iTunes artwork in MP (1 Viewer)

[adlucas]

Hey all,

Just started using Mediaportal after sorting out my entire iTunes library, converting it to *.m4a files of a smaller size. My problem is now with artwork not displaying in Mediaportal (I am guessing due to iTunes not saving the artwork to files, rather referencing it to its own DB)

any way to fix this? Or am i stuck with no artwork?

Cheers

 

[hwahrmann]

unless you find a way to extract the artwork from iTunes you're stuck without it.
we don't read the iTunes DB.

 

[jonaskp]

This is kind of an old thread, But I randomly stumbled upon it, realising I had the solution to the original Question - And if anyone else searches for this, they might as well have an answer, so here we go:

Itunes saves the artwork in a seperate database (as Hwahrmann said) which cannot be read by MP. It is not very clear how to extract the pictures, but searching google, I found a way to do it:

1: Select a track.
2: Download the album art in iTunes
3: In the bottom left corner there is a box that shows artwork (if you do not see this box, you need to click on one of the buttons in this corner, to toggle it on). Make sure the box shows the artwork of the currently selected track, not the currently playing track.
4: Right click on the artwork in this box and select "Copy".
5: Right click on the artwork again, and click "Paste".
Now your artwork is embedded in the tag of the file, meaning MP is able to read it.

Now this is a manual approach, but it is the only way I found to extract the AlbumArt from iTunes. I use it because I find that iTunes has very nice artwork, of alot of albums, compared to searching the web.

 

[adam_purkis]

hey everyone, i'm having a problem getting my artwork from itunes into media portal aswell..

i have the get artwork from mp3 tag option switched on. but it barely finds any of them, only about 5 albums out of my hundreds, i really don't understand, because i have the artwork working in itunes, so don't know why it isnt picking it up in mediaportal?

thanks if anybody can help!

 

[jonaskp]

Are you sure that the files that are missing artwork has the artwork embedded in the MP3-tag? As we said, just because iTunes has artwork doesn't mean it is accesible for other players, because iTunes saves the artwork in its own database, rather than in the actual MP3-file.

Make sure that the artwork is embedded in the file. If you still have trouble, then I'm out of ideas, since I don't use music at all in MP.

 

[hwahrmann]

hey everyone, i'm having a problem getting my artwork from itunes into media portal aswell..

i have the get artwork from mp3 tag option switched on. but it barely finds any of them, only about 5 albums out of my hundreds, i really don't understand, because i have the artwork working in itunes, so don't know why it isnt picking it up in mediaportal?

thanks if anybody can help!

You answered yourself. using mp3tag, you only find artwork for 5 of your albums.
this means, you don't have them in yor files as pictures.
so mediaportal need to use the internet as well for retrieving covers.
And we use similar servers as mp3tag does.

 

[adam_purkis]

ive attached a screenshot of what i get when opening mp3tag, it appears the artwork is there? but i can confirm it does not appear inside mediaportal? or does it still not mean the image is in the mp3 even if it appears there in mp3tag?

thanks again!

 

[hwahrmann]

i'm not using mp3tag myself, but iirc it gives you the ability to store cover art to files.
if you upload such a file to a free file hoster, i'll look into it.
please PM me the link to it . don't post it here in the forum

 

[revs]

As mentioned - iTunes now stores artwork seperately to the mp3s. It used to embed the artwork, but now it doesn't - the reason for this was because the iTunes store has high quality artwork that was 0.5MB in size - so you can imagine, people dont want each of their MP3s increased in size by 0.5MB!!

Anyway, on the Mac there is a utility that will embed all artwork directly into the MP3s. Basically the same thing is needed, but for windows. I did a search but did not find anything free

 

[jonaskp]

As mentioned - iTunes now stores artwork seperately to the mp3s. It used to embed the artwork, but now it doesn't - the reason for this was because the iTunes store has high quality artwork that was 0.5MB in size - so you can imagine, people dont want each of their MP3s increased in size by 0.5MB!!

Anyway, on the Mac there is a utility that will embed all artwork directly into the MP3s. Basically the same thing is needed, but for windows. I did a search but did not find anything free

The only way I have found, so far, is the one I describe some posts earlier. But I am not even sure this is working with the newest updates of iTunes. It's not so often I do it, but last time I think I had some trouble doing it.