How I got album art working with iPod

[VanillaXtract]

First, if you use iTunes after syncing with MM, it will erase all album art. I haven't figured this part out, but I will see what I can do (maybe tomorrow).

Second, this is my setup:
iPod Touch 8GB with firmware 3.0
iTunes 8.2
MM 3.1.2.1271
mp3Tagger 2.44 (google it)

All of these steps may not be necessary, so experiment if you wish, this is just everything I did.
1. Open mp3Tagger 2.44
a. File>Add Directory
b. Choose your root music directory, wait for it to resolve list
c. Convert>actions
d. choose top right icon (new)
e. name it something
f. choose top right icon again (new)
g. select import cover from file
h. just enter the filename, no path
i. you need to select delete existing cover art for this to work (I tried otherwise)
j. ok your way back to the file list.
k. either select all the music or just some
l. convert>actions. check the action you just created and hit ok and wait till done

2. Open iTunes and add all music to it and wait for it to finish resolving all album art.
3. Use iTunes to install apps or videos.
4. Close iTunes and open MM
5. Add music, it should be just fine, but YMMV

Before I did all this, I would add a select number of albums, some art would show up correct, some incorrect. After this, picking the same selection, it all showed up. I have randomly selected albums and they all show up fine. What I noticed that breaks the album art in iTunes is after loading a video, it will say syncing after the status bar has finished. If you stop it fast enough, you can save your album art, but you gotta be quick. After it says that, it begins analyzing gapless playback and this is what breaks the album art.I have tried plugging my iPod into iTunes, selecting all the music in the iTunes library and on the iPod and doing get info, options, gapless playback "no." After syncing a video, it will still perform gapless playback and break the art.

I know this will suck for the people who had all their high res album art as folder.jpg since WMP more than likely converted down to 200x200 (I am one of those), but to me I wasn't willing to wait for a solution and I wanted to see the correct art on my iPod. Feel free to comment.

[baarker182]

I wish i've read this before what i've done 5 minutes ago..

i spent like my whole week adding artwork correctly to my iPod, and now when i finished the WHOLE LIBRARY artwork, i went to iTunes to make a backup and.. everything was gone.

Yes, i want to bite my own brain right now.

Anyone know a possible solution for this? And btw, i deleted the musics from my HD, since i'm always downloading and i got just 80GB.. If needed MM can bring stuff from my iPod to computer without mess with the tags right?

I hope someone saves me if possible, send me a email: fee.luques@hotmail.com, i'm not so active in the forums.

tyvm!

[baarker182]

ok, here's the weird part:

on iTunes, when i click "get info" on my ipod songs, all of them show up with the god damn artwork, but not on the cover flow on my little baby.

i noticed that for them to appear on cover flow again, i've got to readd all pre-existant ones on MM... some on computer didn't had artwork, but they did on ipod..

anyone have a solution for this artwork problem? i don't like to listen music watching a big musical note floating on my screen :s

[baarker182]

ok, now the weirdest part ever:

i just plugged my ipod to itunes, and SOME of my artwork reappeared on my cover flow, but ALL of the albums still having a artwork somewhere, since on "get info" on itunes, all of them show the cover.

omg, someone help me XD sorry for the 3x post

[baarker182]

I FIGURED EVERYTHING OUT

itunes changed the artwork settings.. they all still there, but not as front cover.. cover flow just show up the ones setted up as front cover

so i'm now wondering.. there's a way to automate the cover settings to put all to front? i think this should solve the problem, i'm doing it one by one.. better to make all over again

[davidbspalding]

I FIGURED EVERYTHING OUT
so i'm now wondering.. there's a way to automate the cover settings to put all to front? i think this should solve the problem, i'm doing it one by one.. better to make all over again

I'm researching the rhyme or reason to the Ipod (Classic 2009 160GB) Cover Flow feature ... some albums show up under the Artist section (first 1/2 of Cover Flow), and some albums show up in the Album section (second 1/2 of Cover Flow). I believe that I've assigned one and only one image to "Cover (front" in MM 3.5 (as per another thread I read here ... you forum members who post solutions and workarounds ROCK). But still some albums don't show up. WTH.

