets:nightly)
• Python version: 3.8.5
• beets version: HEAD
• Turning off plugins made problem go away (yes/no): N/A

Problem

Seems like fetchart is pixelating the images when resizing. Not sure if this is a Pillow problem or something beets is doing.

Running this command in verbose (-vv) mode:

beet -vv fetchart -f 53 thieves after hours
user configuration: /config/config.yaml
data directory: /config
plugin paths: 
Sending event: pluginload
library database: /config/musiclibrary.blb
library directory: /data/media/music
Sending event: library_opened
fetchart: trying source filesystem for album 53 Thieves - after hours
fetchart: trying source coverart for album 53 Thieves - after hours
fetchart: trying source coverart for album 53 Thieves - after hours
fetchart: trying source itunes for album 53 Thieves - after hours
fetchart: getting URL: https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=53+Thieves+after+hours&entity=album&media=music&limit=200
ImageMagick version check failed: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'magick'
ImageMagick version check failed: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'convert'
artresizer: method is (1, (0,))
fetchart: downloading image: https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/02/24/59/02245915-fb50-26d7-6a10-b976526d3af1/source/1200x1200bb.jpg
fetchart: downloaded art to: /tmp/tmp3a64362y.jpg
fetchart: image size: (1200, 1200)
fetchart: image needs resizing (1200 > 1000)
fetchart: using remote image /tmp/tmp3a64362y.jpg
artresizer: PIL resizing /tmp/tmp3a64362y.jpg to /tmp/tmpbo33o8x7.jpg
Sending event: art_set
Sending event: database_change
fetchart: 53 Thieves - after hours: found album art
Sending event: cli_exit

Output looks good, no errors there.

---

Led to this problem:

Original Image

Resized Image

My configuration (output of beet config) is:

fetchart:
    auto: yes
    maxwidth: 1000
    enforce_ratio: yes
    cautious: yes

If I use:

fetchart:
    auto: yes
    # maxwidth: 1000
    enforce_ratio: yes
    # cautious: yes

Comes out just fine.

---

Suggested solution

Installing the ImageMagick library worked for resizing. So it seems that we do need ImageMagick to use fetchart to it's fullest extent.

readthedocs state that:

Note: maxwidth and enforce_ratio options require either ImageMagick or Pillow.

Not sure where to go from here, but either:

1. Update doc to include both (or perhaps maybe just ImageMagick here works
2. Figure out why Pillow is destroying these images

[sampsyo]

Oh no! That image is ridiculously bad. 😆

I'm pretty stumped about why PIL would do such a bad job. Maybe it's worth isolating the call to the PIL API to see if anything's going obviously wrong, like a missing parameter that says "make the image look not terrible"? But otherwise, yeah, I concur with your suggestion to at least warn about this in the docs. And maybe we should even remove the PIL option…

[RollingStar]

Would be nice if the Pillow command was printed in -v or -vv mode.

edit: Relevant file / function:
https://github.com/beetbox/beets/blob/00c6d1439ee29b3b4592d6f65cfa57b1d1f96575/beets/util/artresizer.py#L67

[jef]

I believe it is

artresizer: method is (1, (0,))
artresizer: PIL resizing /tmp/tmp3a64362y.jpg to /tmp/tmpbo33o8x7.jpg

What other information would you like to see?

[RollingStar]

My mistake. I have the command at the link I posted (the try/except block). I thought it was a 1-line call to Pillow but the code block has a few steps.

https://github.com/beetbox/beets/blob/00c6d1439ee29b3b4592d6f65cfa57b1d1f96575/beets/util/artresizer.py#L76

[jef]

Gotcha. Maybe this upcoming weekend I'll do some more debugging and see what types of outputs I get for PIL resizing... Could be the library API has changed or needs updating.

edit: Will also throw in some more debug logs there :)

[jef]

Awesome! Thanks @jackwilsdon. I never took the time to ever look at this 😢 Life is hectic right now. I appreciate the support y'all!