Album Art Image Size in Media Player 10

[jyafink]

How do you increase or decrease the size of the album art image that shows in
the now playing screen of media player 10?

[Mike Williams]

jyafink wrote:
> How do you increase or decrease the size of the album art image that shows in
> the now playing screen of media player 10?

You can't zoom the image either way in v10. In the v11 beta, they're all
squashed down to within 200x200 pixels.

Depending on what you're trying to achieve (in v10), varying the size of
embedded album art may do what you want.

[jyafink]

Yes, that is what I need to do – change the size of the embedded album art.
How do you do that? I tried adding an image to the pictures section in the
advanced tag editor, but no matter how big or small the image that I add is,
it never changes in the now playing screen. It is the images that media
player automatically access from somewhere that come up different sizes.
Where are those images coming from? Some are very tiny, others take up the
whole screen. Why is that and can those images be resized somehow?

[Mike Williams]

I don't know how big the image you are seeing is. Possibly you're seeing
the external album-art files that WMP associates with the album, rather
than the embedded files.

[toro]

Had the same problem in WMP10. You have to delete the old picture first -
even if it is the same file you add once more. Otherwise you will just get a
(long) list of pictures - of which only the first - and always the same - is
used. In the advanced tag editor you cannot use multi-selection, because then
you will not see the old pictures.

[jyafink]

Thank you both. Mike - Is there any way to change the size of the external
album-art files that WMP associates with the album? Toro – how do I delete
the old pictures when I don’t know where these images are coming from? I
searched my hard drive high and low and there’s nothing. Is WMP pulling them
from somewhere on the internet every time I play a song?

[Mike Williams]

jyafink wrote:
> Thank you both. Mike - Is there any way to change the size of the external
> album-art files that WMP associates with the album? Toro – how do I delete
> the old pictures when I don’t know where these images are coming from? I
> searched my hard drive high and low and there’s nothing. Is WMP pulling them
> from somewhere on the internet every time I play a song?

The images are downloaded from WMP's online database. They are
technically part of the "metadata" that gets added to media files, but
they don't play by the same rules as the text data.

The files are stored as hidden system files in the same folder as the
tracks are stored. So, you have to enable viewing those files in order
to work with them (Explorer > Folder Options). Unless you set your
search query to include such files then you won't see them in your
search results.

Once you find them, you can theoretically replace them with the correct
art (using the same file names), but because they're system files ( they
weren't in v9) then WMP will just overwrite them with what it believes
to be correct at the first chance it gets.

The Album Art Fixer program (a free download) is worth trying to replace
them.

[John Lockwood]

On 8/6/06 23:08, in article
579F9583-2805-4CD5...@microsoft.com, "jyafink"
<jya...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> Thank you both. Mike - Is there any way to change the size of the external
> album-art files that WMP associates with the album?

Yes, I did this myself. I was not happy with the 'small' images that WMP
calls 'large' that it finds for itself (they are only a mere 200x200
pixels). So I found on various sites (e.g. Google Images) bigger images. I
find that images of between 500 & 600 pixels (square) are the ideal size to
'fill' the 'Now Playing' window in Windows Media Player.

[Note: this is another example of Microsoft missing the obvious. They DO
automatically scale up visualisations, they also allow you to have video
scaled up but they do NOT scale up album art. Even Microsoft's own Media
Center automatically scales the images.]

Now, getting back to how to do this.

1. Find the image (e.g. In Google Images), make sure it is a JPEG (GIF, PNG,
TIFF, etc. should not be used).
2. Right Click the image and choose "Save Picture As..."
3. When the save dialog box appears, browse to the directory the particular
album is in.
4. In this directory you should find existing files like "Folder.jpg" and
"AlbumArt_{XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}_Large.jpg" and
"AlbumArt_{XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}_Small.jpg". Note: these may
be invisible so you may first need to set things so you can see invisible
files. The "Folder.jpg" and the 'large' file will be identical.
5. If you save the larger image (e.g. from Google Images) over the existing
"Folder.jpg" and 'large' file (by clicking on their name in the list and
then the save button) you will replace them. 'Now playing' will then use
this new larger file (since it has the exact same name as in the WMP
database for that album).

Cheers, John Lockwood

[jyafink]

That is what I thought all along. I think the underlying problem is that I
can’t find these files. Nero Burning Rom shows that they exist in the same
folder as the music like you said, but even though I have show hidden files
selected and the same for searching, they are nowhere to be found. Are they
a DOS file or something that won’t show up in windows?