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Pushing Album art to MP3 files

S

sJv

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 11, 2007
169
0
Sierra Foothills, CA
Hello,

I went and ripped my entire CD collection (500+ CD's) BEFORE iTunes supported album art. Now that I have a snazzy iPhone, I'd like all my music to have artwork. THe latest iTunes does a pretty decent job of finding artwork, but it misses about 1/4 of my collection. I have to manually add these in (usually using artwork from Amazon.com). Oh well, it's just my time! However, I only want to do this ONCE!

My problem is that iTunes, for some goofy reason, keeps the artwork in it's local library, and does NOT update the files themselves with it. This is a problem as I have a number of computers that access these files, which will not see the album artwork that I have spent LOTS of time getting right!

Is there an Applescript, or similar, for OS/X that will push the album artwork from the iTunes library to the ID3 fields of the MP3's themselves?

Thanks!

-steve
 
T

TheSpecialist

macrumors 6502
Jun 11, 2007
475
0
The Netherlands, Europe
In my situation, JPEG's I get from the web get added into the file like a ID3 tag. If I get them from the store they just downloaded to the comp but doesnt matter whenever I readd them I just CTRL+A and add the album art again in 3 seconds (iTunes account). Easy
 
swiftaw

swiftaw

macrumors 603
Jan 31, 2005
6,328
25
Omaha, NE, USA
I find that art I add manually gets stored as part of the file, but artwork that iTunes gets on its own is stored only in iTunes.
 
S

sJv

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 11, 2007
169
0
Sierra Foothills, CA
I"m not sure I understand what you mean by add them again. It appears that album art I add manually using "get info" will get written to the ID3 fields, but artwork I automatically get does not. Is there a trick to get iTunes to write this to the ID3 fields?

Thanks!

-steve

TheSpecialist said:
In my situation, JPEG's I get from the web get added into the file like a ID3 tag. If I get them from the store they just downloaded to the comp but doesnt matter whenever I readd them I just CTRL+A and add the album art again in 3 seconds (iTunes account). Easy
Click to expand...
 
epochblue

epochblue

macrumors 68000
Aug 12, 2005
1,671
0
Nashville, TN
sJv said:
I"m not sure I understand what you mean by add them again. It appears that album art I add manually using "get info" will get written to the ID3 fields, but artwork I automatically get does not. Is there a trick to get iTunes to write this to the ID3 fields?
Click to expand...

There's no trick to getting iTunes to do this automatically. iTunes will only automatically get album artwork and store it in a separate folder. If you want the artwork as part of the metadata (ID3 tags), you'll have to add it yourself or use a third-party program similar to the one I suggested above. Like I said, I don't know that Art Collector will do that exactly, but it'll at least automate the finding of the artwork if nothing else.
 
zero2dash

zero2dash

macrumors 6502a
Jul 6, 2006
846
0
Fenton, MO
In my experience they only way to get the artwork stored into the ID tags is to manually do so.

-If iTunes finds the artwork on it's own, to add it to the ID tag, 'get info' of one of the songs on the album, go to the artwork tab, select the album cover, copy it (command-c in OSX, control-c in Windows), then highlight all the songs on that album, 'get info', click in the blank artwork field, then paste (command-v or control-v) and hit ok. It will then embed the artwork in the ID tag.

-If iTunes doesn't find the artwork and you add it yourself, it's a little easier...just find the relevant artwork (I usually get a 300x300 pixel or larger file; I check Wikipedia first, then I do a Google image search based on album name), copy the picture in the browser (or download the jpeg if you'd like, although it's an unnecessary step) by right clicking (or control clicking if you have a 1 button mouse), select copy image, then 'get info' on all the songs on the album and paste in the blank artwork field like in the above case...which will then embed the artwork you found in the ID tag.

A little lengthy process...took me awhile with my 16,000 song collection. ;) But it worked nonetheless.
 
S

sJv

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 11, 2007
169
0
Sierra Foothills, CA
Thanks. I'll check it out.

-steve

epochblue said:
There's no trick to getting iTunes to do this automatically. iTunes will only automatically get album artwork and store it in a separate folder. If you want the artwork as part of the metadata (ID3 tags), you'll have to add it yourself or use a third-party program similar to the one I suggested above. Like I said, I don't know that Art Collector will do that exactly, but it'll at least automate the finding of the artwork if nothing else.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. This is a job that computers are actually good at. This is begging for an Applescript add-on to iTunes!

For manual addition, I find that I can select the relevant set of song, select get info, then move over to my browser, select the picture, and drag and drop it into blank picture square in the get info pane. I suppose it could be worse... :)

Thanks for the help!

-steve

zero2dash said:
In my experience they only way to get the artwork stored into the ID tags is to manually do so.

-If iTunes finds the artwork on it's own, to add it to the ID tag, 'get info' of one of the songs on the album, go to the artwork tab, select the album cover, copy it (command-c in OSX, control-c in Windows), then highlight all the songs on that album, 'get info', click in the blank artwork field, then paste (command-v or control-v) and hit ok. It will then embed the artwork in the ID tag.

-If iTunes doesn't find the artwork and you add it yourself, it's a little easier...just find the relevant artwork (I usually get a 300x300 pixel or larger file; I check Wikipedia first, then I do a Google image search based on album name), copy the picture in the browser (or download the jpeg if you'd like, although it's an unnecessary step) by right clicking (or control clicking if you have a 1 button mouse), select copy image, then 'get info' on all the songs on the album and paste in the blank artwork field like in the above case...which will then embed the artwork you found in the ID tag.

A little lengthy process...took me awhile with my 16,000 song collection. ;) But it worked nonetheless.
Click to expand...
 
P

polycat33

macrumors 6502
Jul 1, 2007
437
1
Alexandria, VA
I apologize in advance for being a total noob, but I've never done anything with scripts before. I was hoping it would be really easy, I downloaded it and double clicked the dmg, it said checking and then done and it didn't mount. Was it supposed to mount or did it already do its thing and now the art is embedded?
 
L

luxemboro

macrumors newbie
Oct 13, 2011
3
0
an automated solution (windows only)

just would like to point out that there is a highly automated little utility (windows, alas) that helped me a lot in a situation like the topicstarter described. it is called Taghycardia. the program speedily scans your mp3 albums, discovering art for them both online and locally, and embedding into tracks. this all happens almost transparently provided that the albums are properly tagged (and when they are not, the program helps with that, too).
 
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