Album art missing

[williambloke]

I got the S545. Before I go and rip all my Cds I need some advice. I tested it on two Cds using Windows Media Player. Then dragged the files to the player. The album art showed in Windows Media player but not on the Walkman.

I am creating Mp3 files going forward. On my other Walkman it used Atrac and were almost half the size and great quality. I set to rip at 128 kbps.

I don't want to be stuck in a propritary situation like I did with Atrac/ OMG files.

So how can I fix the album art problem? Is it worth it since that will take up alot of space with many Cds I have?

[CrowdAds]

[Marvin the Martian]

Don't rip with WMP.....you can do much better. Exact Audio Copy, or CDex will do a better job. Search around the forum here, it's been discussed.

Album art, whether you want to worry about it or not is up to you. Embedding it with MP3Tag is a popular method, as you'll see elsewhere in the forum. I've recently come to the conclusion that I don't really care if it is there or not, as along as the info is there....name of song/album/artist, etc.

But everyone is different, so if you wish to take the time to make it work, more power to you.

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by williambloke

I got the S545. Before I go and rip all my Cds I need some advice. I tested it on two Cds using Windows Media Player. Then dragged the files to the player. The album art showed in Windows Media player but not on the Walkman.

I am creating Mp3 files going forward. On my other Walkman it used Atrac and were almost half the size and great quality. I set to rip at 128 kbps.

I don't want to be stuck in a propritary situation like I did with Atrac/ OMG files.

So how can I fix the album art problem? Is it worth it since that will take up alot of space with many Cds I have?

I've had a great deal of success with album art using both MP3Tag and MediaMonkey. I've found that album art will reliably display on my player as long as I embed the album art into each song's ID3 tag and it is no larger than 240 pixels by 240 pixels.

As far as whether or not album art is worth the effort, it is a matter of personal preference. I prefer to have album art for my files because I dislike the blank space that appears on my player when I don't have album art for a song. For me, the space the album art takes up isn't much of a concern since I only worry about album art for the tracks that are loaded on my player.

[MattMc3]

I'll second MP3Tag for album art. It has worked perfectly for me on all of my MP3's and FLAC files. All of my album art are 320x320 JPG's, approximately 50kb each. For ripping I've used Audiograbber and Foobar2000 (both with the LAME encoder) and haven't had any problems with either. Initially I ripped all my CD's at 128kbps but later ended up re-ripping them all at VBR Level 2 (approximately 192kbps average).

Matt

[lestatar]

Originally Posted by MattMc3

I'll second MP3Tag for album art. It has worked perfectly for me on all of my MP3's and FLAC files. All of my album art are 320x320 JPG's, approximately 50kb each. For ripping I've used Audiograbber and Foobar2000 (both with the LAME encoder) and haven't had any problems with either. Initially I ripped all my CD's at 128kbps but later ended up re-ripping them all at VBR Level 2 (approximately 192kbps average).

Matt

third vote for MP3Tag to embed album art.

FYI, E345 has no problem with jpgs up to 500x500 if you wish...

[lestatar]

Originally Posted by williambloke

I got the S545. Before I go and rip all my Cds I need some advice. I tested it on two Cds using Windows Media Player. Then dragged the files to the player. The album art showed in Windows Media player but not on the Walkman.

I am creating Mp3 files going forward. On my other Walkman it used Atrac and were almost half the size and great quality. I set to rip at 128 kbps.

I don't want to be stuck in a propritary situation like I did with Atrac/ OMG files.

So how can I fix the album art problem? Is it worth it since that will take up alot of space with many Cds I have?

so glad you are getting away from ATRAC. Hope we were some help to you here!

other folks have already mentioned the highly regarded ExactAudioCopy and Foobar to rip your CDs. I also suggest the friendlier [but still excellent ] cdEX...

Just be sure whatever you use that the mp3 encoder is LAME and try to get latest version 3.98.

AVOID WindowsMediaPlayer at all costs if possible!


good luck and cheers,
-lestatar

[williambloke]

I downloaded Exact Audio Copy and its to complicated for my needs. I need to figure how to transfer the album art to the Walkman. There were 5 tracks already loaded on it and I don't see where the images are stored. If anyone has used Windows Media Player and successfully transferred the album art please tell me how to do it.

[thenails]

Originally Posted by williambloke

I got the S545. Before I go and rip all my Cds I need some advice. I tested it on two Cds using Windows Media Player. Then dragged the files to the player. The album art showed in Windows Media player but not on the Walkman.

I am creating Mp3 files going forward. On my other Walkman it used Atrac and were almost half the size and great quality. I set to rip at 128 kbps.

I don't want to be stuck in a propritary situation like I did with Atrac/ OMG files.

So how can I fix the album art problem? Is it worth it since that will take up alot of space with many Cds I have?

I have been using Media Monkey Gold to sync with a Sony NWZ639F with no problems with album Art.I find the program excellent for updating the mp3 ID tags with easy album art updates.

[dmnoland]

Originally Posted by williambloke

I downloaded Exact Audio Copy and its to complicated for my needs. I need to figure how to transfer the album art to the Walkman. There were 5 tracks already loaded on it and I don't see where the images are stored. If anyone has used Windows Media Player and successfully transferred the album art please tell me how to do it.

