iPod Why the overly complex method of storing album art?

[zephead]

Would anyone happen to know why Apple felt the need to make the underlying method of storing album artwork immensely complex? I'm pretty sure the MP3 ID3 tags are able to store artwork in themselves, or am I wrong? Anyone who's looked through the Album Artwork folder in the ~/Music/iTunes (or My Documents\My Music\iTunes) folder should know what I'm talking about. Not to be ranting or complaning or anything, I'm just curious.

 

[decksnap]

I assume it needs to be that way for the purposes of coverflow only.

 

[balamw]

Yeah, basically there are two different ways iTunes handles Album Art: In a separate database for downloaded artwork which is not in the ID3 tags, or in s a database which caches the artwork embedded in the ID3 tags. Both databases are there so Coverflow doesn't need to read the files every single time, and the new way can also save you disc space since it only needs to save one copy of the artwork for a whole album...

B

 

[Verschoren]

but the negative result is that album art doesn't move with the mp3 file anymore when you copy a specific file to another device cause it isn't embedded in the tags anymore

 

[balamw]

but the negative result is that album art doesn't move with the mp3 file anymore when you copy a specific file to another device cause it isn't embedded in the tags anymore

Nothing is stopping you from doing a simple copy & paste of the downloaded artwork to embed it into the MP3 files. Yes, it's an extra step, but it's not all or nothing.

B