Album Art and ID3 Tags

[MarcelsWayOfLife]

i use Media Monkey instead of WMP , it is ways better , and freeware
u can tag ur titles with it so u have the covers on ur zen

[CrowdAds]

[slvrsol]

Haven't received my zen yet.. but what do people recommend if your embedded album art is usually larger than 200x200? Need the higher quality for other applications. Will WMP or Winamp modify a new copy for the zen for you?

[BobbyRS]

Originally Posted by slvrsol

Haven't received my zen yet.. but what do people recommend if your embedded album art is usually larger than 200x200? Need the higher quality for other applications. Will WMP or Winamp modify a new copy for the zen for you?

The album art should be resized to 200x200 in order to be the most reliable for transferring to the Zen. However, WMP should have you covered. WMP can use two different album art photos. The one embedded into the ID3 tag (which you can use as 200x200) for the Zen and the other .jpg file it stores for its own database (which you can use as the larger size one).

[Mich321]

I agree with Marcel - Media Monkey is way better than WMP. I had lots of issues with album art and MM fixed them all.

[BobbyRS]

I'm not too familiar with MM, but can it store two different album arts for the same audio file like WMP?

[Mich321]

Originally Posted by BobbyRS

I'm not too familiar with MM, but can it store two different album arts for the same audio file like WMP?

Yes, it can/does! I've seen three different album arts for one album in one file!

[BobbyRS]

I'm sorry.... I meant to say, does it support both album art in both locations like WMP: one embedded into the ID3 tag and then one as a separate associated file?

[Poofychip]

Originally Posted by whatahw

I have recently invested in a Zen 8GB and everything is working great except I can't get my head around one thing - displaying album art using WMP11.

I have synced some albums using WMP11. They all have album art covers displayed in WMP but not on the Zen. I don't know why this is

However, I then tried using Zen Media Explorer ("Add Media" button) and as well as transferring all the music files it also copied the Folder.jpg, AlbumArtSmall.jpg etc. of the associated album into folders (titled with the artist name) in the main "Pictures" folder on the Zen. For example, when I browse "Photos" on the Zen it might look like;
Pictures\Daft Punk\Homework\AlbumArtSmall.jpg

I would use the Zen Media Explorer method only that I like the sync option in WMP11 where you can chose maximum bitrate and also it would be nice not to have all the album art mixed with my own pictures on the Zen.

The music files are .mp3 and the album art was originally acquired by WMP automatically during ripping. But I'm not sure if those files are embedded or not. How do I find out if they are? Do I have to use software like MP3Tag or MediaMonkey or can I get WMP to do it?

Thanks anyway.

i use itunes to do all my album art and it workers put all your music into itunes and it will look rubbish but if you search for in google itunes art importer it automatically get all the album art for itunes then it embeds the image to the music then you just put the music on your zen and the album art should be there!!! its alot quicker and easier than the other ways

[caelum7]

hey everyone, this is my first post on this forum. i got a zen 16g last week and wrestled for days with WMP11 to get the album art working. previously I used mp3Tag to embed 500x500 art into all my tags and a little over half of them showed up correctly in WMP11. for any file that didn't have art embedded, WMP11 would arbitrarily take art from some other album and associate it; it was extremely frustrating. after reading this thread i tried out MediaMonkey and it works great! not only did all my album art show up correctly, i was able to import rating info from both WMP11 and iTunes. MediaMonkey also duplicates the functionality of MP3Tag by searching the internet for tag data and album art, and will automatically save it in both the tag and the folder. in addition, when syncing with the zen, it will automatically generate and transfer over a 200x200 image onto the player so i can keep my files embedded with 500x500 art in case i want to use them in other programs. also when i browse "pictures" on my zen it is not cluttered with album art, only actual pictures that i sent over. my version (the latest one) also supports two-way syncing of play counts and ratings as well. it definitely transformed my experience with the zen from frustrating to superior (relative to the itunes/ipod ease of use). anyways, just wanted to highly recommend MediaMonkey!

[BobbyRS]

in addition, when syncing with the zen, it will automatically generate and transfer over a 200x200 image onto the player so i can keep my files embedded with 500x500 art in case i want to use them in other programs.

Good to know. I was wondering about this with MM. Welcome to ABI caelum7!

