Can you explain the mysteries of Album Art and MP3 tags?

[kolabere]

I have finally taken the plunge and started moving my music to my media center. The chaotic tags never bothered me before, but the first batch of 100 albums ("My 100 Best") caused MCE a few problems and me several headaches - listing single tracks as separate albums, about 800 in all! Some of these albums are direct CD rips, others are compiled from downloaded MP3s.

I have spent a couple of evenings editing the tags using a combination of:
WMP;
MediaMonkey;
Tag&Rename;
MP3Tags.

My problem is that none of the above seems to do the complete job, most importantly the Album Art. Some albums have the full set, namely:
AlbumArt_{x0x0x0x-0000-0000-x00x-0000000x00x0}_Large.jpg;
AlbumArt_{x0x0x0x-0000-0000-x00x-0000000x00x0}_Small.jpg;
AlbumArtSmall.jpg;
Folder.jpg.

While some only have Folder.jpg. ["Save to tag where possible" is always checked.] and it seems impossible to save the rest.

(Q1) Why do some tags not save all the album art?

(Q2) What purpose do the various jpg files serve?

(Q3) Which jpg files does MCE use?

(Q4) Why is no art displayed by individual tracks in MCE (despite being present in the various editors)?


Sorry to ask so many questions at one go. But I think I should understand more fully, what is going on, before embarking on the next '100 Best' of a thousand or so.

[GeoffWork]

I know it's a bit late when you have ripped 100 albums, but would it be worth using iTunes? The tags and album art are good, it shows individual ones and you can search for album art which is missing.

[pixelpixel]

Hello,

First thing to do is remove all

AlbumArt_{x0x0x0x-0000-0000-x00x-0000000x00x0}_Large.jpg;
AlbumArt_{x0x0x0x-0000-0000-x00x-0000000x00x0}_Small.jpg;
AlbumArtSmall.jpg;

and just have folder.jpg this is what I have and itunes, wmp11 and MCE all see this as folder art and all work perfect with it.

Also I would stay away from "Save to tag where possible" this will cause a few issues with various software. I normally save a 600 px x 600 px image and save it as 'folder.jpg' then point everything to that.

Unless your tags are complete mediaplayer will dump them into seperate folders due to it finding less information.

Has something to do with album artist and artist. If you look at mediamonkey it will allow you to correct this.

[Singh400]

I was playing with Album Art this morning, the most effective method (IMO) is to delete all *.jpg;*.db then embed the JPG into the MP3.

[MacBurp]

First, turn off auto update in Windows Media Player. There is nothing worse than seeing your carefully constructed folders and tags overwritten by WMP.

My workflow for ensuring music shows properly in MCE is as follows:

- Use \music\<artist>\<album>\<mp3s> as your directory structure
- Use Tag & Rename to ensure that the Artist, Album, Title and Track # tags are correct (Album Artist can be edited in T&R also, but its easier to do this in the next step)
- Add the music to the WMP library, then
- Open Album Art Fixer. AAF will fix the Album Art tag, and allow you to find and insert your own art. AAF creates two jpgs with your music - AlbumArtSmall.jpg and folder.jpg. You won't need anything else. AAF will move your music to a new folder based on the artist and album tages, you can turn this off if you wish. In the background AAF will also set the WMP flag to 'found', so your work does not get overwritten.
- AAF only updates the WMP library - not the music itself. So, AAF will prompt you to go back to WMP and commit your changes by clicking on 'Tools', 'Process Media Information Now'. This might take a while but its essential.

Your music should now look good to go in MCE.

regards,
Paul

[Uridium]

I partially agree with all of the above

I've found that you need to have the art saved as Folder.jpg in the folder containing the album for MCE and WMP to display the art correctly.

For use on some portable devices and on my N91 phone I've found that the art needs to be embedded into the tags.

personally I've always found MediaMonkey to be the best tagging software, it always seems to find nice higer res images than the other free apps.

[pixelpixel]

Originally Posted by Uridium

personally I've always found MediaMonkey to be the best tagging software, it always seems to find nice higer res images than the other free apps.

I get mine from itunes of all places nice 600px x 600px.

[kolabere]

Thanks for the feedback so far - plenty "good practice" to incorporate in my 'flow', some of which I already do.

Of the programs tried so far, I think I prefer MediaMonkey and will probably persevere with this for the time being.

I would appreciate if anyone can answer my specific questions .

Originally Posted by kolabere

(Q1) Why do some tags not save all the album art?

(Q2) What purpose do the various jpg files serve?

(Q3) Which jpg files does MCE use?

(Q4) Why is no art displayed by individual tracks in MCE (despite being present in the various editors)?

[meansizzler]

Originally Posted by Singh400

I was playing with Album Art this morning, the most effective method (IMO) is to delete all *.jpg;*.db then embed the JPG into the MP3.

That would work but time consuming as have to do it to every single song..

[meansizzler]

no need for any programs, media player 11 will to the job of editing ID3 Tags if you know how to use it, as the others said for album art manually put a picture which is 200*200 or less in the music folder and name it Folder.jpg

[Uridium]

Originally Posted by meansizzler

That would work but time consuming as have to do it to every single song..

MediaMonkey does an album/folder at a time

[Singh400]

Originally Posted by meansizzler

That would work but time consuming as have to do it to every single song..

Nah Album Art Fixer can embed the JPG for you I think.