pTunes, Album Art and WindowsMediaPlayer11

[phreakonaleash]

Hi folks,

So here I am again in the apps forum begging for mercy... :)

For awhile I've synced my SD card with Windows Media Player 11 on my laptop so that pTunes Deluxe would earn its rights on my device.

While this has worked splendidly, I've come to experience some issues when trying to sync the album art with each album (since CP's wonderful skin does such a nice job with album art;))

Basically, I can get WMP11 to display the album art but, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to get the funky thing to sync the art to the device.

Don't tell me to switch to iTunes, I'll flame you ;) --> all my music is wma 'cause my father tricked me way back when

Edit -- For what it's worth, I don't use pTunes' MTP sync, I use a nice fast USB SDcard reader :)

Thanks folks,

[Supertrucker]

Ha, I didn't even know PT used album art! Where do you get the art from, or has it been on my cds all along?

[phreakonaleash]

A few of my tracks that friends sent me have the art embedded in the tracks, I just can't get WMP to do it :confused:

[LupeValenz]

Can you use dbPoweramp? If you right click on the file, go to click on edit id3 tag and in there it should give you the option to add album art. Hopefully that should do it, I can't say for sure since all my album art is already on with iTunes. Hope this helps out. I know how you feel though, I hope I don't have to regret staying with apple ipod formats for anything microsoft later on (with the zunes which seems to be nicer every generation).

Edit: Opps, forgot the link to dBpoweramp
(http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm) ^_^/

[Greek]

The pic should be in the same folder and it's name should be "folder.jpg". This way always shows on WMP11 and pTunes for me. Hope it works for you too.

I don't know if it can be "synced" as I copy the folder containing the songs, the m3u and jpg directly to the SD with a SD reader, haven't tried to do it with pTunes though.

Regards,

[_Em]

So it sounds like there are two methods:
1) embed your art in the id3 tag of your song, or
2) copy the entire folder structure to your SD card, including <albumname>/<albumname>.jpg as well as <albumname>/tracks.[wma|mp3|aac|m4a|ogg].

#2 is a great suggestion, as I've started using iTunes' built-in album art manager to cut down on file size bloat caused by embedding artwork in each track. The result is that all the tracks whose artwork iTunes manages fail to show up in pTunes.

There's a bunch of scripts for Mac iTunes that let you export artwork from the iTunes DB format to the Album/album.jpg format -- I might just give this a try.

[Tomohawk]

That's neat! I just tried it!

I found a picture or graphic I wanted to associate with a playlist or folder of songs, and saved it on the same folder at the songs or the playlist (1 playlist per folder) and when I launched the playlist in WMP or WinAmp, I got that picture for the album art.

Next, I'll burn a test MP3 CD to put into the DVD player, and I expect that the same picture will show on the screen as the album art...

|<ool... :D

[Church Punk]

hmmm if you classify your music with folders, you just need to put a jpeg file in the folder to have AA shown in pTunes. It doesnt matter whats the file name!

otherwise, i wonder what happend to the cms' plan to make a tutorial for this topic? :confused:

[Tomohawk]

I was wondering how to do the folders thing with pTunes. If you sync your songs the usual way, as other apps, they ALL end up in the audio folder on the expansion card, and the playlists go to the pTunes folder.

[LittleBuddy]

you can get the album art on Amazon.com, just search the album right click on the album cover and save

[Tomohawk]

I've seen those. The problem many people have is that they have playlists or folders that are theme-oriented or not composed of complete albums, so you have to find an image to suit the songs.

[_Em]

Also, Wal-Mart.com has higher resolution artwork than Amazon.com, if you want it. I wrote an applescript a long while back to dig this out for selected songs in iTunes on the Mac.

[_Em]

Well now... this is neat :)
I just decided to do some experimenting.
Here's what happens: pTunes displays the jpeg in the same folder as the song being played that is closest to the end of the alphabet, except where the track has embedded artwork -- then it displays that artwork.

So, for example, suppose I have the following: in /AUDIO/:
Anthology.jpg
I Dig Rock and Roll Music.wma
I Dig Rock and Roll Music.jpg
I Love to Love.mp3
itunes-logo.jpg
Let It Be.m4a

Now let's say that "I Love to Love.mp3" has embedded artwork.
This is what you'll see:
All songs except "I Love to Love.mp3" will display itunes-logo.jpg. That one song will display the embedded artwork instead.

[edit]
And here's a sample piece of artwork I stuck in my /AUDIO/ folder :)
http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/673/coverviewjx3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I'm thinking of writing a script that takes a cover flow snapshot of the album and surrounding albums for each album and drops that in the appropriate folder in my library :) That way, I'll have some fancy album art to use in pTunes ;)

[LupeValenz]

I think each album needs their own folder with the album art saved in that folder. So say if you have Paul Oakenfold cd Bunka. Here is an example of the folder settings
My Music/Paul Oakenfold/Bunka
track1.mp3
track2.mp3
track3.mp3
coverart

I believe that is what they mean with the jpeg in the folder.

[_Em]

Indeed. This is exactly how it works.

[Tomohawk]

I tried to copy over a folder of songs, and I keep getting a picture with one of those funny encrypted filenames. I think it's a hidden file? It doesn't show up in a folder directory.

They have name likes AlbumArtSmall.jpg

How do you get rid of those unwanted pictures?

thx

[phreakonaleash]

Looks like my notifications crapped out here :( I wasn't informed of any action here. :) I thought you folks'd given up on me ;)

So I just tied the folder.jpg thinger.... Splendid! I got the feeling from reading pTunes docs that it only plays nice with embedded album art

[OSWorker]

....yeah -- I thought I'd pipe in and say that people are getting sick of the same old rock/hip-hop/r&b bullsh*t..... and there is just this big upsurge from a new style coming out of Europe -- it's pretty easy to find, just put 'euro club hits' into itunes or check this link:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?albumTerm=Euro+Club+Hits+Vol+

[phreakonaleash]

In retrospect I found that you can embed jpgs in the advanced tag editor (right click file in library and goto advanced tag editor)