After 7 Upgrade Album Art GONE

hi sarah,

the album art i imported myself (as in not through "get album artwork" does appear as embedded when i get info.

i did notice in the itunes album artwork folder there are two folders - "download" and "local" - wondering if local ends up being the folder that doesn't get imported to the ipod?

if so, any idea how i would force the import? my first ipod was a 2nd gen that i used a pc with, and i always just dragged and dropped into folders. since i went with mac os and a 5g ipod, i seem to have lost the idea of how to do that manually.

any ideas would be lovely. 🙂

Hiya

When the artwork is embedded, it should be in the song files themselves (i.e if you move the song from one computer to another...the artwork goes with it). I am thinking that if you have embedded the art, there should be no need for that folder that is new in itunes but I have not had the bravery yet to try deleting it! This would make sense but who knows with this version of iTunes that has caused quite a bit of fear in myself and others! When I noticed some of my songs were getting corrupted by iTunes, i was afraid to edit anymore tags (this is a first for me). I have hundreds of gigs of music all on external drives (packed away all the physical cd's in the basement) and am picky picky about tags and artwork. Artwork was my main reason for getting the ipod video!

I ended up doing a trial and error thing with about 5 different songs. For me luckily, the songs i dragged to the library first and then to the ipod showed artwork. I did realize though that you can no longer just highlight an album and drag artwork to the "drag artwork here" section but you must go through the "get info" to embed the art. I also realized another problem with the iTunes artwork. I started to replace some of mine with iTunes artwork as it was better quality. On one album i added artwork via itunes (clearing my own crappy copy first). After deleting the files from the library to do the next album, I realized I needed to fix something else in the tags, so I reimported the album. The art was gone! I have come to understand that iTunes art was NOT embedded and if you removed it from the library, your artwork gets lost. So if anyone does use iTunes artwork and constantly changes what is in their libary, you must embed the art yourself. I did this by simply dragging the art from the little artwork square to my desktop (creating a clipping). I then get info for all the songs in the album and drag the clipping to that window. This seems to embed the iTunes artwork. I am really quite sick of all these steps!!!

Any of these methods really do not seem fullproof after reading these forums. It appears some things work some of the time for some of the people. It is quite anti-apple to make something that is very user unfriendly and simple in its interface.

All I can suggest is doing a trial and error test and hopefully finding the sequence that seems to work with your configuration. This seems like a pain in the butt and it is. I really am perplexed by the difficulties Apple has created here for users and that there is no simple and straight forward answer that seems to help everyone.


Sarah

Hi all,

What seems too work, as previously mensioned, is to uncheck the "show album art" while Ipod is connected and press apply and then Wait, This is important!!, until Ipod is finished sync-ing. Then check "show album art" again and press apply. After that Itunes start sync-ing all the album art, this mey take a while.

When I first tried it I didn't wait so nothing happened. Patience ,again, seems too be a virtue!

Jelle

I just tried the waiting thing that Castle_EU suggested, and it doesn't work.

Let's face it everyone--artwork needs to be embedded in the track, as Sarah suggested, for it to show up on the iPod.

But what I still am waiting to learn is how to embed multiple tracks, each with different artwork, in a fast way? Or does each individual track need to be embedded separately? For a large library this could take a LONG TIME.

I am still having a huge problem with all album art gone on my iPod. I realized I may not have been clear in my first post, so I have gone back and read additional replies and suggestions, and want to clear some things up about the problem issue of album art in iTunes 7.0 w/iPod.

The facts:
) My iPod (color display) is set to manual update.
) My artwork is manually managed. I drag all album artwork to hard drive based tracks in the Get Info album art area, then drag all tracks to my iPod as the last step. I have never messed about with the automatic album art feature.
) The problem started out slowly. Some tracks began to exhibit the problem, just as in JonathanF's case. Attempting to fix this, I tried the iTunes iPod album art setting trick (uncheck show album art, wait, check show album art, wait), at which point the problem spread to every single file. Repeated attempts using this procedure with increasingly longer wait intervals have also failed.

My issue is similar to the cre8ivemlq's (the original poster) except that I haven't touched the automatic album art feature. I am not going to restore my iPod as many of the smart playlists on my iPod are based upon date added, play count, and other metadata that would be completely hosed.

