Windows Media Player 11's embedded album art

[dreddy]

Hey everyone,
I just spent like 5 hours trying to do this, and it's driving me insane.
Apparently, WMP 11 embeds album art in such a screwed-up way that no other application I've tried (dbpoweramp converter, mp3tags, MM script "Album art tagger", etc.) would remove it.
Now comes the funny part: neither can WMP. It simply shows that there's no embedded images BUT displays album art in bottom-left corner during playback and in "now playing" view. No other apps see that embedded art, but it is apparently still there..
If anyone can do this, this would be one of you Serious Collectors, lol.
If you know of any application/script capable of destroying the mess WMP created OR could actually develop something like that, the help would be greatly appreciated!

[nohitter151]

WMP doesn't embed the art, it saves it as a hidden .jpg in the folder that your music is in, usually as Albumart_### (a long string of numbers/text). If you want to delete it, go to windows explorer, then Tools -> folder options -> View -> Show hidden files and folders AND uncheck hide protected operating system files. You should now be able to find all the album art files that WMP has saved to your HD in the same folders that your music is in.

[dreddy]

Oh, I should've mentioned this: I deleted all those files including folder.jpg's. That was the first thing i did, actually.

[nohitter151]

Then it should be gone. If the art comes back, its because WMP is searching the internet for album art and redownloading it (you can disable this in the WMP options.) WMP does not save art to tags.

[Sheepdog]

I am having this very same issue.

I have turned off the automatic update in WMP11.
I have run AlbumArtTagger to remove album art not matching my storage.
I open mediamonkey and the art is gone.
I close MM and reopen it and lo and behold it's back.
I have searched (checked show hidden files and folders) my hard drives for folder.jpg and albumart and can't locate anything yet these images keep showing up.

I want my images stored in the tag without folder.jpg

Any suggestions for me?

I am running Vista Home Premium and MM3

[Sheepdog]

Aha! I just searched my hard drives for just art and found a folder with ZuneArt images in it. I have a zune player and the zune software must be the culprit. I have the auto update album art and media information unchecked in those settings too so not sure where zune got those images to begin with. Just updating in case someone else runs into the same issue in the future.

Here is a thread that the zune forums about fixing art issues. http://forums.zune.net/1093/ShowPost.aspx

[nohitter151]

The Zune software takes all the Album art from the tags and extracts them into the folders, this is a feature you cannot turn off. The best solution to keep those files out of MM is to see Tools->Options->Library and uncheck "Scan Track directories for Album Art"

[Sheepdog]

Thanks for that. I did speak too soon since the next run of MM and there I had multiple album artwork I didn't want. It's a shame you can't turn that "feature" off in the zune software. Figures M$ would do something like that. WMP screws everything up too.

[renowden]

That is why many of us have abandoned WMP in favour of MM

I was going insane with the way it kept overriding my decisions.

[Sheepdog]

That is why many of us have abandoned WMP in favour of MM

I was going insane with the way it kept overriding my decisions.

Yeah. the issue is that when I open up a video it opens with WMP and then bastardizes my music files in the process.

[nohitter151]

You can remove all music from Windows Media Player by selecting all music from the music node then right clicking and hitting Remove from Library; that is, unless you have some reason to keep the music in there.

Anyhow, the above solution of telling MM not to "Scan Track directories for Album Art" should prevent any problems caused by WMP or Zune.

[Guest]

wmp creates an album art cache in "C:\Documents and Settings\USER_NAME_HERE\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache" (that's for win xp). You should find this in your computer and delete it. In vista i suppose it woud be somewhere around C:\Users\USER_NAME_HERE\...