I too found EAC very complicated. When you consider the listening environment of my players (jobsites and autos) coupled with the fact that most of my files are a 128 kbps in order to squeeze in more songs, WMP is not all bad. However I just recently switched from IE to Firefox and I'm very impressed. Very powerful, fast and light on system resources. I myself would like to find the same easy to use, similar (familiar), fast and light application to replace WMP just as FF is to IE. I really don't want to download every music app and experiment but WMP is a resource hog and it likes to lock up a lot.
As to your question, I don't drag & drop. I use WMP and sync everything and album art always shows up. But sometimes when I rip with WMP the artwork doesn't. In those cases I go to albumart.org and 99% of the time I can find the missing art, copy & paste.

[lestatar]

Originally Posted by williambloke

I downloaded Exact Audio Copy and its to complicated for my needs. I need to figure how to transfer the album art to the Walkman. There were 5 tracks already loaded on it and I don't see where the images are stored. If anyone has used Windows Media Player and successfully transferred the album art please tell me how to do it.

- TO RIP/ENCODE TO MP3:
Try cdEX as I mentioned previously...

Go here:
http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Nearly as good as ExactAudioCopy [EAC] but much more user friendly. Be sure to install latest LAME mp3 binaries in the correct cdEX directory location...Read the simple instructions.

Search Google for current LAME binaries...should be 3.98r2 I believe...


- TO EMBED ALBUM ART TO YOUR MP3 ID3Tags:
As I and others have suggested, FORGET about Windows Media Player if at all possible. This is the best advice you will get...

Again, in order of preference:

mp3Tag:
http://mp3tag.de/en/index.html

OR

MediaMonkey [free version is all you really need]:

http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/

OR

Winamp [again, free version is all you need but its ability to embed artwork is not as user friendly as MediaMonkey's]:

http://www.winamp.com/


-lestatar

[lestatar]

Originally Posted by dmnoland

I too found EAC very complicated. When you consider the listening environment of my players (jobsites and autos) coupled with the fact that most of my files are a 128 kbps in order to squeeze in more songs, WMP is not all bad. However I just recently switched from IE to Firefox and I'm very impressed. Very powerful, fast and light on system resources. I myself would like to find the same easy to use, similar (familiar), fast and light application to replace WMP just as FF is to IE. I really don't want to download every music app and experiment but WMP is a resource hog and it likes to lock up a lot.
As to your question, I don't drag & drop. I use WMP and sync everything and album art always shows up. But sometimes when I rip with WMP the artwork doesn't. In those cases I go to albumart.org and 99% of the time I can find the missing art, copy & paste.

dmnoland:

Please see my previous post/response to williamBloke...

cheers!
-lestatar

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by dmnoland

I too found EAC very complicated. When you consider the listening environment of my players (jobsites and autos) coupled with the fact that most of my files are a 128 kbps in order to squeeze in more songs, WMP is not all bad. However I just recently switched from IE to Firefox and I'm very impressed. Very powerful, fast and light on system resources. I myself would like to find the same easy to use, similar (familiar), fast and light application to replace WMP just as FF is to IE. I really don't want to download every music app and experiment but WMP is a resource hog and it likes to lock up a lot.
As to your question, I don't drag & drop. I use WMP and sync everything and album art always shows up. But sometimes when I rip with WMP the artwork doesn't. In those cases I go to albumart.org and 99% of the time I can find the missing art, copy & paste.

If you are looking for a replacement for Windows Media Player (WMP), one to consider is MediaMonkey (MM). I've been using it for over a year and have been extremely pleased with it. For me, it has been a vast improvement over WMP.

One of the main reasons I sought out MM is due to my frustration with album art in WMP. With MM, you can choose how you want your album art stored (in the tag, in the folder, or both) and it displays reliably in MM and on my player. Also, a quick check of memory usage shows that it uses less memory than Firefox does.

Among MM's best features is the control it allows you over your music. With the paid version you can have it automatically arrange your music collection exactly the way that you want. This makes it extremely easy to add music to the library, all I do is drop the song into the folder where I keep my music. When I start MM it automatically scans my entire library and it will automatically move the song into the correct location in my music library and add it to MM (if MM is running it will do this as soon as you drop the song into your music library folder).

I hope that helps.

[Marvin the Martian]

+1 on MM vs. WMP.

[williambloke]

I got it fixed by using the sync feature in Windows Media Player instead of dragging the files. I was even able to replace album art that was missing.

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by williambloke

I got it fixed by using the sync feature in Windows Media Player instead of dragging the files. I was even able to replace album art that was missing.

A factor in this could be that Windows Media Player (WMP) stores the album art as two hidden-system files in the same folder where the album is stored (I don't know if it stores the album art in the song's ID3 tag). It is possible that WMP only transmits the album art to your player when you sync it.

That's the advantage of embedding the album art into the song's ID3 tag: It will travel with the song whether you sync it to your player or drag-and-drop the file on your player. I've done this with MediaMonkey, Content Transfer, and drag-and-drop via Windows Explorer and the album art shows up in all cases.