Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Epicurus · Apr 28, 2003, 03:05 PM

With the new iTunes 4 supporting album covers, which site has the most comprehensive and highest quality scans?

mishap · Apr 28, 2003, 03:15 PM

Originally posted by Epicurus:
With the new iTunes 4 supporting album covers, which site has the most comprehensive and highest quality scans?

That is what i was going to ask! maybe amazon? i just want the correct size...

Drag Album Artwork Here

mishap · Apr 28, 2003, 03:17 PM

This feature will keep me busy for a month

parsec · Apr 28, 2003, 03:19 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
That is what i was going to ask! maybe amazon? i just want the correct size...

Drag Album Artwork Here

Yeah, amazon is probably the best bet, followed by a google search if amazon doesn't have it.

Unfortunately clutter puts each image into it's own window, and I can't drag my already (automatically) downloaded covers onto itunes.

Ah well, I like clutter better anyway I think.

mishap · Apr 28, 2003, 03:21 PM

Try All Music

Drag and drop works great from Safari

OAW · Apr 28, 2003, 03:50 PM

Go to VersionTracker and download an app called Clutter. It can be used to grab artwork from Amazon.

OAW

mishap · Apr 28, 2003, 03:56 PM

Originally posted by OAW:
Go to VersionTracker and download an app called Clutter. It can be used to grab artwork from Amazon.

OAW

This cant be dragged into iTunes4

Mithras · Apr 28, 2003, 04:01 PM

I use a MusicMatch site, at:
http://www.thestore24.com/Pop/Default.asp

I find it often better than Amazon. But Amazon works too.

OAW · Apr 28, 2003, 04:04 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
This cant be dragged into iTunes4

Well that sucks. You might be able to copy the images into Preview and save as a JPG. Then try to drag that into iTunes. Can't try it myself yet since I'm still at work.

OAW

GORDYmac · Apr 28, 2003, 04:12 PM

High resolution artwork at Wal-mart.com.

Go figure.

conny · Apr 28, 2003, 04:33 PM

I dragged a couple of album covers into iTunes. Where are these stored on the harddrive? They are not in the iTunes library...

WinsOBoogi · Apr 28, 2003, 04:36 PM

Any way to apply art to an entire album instead of having to drag/drop for every song?

Much appreciated.

lazydesert · Apr 28, 2003, 04:47 PM

Originally posted by conny:
I dragged a couple of album covers into iTunes. Where are these stored on the harddrive? They are not in the iTunes library...

Has anyone found this yet ?

Originally posted by WinsOBoogi:
Any way to apply art to an entire album instead of having to drag/drop for every song?
Much appreciated.

You dont have to do each individual song, i've found that if you select the entire album, then drag and drop, it updates them all.

blikum · Apr 28, 2003, 04:48 PM

Originally posted by WinsOBoogi:
Any way to apply art to an entire album instead of having to drag/drop for every song?

Much appreciated.

Just Select command (apple) all (a)
then drag your artwork into the well.

Mithras · Apr 28, 2003, 04:49 PM

Originally posted by conny:
I dragged a couple of album covers into iTunes. Where are these stored on the harddrive? They are not in the iTunes library...

Well, assuming it uses the industry standard, the art is actually added into the mp3/aac file, as a tag.

That's how it worked back when I used MusicMatch Jukebox, anyway...

parsec · Apr 28, 2003, 04:53 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
This cant be dragged into iTunes4

Actually, I just found where clutter stores the images it downloads:

~/Library/Images/com.sprote.clutter/CDs

sweet. Just drag the appropriate image file from the finder into the itunes well.

arclonus · Apr 28, 2003, 05:28 PM

I have tried both using the select all command, and clicking on each individual album title when draggong image files into the well. It still only updates the song thats playing. any other ideas on how to add the album cover to multiple songs?

I hate to bring it up.... but Windows media Player can automaticly DL album art for you as soon as it acces the Cd database.

as2 · Apr 28, 2003, 05:30 PM

I've just been draging them from the amazon Safari window, straight into iTunes. Works great.

