Non square album art from iTunes and use of .bmp vs. .jpg

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Non square album art from iTunes and use of .bmp vs. .jpg

I notice that a lot of album art from iTunes (The Rolling Stones especially) is not not nearly square but rectangular. Any reason for this? More compatible with with the iPhone or Touch?

iTunes, when it finds a match, downloads (usually) a 1GB 600x600 .bmp for an album. Does the iPod work more efficiently with these files or would it be better to convert the 600x600 .bmp to a 250x250 .jpg that's only, say 20KB in size and tag each track? Depending upon the number of track on the album would it space and/or make the ipod work harder to convert the .jpg to .bmp when operating?

To me, having to populate screens, cover flow, album lists, etc. from such huge files (600x600) must take a lot of work and converting. The ipod screen certainly doesn't display 600x600. Is there a known album art size that is more efficient?

Self-built / Intel Quad Core, Windows Vista, iPod Classic 160GB

Posted on May 3, 2008 11:41 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

May 4, 2008 7:05 AM in response to Paul Bigelow

Windows Media Player produces 200x200 jpg's which I used as my standard for ages. I've since used an iPod transfer program called TouchCopy which extracts artwork at 320x320 so I suspect this is the internal resolution on the iPod. If I edit the artwork, to reshape as square or trim off rough/inconsistent borders, I tend to resize larger images down to 320x320 and size to 200x200 for anything that starts off smaller than 320x320. I then embed the resulting jpg. I've found Paint.NET particularly handy for the edits. As far as I know the iPod uses an artwork cache updated during syncing so it doesn't have to extract/convert/resize on the fly.

tt2

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Answer 2

Paul Bigelow Author

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50 points

May 4, 2008 11:37 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for the response!

In researching this further I came across this post in iLounge:

http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=66435

This post confirms (assuming it to be true) that the during the sync phase various artwork databases are created and the imbedded artwork isn't utilized at all. It would seem that as far as the ipod is concerned the embedded aztwork is "dead space". I have Media Monkey and I can see the embedded art. Embedded art can be removed via Media Monkey. I wonder if the embedded art can be removed while keeping the database intact -- resulting in some file size savings?

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Answer 3

Paul Bigelow Author

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May 4, 2008 11:52 AM in response to Paul Bigelow

Additional info: Making a leap of faith, I did remove the embedded artwork tags directly from the ipod in Media Monkey. Upon ejecting the ipod and rebooting I find that the album art still displays on the ipod and the track plays fine!

Has anyone else tried this?

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Answer 4

Paul Bigelow Author

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50 points

May 4, 2008 12:37 PM in response to Paul Bigelow

One More update: It appears that the non-squared artwork (Rolling Stones example) gets cropped on the sides to make it square on the iPod classic.

So, the summary of this would be (I think):

1. Manually add in iTunes what artwork is missing/desired/needs resized/altered/etc.

2. Sync the iPod (I manually Sync)

3. Use Media Monkey to remove the embedded artwork in the individual tracks *directly off the iPod* -- not iTunes.

4. Non-square artwork gets resized/cropped as viewed on the iPod.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

May 7, 2008 11:40 PM in response to Paul Bigelow

3. Use Media Monkey to remove the embedded artwork in the individual tracks *directly off the iPod* -- not iTunes.

I've posted elsewhere that artwork seems to take up about 0.5% of the average music file. Removing all artwork on a 160Gb iPod (or 148Gb when 1Gb = 2^9) would save about 0.75Gb - hardly worth all the effort I'd have thought.

4. Non-square artwork gets resized/cropped as viewed on the iPod.

While the artwork is resized to fill the display area as far as I can tell it isn't cropped and will retain the original aspect ratio. Generally images that are wider than they are tall break up the smooth line of albums in cover flow and are quite easy to spot.

tt2

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