Dealing with iTunes and album art

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Pizza, Oct 4, 2015.

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  1. Pizza

    Pizza With extra pepperoni Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    I've been ripping CDs for the last year with XLD but before that with iTunes, which I use because I use an iPod and iPhone for carrying my music around.
    The one problem I run into from time to time is I'll copy over my external drive to make a back up for safety and sometimes I'll use the back up drive on my other mac computer. Some but not all of the album art will sometimes get lost in the process (or really disconnected) and I'll have to search out new art to attach to the files.
    Is there a software out there that could stitch the art into the files so I don't run into this or get iTunes to recognize the previous art?
     
  2. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Looks like the art work wasn't embedded properly. I use Yate for my Mac to tag all my files. It's free to try for 14 days but costs $20 http://2manyrobots.com/yate/
    It's very easy to use and you can actually load the files from your itunes folder, click the link option and any updates will automatically be sent to Itunes. So your artwork will upload immediately. Very handy.

    I don't use Itunes for tagging these days but I think you can embed artwork by right clicking (make sure all the files are highlighted) selecting Get Info - Artwork - Add Artwork.

    I would avoid using the "Get Album Artwork" feature when you right click as I'm pretty sure that doesn't actually embed the artwork but just stores it in an Itunes folder.
     
    Pizza likes this.
  3. Pizza

    Pizza With extra pepperoni Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Thanks, eddies. I appreciate the info!!
     
  4. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    I would agree with avoiding use od "Get Album Artwork". Years ago prior to learning about properly embedding artwork I had a similar problem with disconnected artwork. I don't know if it still exists but my "fix" was to use a Doug's AppleScript for embedding artwork. I suggest Google to see if you can find it. With that you highlight a bunch songs and select the embed command in the script. That helped get me going in the right direction. Maybe there are other solutions like that.

    Save that you could have a very tedious task ahead of you. For the ones you ripped in XLD I believe there is a checkbox in preferences to embed artwork that will take care of that going forward.

    For those where you might have used the infamous "Get Album Artwork" the tedious manual way to embed is to select an album in iTunes>Get Info>Artwork. Drag the art from the box to your desktop. Now right click and delete artwork from the iTunes box. Confirm the delete. Go back to the Artwork tab select load artwork and browse to the desktop select and confirm.

    That should eliminate missing artwork when you are moving files between computers, hard drives or softwares (iTunes, JRiver, Audirvana etc).
     
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  5. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    iTunes historically does not embed artwork in the file, but keeps it in it's database if you do it at the album level. If you do it by selecting the file and doing it in the 'Get Info" box it going into the file. but just using "Get Album Artwork" generally just puts it in the database and not the file. I'm not sure if this is still the case or not.
     
    Pizza likes this.
  6. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    It is still the case and you have to manually embed in some method to overcome the issue.
     
    Pizza likes this.
  7. Jerjo

    Jerjo Forum Resident

    Yeah, it's pretty terrible in this regard. I've had iTunes lose artwork several times and even more often fail to find the appropriate album cover. I only use it to load music on my phone or iPad, my main player on my PC is still WMP. WMP has its issues but it does a far better job of finding artwork and such, even on ROIOs. On my iPad right now all my King Crimson album covers are all photos of nude women because I got so frustrated at trying to force iTunes to load the proper cover. Hopefully I'll never sit on an airplane next to Robert Fripp and he gets a load of what I'm listening to.
     
    Pizza likes this.
  8. Whoopycat

    Whoopycat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Des Moines
    I've used TuneUp for album art. It does a decent (not perfect) job of managing album art. It also does some extra things like for duplicate tracks in your library. I don't remember how much the license costs though. I don't think it was that expensive.
     
    Pizza likes this.
  9. olson

    olson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pilgrim Hills

    Looks like a nice program, it is $39.96 for a permanent license.
     
  10. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    I cannot add the Jimi Hendrix Singles Album artwork to my iTunes playlist. Somebody is upset about the Jimi puppet and is preventing me!
     
  11. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    I learnt to live without album art as it was making itunes very slow. I also didn't upgrade from v10 because I hated the new version.
     
  12. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    I'm just curious about someone else's experiences. In what way does album artwork slow iTunes down? I've never noticed any issues related to artwork in terms of how iTunes operates. All my artwork is embedded and the only thing I could think of is if the artwork were not embedded and somehow the artwork database file was corrupted.
     
  13. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    I dunno exactly. I was using my own files if that's any help - I think itunes was very slow loading them, maybe using up too much memory. It was a pain, so I just stop using the artwork files.
     
  14. Steve Martin

    Steve Martin Wild & Crazy Guy

    Location:
    Plano, TX
    I use the Get Info box in iTunes 12, and paste into the artwork panel. It embeds every time, even when I select all the tracks in an album.

