Album Art and ID3 Tags

[Jobbie]

Hi, this is my first post.
Regarding Album Art - I'm planning to get a 32G Zen. Just to be clear - I'm using Windows XP and I plan to synch my WMA files using WMP11. Will there be an issue with Album Art?

[ZenChick]

There shouldn't be, no.

[Michel]

Originally Posted by Valdr

Additionally I think it's useless to drop album arts larger than 200x200, the largest view you'll get on ZEN is 3/4 of the height of the display and that's around 180px.

Is there a limitation of the image- / filesize?

My covers are all 300x300 & I have problems to get them all displayed, too.
Even I sync with WMP11....


Michel

[Valdr]

Can't you resize them? you really won't see 300x300 cover on 240 px high display. 200x200 is probably the max size.

[Michel]

Thats true, 300x300 doesn't make much sense on the 'smaller' Zen display.

But I have them displayed on my WMP11 as well while listening to music and like the size then. I don't want to have different cover sizes depending on where I just play my music...

Shouldn't they just be scaled to the proper display size on the Zen?


Michel

[Valdr]

I think they should, dunno about WMP11, but I am sure Zen Media Explorer resizes album art. If there are problems try using Media Explorer: browse to music, and the album of your choice, change view to Album. You can drag'n'drop file with album art on the grey cover in the upper part.

[Michel]

Ok, i'll try that

Thanks a lot for the help

[miklosb]

Hey all.
My usual routine is after I create my album directory, place the mp3's, and after I modified the properties etc...
I usually got to music.yahoo or wherever, and save the album art to the directory, name it folder.jpg. I then modify the image to 135 x 135 pixels...
Then drag the entire folder to my zen via it's explorer.

Hope this helps....

[wuhan_clan]

I mainly browse my music by Artist on my Zen. However, any artist names with a "the" in front (ie The Beatles) will get sorted in with all artists beginning with T. So now I have a huge list of The ...........
Is there anyway that the Zen can ignore the prefix "The" when sorting artist names?
Otherwise I will need to retag all my music and take out all the "the"s.

[BobbyRS]

As far as I know, retagging them is what is needed. However, this should be easy and not time consuming at all using a mass tagger like MP3Tag:

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

[Qboi]

retagging something already on the zen is a pain.

[BobbyRS]

Originally Posted by Qboi

retagging something already on the zen is a pain.

I usually delete the files I need retagged, retag them, then re-sync. All is usually good.

[ZenChick]

If you used WMP11 to manage your syncing, you could just change to tags on the PC-side library, then sync. The changes would sync to your Zen automatically.

[wuhan_clan]

Retagging was not too big of an issue. I did it all in MediaMonkey and my Zen syncs perfectly, album art and all.
Yeah, it looks like the current Zen firmware is not equipped to ignore common prefixes in artist names like "the" or "a".
I used to use an iPod and iTunes allowed you to edit the display name and sort name as two separate variables. It's small things like this that you are almost impossible to discover until you actually use the devices. However, I would still take a Zen and several other players over any iPod.
Maybe future firmware updates will allow for more advanced management over music files.

(Although Mediamonkey doesn't have a built-in ignore "the" prefix feature, Winamp does. But Winamp doesn't sync my Zen and it doesn't embed album art to mp3 file)

[BobbyRS]

Originally Posted by wuhan_clan

It's small things like this that you are almost impossible to discover until you actually use the devices.

So true. Welcom to ABI wuhan_clan!

[Southwest]

Originally Posted by wuhan_clan

(Although Mediamonkey doesn't have a built-in ignore "the" prefix feature, Winamp does. But Winamp doesn't sync my Zen and it doesn't embed album art to mp3 file)

Even if Winamp did sync your Zen (which I do believe is possible-- it works for me), would it matter whether or not it had an "ignore 'the'" function? By my reckoning, that's a firmware thing on the device side, dealing with how the player reads the tags and orders them.

This actually bothers me a bit-- I do so hope that Creative will address this in a future firmware update. When arranging my CDs, I wouldn't put the Beatles next to They Might Be Giants. It's standard English convention, as far as I know, to ignore articles when ordering things-- at least "the" and "a". It's certainly possible, as Apple has demonstrated, and it makes sense, so I really hope Creative fixes this.

[xikk]

Hey there, may I ask whether this albumart dragndrop in media explorer can be used in Vista? how does the album art drag n drop procedure look like?

[Valdr]

Browse to Music from Zen Media Explorer then choose View -> Album from menu. The rest is obvious.

[xikk]

If I sound noob here my apologies, I dont know how to view albums from the Music list... here's an attached screenshot of what I have, hell messy I know... thanks for any help given...

[ZenChick]

I'm not at all sure what you're trying to accomplish; I'm assuming you want to see album art displayed within Vista's Explorer windows? If so, just click the "Views" button a couple of times until the larger icons show up.