[MarcelsWayOfLife]

Originally Posted by BobbyRS

I'm sorry.... I meant to say, does it support both album art in both locations like WMP: one embedded into the ID3 tag and then one as a separate associated file?

yes

[bobcat56458]

I used MediaMonkey to embed the album art in my Mp3's, most of them have artwork that is larger than 200x200. I then used the ZEN Media Explorer "Add Media" button to transfer those songs to the ZEN. The album art looks correct when playing the song on the ZEN even though the artwork is as large as 500x500 or larger. I thought maybe the ZEN Media Explorer had resized the artwork, but when I copyed a song back to my hard drive from the ZEN and opened it using MP3Tag it showed the artwork as the original 500x500. So it seems to me that there is no 200x200 limitation with the ZEN. I will add though that I transfered 2518 songs to the ZEN and it took 17 hours to do so. This may have been because my songs are not the usual 15 songs in an album with all songs in that album having the same album art, but rather I have all my songs Tagged in the "Album" field such as "You Shook Me All Night Long - AC DC", with each song having its own different album artwork. This is because I do not have albums on the ZEN, but instead have 2518 hit singles. By doing it this way each song has its own individual album artwork that I hand selected using the "Auto-Tag from Web" feature in MediaMonkey, and if I did not find artwork I liked, I searched the web and found an album cover, or old 45 record sleeve cover, and added it again using MediaMonkey. Now I don't recommend this method for most users of the ZEN because it took months to get everything just as I wanted it, but for the hard core ZEN users this method will give you the most accurate album artwork for collections based on hit song singles.

[bluelavender]

Hi All,

i'm new in this forum, so i apologize first for the basic question.

i have searched throughout the forum and found that there are 2 answers, one said that album art for songs inside SD Card cannot be displayed. While there is one other answers that said that he / she (?) can display songs' album art for songs inside SD Card after formatting it into aac format.

i have tried converting my song to AAC format and then copy it into SD Card , but it still cannot display album art. Is there any special steps ? or is it truly confirmed that ZEN cannot display album art for songs inside SD Card ?

BTW, i copy the song into sd card by taking out the SD Card first and then copy it the usual way . i'm not sure if this can be problem.

Thank you for any info given..

Regards

BL

[BobbyRS]

The Zen displays album art embedded into the ID3 tag. Since the Zen doesn't read the metadata (ID3 Tag) from files on the SD Card, it won't display album art from them.

See my sig for the Zen FAQ.

[Ender15]

Hello all. Just joined, and I'm sorry my first post ended up being a question. >_<

Also sorry to be necrobumping this, but this seems to be a good thread for all things Zen and Album Art, so I thought it would be nice to keep it all in one place.

I think I get everything said so far but I just want to make sure.

Is there no way to add album art to files ALREADY IN THE PLAYER when you are using Vista?

From what this thread said, and several tries, this are things I picked up.

1. In Vista, there is no "album view," so there is no way to drag and drop the album art to the album folder in Zen Media Explorer. Is there any way to add this functionality back into Vista (Third party software or something)?

2. In MediaMonkey, you seem to be able to add album art to files in the player, but they instantly disappear. Is this protection in the player or is there a script or setting that will fix this issue?

3. In Windows Media Player, I went to the Sync tab (since you can't see the files in the player in Library view), shut off sync (as my music files are on an external that I don't usually plug in), and viewed an individual album. I tried dragging the picture onto the album art pic and it does not let me. Can WMP add album art to a file already in the Zen or can you view the Zen in library view WITHOUT synching?

4. Haven't tried MP3Tag or Ultratagger or anything of that nature, will these work on the files in the player in Vista?

Tl;dr: What I'm asking is, is there any way to add album art to the files ALREADY in the device, in Vista x86, without synching of any kind?

[ZenChick]

Can album art be added to music files located on the player? I'm afraid not. There is no way to directly modify ID3 tags within the player. The player's database has to be modified, which requires special software capable of this. Most MTP-aware sync managers can do this during a sync cycle, but it requires the files be present and accessible on your computer, as the modifications are made to the computer-located file and then synced.

[BobbyRS]

1. Yeah, no album view that I can find. Not sure what is going on there. Don't know of a way of having it added/shown either.

3. 4. Like ZenChick mentioned... I believe you have to work on the files stored on the computer and then either re-sync or manually copy the file(s) over with the changes.

[Ender15]

*sigh* I thought so.

It seems I'm gonna have to copy the songs out of my Zen into a folder/subfolder structure, album art it, and then put them back.

Or find a way to make the "album view" appear in the Vista version of Media Organizer.

Probably the latter, no room on this laptop drive. ;_;

Thanks for the replies.

[Lifter59]

Originally Posted by Ender15

*sigh* I thought so.

It seems I'm gonna have to copy the songs out of my Zen into a folder/subfolder structure, album art it, and then put them back.

Or find a way to make the "album view" appear in the Vista version of Media Organizer.

Probably the latter, no room on this laptop drive. ;_;

Thanks for the replies.

If you run any sort of "sync" action, the music files should be replicated to the desktop/laptop. When you add the album images that you want and save them, it will change the file data for that song. The next time you sync, the date difference should be detected and the updated art moved back to the Zen. Since the images are rather small, the amout of space consumed should be nominal.

[BobbyRS]

Ok, I believe the no "album Art" view in Vista/Zen Media Explorer is more related to WMP. The album view was a feature used by WMP10. Upgrading to WMP11 removes this feature. I have no idea why Microsoft would do this. Since Vista comes with WMP11 and not WMP10, there is no "Ablum View".