Why not more album art in tags?
Bartenhagen
probably about 300. I am suprised that none, not one, of the files
that I have downloaded have cover art in the tags. I have been using
Tag and Rename to download this information and update my tags. Can
someone tell me if this is a mistake. Is there a reason not to have
art. My main reason for doing this is that I want to have this
information as I think it will be very useful in the future and I want
to do it while I have a collection that is a managable size. I am
sure if there are not already there will be music servers that will
integrate with a home theater system that will be able to play files
and display associtaed cover art on the TV as well as many other
applications. Can the experts answer a few questions for me. Why
aren't more people using art and am I going to be sorry I am adding it
to my current tags? Also by changing my tags am I in anyway affecting
the quality of the mp3 file? Can I change these as often as I want
without negative effects?
CQ
junk...@blackcows.com says...
> Why
> aren't more people using art and am I going to be sorry I am adding it
> to my current tags? Also by changing my tags am I in anyway affecting
> the quality of the mp3 file? Can I change these as often as I want
> without negative effects?
>
I think most people don't add cover art because they use mp3 files to
play music and trade music. Adding jpegs to the file obviously makes it
bigger, while not adding anything musically. (note also that some
programs that "add" art to the tag actually just add a pointer to the art
on your hard drive so if you download them you aren't going to see the
art that has been "added")
That said, the mp3s on your system are yours and you are certainly free
to add whatever you want to them or change them in any way. Some people
intensely dislike id3v2 tags (that is where the cover art info is going)
but they can always delete them if they happen to get one of yours and
they shouldn't be bitching about a free lunch anyway. The only way I
would think it may affect the quality of the file is the very small
chance that the file will become corrupted during the re-writing
procedure that has to go on when you change an id3v2 tag in any way...the
entire file has to be "moved back" to accomodate the new info which goes
in the front of the file. As long as you don't have too much other stuff
going on when you work with those files and keep things clean and
defragged pretty regularly anyway that should be a very remote
possibility.
> I am
> sure if there are not already there will be music servers that will
> integrate with a home theater system that will be able to play files
> and display associtaed cover art on the TV as well as many other
> applications
>
As far as this part goes you can already accomplish this with a few
different applications and you are right, I believe, it is only going to
get easier to do and more widely accepted, if not expected.
--
CQ
Loco Jones
ahead of the "how can we get the most enjoyment from our mp3s?" curve.
I've always been a big fan of album art (giving away my early fascination
with vinyl LPs) and still begrudge the lack of same when it came to early
CDs. It's an added enhancement to my enjoyment of music I'd taken for
granted, and I miss it when it comes to MP3s.
I'm sure the promised future world of "convergence" will happily fulfill
your vision. There was a time, not long ago, I was thrilled to find out I
could connect my stereo and computer and make a Cassette Tape of shared
mp3s. Imagine my delight when I learned it's possible to burn a "mixed-use"
CDR with music, video, text liner notes and cover art to enjoy on my
computer (or someone elses).
Keeping pace with the leaps and bounds of technology is arduous exercise.
Doing the best I can... say, is the juice bar licensed?
;-{)
- Loco -
(Now Playing: Symmetry <12 Inch Version> - Spoons)
"Bartenhagen" <junk...@blackcows.com> wrote in message
news:7080eb59.0204...@posting.google.com...
Robert Surtees
years have included album art via MusicMatch in all the tracks -- you're
right, it's rare one you download has the art included in the file. That
said, I've recently removed all the art from inside the files and into their
respective folders. Why? Well, not because it makes the file bigger (what's
a few hundred K out of several meg), not because it rubs me the wrong way to
have the same data duplicated in every file of an album (it does), it's
because it turns using the Microsoft audio decoder into a game of music
roulette.
I could never find a decent player for use with my TV / receiver / computer
combination. Something that used huge fonts, displayed the album art, and
worked well with a remote control (yeah, I know, MuzicMan can do this...).
Anyway, I ended up using this as an excuse to pick up a shiny new copy of C#
and went after creating my own. Having art in the file screws up the higher
level calls to the MS decoder (the renderFile call). Many shareware
applications suffer from this as lots just use some form of this call.
Don't know why, and not really too interested as it was more an exercise in
seeing what MS was unleashing on us unsuspecting masses. So, that's perhaps
a reason not to put your art in files.
Having fiddled with a few art taggers I have noticed that several don't
properly protect the art using the V2 unsync flag thingy. This prevents old
non-V2 decoders from puking on a jpg thinking it's the start of a track.
Not a big deal with most newer apps but just one more thing to worry about.
It's also possible that hardware players may not be so keen on a 300K header
although my old Expanium and AIWA car player seem to manage. At any rate,
if you're trying to stuff your collection on a 32meg flash card the few
extra K per track does make a difference.
At the end of the day, it's made me rethink the whole V1 V2 deal. I've
always thought V2 was the way to go as it's pretty flexible and gets you
long names (yeah, I know, V1.2 does this), but the lads at V2.inc seem to
change the spec on a whim and while they talk the talk of not breaking old
apps, they don't really walk the walk when it comes to new versions. V2.4
headers cause some taggers to fail for example. Could be the taggers fault,
of course. I believe the ideal tag is simply a unique identifier for the
track which can then be used to look up art, lyrics, the bands horoscope,
etc from some database be it on your PC or on some internet server. The V1
tag pretty much provides this.
A final bit of trivia. If you're using XP and you place the art in a file
named folder.jpg you can see the art in the parent directory if you choose
the thumbnail view. So if you have your library arranged
"artist/album/track" you can see all the album artwork when you're in the
artist directory. MS is supposed to come out with their Freestyle interface
Real Soon which will no doubt make use of this featurette. WMP will also
see and display the file although as hard as I've tried, I just can't get
WMP to work for me but that's another story.
"Bartenhagen" <junk...@blackcows.com> wrote in message
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