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User profile for user: peoplographer
peoplographer Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Forecing Smart Playlist to check the music tracks for Artwork

Windows 11

itunes Version 12.13.3.2


I am using a smart playlist to identify tracks without Artwork. It has the flag "Has Artwork" set as "False". It seemed to work perfctly in the past. Here is a screenshot of the Smart Playlist Settings -



I initially was surprised to see trackes that is showing artwork end up in the playlist. However, I came to realize that iTunes shows artwork for all tracks belonging to an album, if one or more tracks have artwork in them. If track 1 of an album have artwork and the rest 11 do not have, iTunes will show artwork for all them. The smart playlist is smart enough to flag the rest tracks as missing artwork. I can select those tracks and use Song Info (Ctrl + i or Cmd + i) to find that the Artwork Tab is empty.


But recently I found this playlist contains multiple tracks which have Artwork. When I selct the file and view Song Info, it shows Artwork in the Artwork tab.


Things I tried -


1. Check individual music tracks by clicking on Song Info. The file vanishes from the playlist after I close the Song Info dialog box. But I have 600+ tracks in the smart playlist and will take a long time to go through them all.


2. Disabled the Live Updating in the Smart Playlist setting and click on "Update Smart Playlist". This seems to recognize artwork in some files and remove them from the playlist. But not all files are not recognized or removed.



Anyone know how I can forece the Smart Playlist to check the music tracks for Artwork?

Posted on Oct 14, 2024 10:47 PM

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,464 points

Oct 15, 2024 3:02 PM in response to peoplographer

Not something I recall testing explicitly since in my library iTunes has the correct knowledge about which tracks do and don't have artwork, but try my script UpdateTagInfo which should have the same effect as your manual clicking of each track in get info.



FWIW I also have two scripts that can help with embedding artwork; CreateFolderArt and EmbedFolderArt. The scripts have slightly different functions:


CreateFolderArt ensures that every album folder ends up with a Folder.jpg image which is the art that iTunes already knows about. Side effects are that if artwork has been updated in iTunes the folder art should be updated also, and if any track from the album doesn't have embedded artwork it gets embedded.


EmbedFolderArt was actually written for someone who already had various artwork images stored in the album folders and wanted them added to their tracks, but not if iTunes had already downloaded a better quality image. It creates new files of any store art with the name iTunesArt.jpg, then embeds the largest image by area in the album's folder, based on the premise that this is likely to be the best image.


In either case you could search and destroy the images in the folders after they are embedded if you don't want them.



tt2

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Forecing Smart Playlist to check the music tracks for Artwork

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