I think the bottom line is that the album art storage model has changed in iTunes 7.0 to the point where it is exhibiting serious bugs. I've tried using the restore album art script from Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes page, which does not work in this case. My fear is that an iTunes update will not retroactively address the many users who have been affected by this bug. If someone can at least point out the new model for album art, perhaps we can fix this ourselves. Perhaps if I find some time I can figure it out.

2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Minor update (no fix yet, no workaround):

Fix attempt #15:
I've tried using the Embed Artwork v1.1 AppleScript ( http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts13.php?page=1#embedart ), but this does not address the problem.

Fix attempt #16:
I took a look at the size of the Artwork folder on my iPod, and noticed it was quite small (in Terminal: sudo du -sh myiPod/iPod_Control/Artwork). I manually deleted the contents of the Artwork folder, then tried the iTunes 7.0 "Display album artwork on your iPod" disable/enable method. The files in the Artwork folder rebuilt to the exact same small size that they were at before I deleted them.
This leads me to believe that the iTunes 7.0 "Display album artwork on your iPod" feature is breaking. There is no error or feedback in the Console that indicates this.

2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Fix attempt #17: Another failed attempt
I upgraded to iTunes 7.0.1, then tried the iTunes 7.0 "Display album artwork on your iPod" disable/enable method. Artwork still does not display on my iPod.

2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Here is the deal:

iTunes 7 incorporated a new feature called "CoverFlow". [For those who haven't used it yet, this was a previously 3rd-party app that allows you to browse artwork similar to how you'd flip through albums on an actual jukebox]

Since CoverFlow involves flipping through likely hundreds or thousands of album covers, iTunes 7 no longer embeds the artwork into the file but instead stores it in a folder on your hard drive located under User>Music>iTunes>Album Artwork.

By storing the cover art on the hard drive it only needs to retreive/store the artwork once and will thus load faster on subsequent uses and be less hardware intensive.

The mistake on behalf of Apple is that while CoverFlow will only work with songs stored on your hard drive, iTunes will still store all album art to your hard drive even if that art is added to the iPod and useless for CoverFlow.

However, if you copy songs from your hard drive to your iPod after having already attached art (even though it has not been embedded), iTunes will then embed the art while copying the songs to your iPod.

So to recap:

- If you add art to songs on your iPod directly, it will not embed
- If you add art to songs on your hard drive, it will not embed
- If you copy songs with attached art from your hard drive to your iPod the art will be embedded in the copy process

Hopefully Apple will fix this mistake for 7.0.2 by adding an option to either embed or cache art and add support for CoverFlow for songs on the iPod. Since my laptop is only 100 gigs, and my iPod is 60, there is no way I can sync and have a lot of songs only on the iPod. As is, I have to copy the songs off the iPod, add the art, then re-copy back to the iPod. This is a major hassle for something that shouldn't have changed to begin with.



PowerBook G4 1.67 17" (June 2oo5) Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1GB RAM

Yay! Trying this method and clicking Apply both times seems to have worked for me now 🙂

As Castle_EU says, just wait for the iPod to complete syncing first each time you click "Apply"

You are absolutely right in this summary. Just to clarify that if you remove the album from your library (which i do as it is too big and on several different drives), the artwork you got from iTunes will be gone if you remove the album (unless you have it checked to download the art every time you put the album back into the library). I spend too much time getting artwork...I want it embedded so it is done and found and organized. That is me though, I am picky about tags and artwork. i have downloaded hundreds of covers from iTunes but clear my library everyday, so my artwork folder is still only 3 megabytes. The artwork is gone unless I embed it. I would like the option also. 🙂

Sarah

since i seem to be the big dummy here, how do i go about copying the songs with attached art from my hard drive to the ipod? do i need to first be viewing hidden files (which i have the tools to do)?

i tried to install the new version of itunes, unchecked to show album art on my ipod, rechecked it, and no luck - the album art that itunes could find for me is on my ipod, my own album art is still missing.

i also tried doug's script for embedding art and yes, had no success with this.

thanks!

Thanks Serotonin for the explanation. Your definitions weren't exactly precise, but your basic description of the issue helped enormously and led me to investigate. I've come up with an incomplete workaround.

