Album Art and ID3 Tags

[BobbyRS]

Not sure if this has been said before, but it worked everytime for me

Yes it has; plenty in this thread. However....

And for some reason, MediaMonkey sucks when it comes to putting music on my Zen.

I don't use MM, but, yes. This seems to be a popular statement around here lately.

[WeenieDog]

Yes it has; plenty in this thread.

Lol. But I do have one question. In MediaMonkey, you can put multiple pictures into the ID3 tag for album art. How does that work in the ZEN? Most of the time album art I embedded in MM dosen't work anyway, but just, per se.

[BobbyRS]

But I do have one question. In MediaMonkey, you can put multiple pictures into the ID3 tag for album art. How does that work in the ZEN?

The Zen will only show the one that is embedded into the ID3 tag.

[WeenieDog]

Except I just added a picture to an album I have in MM, the album already had 1 pic stored in the tag. I added the second one, and it says it is also added to tag when I hover my mouse over it for a few seconds. I took some pics but my computer sucks and it won't upload. But they both are. So what would happen?

[werezenwolf]

I think that only the "Front Cover" item works for album art display and that is an ID3 tag. There seem to be numerous places to put album art, but only front cover has worked for me (media monkey)

[WeenieDog]

They are both set as the front cover

[BobbyRS]

I believe only the front cover will be shown.

[OmegaWolf747]

All I can add is that when I first got my Creative Zen 8 GB, I just kept all my MP3s in the My Music folder. When I did this, the player would keep mangling the ID3 tags, chopping off the singer's name, song title, album, etc. After I reorganized all my MP3s into separate folders by artist and album, it's been better. I guess maybe all those files in one folder overwhelmed the player!

[BobbyRS]

All I can add is that when I first got my Creative Zen 8 GB, I just kept all my MP3s in the My Music folder. When I did this, the player would keep mangling the ID3 tags, chopping off the singer's name, song title, album, etc.

Maybe a MTP or syncing software issue more so than the Zen... It won't matter once they are on the Zen since the Zen is set to read only the ID3 tags.

After I reorganized all my MP3s into separate folders by artist and album, it's been better.

On the Zen or on the computer?

I guess maybe all those files in one folder overwhelmed the player!

After transferring a bunch of files, it may be a good idea to boot the Zen into Recovery Mode and do a Cleanup. This will correct any database impurities that are or may be causing problems with files. See the Zen FAQ for more information.

[Yossi]

I have mp3 and wma files in the same album on my Zen. However, when going to "Music/Albums" and selecting my album, the files are sorted first by the mp3 extension and then by the wma extension. All the songs are not sorted alphabetically. How can I get all of the files, regardless of mp3 or wma, to display alphabetically regardless of the extension?

[ZenChick]

It sounds like all of your files are lacking ID3 tags. These tags are used by the player for proper sorting and cross-sorting by different criteria; however, if your songs are untagged, there's not much for the player to work with other than filename. I've never noticed this sort of thing before, but I don't find it all that odd that the Zen would sort by filetype, then filename.

Get your tags sorted out, then resync. This should solve your problems.

[BobbyRS]

I believe the Zen will first organize by Track listings under Album view when you have the Track part of the tag filled in. When there is no tag info for the Track entry, the Zen will organize the tracks in alphabetical order. Under All Tracks, it will list them in alphabetical order regardless of Track info.

EDIT: Thread merged with main ID3 Tag thread.

[kinsey]

Has anyone else experienced problems with album art on Creative Zen (mine's 16 gb)? There are 4 or 5 album artworks that take over most of my MP3s. Like an inappropriate Daddy Yankee album art displayed during a Glenn Miller song or something. I think the songs with no album compound the problem because it doesn't know which album cover to choose. Is there a way of turning off the album art feature or an efficient way to clean it up?

Thanks

[CJ2150]

I have album art problems... I use creative media explorer and drag the album art to the albums i want covers for which is fine. The problem is where I want an album not to have album art. Like you say i'll often get a random piece of album art for these albums. I found a solution is to delete the .alb file for the albums you don't want art for from the music directory on your player using windows explorer. However i'm not sure whether this will have any side effects although i haven't noticed any so far...

[BobbyRS]

Thread merged with existing Album Art thread.

[bodotdot]

All of the songs I've ripped onto my Zen from CD's (through Creative Media Explorer) do not have any album art. How do I upload the songs from my Zen onto my computer? WMP11 easily transfers music TO the Zen by syncing...how do I get it to grab music FROM the Zen? Then, once that's done, will a simple re-sync automatically slap on the album art, or do I need to go song-by-song on my computer and add the album art ID3 tag to each individual song before re-syncing?

[BobbyRS]

All of the songs I've ripped onto my Zen from CD's (through Creative Media Explorer) do not have any album art.

They won't until you add album art to each song yourself.

How do I upload the songs from my Zen onto my computer?

Use Windows Explorer, navigate to the music folder and cut and paste all of the files back to your computer.

Then, once that's done, will a simple re-sync automatically slap on the album art, or do I need to go song-by-song on my computer and add the album art ID3 tag to each individual song before re-syncing?

If you already have the tracks on your computer, just add the album art to their tags and then resync. The changes should propagate to the Zen. If they don't and you have the files on your computer already, boot the Zen into Recovery Mode and do a Format to erase all of the files on it, then do a sync of the files again with the newly added album art.

[Freaker]

Hi,

Got the player - liking it but for some reason loads of my music files copied across with the album art of one artist, even for files not of that artist. I don't have much album art but even so i don't want it to go across all tracks

Any ideas how to remove this? Can't seem to find the info anywhere. Thanks.

[BobbyRS]

Hello Freaker. Welcome.

MP3Tag is your friend here. Download and install it. Then follow these directions for removing album art from your files.

Edit: Moved to main tagging/album art thread.

[Freaker]

Hi, Thanks.
I checked the tags, some have album art, the majority do not.
However, what Im finding is that the player is defaulting one of the album covers for all songs without album art in the tag. Is there a setting somewhere to undo this - its like it could be a default??

Hi,

Not sure where my reply got sent to, but wanted to say I tried that but found most files didnt have art embedded, so it seems as if the player has picked up some art and applied it to multiple tracks which don't match the art (almost as if its choosing a pic as default). Any ideas? Thanks.