MPANGASA  Okay for some reason it appears the website www.opticalalchemy.com is down -- Google search results say the site has a virus and warns against navigating to www.opticalalchemy.com/about.html or /products.html.

When going to www.opticalalchemy.com directly am taken to a page saying the site is under construction or to a military contractor website.

Mark, if you can shed some light on what is happening asap that would be great.  
(Version 2.1)

LENRDZELIG  Anyone know if they are going to update this, or if there is another visualizer that does what Jewel Case does? I like this visualizer best hands down for my workplace. But, it seems that the current version of iTunes causes Jewel Case to crash approx. 5 days after install. When I go to turn the visualizer on, it will open safari and attempt to open the preference page over and over and over, and I can't close it down. My system becomes unstable and I'm forced to force quit iTunes.

I attempted to contact Optical Alchemy several times about this, but they never respond. I guess they got my money and don't care.  
(Version 2.1)

SCHMELDING  Loved it when it was free. Ain't paying $10 for it -- overpriced. $2 is more reasonable for what it does, IMHO.  
(Version 2.1)

EJ1  Audio momentarily drops out when album art is first sweeping onto the screen. Face of album spins much faster than the back.

The last version always caused iTunes 7 to crash on my 800mhz iMac G4, this version runs good except as noted above.

Nice eyecandy.  
(Version 2.0.1)

JEWELCASE  IntelMac Support

Now in JewelCase 2.0 !

:)

-Mark  
(Version 2.0)

BLAUGHLIN  Great plugin, is it coming to intel Macs?  
(Version 1.8)

DMETZCHER  Great plugin. The text that displays the album, artist, and song info to the right of the CD (by default) is very tiny and blurry, but this is still a great addition iTunes. This feature should have been included with iTunes in the first place, and I'm glad someone wrote it.  
(Version 1.8)

STARTYGER  Works with iTunes 5 here! wow! lol. iTunes plug-ins are great! lol Eyedrophene! Kaleidostrobe! JewelCase, the app(soon to be plug in) that lets you flip through the covers!!!!, plus so many others even Apple's is great! has anyone tried to project any of these? i want to have a party with friends.. even a dinner! with these as a back drop! wow!! lol this one is great! opengl is great...... aw man i'm just melting... i love the way it places the cover art in the CD case.... track listing... which track is playing... next great thing would be to open the case... and show the lyrics, now that iTunes 5 supports lyrics for the tracks! awww i'm falling in love with iTunes and these plug ins... this.. this put me over the top again! wow... it's so clear!

C'mon now... stop spending the money on illegal substances... just use iTunes plug ins... keep your mind, job, family... and just feel iHappy!  
(Version 1.8)

ANONYMOUS  Does not seem to work with iTunes 5. Has anyone been able to get it to work with iTunes 5?  
(Version 1.8)

ANONYMOUS  For album information listed on the back, could it simply draw that from the album? It seems right now it looks for songs on the same album AND same artist (not every album has one artist).  
(Version 1.8)

KARL BECKER  Awesome visualizer, I absolutely love it!

I agree, that if there is multiple artworks with a song, could it display the second (or even third or fourth) picture on the back of the CD?

If there are more than two or three songs, what about a picture in the background flying by occasionally with the third or more pictures on it?

(also, I can see why some people would want an installer, but I'm *very* glad you gave a URL to download the bundle by itself - thanks for being a pro-user friendly developer!)  
(Version 1.8)

SAL  Wow, thanks for such a great plug-in, it's so professionally done, as a suggestion, it would be cool if a secondary picture would be shown as a back cover instead of a blurred front cover, of course for those songs with two or more pictures stored.  
(Version 1.8)

TOURNESOL  The plugin is awsome, but it slows my computer really really bad. That didn't happen with 1.7 on Panther. I have a 1.5Ghz G4 and 768 mb ram.  
(Version 1.8)

DORKUS MALORKUS  Very very cool. Doesn't support Japanese ID3 tags yet, just lists "?????". How am I supposed to tell who's singing which track on my Katamari Damacy soundtrack album???  
(Version 1.8)

ANONYMOUS  REALLY AMAZING !!! KUDDOS !  
(Version 1.8)

KINGSTER  About as cool as cool gets!

Kudos to the developer for making it and double love for making it FREE!  
(Version 1.8)

GORDYMAC  Oh my GOD!!!

This is really a great plugin.

Thanks guys!  
(Version 1.7.1)

MARK BUCHANAN  I have replaced the 1.7 release with a new installer with corrections:

Download:

http://www.opticalalchemy.com/download/JewelCase_1.7.dmg

(The main link now points to the fixed version.)

Please give it a try it, and let me know if you have any problems.

My apologies for any inconvenience.

Also, there is a plug-in without installer:

http://www.opticalalchemy.com/download/JewelCase_1.7_Plugin.sit

-Mark Buchanan

mark@opticalalchemy.com   
(Version 1.7)

LUCIANO  Astounding! Really amazing.