My only quam is that you have to select every song in an album when you drag it across, or it only gets added to the one song.. Ahh well.

Busy re-ripping all my CD's in AAC format instead of MP3 for now.

Adam

conny · Apr 28, 2003, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by Mithras:
Well, assuming it uses the industry standard, the art is actually added into the mp3/aac file, as a tag.

That's how it worked back when I used MusicMatch Jukebox, anyway...

You mean it would add the image data to the acc file? That would suck. It would increase the size of the song and be stored over and over again for all the songs in the same album. And if you download really high resolution album covers this would really add to the total size. This would also carry over to the iPod which doesn't have any use for the image (yet). I hope it just stores a reference to an image which is stored somewhere on the harddrive.

conny · Apr 28, 2003, 05:43 PM

I made a little test where I copied a song (Acrobat from U2's Acthung Album) to the desktop, I also went to Amazon and dragged the album cover to the desktop. The original mp3 file was 5,408,987 bytes and the cover image was 40,941. I then selected the Acrobat song in iTunes and dragged in the image file. The Acrobat.mp3 file now became 5,447,961 bytes. This indicates that the image is stored with song in the same file. This is something to keep in mind when you add album covers to your songs. I have about 5000 songs, if I would add images to all songs I would increase my library size with 40KBx5000=200MB! It's not that much compared with the total size of the library but still...

cardinale · Apr 28, 2003, 05:51 PM

1. Use clutter to get the album cover.
2. Command-C to copy the image will in Clutter
3. Go to iTunes, select all files in an album.
4. Command-I to get info
5. Select the empty square where album art goes and press COMMAND-V

Just a note...when in visualization mode, the album cover displays next to the song name. Pretty cool.

parsec · Apr 28, 2003, 05:53 PM

Originally posted by arclonus:
I have tried both using the select all command, and clicking on each individual album title when draggong image files into the well. It still only updates the song thats playing. any other ideas on how to add the album cover to multiple songs?

I hate to bring it up.... but Windows media Player can automaticly DL album art for you as soon as it acces the Cd database.

Selecting multiple songs, and then dragging the image to the well definitely updates them all. I get the little dialog box popping up, saying it's processing all the songs.

My exact steps:
1. Select the artist.
2. Select the album.
3. Click in the bottom pane to make sure it is in focus.
4. Hit cmd-a for select all.
5. If the album art well isn't showing, click the icon to make it appear.
6. Drag the image into the well.

As for WMP, I can't stand the way it litters the directories you keep music in with all those damn album art files. Most annoying.
But, automatic download is nice. That's why you should check out Clutter.

I also don't like the fact that each song gets updated with the image, it does make the files larger, and with large libraries it starts to add up. It would be nice if the same picture is used for all the songs on an album, it just kept a pointer to a single copy of the image somewhere.

But I'm putting album art for all my music anyway

sja777 · Apr 28, 2003, 06:31 PM

Why do you need to find a site with album art? Why not just scan your own CD covers?

eevyl · Apr 28, 2003, 06:49 PM

Originally posted by sja777:
Why do you need to find a site with album art? Why not just scan your own CD covers?

Well, you need a scanner for that

And it is easier to download them... for the lazy ones like me

sja777 · Apr 28, 2003, 06:55 PM

Oh! And I assumed you'd pirated the music ...

Shame on me!

tritonus · Apr 28, 2003, 07:01 PM

Originally posted by eevyl:
Well, you need a scanner for that

And it is easier to download them... for the lazy ones like me

Yeah, a scanner and a lot of patience.

::maroma:: · Apr 28, 2003, 07:08 PM

Originally posted by sja777:
Why do you need to find a site with album art? Why not just scan your own CD covers?

