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I got a new computer, told it library was on external hd, no problem. A lot of artwork was missing though (NOT manual artwork, only previous artwork I'd asked itunes to find). I ran 'get artwork' but it's only asigned artwork to the1st song in each album

So, I got a new computer. As my itunes library has gone through a few in its time, it lives permanently on my external hard drive, as this generally makes moving to new computers hassle free. I told my freshly intsalled itunes on my new computer where to find the library and it got all my songs, movies etc no problem. However, some albums were missing artwork (NOT any of the albums I had ever manually added artwork to, thank god, these all seemed to be intact, jut ones where itunes had previously got artwork for me). I asked itunes to get missing artwork, as is par for the course. This it did, but it has only installed artwork for one song per album (generally the first song, or the lowest numbered track for incomplete albums, as far as I can tell).


It does not acknowledge these songs as missing artwork when I create a smart playlist but, erm, they are - the artwork doesn't show up on the display in the bottom LH corner or in the info tab. WHY? When I've added new albums 'get artwork' has always added artwork for EACH song on the album in every previous itunes I've ever had. I don't get it at all.


I appreciate it might be irreperably messed up, but please don't reply with any manual adding solutions. I have over 25,000 songs in my library and to go through and manually ask itunes to add artwork to each song (apart from the first on the album which already has it) would take SO LONG it makes me want to die inside.


I can't find anything else on this. Other people have had issues with itunes match and devices, but these songs don't even have artwork on itunes, let alone on my ipod, iphone etc.

Posted on May 13, 2012 4:49 PM

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Posted on May 13, 2012 5:42 PM

Use my script CreateFolderArt to embed artwork into each track from the one downloaded file.


tt2

19 replies

May 14, 2012 1:43 AM in response to Pouxin

😟 What line number does the error occur on & what version of Windows? I'll try to take a look at the script later today to see if I can eliminate the problem. I suspect I need to add in a little loop that tests to make sure the artwork has actually been written out to the disc before trying to insert it into another track. Linear programming style meets multi-tasking operating system that acts as if it has completed a job before it actually has.


tt2

May 14, 2012 10:22 AM in response to Pouxin

Well my first guess was wrong. The line that failed is the one that writes out the image to disk. I've not revisited the code for that script for ages, but it seems I did add in an extra test for missing files a little while later, then forgot to upload the change. I can reproduce the error message if I deliberately rename a file to confuse iTunes so that seems the most likely reason for your problem with the script. I've uploaded a new build of CreateFolderArt which should work better.


See FindTracks for a tool to repair broken links. You should probably get that issue fixed first.


I know what SPSS stands for but that is all I know about it. 🙂


tt2

May 14, 2012 11:06 AM in response to turingtest2

dfkjbsejfbsjfbsjfgb. My hopes were dashed once more 😉


I used your findtracks tool which found one broken link (not bad out of 15,023! - but then I am pretty OCD about my library, hence my artwork despair), which I repaired; when I ran it again it found none. However, this time CreateFolderArt sent me the same error message, but with:


line: 204

char: 15


Any ideas? If you want to give up I totally understand!!


p.s. it's probably not worth knowing much more about SPSS, urgh! But it did teach me the value of writing your own code isntead of using a drop down menu to ask the machine to write it for you, in terms of usability and replicability and having a RECORD of everything you've done to a dataset!

May 14, 2012 11:44 AM in response to Pouxin

Ok, next guess is that it is something to do with a migrated library and redirected paths. I've given the script another tweak so that now it reports the name of the file it tried to write when the failure occured. Pressing OK will allow the script to resume with the next track, pressing cancel aborts. Would you be kind enough to copy an example or two of the failed paths back here so I can try to figure out the exact cause and, hopefully, a workaround.


tt2

May 15, 2012 5:13 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks so much! This is fine, because everyone it has a problem with an album I'm just doing manually (I think it might be where I put the original art in because it was before itunes was that big, back in the day, but have since put more tracks in from the same album and have let itunes chose the art because it now stocks the album - so it confuses your script?? Just a guess!) But this is a LOT quicker than having to manually go through and check what does and doesn't have art, so I'm happy with it as a solution. Thanks SO much for your work on this :-)!

May 15, 2012 5:26 AM in response to Pouxin

Glad to hear things are progressing. Would you mind posting back one of the problem paths anyway? I'd like to debug this issue for the next person even if you don't need it.


BTW You can make a smart playlist with the rule Has artwork is false, though that's not so useful when using my script for spreading art from the track that has it to those that don't.


Cheers,


tt2

May 15, 2012 5:54 AM in response to turingtest2

Sure. I get:


error: &8000FFFF

while saving image to: [pathway]


actually there's quite a few of them! But at least it's identifying them for me.


I did try the smart playlist, but this didn't work, as it only selected songs where there was no artwork for the album at all (e.g. there was only one song from the album, and it had no artwork; or there was no artwork for any song). It ignored the thousands(!) of tracks that had no art, BUT one of the tracks on the same album did. VERY FRUSTRATING! Horrible buggy itunes.


Thank goodness for your script :-)


Do let me know if there are any further refinements, otherwise I'll keep working through the list!

May 15, 2012 6:32 AM in response to Pouxin

Sorry, I'm not making myself clear. Its the pathway I'm interested in. I'm guessing that because of the way you've migrated the library it might say something like:

C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\<Artist>\<Album>\Folder.jpg

instead of:

C:\Users\<User>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\<Artist>\<Album>\Folder.jpg


If so, then at least I understand the cause of problem. In principle both paths are valid for reading the file, and would connect to the same file, but Windows Vista/7 wants one to use the new constuction for user content so may be blocking the script's attempt to write to the old one.


Then again, it could be something completely different.


tt2

I got a new computer, told it library was on external hd, no problem. A lot of artwork was missing though (NOT manual artwork, only previous artwork I'd asked itunes to find). I ran 'get artwork' but it's only asigned artwork to the1st song in each album

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