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ATV2 - iTunes Artwork Screensaver (workaround)

I

Icculus

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 2, 2007
380
62
Frisco, TX
Okay I had enough of Flowers/Animals and wanted my iTunes Artwork back but as we all know, that is not an option. So if you are like me and love to have your iTunes Artwork "floating" on the ATV2 (or whichever view you prefer) follow these instructions:

* First you will need to go to http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=savealbumart and download dougscripts for export album art. If you have never installed a doug script, they come with really easy instructions and if you have problems just hit me back in this thread.

* Once you have that go into iTunes and create a smart playlist with 2 rules, 'album artwork is true' and 'media kind is music'. Make sure you have it set to match ALL rules. This just eliminates all the albums that don't have artwork and doesn't do movies/tv shows. Not 100% necessary just speeds it up with large libraries.

* Now click on the script icon in iTunes and click "Export Album Artwork". I choose .jpg as the file format and then specify a folder otherwise it will dump it in the folder for the album, not really what we need. I leave all the other options alone.

* Once done open up iPhoto and create a new library called iTunes Artwork and drag all the files from the folder you chose to save the artwork to into iTunes Artwork inside iPhoto.

* Back in iTunes click on Advanced > Choose Photos To Share and scroll down to iTunes Artwork (or whatever it may be called) and check it and hit apply.

* Go to ATV2 > Settings > Screen Saver (sorry if its not exact not in front of ATV2) and Photos > iTunes > iTunes Artwork.

Let me know if you have any problems and Enjoy!

I also created a youtube video of showing it in action, view it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzQZtQXaWnk

Jeff
 
F

fpnc

macrumors 68000
Oct 30, 2002
1,979
134
San Diego, CA
Thanks for the tip. The loss of the music artwork from my Apple TV2 has been one of the things I really miss over my original Apple TV.
 
I

Icculus

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 2, 2007
380
62
Frisco, TX
fpnc said:
Thanks for the tip. The loss of the music artwork from my Apple TV2 has been one of the things I really miss over my original Apple TV.
Click to expand...

No worries man...I spent some time trying to find a solution and when that didn't materialize I just did my own. I never had an ATV1 and only saw it at my parents so I can't remember how the screen saver worked but this is a pretty neat way of doing it. Its a headache yes...and if you already signed up for iTunes Match get ready for a lot of artwork work ahead of you.
 
F

fpnc

macrumors 68000
Oct 30, 2002
1,979
134
San Diego, CA
I just completed this using your directions and I was pleased to see that once you finish the setup the Apple TV2 will cache the artwork so that you don't even have to leave your Mac running to use the screen saver (I don't know how much it caches, but it seems to be a pretty good number of album covers).

Thus, since I have iCloud enabled on my Apple TV and also joined the iTunes Match program I can now stream all of my iTunes music content from the cloud and I don't even need to leave iTunes running on my Mac.

Of course, I still have to deal with the download/streaming caps from my ISP, but I get 150GB/month which works out to about 1300 hours of streaming audio per month (at 256Kbps, and that's even more hours than there are in a full month so no problem with that).

Okay, let's say I stream 8 hours of audio per day using iCloud and that works out to 27GB in one month. Thus, I'd have about 120GB remaining per month and then if I watch/stream one iTunes standard definition movie per day (at 1.7GB/movie) that would leave me with just over 2GB/day for my regular internet use (browsing, downloading, etc.).

Seems workable, but a little tight given that my video streaming to my Apple TV is probably already close to 2 hours per day (i.e. one iTunes movie equivalent, or several hours of Netflix or video podcasts) but then I don't listen to music at home for anything near to 8 hours per day.

In any case, it seems that ISP data caps are going to put an end to HD video delivery over the internet. With the caps that my ISP has I could only watch about 2 hours of HD video per day (and that would leave me nothing for music and my other internet data). So, realistically only about one hour of HD video per day if I want to retain some room for all of my other internet activities.
 
I

IdiddidI

macrumors member
Jan 22, 2008
51
1
This is a nice workaround. Is there a way to auto-update the folder of artwork when new music is added? Or do you need to run the script on your whole library periodically?
 
I

Icculus

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 2, 2007
380
62
Frisco, TX
IdiddidI said:
This is a nice workaround. Is there a way to auto-update the folder of artwork when new music is added? Or do you need to run the script on your whole library periodically?
Click to expand...

Sorry for the late reply. At this point I have not found a way to update the artwork folder easily. I just run the script and copy it back into iPhoto. I need to figure out a way to auto-update...cause it will get annoying to keep doing this.

What I have been doing as I add a new album as soon as I am done getting the artwork and tagging them to the actual files, etc. I will instantly open iPhoto and drag that into my iTunes Artwork folder...I know this is not ideal, and hopefully I will come up with something cool soon.

Thanks for reading my post.

----------
fpnc said:
I just completed this using your directions and I was pleased to see that once you finish the setup the Apple TV2 will cache the artwork so that you don't even have to leave your Mac running to use the screen saver (I don't know how much it caches, but it seems to be a pretty good number of album covers).

Thus, since I have iCloud enabled on my Apple TV and also joined the iTunes Match program I can now stream all of my iTunes music content from the cloud and I don't even need to leave iTunes running on my Mac.

Of course, I still have to deal with the download/streaming caps from my ISP, but I get 150GB/month which works out to about 1300 hours of streaming audio per month (at 256Kbps, and that's even more hours than there are in a full month so no problem with that).

Okay, let's say I stream 8 hours of audio per day using iCloud and that works out to 27GB in one month. Thus, I'd have about 120GB remaining per month and then if I watch/stream one iTunes standard definition movie per day (at 1.7GB/movie) that would leave me with just over 2GB/day for my regular internet use (browsing, downloading, etc.).

Seems workable, but a little tight given that my video streaming to my Apple TV is probably already close to 2 hours per day (i.e. one iTunes movie equivalent, or several hours of Netflix or video podcasts) but then I don't listen to music at home for anything near to 8 hours per day.

In any case, it seems that ISP data caps are going to put an end to HD video delivery over the internet. With the caps that my ISP has I could only watch about 2 hours of HD video per day (and that would leave me nothing for music and my other internet data). So, realistically only about one hour of HD video per day if I want to retain some room for all of my other internet activities.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about your data caps, I am afraid that is unfortunately coming to us all soon enough.

Glad you got everything working. Sometimes my directions can be a little confusing as I am usually writing it the second I finish figuring it out. Unfortunately there is no way to auto-update the folder (see my post below). I am going to try to find some time and figure that one out, but it may be kind of hard. I dunno.
 
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