The first time I ran this pluging, I asked myself Where did it get the covers? They're better than the originals!

Definitely the best itunes pluging.  
(Version 1.7)

ANONYMOUS  awesome! really fun! thank you!  
(Version 1.7)

HACKONO  Really Cool ! wish it wouldnt make such a load noise in my G5 Processor. A Screensaver Version would be Sensational.  
(Version 1.7)

BORIS  installation work after i restart on a volume with tiger.

Installation worked on a disc starting under tiger.

But, I dont understand, this disc is a clone of my system 10.3, on which I do an update install of Tiger  
(Version 1.7)

SSP  Pretty and free. What more can you ask?

Even runs on my old TiBook with just 8MB of video memory, although that's not officially supported.  
(Version 1.7)

ANDY  1.7 breaks during installation for me also. Shows that I can not install on any volumes.

10.3.9

400 MHz G4

640 MB memory

16 MB ATY Rage128 video  
(Version 1.7)

BORIS  the package don't want to installe jewaelcase on my device (it can't be selected).

Problem is same on my ibook G3 and powermac G4

i'm using mac os 10.3.9 and itunes 4.7.1  
(Version 1.7)

SCHMELDING  It rawks. If only it came as a screensaver (hint-hint).  
(Version 1.7)

JOHN   Quite possibly the niftiest iTunes plug-in ever! I just happened across this a couple of days ago and I'm in LOVE with it. Runs beautifully on my G4/533 DP and G5/DP, but it labors badly on my FP iMac/800. Seems to crash randomly on all machines and so far, the crash log has not provided consistent clues as to why.

Nevertheless, this is just a stunning piece of visual eye candy and unlike anything I've ever seen or imagined possible. I would strongly encourage the developer(s) to stay at it and see what can be done about stability and performance on slower Macs, and I would also encourage all iTune fans to give this FREE puppy a tumble. Absolutely first-rate toy at a price that cannot be beat. Thank you!  
(Version 1.6)

ANONYMOUS  WHOW!! Incredible little app. Best I´ve ever seen for iTunes. Smart integrated, I love such programmers. And (unbelievible) it´s for free. A MUST TRY !!!  
(Version 1.6)

D!  First of all: a very nice app.

Here are my mac's features: 800Mhz PowerPC G3; 128 MB; 18 GB diskspace:

1. At the end of a song the cover is changing. That's all OK, but until the appearance of the cover of the next song dures about 10 seconds in general while the song struggles and interrupts several times due to cover loading. A bug to be fixed as soon as possible!

2. The playlists of the back covers are either incomplete or list songs of other albums. (For example, I got an album called "Live!" by Bob Marley and an album called "Get Down Live!" by KC and the Sunshine Band. When I play a KC song, the playlist gets mixed with Marley songs) A bug to be fixed in the near future.

3. There are the options to see on the back cover a) just the song name, b) song name and track number, and c) song name, track number and running time. But there's no option to have just the song name and the running time. A feature to be included, if possible.

4. The loading time of the covers are quite OK, but when a song has no cover image in the iTunes cover box in the lower-left part of the iTunes window and I activate JewelCase, then the loading time of a one-color cover is very long. After deactivating JewelCase, iTunes goes on much slower than it did before activating JewelCase. An annoying bug to be fixed as soon as possible.

Overall, I must say, JewelCase has had a very good beginning, but for me it's important to see these 4 bug observations being fixed. Then, I'd say the plug-in is really an useful funny thing. I hope the developers are going to fix these bugs soon.  
(Version 1.6)

SVEN SIEMSEN  This is awesome! Great! Thanks!

However, I would LOVE this thing to work fullscreen on a 2nd display while working with iTunes on the 1st.  
(Version 1.6)

KIT  This little plug-in is just incredible!

It's not useful, and it's not practical, but I'll be darned if it's not awesome.

It shows (in place of the songs and source sections, much the same as a large visualisation) a 3D render of a jewelcase filled with the album art you have in your library for that song.

The textures are very realistic, with the front and back plastic reflecting very much as a real case does, and viewed from either the front or the back, there's a realistic gap where the sides' plastic shows through. The whole case looks very, very realistic, yet renders very quickly for each song (no more than two seconds, including gathering all the song titles on that album on my 1GHz PowerBook G4).

The interface is fully customisable, which is nice; the CD case and accompanying text can be scaled with a simple slider, and all the fonts and blurs are editable.

All in all, a very worthwhile download.

The developer is also supremely responsive when it comes to suggestions!

The only reason it didn't get a 5 for features is that it's not DESIGNED to be feature-packed. It's a plug-in. And a truly extraordinary one too!  
(Version 1.6)

RET  Can you give 6 out of 5 ?

