Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

badtz · Apr 7, 2004, 11:04 PM

Is there anyway to have the artwork saved on the HD and not in a mp3/song?

Ideally, I would like the cover of an album associated to a playlist [but not embedded in any mp3/aac files] .....

is this possible yet in iTunes? or 3rd party program?

wataru · Apr 7, 2004, 11:17 PM

If the song is on your HD then the art is still on your HD even if it's embedded in the song. I know what you mean, though.

There is no way to separate the art and the file and still have the art show up in iTunes, but various 3rd party apps like Synergy will look for art elsewhere first. I highly recommend Synergy, but there are plenty more apps out there.

badtz · Apr 7, 2004, 11:37 PM

The reason for this would be, let's say you have an album of 15 songs. Then you'd be able to use that ONE [graphic] file for the whole album, versus embedding that photo 15 times.

Is there a program that'll let you add your own album covers that you've scanned/downloaded yourself instead of 'fetching' online?

I wonder why Apple wouldn't give you the option to not embed the graphic file in the audio file ...?

thePurpleGiant · Apr 7, 2004, 11:51 PM

Originally posted by badtz:
I wonder why Apple wouldn't give you the option to not embed the graphic file in the audio file ...?

So that if you put the song on a different computer, it will keep its artwork with it.

wataru · Apr 8, 2004, 12:13 AM

Originally posted by badtz:
The reason for this would be, let's say you have an album of 15 songs. Then you'd be able to use that ONE [graphic] file for the whole album, versus embedding that photo 15 times.

Is there a program that'll let you add your own album covers that you've scanned/downloaded yourself instead of 'fetching' online?

I understand the reasoning, but the answer is still no, you can't do that right now.

There is no prescribed method of getting art. If you "fetch" them then all you're doing is automating the process of aquiring an image file, and then feeding that into iTunes. So obviously, if you want to, you can manually scan some art and paste it into iTunes.

badtz · Apr 8, 2004, 02:41 AM

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
So that if you put the song on a different computer, it will keep its artwork with it.

I wonder why Apple wouldn't give you the option to not embed the graphic file in the audio file ...?

kovacs · Apr 8, 2004, 02:53 AM

Yeah pretty stupid especially if you have an iPod, the covers just take up too much space, Synergy solves this problem somewhat and it's only 5$. I'm sure there are other alternatives but Synergy has the advantage of being able to run in the background without an icon in the dock, however Synergy won't show the cover in iTunes itself but in its own window ( bezel )...

badtz · Apr 8, 2004, 08:14 PM

Originally posted by kovacs:
Yeah pretty stupid especially if you have an iPod, the covers just take up too much space, Synergy solves this problem somewhat and it's only 5$. I'm sure there are other alternatives but Synergy has the advantage of being able to run in the background without an icon in the dock, however Synergy won't show the cover in iTunes itself but in its own window ( bezel )...

....... in the bezel is fine, but will synergy allow you to add your own album covers to a playlist?

how's the cpu usage of synergy?

wataru · Apr 8, 2004, 10:36 PM

Originally posted by badtz:
....... in the bezel is fine, but will synergy allow you to add your own album covers to a playlist?

how's the cpu usage of synergy?

You can set it to poll iTunes only every 10 seconds. It doesn't seem to take up too much CPU that way.

I'm not that familiar with the intricacies of how Synergy handles album art, but I don't think you can assign it by playlist. It will find art in the same folder as the song in question, or it can find art stored in Synergy's own special folder, but those associations are limited to "art for x album by y artist" if you know what I mean.

mitchell_pgh · Apr 8, 2004, 11:25 PM

Originally posted by kovacs:
Yeah pretty stupid especially if you have an iPod, the covers just take up too much space

I don't think it's stupid. The graphic file only utilizes approximately 300K for an entire album. (30K times 10 files). So considering the size of the album is around 40+ MB, it's less then 1%.

Originally posted by kovacs:
, Synergy solves this problem somewhat and it's only 5$. I'm sure there are other alternatives but Synergy has the advantage of being able to run in the background without an icon in the dock, however Synergy won't show the cover in iTunes itself but in its own window ( bezel )...

Synergy looks cool, but it seems a little like overkill for average users.