What's going on with Album Art?

[p1r4cy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njz0celNxZI

I've been having trouble with tags recently. I'm on the latest version, and always run it in administrator mode with full access.
My <Album> tags have also been wonky, but especially frustrating is the album art which seems to disappear after I apply. And then syncing with android is a problem in itself.

Not sure what I did (if I did anything), but I suspect it has something to do with "Saving image to file folder" vs. "Saving image to tag".
Can someone help me out here?

[MMFrLife]

What are you calling the latest version?
Try embedding the image to .jpg format.

[nohitter151]

It could be that your mp3 file is corrupted or another possibility is that your user account does not have ownership over the files and thus lacks permissions to make changes to the file.

In that case admin access is not enough, you most modify the owner of the file(s). For more see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... 53659.aspx

[rovingcowboy]

Mp3s are great but if you use a fixed bit size the album art will be tossed if it can not be made to fit that fixed bit size music will have preferences over the art. If you are going to have art in the files you should be using variable bit rate and no smaller than 220 bits.

[MMFrLife]

Mp3s are great but if you use a fixed bit size the album art will be tossed if it can not be made to fit that fixed bit size music will have preferences over the art. If you are going to have art in the files you should be using variable bit rate and no smaller than 220 bits.

That's not true. When I use mp3, I only use constant bit rate. I always embed to the file. I never have any problems whatsoever with it.
VBR is "only" necessary if you are encoding to low bitrates around 160 are lower. Anything higher retains enough of the variance/dynamics data
to reproduce the music in a way that is indecipherable to most listeners when compared to the source.

[Monkey hi fi]

I was going by the quality of the art wanted. But I have had better luck with the vbr in the ogg format.

[rivorson]

Bit rate is only for the audio payload in any format. Artwork, tags, and other metadata are not counted for the bit rate and do not affect the audio quality.

I see three possibilities, two of which nohitter has already covered.

• The mp3 file is not properly structured (corrupt) so the artwork isn't being saved properly. If this is the case then it will be necessary to create an entirely new file. MM's converter should work.
• You don't have write permission for the file. Seems unlikely since Windows Explorer shows the artwork briefly when you tag the full album.
• Some other software is rewriting the file. Perhaps syncing software like Dropbox or maybe some backup software.

[p1r4cy]

I've avoided using "Save image to tag" and instead using "Save image to file folder" as a jpg. It's working. But it would be nice to have it save to tag without messing up. This is kind of off topic, but I just noticed that Album Art without an Album does not get synced to Android. :\ Annoying when a lot of the music are singles.

[MMFrLife]

Did you at least try to save it to the tag as a .jpg?
In the video it shows embedding as .thm.

[terrypin]

Did you at least try to save it to the tag as a .jpg?
In the video it shows embedding as .thm.

Well spotted! I had trouble following the video by p1r4cy because of its speed. But with some stabbing on the space key I've now found the THM evidence. Here's a snapshot for easier discussion:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/401 ... apshot.jpg

I'm studying this thread as part of my ongoing attempt to understand exactly how to use the artwork features. So I expect this has another obvious explanation. But I don't understand how MMW can create a THM file? As I understand it from the following two dialogs, that format isn't offered?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/401 ... ions-0.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/401 ... ions-1.jpg

[rivorson]

The image filename there only applies if the image is being written as a separate file, not being written to the tag. When writing to the tag the original image content is written. In this case the jpg file is written to the tag.


The thm format is a thumbnail collection. It's basically just several separate images written to a single file, so MM uses that if there are multiple images being used as covers instead of flooding the directory with multiple image files. If only a single image is selected then the original jpg image is written to the directory.

[terrypin]

Thanks rivorson. I think I've got it, although I'd like to study any detailed documentation that exists? Preferably with some worked examples. Where did you and others learn all this?

"...MM uses that if there are multiple images being used as covers..."

But how can an album cover have multiple images? Is it to support the use of individual images for say Front, Back, Insert, etc? Where would such images appear in practice? Do others use them? I'll be happy simply to get one for every track - about 2,100 still to do, and that's with a very relaxed approach (a.k.a cheating)!

[rivorson]

MM's options in your third screenshot described the mask "Format for multiple images" with the .thm extension. A quick Google search was enough to find out about the format.

You can have different artwork for front, back, inlay, band images, tour images, etc. Some albums are also released with a selection of different front covers. In MM you can set as many artworks as you want for each track.