Naming Conventions for cover art

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Naming Conventions for cover art

Goal: Store copies of the cover art in the directories of the albums, in a format that If I have to import music from a backup Itunes directory, Itunes will recognize the art files in the album folder.

I understand that itunes stores all my artwork in its ITC format, which is fine as long as everything is in its place.

But if I have to move things from computer to computer, or want to back it up, I run the risk of losing the conection to the cover art.

I also understand how to extract the png files from the ITC2 format via a dos program using the first few steps from this link:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-huge-printable-poster-from-your-iTunes-al bu/#step1

If anyone has a better easier way of doing this I'm open to it.

I also understand that art files can be directly installed inside mp3 files, however not all players recognize that. Think it may be timeconsuming and tedious, and also take up huge amounts of space, so I am not partial to it.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Thank You,

Dan

iPod classic, iOS 2.x

Posted on Dec 15, 2013 3:12 PM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Dec 15, 2013 3:29 PM in response to dspevack

If you backup/migrate the entire library as a unit the artwork cache is included. That said I prefer to ensure that all artwork is embedded in my tracks and that there are local Folder.jpg images in each folder. I have two scripts that can help with this, CreateFolderArt and EmbedFolderArt.

See also this backup tip.

tt2

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Answer 2

dspevack Author

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Dec 15, 2013 3:41 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for your help and prompt reply

These seem to be exactly what I need.

So I would put the largest video file (400x400) in the folder as folder.jpg

And your script would embed it for me.

Two questions:

1. I am clueless on how to use a script. Never used windows scripting before. (Win 8.1x64)

Any step by step instructions are appreciated.

2. Do your scripts have to be executed on each folder separately, or can they be set to execute on all subfolders within a directory?

Thanks

Dan

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Answer 3

turingtest2

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272,725 points

Dec 15, 2013 4:11 PM in response to dspevack

There are general download and usage instructions at the top of the scripts page, although in both cases you select a group of tracks in iTunes or let it work with all tracks in the current playlist, then double-click on the downloaded script to start it running and follow the prompts.

The scripts have a slightly different purpose.

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 embeded.

EmbedFolderArt was actually written for someone who already had various artwork images stored in the folders and wanted them added to their tracks, but not if iTunes had already downloaded a better quality image.

tt2

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Answer 4

dspevack Author

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10 points

Dec 15, 2013 5:47 PM in response to turingtest2

Ok, So I'm just now completeing the sourcing of all my cover art files.

Once I do that I back up my library.

Then I think the script I need is the Create Folder Art script which if I am reading it right,

Will pull the largest size picture from the ITC files related to that album, and place it in the folder with the name "folder.jpg."

Now what confuses me is this part:

and if any track from the album doesn't have embedded artwork it gets embeded.

By embedded, do you mean that if for instance one song in the directory is not linked to the cover art itc file that the others are linked to then it embeds the link to the itc file?

Or are you saying it literally embeds the art into the file so I can now take this file to another mp3 software and the art is part of the file?

Also Must all tracks be mp3, or will it embed file in any track itunes recognizes?

Thanks again for all your help. you've been very helpful.

Dan

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Answer 5

turingtest2

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272,725 points

Dec 15, 2013 6:09 PM in response to dspevack

iTunes has two ways to associate artwork with albums. When you use the iTunes Get Album Artwork feature, and it can find a matching album, the artwork is downloaded into something along the line of ..\iTunes\Album Arwork\Download\<Library GUID>\<Nested Folders>\<Track GUID>.itc2. If you copy the file to another iTunes library the artwork doesn't come too, although Get Album Artwork would probably get it. Reasons for failure might be that an album has been removed from the iTunes Store, or cannot be uniquely identified. Depending on how teh tracks in your library were built up, and how iTunes artwork download service has been used it is possible that different tracks from the same album have different art, or some have it embedded while others do not. The script aims to force consistency. Note it assumes your media is in a standard layout where each folder only contains tracks from one album. I know there are some people who, for example, put everything by one artist in a single folder.

If you embed the artwork in the tag all media players that handle tagged files properly will be able to render the artwork. Most audio formats can support embedded artwork, but not .wav which doesn't support tagging at all.

tt2

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Answer 6

dspevack Author

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Dec 15, 2013 6:21 PM in response to turingtest2

I'm confident that all art I downloaded I applied to all files in the same album, so I don't thnk that is a problem.

Conformity is definitely what I want.

Once I have executed the script, how do I check my results to see that each and every file has the artwork embedded?

Thanks,

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Answer 7

turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Dec 15, 2013 6:59 PM in response to dspevack

When you run the script it will report on what it does. Run it again on the same set of files and it will tell you that no action was required.

tt2

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Answer 8

dspevack Author

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10 points

Dec 17, 2013 8:14 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks again for your continuing help.

I've run your script.

Now when I look at large Icons in the browser it shows a picture for most mp3 or m4a files and it shows a "Folder.jpg" in each directory.

However it did not seem to be able to embed for all mp3 or m4a files.

And there was no obvious consistency. Some files in the directory would get the picture and some would not.

Even though your script put the folder.jpg in the right place.

Any suggestions on what I need to do to troubleshoot this?

I"ve only checked artists a thru c so far and come up with about 100 files I need to work on.

Also while I got error messages on some directories that had this problem It did not alert me on others, nor was there a final report.

I should also mention that the read only attribute was off.

Dan

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Answer 9

dspevack Author

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Dec 17, 2013 8:34 AM in response to dspevack

I also got this 1 error both times I ran it:

Line 231

Char 17

Error: The artwork Has been deleted

Code: A0040202

Source (null)

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Answer 10

turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Dec 17, 2013 9:34 AM in response to dspevack

If it crashes due to an error then there is no report... Not sure why you would get an error, though the best guess would be that the iTunes has references to downloaded or cached artwork that isn't actually there when it is requested. 😕

Where there are some files that don't get the image displayed in the large icons view of Windows Explorer I suspect there might be an issue with multiple tags. The ID3 tagging scheme allows both V.1 and V2.x tags to be attached to the same file, and also allows multiple tags with different language codes. Where more than one tag is present the results may be unpredicatable. For best results I recommend a single ID3V2.3 tag for MP3 files. AAC files have a different tag scheme. Can you see if it is only mp3 files that have a problem?

tt2

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Answer 11

dspevack Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 18, 2013 12:42 PM in response to turingtest2

After using your script for the entire directory at once, there were various reasons it did not work universally.

Some songs were missing the original artwork link. In other cases I when I asked your script to work on a smaller group of items such as a single artist's directory, the embedding worked, when it didn't work globally. Its weird because some of the files in a given artists directory were converted while some were not.

Eventually there were only 4 songs that I could not get it to embed no matter what I did.

So I had itunes make me aac versions. Then deleted the original mp3 version. Then I had itunes make me mp3 versions from the aac versions and deleted aac.

Once Itunes did that I had no problem embedding the art in the remaining 4 files.

So I completed everything, thanks to your help.

Now if I can only figure out how to get music videos and cd audio to work on the same playlist on my ipod....LOL

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Answer 12

turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Dec 18, 2013 1:18 PM in response to dspevack

If you still had the reluctant mp3s I would have suggested using Convert ID3 Tag > None a few times, followed by Convert ID3 Tag > ID3v2.3 and then attempting to attach the artwork.

tt2

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