Album Art Missing in iPhone 16Gb 3G

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Level 1

8 points

Album Art Missing in iPhone 16Gb 3G

When i transfer albums to my iPhone only some of the albums display album art. Every album in my iTunes library has album art, most of it I have manually attached to each album.

when i use the iTunes interface to look at the music on my iPhone it displays the album art in the "Selected Item" section in the bottom left corner. i have checked multiple albums, and every song in those albums has the artwork. so it displays the art in my iTunes library, it displays the art when i view the music on my iPhone in the iTunes interface, but it does not display the art when i scroll through the music using the iPhone.

am i totally missing something here?

Message was edited by: ajaj7411

iMac 2.4Ghz Intel, Mac OS X (10.5.5), iPhone 16Gb 3G; iTunes 8

Posted on Sep 25, 2008 10:14 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

DaVBMan

Level 6

9,280 points

Sep 26, 2008 3:06 AM in response to aj_wride

This has been issue for long time even for iPods before iPhone.

The cause is this.

There are multiple ways of manually applying artwork to a song in iTunes. Only 1 is the best way to make sure artwork goes with the file.

The three ways are:

1. Drag a file/image to the bottom window where it displays artwork when a song is selected.
2. Using the "Find Album Artwork" option in the right click menu for a song.
3. Using "Get Info" option to bring up the Tags of the song and pasting a image into the artwork tab.

The 3rd is the best and only option you should use.

Here is why.

If you use the little artwork window and put images in there, or if you tell iTunes to find artwork, what it does is uses the image supplied or the one it finds and then saves that image to a hidden file on your computer. Then iTunes notes/saves a pointer to that file matched to song. So "iTunes" when playing or looking at the file will say, oh there is a pointer to a file, let me go find that file and display the image. All good and dandy for iTunes.

However when you move that file (manually to another machine or sync to a device) it just moves the media file. The hidden image doesn't go with it as iTunes just uses it.

So the 3rd option of using "Get Info" to get into the tag editor does it different.
In the tag editor you are literally editing data contained in the media file itself. Thus if on the Artwork tab in the tag editor if you paste an image in there, when saved it will embed the image into the media file itself. Thus if you move the file to another computer or sync, that file contains the artwork thus will always be available to it no matter where it is moved.

So in summary, ONLY ever add artwork by using the ArtWork tab in the tag editor (Get Info option).

Nice thing is too when you do, since it literally changes the file (can see date change property update...and filesize) then when you sync it will notice a file change and update the song on the device. If you use the other options, no change is ever done to the physical file thus you will notice the file not change it's change date or size, thus on syncing after assigning artwork those other two ways, it will not retransfer the file because to the iPhone/iPod, it has not changed so there is no need.

Message was edited by: DaVBMan

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Answer 2

aj_wride Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 26, 2008 9:50 AM in response to DaVBMan

this is very helpful.

a followup question:

When you use the "Get Info" option to edit Tag info, the interface for the Tag information is different depending on how many items you have selected. Ie, a single song displays an "Artwork" tab at the top, while multiple songs you edit the artwork similar to the process described in method 1 (using the small artwork window in the bottom right-hand corner of the "Info" tab).

I have used the multiple items method for my whole library. I have lots of music and it would be ridiculous to edit each song individually. Is there a method to edit en masse? or at least as an album that will attach the artwork to each media file?

In the past I have assigned artwork in this manner, then moved the artwork from my desktop to another folder. iTunes has always displayed the artwork even though the artwork file is no longer in the location it was when the assignment was made. Also, I have loaded these mp3 files on my laptop and into iTunes. The artwork appears for every song in my library and the original artwork files are not even stored on the drive of that computer, so iTunes could never access them. Lastly, I have never had this problem with my iPod. It displays all of the artwork, and again the artwork files are not on my iPod they are on my external HD--no way for the iPod to access them.

This seems to be a problem related specifically to the iPhone. Does anyone know why it won't display the art that iTunes and my iPod will?

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Answer 3

ultxx

Level 1

0 points

Sep 29, 2008 11:28 PM in response to aj_wride

I've been having some problems with no album art on my iPhone (3G, 2.1) but the album art is still displaying in iTunes (iTunes 8). This has been going on for a while and I played around a little bit and discovered that if I uninstall iTunes and then delete my library (DO NOT DELETE FROM HARD DRIVE!) and then add my library back, iTunes will refresh all my album art and then sync it to my iPhone! That's it! This probably happened when you upgraded iTunes to iTunes 8 and it didn't refresh the album art in it's database even though it was there displaying in the file. Works like a charm now.

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Answer 4

Oct 4, 2008 1:49 AM in response to aj_wride

I like to no where to get the artwork? I have got the available ones from itunes, but from where do I take the artwork and paste it into the related tab as recommended?

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