I think this is the best concept and execution of an iTunes Visualiser plug-in I've ever seen, and I've downloaded a few...  
(Version 1.6)

MAXIM  great product, but unfortunately does not support unicode, as my files with Russian tags show up as question marks :(  
(Version 1.6)

DJDARLEK  I'm probably going to get shot down for suggesting this in light of the whole 'MenuCalendar' fiasco - but this software really could be worth some cash to the developer (or at least until Apple pinches the idea for iTunes 5). The developer is definately making a lot of friends providing this for free - but with a little work at getting automated artwork from the internet for all sides of the CD case i'd happily throw a few quid his way. At the very least he should turn this into donation-ware.

All in all - GREAT PRODUCT!  
(Version 1.6)

TOM K  Simple, elegant, familiar & novel, ENJOYABLE! This iTunes visualizer really works for me.  
(Version 1.6)

TIMMYZ  This has got to be the coolest visualizer that I've seen for iTunes yet. Great work!  
(Version 1.6)

LEFLY  The best feature of this gem must be this:

Minimize the iTunes main window to the smallest possible size (using the green button and resizing the controls as small as possible). Play a song, and hit ctrl-A. This brings up JewelBox's 'About' window. In there, click the small 'pearl' button in the lower right corner...

Kewl!  
(Version 1.6)

CHROMATIC  WOW ... O.O

i just want to drop a note cause the work you did really is great ^_^

its the best plug i ever seen for using cover in itune, it really look so cool :D

thank you thank you thank you ^_^

It really is great for me as i listen mostly Asian Pop music and 90% of the time i dont have the original CDs... so with your plugin its allmost like having them haha ... thank you i love it ^^  
(Version 1.6)

MARK BUCHANAN  New Version 1.5.2

is linked to download

"Copy Tracks" bug fixed.

Improved Stability.

JewelCase Menu removable.

Faster Transitions.  
(Version 1.5)

ANONYMOUS  Concerned with program. Everytime I have the program on it duplicates each of the songs from the album that was playing. How do you de-install the program??  
(Version 1.5)

SCHMELDING  JewelCase, will you marry me?  
(Version 1.5)

ANONYMOUS  Amazing!  
(Version 1.5)

AMBITIOUSLEMON  Nifty iTunes visualizer. Only problem I have with it is that it doesn't load cover art from iTunes and its auto lookup isn't very good. I've added cover art to most of my songs, but most still show up without covert art in this visualizer. When it does correctly find cover art it is quite stunning. I'd love to see it use art from http://www.coverkingdom.net/ so that we could have front, back, side, inside, and CD artwork all available.  
(Version 1.5)

IVAN  this must qualify as the best app oif the year.The answer to a prayer for anyone who likes something solid to go with their mp3s.  
(Version 1.5)

ANONYMOUS  Too f---ing cool! I love it!  
(Version 1.5)

CYBERDYNE  WOW ! This is a great idea.

Unfortunately, I experienced the same problem than "anonymous" below. JewelCase "went out to lunch" and never came back - perhaps trying to find artwork for an album or something? Spinning beachball, iTunes unresponsive..." and a few seconds later, iTunes crashes.

This happens every 3 or 4 songs, so, unusable for me :-(  
(Version 1.5)

PAUL LIEBER  Wow. I feel the same way about this as when I first bought my GForce Gold license. This is splendid work.  
(Version 1.5)

GERAINT  Downloaded it th other day and it is superb, can't stop playing with it. Works great and a must for anyone with iTunes. Great work, Thankyou very much.  
(Version 1.4)

VITALY CITOVSKY  regarding my previous comment about inability to see coverart in files generated with itunes prior to v.4, it can be circumvented by repasting images into these older files  
(Version 1.4)

MARK  John-

It's true drag-n-drop install is the standard.

But in this case an installer was necessary

to support the "Send to a Friend" feature.

Also we figure that not everybody knows

how to navigate to ~/Library/iTunes Plug-ins

and copy plugin to there.

-Mark  
(Version 1.4)

VITALY  artwork appears in jewelcase only for songs ripped in itunes 4 and later. songs converted using earlier versions of itunes show song list etc., but not the artwork  
(Version 1.4)

ANONYMOUS  Awesome concept, but I found a few problems. The song list on the back of the "CD" has yet to appear for me, yet the ID3 tags in my collection are fairly complete. I managed to get the single name up occasionally. Perhaps the biggest showstopper thus far has been when JewelCase seemingly "went out to lunch" and never came back - perhaps trying to find artwork for an album or something? Spinning beachball, iTunes unresponsive...

Keep up the great work! Not ready for prime time yet, but definitely on its way.  
(Version 1.4)

RIBOS  Like Jacket... just 10 times much amasing!

Simply Great!!!  
(Version 1.4)

ANONYMOUS  After instaling jewelcase starts to duplicate my iTune library when you activate it a set of instructions would be usefull  
(Version 1.3.9)

JOHN  lol! That's pretty groovy :) The quality is much better than I expected.

My only beef about this is that it requires an installer app instead of just asking you to drag/drop the bundle into the iTunes plugin folder.  
(Version 1.3.9)