Ugh, scanning would take forever! Using an app like Clutter is MUCH faster. This new version of iTunes is going to keep me busy for a long time. Re-ripping all my CDs to AAC and adding album covers! Better put on a pot of coffee.

arclonus · Apr 28, 2003, 07:47 PM

This is insane, Yes, iTunes is light years ahead of Windows Media Player.But with WMP,you don't need to do these manual steps to get the correct album art. It does it automaticly, and its cool....but it doesen't make the song sound better!
I say, until iTunes automaticly retrieves album art, it is a useless feature.

Membranophonist · Apr 28, 2003, 08:27 PM

Although it is not a perfect solution to the art retrieval problem, Sofa can find good quality scans (higher res than those used by WMP9 [AllMusic]) using Amazon's Web Services APIs:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/18580

The interface leaves something to be desired, but it is generally functional. The downloaded image files are place in the album's folder with a filename syntax of: Artist-Album.jpg

fortepianissimo · Apr 28, 2003, 08:35 PM

Originally posted by conny:
I made a little test where I copied a song (Acrobat from U2's Acthung Album) to the desktop, I also went to Amazon and dragged the album cover to the desktop. The original mp3 file was 5,408,987 bytes and the cover image was 40,941. I then selected the Acrobat song in iTunes and dragged in the image file. The Acrobat.mp3 file now became 5,447,961 bytes. This indicates that the image is stored with song in the same file. This is something to keep in mind when you add album covers to your songs. I have about 5000 songs, if I would add images to all songs I would increase my library size with 40KBx5000=200MB! It's not that much compared with the total size of the library but still...

Did anyone try to get the music files with the cover artwork into iPod and see if the pictures are stripped off before the files get sent to iPod?

macgyvr64 · Apr 28, 2003, 10:01 PM

Test Results:

Carl Orff - O Fortuna.mp3

5105046 bytes [Original MP3]
48984 bytes [Artwork]
-----------------------------
5153602 bytes [MP3+Artwork]
(difference of 48556 bytes, meaning 428 bytes were compressed somehow)

Copied to my iPod with iTunes4, it's 5153602 bytes :-(

Pictures are not stripped off.

fortepianissimo · Apr 28, 2003, 10:12 PM

Originally posted by macgyvr64:
Test Results:

Carl Orff - O Fortuna.mp3

5105046 bytes [Original MP3]
48984 bytes [Artwork]
-----------------------------
5153602 bytes [MP3+Artwork]
(difference of 48556 bytes, meaning 428 bytes were compressed somehow)

Copied to my iPod with iTunes4, it's 5153602 bytes :-(

Pictures are not stripped off.

geez you would think they should be smarter than that...

macgyvr64 · Apr 28, 2003, 10:25 PM

I'm sure someone can make a program that, given your root iPod directory, can go through and rip out the pictures from the mp3's. I could do it, but by the time I finish, someone will have done it (better). It's just a matter of finding the data using an ID3 library and deleting it...going to the next Fxx directory...etc

Someone wanna make a cocoa wrapper for a command-line app? *will go for that*

OAW · Apr 28, 2003, 10:30 PM

I really don't understand the point of adding the image to the music file itself. It's not as if the files are portable in the sense that they can be played on another machine or in software other than iTunes (the Music Store files that is), so why add to the filesize? You would think they would simly download one image per album and link to the actual files instead.

OAW

macgyvr64 · Apr 28, 2003, 10:30 PM

Also - how can we rip out music videos from the cache? *wants some*

Edit: After some poking, it seems they're kept in RAM, not disk. When you go to the "page" again, it starts downloading the video again :-/

macgyvr64 · Apr 28, 2003, 10:36 PM

Originally posted by OAW:
I really don't understand the point of adding the image to the music file itself.

