can this be done

It can be. I do believe you can disable filetypes from directories.

Try tracker-cfg for a frontend to editing the tracker configuration files.

that looks like germane to me. but i know its written english. any chance in getting some layman's terms? I am kinda of a noob.. but not a total noob. i kinda understand what your saying but not really. is this so dangerous that i should just wait until someone does a app with a GUI instead of foolign with this? thaks for the help though either way

Yes, you might as well wait until there are clear instructions.

tracker-cfg is a GUI frontend for modifying the trackerd settings though.

i have been playing around with the tracker-cfg, the prob is that when you remove directories from the index the phones applications like media player for example doesnt recognize them. i just want to hide the album art but only in the photo viewer. i would like them to show in the media player. anyone got any ideas out there?

I do it like this: (Yes, it's painful and slow)

Manually go through each directory and rename all the album art by placing a dot "." in front of the file name.

Eg:
/home/user/MyDocs/.sound/music/album/album_art.jpg
I will change this to be
/home/user/MyDocs/.sound/music/album/.album_art.jpg

It still shows up in the media player, but doesn't show up in the gallery.

It's a pity tracker isn't more configurable. (Maybe it is, I just haven't figured it out yet)

rename the folder to "private"

both of you are super awesome and thank you so much for these useful techniques.

If i rename a folder to private will all of its contents be hidden? ie. the phone media player will not show anything in the folder at all? all of my media art is not in one specific folder. each song comes in a folder with its own media art

So i tried to rename a fiolder called albumart to .album art and windows XP would not allow me to do it. i got a error message that read must use a file name everytime i tried to put a "." in front of album art.

SO next i tried to out smart it by moving the folder album art to a folder that already showed in windows explorer as having a "." in front of the folder name. I moved the albumart folder to a folder already named .mediart that didnt make a difference either. when i opened the photo viewer on the n900 after disconnecting the images did not appear but now i have a bunch of broken image icons in my photo viewer. technically its just the same as having the original annoying media art there now just slightly less interesting to look at.

Ok, here is a update for anyone following because they have the same problem

it seems that moving fgolders to a folder named .medaart actually works to keep them from showing up in the photo viewer. the good thing is that it doesnt hide the music files so they show up in the media player along with the album art even though the album art is in a folder named ".mediaart"

you may have a problem doing this on the n900 or even in a windows system but here is a trick to get around it

either move the picture thats bugging you to another folder that is already named ".mediaart" (which may cause the wrong album art to show up in the media player as the art itself must be in the same parent folder as the mp3 file)

ORRRR

you can copy a media art folder from some where else to the same folder as the mp3 file. THEN!!!! delete all the pics from the newly pasted ".mediaart" folder as it has pics in it from other albums or book covers or what ever you had in there

then simply copy and paste the appropriate album art work for the respective album i that newly pasted folder

this worked for me and i hope it works for others