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theBigD23

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 13, 2008
609
115
I shared a song from one Mac to another. Just one. The album art did not copy over. Is this normal?
 

themoonisdown09

macrumors 601
Nov 19, 2007
4,319
18
Georgia, USA
If you use iTunes to get your album artwork for you, the artwork is not actually stored inside the audio file. If you want your artwork to be embedded in the file, right click the file in iTunes, select "Get Info", and then drop the artwork into the artwork box.

If you have your artwork embedded in the audio file and it's still not showing up, then I'm not sure what the issue is.
 

Scott-n-Houston

macrumors 65816
Apr 27, 2008
1,021
333
Houston (duh)
If you use iTunes to get your album artwork for you, the artwork is not actually stored inside the audio file. If you want your artwork to be embedded in the file, right click the file in iTunes, select "Get Info", and then drop the artwork into the artwork box.

If you have your artwork embedded in the audio file and it's still not showing up, then I'm not sure what the issue is.

I can tell you the issue. :) I discovered this problem even pre iTunes 9. If I copied the files on a USB drive, I'd still have this problem.

The reason I found for the problem was the album art picture size. I'm not sure where the cut off is, but at some point, if the album art pic is too large, it will not copy with the file. I ended up going through a painful task of manually copying the artwork separately, and adding to the files in iTunes again on the other computer. It sucked, but that's the only solution I found.
 

themoonisdown09

macrumors 601
Nov 19, 2007
4,319
18
Georgia, USA
I can tell you the issue. :) I discovered this problem even pre iTunes 9. If I copied the files on a USB drive, I'd still have this problem.

The reason I found for the problem was the album art picture size. I'm not sure where the cut off is, but at some point, if the album art pic is too large, it will not copy with the file. I ended up going through a painful task of manually copying the artwork separately, and adding to the files in iTunes again on the other computer. It sucked, but that's the only solution I found.

I have almost all my album artwork at 600x600 and about 84 KB in size. I get my album artwork from Album Art Exchange and then re-save them using Preview to get to a smaller size.
 

pooryou

macrumors 65816
Sep 28, 2007
1,329
63
NorCal
84k is too compressed for a 600x600 image, I would shoot for around twice that size or even a bit more as a general rule. IMHO of course.
 

Avenger

macrumors 6502a
Sep 20, 2007
824
186
Seems to happen to me also on some lossless albums. Not consistent but when it happens it was with lossless files.
 

iMerlin

macrumors 6502a
May 13, 2008
643
0
Mine is doing the same thing. I kinda have a weird setup though. I use my MBP to control iTunes, but I dont like having the external HDD hooked up all the time so I copied the entire library to the drive hanging off my PC and then shared it to my MBP. When Im hooked up to the external drive on my MBP, ALL my music has artwork, now that Im sharing it, only about half does.

Is there anything I can do to get the artwork off my external HDD onto this new one without having to do everyone of them into Get Info? Thats a PITA since Ive already done it once before.
 

kayno

macrumors regular
Aug 19, 2008
196
1
Phelps Land
Mine is doing the same thing. I kinda have a weird setup though. I use my MBP to control iTunes, but I dont like having the external HDD hooked up all the time so I copied the entire library to the drive hanging off my PC and then shared it to my MBP. When Im hooked up to the external drive on my MBP, ALL my music has artwork, now that Im sharing it, only about half does.

Is there anything I can do to get the artwork off my external HDD onto this new one without having to do everyone of them into Get Info? Thats a PITA since Ive already done it once before.

You know if your songs are labeled correctly.. you could easily highlight dem all and right click and say get album art.. and it will download them from Itunes automatically.. if this doesnt work.. highlight individual albums and try.. another way to know if your albums are labelled correctly is to click the arrow next to album name in your list and if Itunes finds the album chances are it will also find the artwork. if your album name doesn't match rename it to match how it appears in itunes store then try again. Sometime its easier to work around the problem than actulally find a solution.. I'm big on organization and aesthetics and I ensure that every single song has album art, So I feel your pain.. Hope this helps..
 

iMerlin

macrumors 6502a
May 13, 2008
643
0
You know if your songs are labeled correctly.. you could easily highlight dem all and right click and say get album art.. and it will download them from Itunes automatically.. if this doesnt work.. highlight individual albums and try.. another way to know if your albums are labelled correctly is to click the arrow next to album name in your list and if Itunes finds the album chances are it will also find the artwork. if your album name doesn't match rename it to match how it appears in itunes store then try again. Sometime its easier to work around the problem than actulally find a solution.. I'm big on organization and aesthetics and I ensure that every single song has album art, So I feel your pain.. Hope this helps..

Yeah, it helps. But for some reason iTunes isnt finding a lot of my artwork. Ive spent many hours searching for myself for the albums iTunes cant find. I never thought of trying to renaming it to match the store though. Some of it isnt even in the store. But good suggestion nevertheless. Thanks kayno.
 

kayno

macrumors regular
Aug 19, 2008
196
1
Phelps Land
Yeah, it helps. But for some reason iTunes isnt finding a lot of my artwork. Ive spent many hours searching for myself for the albums iTunes cant find. I never thought of trying to renaming it to match the store though. Some of it isnt even in the store. But good suggestion nevertheless. Thanks kayno.

If you have to do it manually, go to amazon.com and search for the album. Usually you could get album art from them easily.
 

jbickers

macrumors newbie
Oct 6, 2009
2
0
Commonly this is because the artwork actually doesn't exist for that specific file.


Easy way to ensure the same artwork is applied to a selection of songs is to take the entire album and select it then do a get info (on mac its command + i), it will warn you that your gonna edit for multiple songs, tell it ok (this just means everything is applied, so be wary of song names, but if its an album then artwork and album names should be cool). put the new artwork in this info window and tell it OK.
 
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