HELP I think I messed up my music files

[windcrest77]

I just noticed that my hard drive was almost full and determined that Media Monkey increased the average size of about 25,000 of my media files to on average 50MB to 80MB long per song. Over the past few weeks I've been updating the album art for my 50,000 tracks but I had MM set to "Save album art in a tag". Boy was this a HUGE mistake because now thinking of it, it will be duplicating all that art data in every file of the albums!

But here is the REAL ISSUE and a bug in my eyes. I reset the flag to "Save album art in a folder" BUT when I went to re-update the album art on some of these bloated tracks, MM did not remove the art from the tags in those tracks. So the things are still huge.. And they load very slowly when I go to Play or Stop or Pause, and they often hang the system. Additionally I'm getting not enough memory to perform operation errors.

What I want to know is how the heck do I get the album art OUT of these 25,000 tracks?

I'm sure once I get the art removed from the media files and into a file folder things will be much better. It was truly stupid of me to put album art in the tracks considering the size of my library and how much it would bloat it. I wish MM would put a big warning on using this option to save someone else this nightmare.

Please if anyone can tell me how to clear out only the album art tags on my files, I'll go back and re-edit all 25,000 files with art that gets saved to file folders instead of the media.

These are all pristine FLAC files ripped from my CD collection over the course of 3 years, needless to say I'm not having a good day.

Thanks
Rescue me please!

[Lowlander]

Actually that isn't a bug as it is only for new Album Art you add. If it would start changing things on itself it would really result in issues.

Also I believe it's better to embed album art as this ensures that album art is always associated with the track. External art can be lost.

To extract embedded art into files take a look at the Album Art Tagger addon: http://mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic. ... art+tagger

[rovingcowboy]

if you really want to go back and get all the art then just select all the songs in the library you don't want art too.

make it small groups at a time might make it not lock up if you do small groups of them..

but when you select the songs right click on one of the songs in the group you selected then click on properties
to get the panel up.

go to the album art tab. in the left corner you see a box to check so it does the same for all the selected files.

check that box then select all the art and remove it by the remove button. so there is nothing on the art tab.

click okay and the art from all the songs should be gone. now just close mediamonkey and allow it several minutes to make sure its updated all the tags to those songs. restart monkey and do it again until you get all the songs art gone.

then just go online and find it again with the option to save to folder selected and not the save to tag.

[nohitter151]

You're adding 30MB images to each audio file?!

[windcrest77]

To rovingcowboy I tried that and the art was gone from view however the size of the flac files was unchanged, MM still left the art imbedded in the media files.

I'll go back and double check your procedure, but I cant get MM to make the files smaller again.

[windcrest77]

To lowlander, true the only affected media files are the 25,000 FLAC files I added album art to.

I really dont want the art re-duplicated in each song of each album, I'd rather have one copy of the art images in a separate folder within the album folder.

The problem is that add works to imbed the art, but when you reset the global option to use folders and you go re-edit the art tab of a file, it should do the reverse and remove the art from the media and put it in a folder, (unless you set the option to do both).

Now I have to figure out how to clean up the FLAC files of imbedded tag art.

That is really my goal and was looking how to do that. Many of my CD's have 25 tracks, each duplicating 30-40MB of booklet pages, seems wasteful and makes the files clearly play and stop slower and have slower responsiveness from my testing here.

Thanks
Rick

[windcrest77]

To rovingcowboy, I tried your procedure (which I tried before) but the FLAC file sizes still are bloated with art images.

[Lowlander]

I don't think that setting should control existing art nor do anything while merely viewing Album Art properties. Some people might want a mix of embedded and external art and this would change everything.

Anyway as said check out the Album Art Tagger script as it should be able to remove the Album Art from your files and save them as external art instead, thus reducing the file size requirements.

[nohitter151]

Now I have to figure out how to clean up the FLAC files of imbedded tag art.

Album art tagger script can do it.

That is really my goal and was looking how to do that. Many of my CD's have 25 tracks, each duplicating 30-40MB of booklet pages, seems wasteful and makes the files clearly play and stop slower and have slower responsiveness from my testing here.

Thanks
Rick

Seriously? How are there so many images? Why are they so large? A typical jpg file is less than 500kb even at sizes up to 1000x1000 pixels.

[windcrest77]

To nohitter151 probably around that number, yes. Many of these are musicological CD's and the art I obtained for them have scans of the 30-50 page booklets in each CD.

Most CD's have just the cover back and liner notes obtained from people who scanned them, probably smaller. I still hate the idea of the album art being in the media file, I'm kicking myself for knowingly using that option. It has burned up my 2 TB drive with a lot of duplicate data and made a bunch of files that load noticeably slower than the files without imbedded art. The worst of the files take 10-15 seconds just to begin playing as it processes all the internal art tags I guess. I sent Peke a copy of one of those files.

[windcrest77]

Thanks lowlander I'll go grab AlbumArtTagger and give it a try.

[windcrest77]

Well I tried to install Album Art Tagger 4.7 as downloaded from trixmoto.net and I get an error "Product Installation Error".

Now I dont know what to do, maybe Google around for a FLAC tag editor that can do art tags?

[Lowlander]

See: http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... ticleid=59

[rovingcowboy]

you have to make sure when you use that way i said of getting the art out of the file.
that you pick the songs with all the art in them like front cover back cover and any others you have listed.

it should remove the art you selected from each file. if one file has only front cover and you clicked only on that.
and the others were let to remove it. then only the front cover was removed from all those selected. that is why i said
to do it again until you are done.

in other way of saying it.

if you have group of songs selected where you have mixed number of art in the songs.
one with 3 art covers
one with 6 art covers
and
one with only one art cover.

you happen to right click on the one with only one art cover in it. and it is called front cover you remove that
from the file and click okay.
then only the front cover will be removed from all the other song files.

you have to redo it over and over each time to make sure you get rid of all the art from the file.

so its best to know which file has the most art in and then select it with the right click to get its properties
and select all the art and remove it all from that one. then all the others in the selected group with the same
art cover titles in will have all them removed too.

at least that is what i had happen when i did it several yr's ago. might have changed now?

[windcrest77]

Thanks everybody, the Album Art Tagger is working out, it can decrease a bloated file.

I appreciate, very much the MM community.

MM is a GREAT product, but like any professional software one has to be aware. MM did exactly what I told it to do, but in the end, that wasnt the best way for my particular collection to be set up. I've reduced some files and not getting the out of memory errors anymore (on the art tab) and they Play/Stop right with the mouse click, no delay.

Tomorrow, I'll be cleaning up the rest by moving the art to folders and just keeping the front covers in the FLAC's.