Can I associate/save album artwork to a non iDevice (e.g., thumb drive)?

Question

Level 1

11 points

Can I associate/save album artwork to a non iDevice (e.g., thumb drive)?

I recently purchased a car that has this nifty audio system that shows album artwork on the information display while the song is playing. This works well when an iDevice is plugged into the car's USB port. I have downloaded a large music library to a stubby thumb drive. The songs play fine, but less than 10% of the songs are accompanied by the artwork on the car's display. I have figured out that the ones that show the artwork are the songs that I have purchased through iTunes. The MP3s that I've loaded from my non-iTunes music just show a big fat music note. I have downloaded artwork using iTunes and the artwork accompanies the music on the e.g., iPad - so it''s there. It just doesn't show on the car's display.

I prefer to not have my iDevice always hooked into the system because of the wires and for other reasons.

Is there some way to load the music onto a thumb drive so that the artwork shows? I have tried putting JPEGs of the album artwork into the same folder as the MP3 albums, and that doesn't work. I don't believe that the artwork needs the Apple OS because there is a small number of songs (purchased through iTunes) that do show the artwork when the thumb drive is used.

If the entire iTunes library can't be loaded to the thumb drive with artwork, is there some secret file (not JPEG) that can be loaded to accompany a folder (album) so that the artwork shows?

Thanks.

Posted on Mar 9, 2016 9:12 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

the fiend

Level 7

22,506 points

Mar 9, 2016 11:57 AM in response to lbeck

First off, if the songs are in .wav format, you cannot associate artwork with them

For other tracks, such as MP3s or AAC (.m4a) the artwork is in the file itself, not in the folder.

Play one of these songs in iTunes, and look at the top Now Playing bar. Does the artwork appear? If it doesn't, then you can add it to the file itself by using the Get Info/Artwork panel and pasting the picture in. Be aware that for some reason iTunes for Windows doesn't currently show the paste command. You select the artwork panel and then use CTRL+V to add it.

Reply

Answer 2

lbeck Author

Level 1

11 points

Mar 9, 2016 3:16 PM in response to the fiend

Re: "the artwork is in the file itself, not in the folder" I'm afraid I don't totally understand.

On your other mentions - all my files are MP3. If I look at the Now Playing bar the album art always appears if album art is in iTunes. Most of the album art has been placed there by me if there isn't album art already there. I use the protocol you suggest get info/artwork/ctrl+v.

The only way that I can show what is happening (or not) is with pictures. The pics/screenshots below are of two scenarios. The PI song was not purchased and had no album art in iTunes or my car. I added artwork as described above. The artwork now appears in iTunes but not in the car. The Cash album was purchased through iTunes. The artwork appears in iTunes and in the car.

PI song - no art - iTunes = this is how the song looks in explorer. Note H:/ is the thumb drive

PI song - art - explorer = This is how the song/album looks after I add art in iTunes

PI - no art - car = This is how the song plays in the car AFTER I have added the art as above.

Cash alb - art - explorer = This is the album as shown in Explorer. It also shows of course in iTunes

Cash - art - car = Shows how the art is displayed in car

Reply

Answer 3

lbeck Author

Level 1

11 points

Mar 9, 2016 4:44 PM in response to lbeck

The screenshot that I neglected to post - not that it makes a real difference - is how the PI song looks in Explorer prior to adding the album art. Note that there is a JPEG, but it doesn't appear in the car or in iTunes until I add it later as described above.

Reply

Answer 4

ed2345

Level 9

62,486 points

Mar 9, 2016 7:17 PM in response to lbeck

There are two ways to add artwork to an MP3 in iTunes.

If you use the iTunes command "Get Album Artwork," the art will be in a folder, not in the MP3 file.
If you paste art into the Artwork screen using Get Info it will be embedded into the file, and will be there if you use the file outside of iTunes.

Reply

Answer 5

hhgttg27

Level 5

5,591 points

Mar 9, 2016 7:37 PM in response to ed2345

Also, for clarification, when images are associated using the Get Album Artwork function these are stored in a proprietary format (with .itc2 extension) within iTunes' Album Artwork folder, not as a readable JPEG or other standard format within the same folders as your media files.

Turingtest2's very useful set of iTunes scripts for Windowsincludes two that will:

add a standard folder.jpg file to each album folder within the iTunes Media hierarchy (CreateFolderArtscript) - these are the images that Windows uses to add thumbnails when browsing folders (the various "<size> Icons" views in File Explorer (Win10) / Windows Explorer (pre-Win10)
take any artwork that's stored in iTunes' Album Artwork folder and embed this within the relevant media files, format permitting - as already noted, WAV files have no capability to stored embedded images (EmbedFolderArtscript)

You may need to experiment with your in-car system to see which is appropriate to use - some look for embedded images in the music files, others will pick up separate image files stored in the same folder as the media files.

Reply

Answer 6

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Mar 9, 2016 7:43 PM in response to lbeck

As given, iTunes cannot embed artwork to tracks in .wav format. If iTunes downloads art from the store then it maintains its own cache and doesn't embed the artwork however purchases normally have artwork embedded. You can copy and paste in any associated store art by hand, but I have two scripts that can help with this;CreateFolderArt and EmbedFolderArt.

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 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

Reply

Answer 7

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Mar 9, 2016 7:50 PM in response to hhgttg27

Timing! 😁

Talking of which I should go to bed.

tt2

Reply

Answer 8

lbeck Author

Level 1

11 points

Mar 9, 2016 8:00 PM in response to turingtest2

WOW!

You've done quite a bit of work here. Admirable. I was hoping that the solution was simpler - like Ed2345's - which I've already tried and it doesn't work to get the album artwork onto my car display. I suspect that the villain in my dilemma is the proprietary .itc2 file that I wasn't aware of.

I appreciate your assistance and I'll hopefully try the scripts that you cite. I took a short course in Visual Basic about 20 years ago and haven't used it since. But I'll look for the syllabus and try my hand again - after backing up my library as you warn.

If there's an easier workaround let me know. Otherwise I'll leave this issue open until I get up the courage to try some of the scripts.

Lee

Reply

Answer 9

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Mar 11, 2016 3:31 PM in response to lbeck

You don't need to understand the scripts to run them, though understanding is more fun. 🙂

For a single album you can embed artwork by hand, but if you want to fix the whole library a script is the easiest workaround.

tt2

Reply