As to Baarker's suggestion, have an option in the program preferences/options to determine the "default" tag for added images (or "first added image"; I WOULD NOT configure it to put all images to "Cover (front)" because on some iPods this will screw the pooch), I'd second that for a bug/enhancement submission. IIRC I've noticed that when I paste an image into the small thumbnail pain in the main MM window, it is entered as "nothing." If I right-click and select "Add image," it defaults to "Cover (front)." At least I think so; laptop with MM is not with me at the moment. ... Kind of annoying that I have to then right-click and select "Edit Album Art properties" to correct it.

(Unrelated -- I have to applaud the programmer who added a confirmation to "Remove image" that asks "remove image from all tracks" or "remove images from entire album" or something. That's a sweet time saver.)

[Rednroll]

I have this problem all the time on my iPod Classic.

Here's the things that I've learned that will usually fix the problem.
1. Make sure there is only 1 album art pic...no additional back or insert pics. For the songs that don't show album art on your iPod, in MM right click select "Properties" and go to album art tab....it will show all the images contained in the tag. "Remove" all but the one you want.

2. Regularly right click on your iPod icon in the explorer tree in MM and select "Rebuild Device Database". Often I have problems on my iPod of music not showing up and album art not showing. Rebuilding the iPod's database seems to fix the problem 99% of the time.

[davidbspalding]

I have MP3s with multiple images in them, but only one "Cover (Front)", and they show up in Cover Flow. Just checked.

But in those, I don't think any are tagged as "nothing." I.e. they're tagged as something, e.g. "Cover (back)," "Illustration," "Artists during recording," etc.
_____________

** Well, wait. Just for giggles this morning, I did "Rebuild Device Database" after syncing this morning while eating my Lucky Charms. Now, at work, listening to music, every song in my current playlist ("New Additions" autoplaylist) in "Now Playing" has got the wrong cover, even though they're from the same compilation album (Singles OST, MTV: Unplugged Collection). Yuck. Did an iPod restart (hold down Menu and center button for 3 seconds), no joy. It is even showing blank album art for some songs in the same album (and I know that's not the actual case).

I'm beginning to think that album art imbedded in MP3s as a tag is not properly implemented on iPods.
______________

*** Further correction ... the problem I mentioned above only indicates in each song in a particular couple of new playlists (created in MM, and/or synced for the first time, e.g. "newest additions," "favorites not listened to recently"), and a couple of "Various Artists" albums ripped this past weekend. Images for older albums that I ripped this past weekend are fine. Images are fine in MM/database, it's just on the iPod that they're funny. I may deselect those for syncing, deleting them, and then resyncing.

I don't know what mucked things up, rebuilding the database, or the new playlists, or the new mp3s on the iPod. Probably not related to the problems raised in this thread.

[Rednroll]

I dunno???? There's obviously a problem some where, because there are now 4 threads going with which seems like a similar issue.....and now, I'm going to post a 5th with pics.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 12&t=43317
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 12&t=46206
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=43900
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 12&t=45988

[davidbspalding]

I posted another idiosyncracy in another thread, I had set my preferences for ID3V2 tags only ... and then started seeing some weird problems with art. Set back to the recommended ID3V1+ID3V2, and synchronised that album ... the album art was find. Then synchronised the other 1400 songs's tags that needed it ... and things seem to be normal. Will check some more. So that may've been the issue. The ipod, as advanced as it is, needs ID3V1 tags...?

So a takeaway here is to ensure MM is recording ID3V1 + V2 tags in prefs (Options | Tags and Playlists), and ensure tags are synchronised.

[davidbspalding]

Just for farts and giggles I upgraded to iTunes 9.0.3, and synced all my music with iTunes. There are some MM peculiarities which were resolved (CoverFlow is now one long stream of album covers sorted by all discrete instances of <Artist>), but within a day I noticed that an album cover showed properly in CoverFlow, in Artist browse, but then in Now Playing the album art disappeared, after I messed with starting the Genius Mix function.

So I would say the haphazard disappearance of album art is the iPod's fault, not the database that MM lays down on it.