Bolero Album Art

[Spirit]

I was searching for solution, but everything that I tried, doesn't work.

 

I have mp3s on USB, ID3 tag works, but Album Art doesn't show up on all songs.

Half of them are ok, but the rest of it are not.

On computer all mp3s have Album Art, viewed by ID3tag, winamp, iTunes.

Size of pics are smaller than 500x500..

 

Really don't know what else I can do?

 

thx

[GAFF]

Mentioned here before

ID3 image editor

http://hcware.t15.org/mp3art/

---> google 'Hot Coffee Software'

'Sanse mp3 Art Sizer' and setting the quality to 80% or 90% and the size to 499x499

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/325438-sd-album-art-on-amundsen/#entry3999715

[Spirit]

Thx buddy, that works!

[GAFF]

Initially I only converted images bigger than 499x499....but some other images were still not showing....then I converted all....seemed to work much better.

[nickcoll]

Sanse mp3 Art Sizer is only for Windows. The best application for Macintosh I've found is Metadatics which is great and costs £7.99 from the Apple App Store, so it's very easy to install and keep up to date.

 

Regarding the specification for the artwork, I would suggest making sure all files are definitely JPEG (some music files have PNGs in them which don't seem to work) and make them less than 150kB. I have found some JPEGs that are just over 200kB that don''t work, but I haven't experimented to see whether the limit is between 150kB and 200kB. Given the ability to easily change the quality which just won't be visible at the size the artwork is displayed on the head unit, there is no issue with keeping everything below 150kB - it will look fine.

 

Metadatics is an extremely powerful utility for changing meta (tag) data and within its capabilities you can change the existing artwork to whatever size you want, including upsizing lower resolution images and changing from PNG to JPEG. For the best results I would set artwork to 499x499 JPEG (whether it starts larger or smaller than this) and then juggle the quality setting so that the resulting disk space occupied by the image (Metadatics shows you this in real time) is around 125kB. That will give really good quality results when viewed on the head unit display.

 

Note that the way you do things in Metadatics is that you first load the files you want to work on (using Add Files), then initiate all the changes you want, then finally commit the changes by choosing Save. The program will prompt you to do this if you try to quit or remove the files from the list without first saving the changes. Then you unload the files when you have finished making all changes using Remove Files.

 

Finally there is another useful utility when working on a Macintosh for removing the dot files which can spoil the display of tracks on the head unit. It is called Cleanup SMB Mess and is free. You simply launch it, make sure that your SD card or USB stick are selected in the window, then click the Clean button. The dot files will all be deleted and the volume "ejected" so that you can simply unplug it.

 

Here are a few screenshots of the two utilities in use:

 

 

This is the main window of Metadatics

 

 

This shows the artwork size editing dilog

 

 

Here is Cleanup SMB Mess in use just before I take the SD card to the car.

 

Edited 2 May, 2015 by nickcoll

[nickcoll]

Just a quick note to say that 499x499 should read 500x500 in my post above.

[Dirtydogg]

Just found this post again, thank god. :clap:

I have been having issues with some of my album artwork not showing up on the head unit.  I had been re sizing the artwork to 500x500 pixels manually with various results. some still didnt show up.

The Sanse art sizer is a fantastic easy to use small program that works flawlessly.

It adj the artwork and reduces the image quality to the required setting to work...

Its saved me hours of work and frustration trying to resize it all.

 

So big thx to Gaff for posting the link :cocktail:

[andyvee]

So big thx to Gaff for posting the link :cocktail:

 

Errr ....... it may have been me

[randomeclipse]

I just edit the .jpg cover images and resize them to 499 pixels. Didn't need a 3rd party app.

[andyvee]

The Sanse utility can automatically parse a directory tree, resize everything and embed them in the file tag.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[Dirtydogg]

Errr ....... it may have been me

 

Thanks as well Andyvee if you were the original poster of the software,  i didn't see your post when looking for a solution, only this topic. But a great little bit of software all the same.

 

[GAFF]

So big thx to Gaff for posting the link :cocktail:

All credit goes to andyvee....I couldnt find original link when I posted above.....I just updated above post with andyvee link.

Its a super bit of software.

[nickcoll]

I just edit the .jpg cover images and resize them to 499 pixels. Didn't need a 3rd party app.

 

How do you resize the images if you don't use an app to do so? I think you need to give us more information to understand what exactly it is that you are doing.

 

BTW, I suspect that the maximum size of the images may be limited to 128k - this might make some sense in computer terms.

[Gromle]

How do you resize the images if you don't use an app to do so? I think you need to give us more information to understand what exactly it is that you are doing.

BTW, I suspect that the maximum size of the images may be limited to 128k - this might make some sense in computer terms.

He probably just opens the images in paint or something similar and resizes.

[skd12]

He probably just opens the images in paint or something similar and resizes.

If you have a lot of images you can use free software to bulk resize and/or rename. I've used Irfanview to do this for various things over the years. http://www.irfanview.com

[Gromle]

I know.

I use a program called Tagykardia or something similar. It gets the Job done and imbeds the albumart in the files.

[hobbie2k]

It has been awhile, but I've been working on getting all my album art working.

 

First, I made sure that all tracks had artwork embedded in the mp3 file, and not in a separate folder.  I'm pretty sure you can do this with iTunes. You just have to use "get info" and paste the album cover into each track individually. If you select a whole album, then it will place the art separate.

 

I used mp3tag to set each id3 tag to version 2.3.  Also useful for finding bad id3 tags that may work in iTunes, but not on Bolero.

 

I used the Sanse MP3 Art Sizer trick to resize each piece of art to 500x500 max.

 

However, I found that about half my art still wasn't appearing.  I resized them to 400x400 and found that far more art was appearing, but still not all.  I found that all the artwork that doesn't appear was in .png format, but some .png files were working.  After testing different tracks with .png files, it seems that the factor is a file size in excess of 200KB.

 

So it appears that in addition to a 500x500 pixel limit, there is also a 200KB file size limit.

 

I haven't been able to find an easy way to batch covert embedded .png art to compressed .jpg.  mp3tag can extract all artwork, then you can use IrfanView to batch convert the .png files to .jpg, then use mp3tag to embed the new art, but you have to be able to write a script for it (beyond me).

  

I have resorted to scrolling though tracks individually with mp3tag, finding all the .png art in excess of 200KB, extracting them one album at a time, converting them to .jpg with IrfanView, then embed them and save the changes with mp3tag.

 

You can reduce artwork sizes further with Sanse (300x300) or less, or reduce quality, to get the .png below 200KB.

 

Otherwise, you can just find new artwork in .jpg form and embed that to replace the .png.

 

I hope this answers some of the seemingly random problems people have had.