Cover/Album Art on E345

[sadi85]

Hi, I'm new to the forum. I was searching for guidance on cover art for my Sony NWZ-E345. I found many suggestions regarding format of cover art, file size etc, though I really found myself a bit lost in this jungle of information. So I decided to test things for myself.

The E345 supports cover art for mp3/ wma/ aac (.m4a) files.
For mp3 files: Cover art file needs to be in jpeg format. Size really isn't fixed. I tried a 1200*1200 file of 1016 KB, it worked. I also had some files/ tracks with 765 KB or 462 KB cover arts, they also worked fine. Though I personally prefer cover arts to be in the 300*300 to 600*600 with file size of less than 100 KB (because many mp3 players might not support larger files as cover art), much larger files also seem to be working fine. I did not find any tracks with jpeg cover arts not be working (in my small collection of about 2300+ tracks).
For wma (.wma) files: File type of the cover art needs to be jpeg. Some tracks with 500*500 of up to 70 KB worked fine, but some smaller ones with even 200*200 of 10-20 KB didn't work. Not really sure why.
For aac (.m4a) files: Same here like wma. File type of the cover art needs to be jpeg. Some tracks with 500*500 of up to 82 KB worked fine, but some smaller ones with even 300*300 of 23-47 KB didn't work. Not really sure why.

Can anyone tell me what are the requirements for cover/ album art file size (both in xy*xy and in KB) for wma(.wma) and aac(.m4a) are? I use MP3Tag for editing tags. Also, I like to edit the tags manually by myself, not use some other software like Media Monkey etc.

Thanks in advance for any help.

*All the file sizes are that of files I tested. Your mileage may vary.

[skip252]

I don't have a definitive guide on what works but I use this general guideline and have 100% success displaying album art regardless of the codec of the files

• Baseline, not progressive, .jpgs.
• Jpg file size no larger than 85 kb
• Jpg dimensions no larger than 500x500
• Embed artwork with either foobar2000 or Mp3tag
• Make sure that no other embedded, hidden or system files might exist to interfere with the display of the AA I embed

The only part of that I'm sure has to be followed 100% is the use of baseline, not progressive, jpg files for embedding.

I found that out when I tried embedding the files WMP had fetched for some of the old .wma files I had. Some were baseline and others were progressive and none of the progressive worked. Searching here I found a post by dfkt about using baseline jpgs and used FastStone Image Viewer to batch convert the jpgs to the correct format. After that they all appeared once they were embedded.

As your research has showed you there's times when larger files might work. I find files no larger than the sizes I listed sufficient for the desktop and the player so I go with what works. Sometimes I go a lot smaller. About 300x300 at around kb is average. Album art is a quick identifier for me, not something I spend much time looking at. Having studio quality AA just isn't one of my concerns.

I used Mp3tag to strip all the previously embedded AA before I embedded the new images. I also took the time to reveal all the hidden and system files that WMP left behind from the way it tags. After I deleted all of those and embedded all baseline files my AA always shows.

[sadi85]

Thank you so much skip252 for the guidance. I might have missed the point of baseline & progressive jpgs earlier.

[skip252]

TBH I don't know where that type of info is listed for you to have missed it. The Sony manual says

You can set cover art using Windows Media Player 11, or another transfer capable software for setting cover art. For details on operation, refer to the Help or maker of the software. Cover art may not be displayed, depending on the cover art file format.

That type of incomplete information is why we get together and share the details of what's actually is needed to make things work. Considering the level of research you did before you looked for more help it's possible you'll find something else that might help the next person. If you do be sure to share with us, OK?

[sadi85]

I read about the album art- jpg thing, possibly in some other forum. May be that was a cell phone related forum or something like that. Anyway, I'll keep the forum posted if I discover/ know something new.