Novelty... other players that suport it can read the images, too (AFAIK... It's an ID3 standard. I imagine Apple used it.) Too bad the iPod's not color and could read them..

dettociao · Apr 28, 2003, 10:39 PM

konfabulator? has everyone forgotten about it?? i love it, think it's better than the new iTunes integration

fortepianissimo · Apr 28, 2003, 10:45 PM

Originally posted by macgyvr64:
I'm sure someone can make a program that, given your root iPod directory, can go through and rip out the pictures from the mp3's. I could do it, but by the time I finish, someone will have done it (better). It's just a matter of finding the data using an ID3 library and deleting it...going to the next Fxx directory...etc

Someone wanna make a cocoa wrapper for a command-line app? *will go for that*

Personally I don't own an iPod (yet), but for whoever wants to do that, it should be transparent for an end user (maybe a plug-in)?

bewebste · Apr 28, 2003, 10:49 PM

Originally posted by OAW:
I really don't understand the point of adding the image to the music file itself. It's not as if the files are portable in the sense that they can be played on another machine or in software other than iTunes (the Music Store files that is), so why add to the filesize? You would think they would simly download one image per album and link to the actual files instead.

OAW

You can add the artwork to MP3 files as well as AAC, and you can move the MP3 files as many times as you want. Also, not all AAC files are necessary copy protected. It would probably be just a pain in the butt to handle copy protected AAC files differently from the rest just to save a little disk space.

ccrider · Apr 28, 2003, 10:57 PM

Personally, I'm not going to spend my short life downloading album art for my 1297 albums and taking up precious disk space.

I use Synergy for my album info. It looks up the album cover on amazon and pops it up on command and when the song changes in a cool customizable transparent box that floats above everything else. It also enables hot keys to switch songs as well as a group of menu bar items that do the same.

Well worth the $5.

Oh, and it works with iTunes4- using it now...

lazydesert · Apr 29, 2003, 03:16 AM

Originally posted by arclonus:
I have tried both using the select all command, and clicking on each individual album title when draggong image files into the well. It still only updates the song thats playing. any other ideas on how to add the album cover to multiple songs?

I hate to bring it up.... but Windows media Player can automaticly DL album art for you as soon as it acces the Cd database.

Maybe you need to change the view from currently playing to selected

just click the title where it says now playing (or selected song).

Gee4orce · Apr 29, 2003, 04:22 AM

I used the Amazon tool in Watson to do this - very easy.

I predict about twenty shareware apps to automatically fill album art will appear in the next three days ;-). In fact, I bet this is something you could knock up in AppleScript in a couple of hours. Erm, if you knew how to...

Timo · Apr 29, 2003, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
Try All Music

Drag and drop works great from Safari

Thanks, worked great for me.

Epicurus · Apr 29, 2003, 02:29 PM

Strangly enough, I have found that Walmart.com has the highest quality scans so far.

GORDYmac · Apr 29, 2003, 02:41 PM

I told ya. Who'd a thunk it?

JB72 · Apr 29, 2003, 06:13 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
Try All Music

Drag and drop works great from Safari

Yup

Gene Jockey · Apr 29, 2003, 08:39 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
Try All Music

Drag and drop works great from Safari

Unlike Safari + Amazon's large-size artwork, which results in upside-down album covers.

Please fix that, Apple.

--Josh

jtbowden · Apr 29, 2003, 10:18 PM

Two things. First, how do you get the album art off? I accidently put the wrong image on an album and when I drag and dropped another, it now has BOTH. I just want the one.

Second, the cool thing about the image being connected to the mp3/aac file is ... well, let's just say imagine an iPod with a square color screen...

dettociao · Apr 29, 2003, 10:20 PM

Originally posted by Gene Jockey:
Unlike Safari + Amazon's large-size artwork, which results in upside-down album covers.

Please fix that, Apple.

--Josh

They did. It's fixed in Safari Beta 2.

jtbowden · Apr 29, 2003, 10:35 PM

Two things. First, how do you get the album art off? I accidently put the wrong image on an album and when I drag and dropped another, it now has BOTH. I just want the one.

Answer to my own question: Go to "Get Info" in the File menu. You can select which album pictures to add or delete. Or if you select a whole album and then "Get Info" you can click on the Album Art checkbox and drag and drop an image for all of the songs.