Cover Art on iTunes

Question

Level 1

8 points

Cover Art on iTunes

I have read this somewhere on the internet and it seems to be generally true about cover art on iTunes:

"If you manually drag the album artwork into the song (in the Get Info window), it will be embedded into the tags of the music file.

If you use iTunes to fetch the album artwork, it will not be embedded and will be in the location ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork."

I have however noticed that a number of music folders also have cover art in jpg files and are in several files with different sizes. These tend to be in folders for music that I have had for a long time. New music that I add where I use iTunes to fetch the album artwork doesn't seem to have the jpg files. I can tell you that I have never manually added jpg files.

So I am in a little confused about what is right and where these jpg files came from. Any ideas? My main question is how do I restore the cover art from a back up copy that I keep?

Thanks,

George

Posted on Jul 3, 2014 9:18 PM

Reply

Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Jul 4, 2014 4:09 PM in response to GeorgeH19

They will most likely have been generated by Windows Media Player. Typically you get 4 files:

AlbumArt_{GUID}_Large.jpg 200px x 200px

AlbumArt_{GUID}_Small.jpg 75px x 75px

AlbumArtSmall.jpg 75px x 75px

Folder.jpg 200px x 200px - This will be used by Windows Explorer when viewing the folder from its parent

Other media managers may also create local folder art images.

I have a script called EmbedFolderArt that will embed the largest (and thus hopefully best) image it can find in the same folder as the tracks however I don't think that is what you are after.

The Album Artwork folder contains a form of hash table which iTunes uses to locate cached and downloaded artwork. You can copy an entire library complete with its Album Artwork folder, but I don't think it is possible to repair missing artwork for tracks imported into a new library by trying to manipulate that folder.

tt2

Reply

Answer 2

GeorgeH19 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 6, 2014 1:55 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks, The files I have do actually follow the format you identify. There is also a "desktop.ini" file in there also. I didn't think I used the Windows Media Player very much but it seems I must have. I tend to use the freeware "Media Player Classic" more.

It looks like restoring a back up copy of an entire library can be a bit of a hassle. I understand the playlists are in this file "iTunes Music Library.xml" that is located in the iTunes folder and can use the "Import Playlist" function to add it.

Would you happen to know where the ratings (that have up to 5 stars) are stored?

George

Reply

Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Jul 6, 2014 4:18 AM in response to GeorgeH19

All the important data is stored in iTunes Library.itl. The .xml file has a subset of the data that can be read by third party software. In some cases when the main library file is corrupt iTunes will use the .xml to rebuild the database complete with ratings and play counts but I think if it is imported into a working library all that imports are the playlists. For those to work the media files also need to be on the same paths that they were when the .xml file was generated.

At this point I'm not sure what the issue with your library is, or what you did to precipitate it. In general I'd ignore the lo-res folder art that WMP made in the past. 600px images work much better. You should be able to get iTunes to download artwork for many albums, otherwise a Google image search should find nearly everything else. I've had to resort to scanning a few really obscure album and single covers, but nearly everything can be found online somewhere.

tt2

Reply

Answer 4

GeorgeH19 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 7, 2014 11:31 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank You so much for your help. I haven't actually lost any data yet but I have consumed so much effort into developing the data in iTunes that I want to make sure I don't loose it. I did some additional searches on the restore topic. I found this on how to restore if the new install has the identical folder structure as the original:

Re: How do I transfer song ratings to a new computer

Unfortunately if your new install has a different folder structure, it appears you have to follow this more complex process:

http://www.heyhowto.com/music/transfer-itunes-playlists-and-song-ratings/

George

Reply

Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Jul 7, 2014 1:58 PM in response to GeorgeH19

See Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy.

tt2

Reply