A clarification on including album art for an iPod:

Let me be clear that the following is relevant specifically for iTunes 7.0.1 users with iPods using the manually manage music option.

It seems that the only way to include album artwork with a track when copying it to an iPod is to drag copy a file from playlist to playlist in iTunes 7.0.1, from a LIBRARY based playlist to an iPod DEVICES based playlist. Drag copying a file from the Finder into an iTunes playlist will not copy the artwork to the iPod. This is true even if the file in question has embedded artwork. This is a change in behavior from iTunes 6.

Apple has increased the workflow complexity of manually managing your iPod. Compare:

Steps to properly copy files from hard drive or optical media to an iPod using iTunes 7:
1) In iTunes, create a temporary LIBRARY based staging playlist. We'll refer to this playlist as "temp".
2) Drag files from the Finder into the iTunes "temp" playlist. If you are dragging files from optical media, you'll want to make sure the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" option is unchecked in Preferences > Advanced > General, or you'll end up copying files to your hard drive.
3) In iTunes, drag files from the "temp" playlist to desired iPod DEVICES based playlist.
4) When copy operation is complete, delete the "temp" playlist.

Steps to properly copy files from hard drive or optical media to an iPod using iTunes 6:
1) Drag files from the Finder into desired iTunes iPod playlist.

This workaround still does not address the legacy issue of users who have lost the ability to view artwork on files already on their iPod before the iTunes 7 update. Copying files back to the hard drive and then back to the iPod will destroy all sorts of metadata the iPod collects (playcount, date added, ratings, etc.).

Exception to the copying rule
Enhanced podcasts with dynamically changing artwork do not suffer this problem. You can directly copy such files from the Finder to an iPod DEVICES based playlist.


Final comments

Despite user's testimony, I'm no longer certain about what constitutes an artwork embed action and what constitutes an attach action. If I take some "naked" untagged mp3 files, bring them into iTunes, then attach album artwork using the Get Info window, I would think this constitutes an embed. According to some, it is just an attachment. If I then take these files and copy them over to Mac #2, iTunes 7 on that machine can see the artwork.

We all agree that Apple has messed this up. Let's hope that they clean up their mess.

2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

and in turn thank you for your explanation. i'll give it a go.

thanks again!

so i tried your workaround and it works. weird that we should have to resort to these measures.

thanks again!

i believe i have a fix for some of those who have album art issues, namely, none of your artwork shows up on your iPod, but does show up in iTunes 7.x. i'm not sure exactly what models this will work for, but it worked for my 60GB iPod w/Color Screen, software v1.2.1.

my problem started when i tried fixing what seemed to be a minor glitch on the iPod-- some albums did not display artwork when playing from the iPod; yet, all art appeared in iTunes 7.1. i followed this hint on macosxhints.com that explained that if you uncheck the "display album art on this iPod" option, and then recheck it, iTunes will rebuild the artwork database and should rectify any album art problems. unfortunately, the hint didn't mention that on the iPod w/Color Screen, your artwork will no longer be diplayed AT ALL after you do this.

i tried restarting iTunes, resetting the iPod, deleting the ArtworkDB, resynching the iPod... nothing worked. i could see all the artwork in iTunes, it just wouldn't show up on the iPod no matter what i did.

fortunately, i received an email from the original author of this hint, and apparently he or she had the same problem that i had. when the hint was published, macosxhints.com decided to leave out the information that helped restore our artwork. anyway:

i'm not sure if this is limited only to the iPod w/Color Screen, but that's what i own and i did indeed seem to hose my album art on my iPod by following the above-mentioned hint. the fix is to connect your iPod to a mac that has an older version of iTunes (for both of us, this happened to be 4.7.1; i cannot vouch for any other versions). in iTunes' preferences, uncheck "display album artwork on your iPod", and then check it again. iTunes will then optimize the artwork (i've got about 4500 songs/22GB; this took roughly 15 minutes over firewire). when it's done, voila, your artwork is restored.

although it's probably a pain for a lot of folks to find a mac with a super old version of iTunes, this beats the **** outta moving your music onto another drive, reimporting, etc... also, all of your ratings and playlists will remain intact. i have no idea if this will work the same with a windows-formatted iPod, either, but it's certainly worth a shot, IMHO. good luck!

60GB iPod w/Color Screen Mac OS X (10.4.8)