Album Art - Stupid Question

[stlbud]

I searched and searched and cannot find the answer to one dumb question - Where do you put the album art? I cannot get album art to show in CorePlayer. MediaPlayer complains that there is no album art (I already know about folder.jpg).

When I look at the various tag editors, they offer a huge number of options for images. Some would seem pretty obvious but apparently are not. I've tried "cover front", "other", "user defined", and several others but they don't seem to work consistently. Some of my mp3s show album art when there is something in other. Some show when it's in cover front. Some show when I can't even find any art work in any of the possible options.

This is making me *@#!!& CRAZY!!!

I looked for Darius Wey's article (mentioned in another thread) but cannot find it.

Is there a clear and simple way to get this to work? What about a clear and simple tutorial or white paper on MP3 tags?

Thanks,

[JesterMania]

I use a program called Tag&Rename for album art and ID3 tagging and it works great. However, prior to using that what I did was load my MP3s into Apple iTunes and you can drag and drop album art in there to embed them into the MP3 file. I've found that with both iTunes and Tag&Rename, it works 100% with TCMP (I imagine the new Core Player would be the same) and Conduits Pocket Player.

[galt]

I used the free version of mediamonkey to tag a ton of my stuff with the album art embedded in the file tags, it's incredibly capable software. After cataloging your media it allows you to review all tracks without album art, and then search and update the tags and album art very easily. It's very cool. I do have some WMA files that don't see to show the album art in CorePlayer, I think for WMA files it might not support embedded album art.

[Darius Wey]

I looked for Darius Wey's article (mentioned in another thread) but cannot find it.

Here's a link to the article: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,44243

I'm not entirely sure how CorePlayer handles album art (haven't tried it yet). If it supports embedded art, then you can easily apply it using the Advanced Tag Editor in Windows Media Player (just have it set as [User Defined]; don't worry too much about Cover Front, etc.), or you can use the Get Info dialog in iTunes. Both work fine, and of course, there are the other suggestions that JesterMania and galt have provided.

[stlbud]

...However, prior to using that what I did was load my MP3s into Apple iTunes and you can drag and drop album art in there to embed them into the MP3 file. ...

It seems iTunes 7 no longer embeds the image in the mp3 file. It puts the image in to a separate directory and references it there when you select the song file.

[stlbud]

Here's a link to the article: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,44243

I'm not entirely sure how CorePlayer handles album art (haven't tried it yet). If it supports embedded art, then you can easily apply it using the Advanced Tag Editor in Windows Media Player (just have it set as [User Defined]; don't worry too much about Cover Front, etc.), or you can use the Get Info dialog in iTunes. Both work fine, and of course, there are the other suggestions that JesterMania and galt have provided.

Thank you,

[Darius Wey]

It seems iTunes 7 no longer embeds the image in the mp3 file. It puts the image in to a separate directory and references it there when you select the song file.

That's only if you use the album art retrieval feature of iTunes 7. If you use the Get Info dialog, it will embed the art.

[stlbud]

That's only if you use the album art retrieval feature of iTunes 7. If you use the Get Info dialog, it will embed the art.

I C. I had gotten so confused by the problem I wasn't sure if that was the case.

Thank you,

[stlbud]

Here's an interesting article from another source --
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=pmc&message.id=219

This is the second instance where 200 x 200 pixels was mentioned. The other was a blog from someone at Microsoft. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find this article again.

It seems there is something magic about this image size. Any thoughts?

[Darius Wey]

This is the second instance where 200 x 200 pixels was mentioned. The other was a blog from someone at Microsoft. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find this article again.

It seems there is something magic about this image size. Any thoughts?

200 x 200 is the default size of Folder.jpg used by PlaysForSure devices. However, you don't actually have to go the extra mile to resize all of your art to that size. You can use an 800 x 800 image as Folder.jpg if you wanted to. Most devices are capable of resizing it on-the-fly, and more often than not, it looks better than the 200 x 200 version.

[stlbud]

The Microsoft blog article seemd to imply that 200x200 was the best size for MediaPlayer for Windows. Mine are 500x500 since that seems to be the popular size on Amazon and Buy.com. Any that I've scanned I resize to 500x500. You're right larger looks better in Windows MediaPlayer and my iPaq (both MediaPlayer and CorePlayer) handles the size fine even resizing to suit full screen, portrait or landscape.

Someone has suggested PNG image files instead of JPEG but I haven't tried that.

Thanks again for all your help. It seems to be working now that I've followed your suggestions.

[Darius Wey]

Someone has suggested PNG image files instead of JPEG but I haven't tried that.

Stick to JPG for now. Not all devices are capable of handling PNG.

Thanks again for all your help. It seems to be working now that I've followed your suggestions.

You're most welcome. Glad to see everything's working. :)

[stlbud]

Just to help make this article complete for anyone who comes after. The program I used to make the PNG file made one that was 10 times bigger than the JPEG I started with. Obviously this is no advantage.

In searching the web for album art, I found one that refused to become part of the MP3 file. Everytime I tried to add it in MediaPlayer or iTunes it disappeared. Guessing the image file was somehow malformed, I tried to edit it. Corel PhotoPaint regenerated the jpg file and fixed the image. Now it appears in the tag editor and displays properly in all 3 places (desktop WMP, PDA WMP and iTunes).