    As far as I know the only way to avoid it is to use the Get Album artwork feature. If I do ever stoop to that, I just select the tracks of the album, Get Info, select the artwork, Cut, then Paste it back and it embeds it.
     
  15. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    Somebody on the Apple discussion forum said that Apple lossless files work better than .wav at receiving artwork from the user.
     
  16. Synthfreek

    Synthfreek I’m a ray of sunshine & bastion of positivity

    Ya think?
     
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  17. Steve Martin

    Steve Martin Wild & Crazy Guy

    Location:
    Plano, TX
    iTunes doesn't embed artwork in WAV files. It does on Apple Lossless, MP3, and AAC. So, yes, that is correct.
     
  18. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    And will embed art in AIFF
     
  19. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    In iTunes 12, I was able to replace the stock album art associated with a .wav for a different Hendrix album. The issue with The Singles Album and the "Love or Confusion" singles may have been that there wasn't any art for me to replace.
     
  20. Steve Martin

    Steve Martin Wild & Crazy Guy

    Location:
    Plano, TX
    But it did not embed the artwork inside the .WAV file, iTunes kept the artwork in its own database, associated with that album. If you imported the WAV file to other software or played it on a player other than an Apple device synced from that iTunes library, the artwork would not go with it.
     
  21. OobuJoobu

    OobuJoobu Forum Resident

    Location:
    Yorkshire, UK
    Hoping someone here can advise please...

    A friend of mine uses iTunes on a Mac, and is looking to prepare his library for a possible move to another player, so wants to make sure as much as possible is embedded in to the files.

    He wants to use an Applescript to ensure that any artwork attached to a file in iTunes is embedded to the file (rather than just displaying artwork that iTunes stores separately). He's tried Doug's Applescripts but it's been crashing on him, and asking for a donation.

    Does anyone know of a completely free script for a Mac that will do this task please? Trued google but everything seems to want to link to Doug!
     
  22. rockin_since_58

    rockin_since_58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Simi Valley, CA
    I use Metadatics to embed the artwork into the files that I convert from CD's to ALAC. It is an extra step but for me, it is worth the time.
     
  23. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    Although I don't use iTunes I have had some related issues with album art and my Walkman digital audio player. I found that I had to embed the album art in the file's ID3 tag to get it to consistently display on my player. A program I've used in the past to embed the album art in the ID3 tag is MP3Tag, and I'm currently using MediaGo which embeds the album art in the ID3 tag.

    Among the issues I've had with album art are (this might help to identify some issues):
    • Correctly selecting the type of album art: I found that I had to make the album art the "Front Cover" and to embed only one graphic file as the cover art (it is possible to put multiple images in the same ID3 tag and give them different descriptions [including Back Cover, Leaflet, Illustration]).
    • Selecting the correct type of graphic file: I've found that .jpeg works best when it comes to album art.
    • Making sure the album art is the right size: In the past size was an issue (if the file was too large it would not display), so I limited the size of the file to 300 pixels by 300 pixels. With my current player it has no problem with art that is 600 pixels by 600 pixels.
    I hope this helps.
     
  24. cmcintyre

    cmcintyre Forum Resident


    As clearly explained by recent posters, if you embed the artwork via the "Get Info" command each individual track selected gets a copy of the selected artwork - what is not explicit is that the lowest numbered track (with artwork) of the album also has its artwork copied to the iTunes folder that contains the artwork. It is this artwork (not the embedded artwork) that is shown in the "album view", "artist view" and so on.

    The lesson here is that, if you embed different artwork for different tracks of the same album (eg front cover, inner image(s), rear cover), then the artwork that is embedded first (usually*) becomes the album artwork in the various view modes. It is wise to always embed track one's artwork first, if using different images for different tracks.

    *Deleting tracks, changing artwork, adding artwork previously absent when this is no lower track number with artwork, can all affect this.

    As a simple example using a various artists compilation. Find the album cover for the compilation and embed on track one. For all other tracks embed original images for that track .

    Atlantic Rythmn and Blues Vol 1 - 7.

    *First track for each volume get the associated front cover of the album, all the other tracks get single artwork (pref a pic sleeve, or at least original US label).

    *When playing, every track, except track 1 of each volume, displays artwork for the correct track.

    *When sorting (album view, compilations) only the front covers are seen (7 in total Vol 1 - 7).

    *When filtering or sorting by artist the compilation cover is shown, but the correct individualised artwork is displayed whilst playing (unless it's track one - then it's the compilation cover)

    This had worked for me now for about 10 years and across several versions of iTunes.
     
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