Is there no app that can properly find album art?

[13Gigatons]

Seems only Windows Media Player does it right (when it wants too).

1. Hidden
2. System
3. small and large
4. Folder
5. Custom?

Still Looking....

Update:

List of Software:

1. Automatic Cover Tool (Uses Discogs, simplistic but may work if your tags are correct)

2. Cover Fetcher

3. Creevity Mp3 Cover Downloader (slow, only does mp3's embedded art)

4. Album Cover Art Downloader

5. Album Art Downloader XUI (best for downloading folder art, needs some patience and has a learning curve)

6. media art aggregator


Sites:

1. http://www.albumartexchange.com

2. http://www.discogs.com/

3. http://albumart.org/


------------

 

[evident]

Media money

 

[TangoJuliet]

I saw an ad for this

http://www.tuneupmedia.com

I've never used it nor do I know anyone that has. It also looks like you have to use iTunes as well.

 

[nageov3t]

Media money

Media Monkey does a pretty good job of it too

had to tweak the default settings a bit to get the album art to stick with I sync to my cellphone.

 

[notposting]

I saw an ad for this

http://www.tuneupmedia.com

I've never used it nor do I know anyone that has. It also looks like you have to use iTunes as well.

I've been using Tuneup, (you can pair it with WMP or iTunes) but not so much for the album art.

Unfortunately, the best approach I have found now goes like this:

(assuming old/improperly ripped in regards to metadata, file names, etc)
Tuneup (in iTunes)
mp3Tag, use metadata to fix file names, paste in new cover art from albumart.org (or if their art isn't high-res, the links to Amazon they have often supply customer uploaded scans).
mp3Tag, Tweak any remaining metadata.
Upload to WHS.
Watch as Media Center interprets everything all wrong on the HTPC.
Swear.
Go back into mp3Tag, start fixing album artist, disc number, etc etc.
Watch Media Center ignore me.
Swear.
Eventually get everything fixed...except for wherever the hell MC is hiding that damn Beatles album cover (not in Zune cache, WMP cache, pictures, MC cache, not in the server album folder, die die dieeeee)...

rebuild WMP database on HTPC.

Upload new music next day and start the crying cycle again.

:ninja: :awe: :hmm: :|

 

[evident]

Media Monkey does a pretty good job of it too

had to tweak the default settings a bit to get the album art to stick with I sync to my cellphone.

silly cell phone auto correct.

mm really does a great job of renaming and tagging every file with album art.

 

[pmv]

I have no suggestions, but just want to agree that most packages don't seem to be very good at this (I couldn't get Media Monkey to work at all when I tried it ages ago, then it wouldn't uninstall properly either so I gave up on it without getting that far).

iTunes is rubbish at it, seems to me it can't cope with anything that isn't a mainstream US release. WMP's a lot better but still not great.

End up having to do it "by hand" for most cases, getting it off Amazon or somewhere.

Annoyed that I've ended up being sucked into iTunes's trap (that is, once all my stuff is organised with it I'm feeling a bit "locked-in" to it, even though I never actually buy anything from iTunes.)

 

[Anubis]

i did 20k+ songs manually this summer with mp3 tag because no program worked well enough, most dont work, those they sometimes work often pull in the wrong album cover or mess up the tags

 

[WelshBloke]

Does wmp still put the artwork in a separate folder rather than embedding it in the file?

 

[Markbnj]

As far as I know there is no standard, open repository of album cover art, so it's surprising these programs do as well as they do. Not long ago I worked on the back-end for a digital music streaming system that had over 8TB of tunes and ingested an additional 60-80GB per day from major publishers. One of the data items we received was cover art, and across publishers none of it was in consistent formats or sizes. We had to convert/resize everything. There were also a lot of records from the older portions of the catalogs that either had incorrect art, or no art at all.

 

[13Gigatons]

Does wmp still put the artwork in a separate folder rather than embedding it in the file?

No, same folder, hidden & system attributes. Also they are embedded as well.

 

[Ronstang]

Online album art is hit or miss. I am picky. I don't like the album art most software finds for you. I scan the CD covers I own physically and then go into Photoshop and make the proper corrections and re-size to 500x500 for HiRes and then to 280x280 in high quality to put in the files.

If I don't have the physical CD I then scour the web for the best large high resolution file to start with and go into Photoshop and do the same as above.

I once spent almost a year in the evenings doing this and making sure all the tags were correct....but then again I have over 6000 CDs.

 

[Eos]

i did 20k+ songs manually this summer with mp3 tag because no program worked well enough, most dont work, those they sometimes work often pull in the wrong album cover or mess up the tags

This.

Take your time. Process thirty albums per day until you're done. Use http://www.albumartexchange.com for HQ art.

My tagging and art are a source of pride.

I sort artist by last name, first name if it's Bryan Adams or similar. He belongs in the As. Band names sort by their letter.
I sort multiple albums from the same artist by year of release. Duh.
I use ACϞDC for AC/DC to get around no / in tags. I thought everyone did that, too...
And my favorite: (?<![/\-:;\(\)\[\]{}])\s(a|an|and|as|at|but|by|for|from|in|nor|of|on|or|so|to|the|yet)(?=\s)(?!\s[\-\(\)\[\]{}])

 

[WelshBloke]

Thinking back I think I used something called musicbrains picard or similar.

I used something else as well . I'll check when I get in.

 

[13Gigatons]

List of Software:

1. Automatic Cover Tool

2. Cover Fetcher

3. Creevity Mp3 Cover Downloader

4. Album Cover Art Downloader

5. Album Art Downloader XUI


Sites:

1. http://www.albumartexchange.com

2. http://www.discogs.com/

3. http://albumart.org/

 

[Anubis]

This.

Take your time. Process thirty albums per day until you're done. Use http://www.albumartexchange.com for HQ art.

My tagging and art are a source of pride.

I sort artist by last name, first name if it's Bryan Adams or similar. He belongs in the As. Band names sort by their letter.
I sort multiple albums from the same artist by year of release. Duh.
I use AC&#990;DC for AC/DC to get around no / in tags. I thought everyone did that, too...
And my favorite: (?<![/\-:;\(\)\[\]{}])\s(a|an|and|as|at|but|by|for|from|in|nor|of|on|or|so|to|the|yet)(?=\s)(?!\s[\-\(\)\[\]{}])

All of mine is sorted by artist in folders, I did 1 letter each day so it took like a month. Pulled art from amazon (which is where mp3Tag looks) and a lot of manually downloading from bands wiki pages/google. i did all that and i never see the art most times. i use winamp and it does not display it. I did it m mostly for google music which still manages to mess it up every now and then

 

[fustercluck]

Winamp tried to have an album art downloader built in for a while but it sucked pretty bad so I think they just gave up on it, and it no longer works.

Wonder if any of that software linked by Gigatons works well? I could probably do em all manually as my carefully constructed playlist only has about 1000 mp3s. Probably the best route to take.

 

[Eos]

All of mine is sorted by artist in folders, I did 1 letter each day so it took like a month. Pulled art from amazon (which is where mp3Tag looks) and a lot of manually downloading from bands wiki pages/google. i did all that and i never see the art most times. i use winamp and it does not display it. I did it m mostly for google music which still manages to mess it up every now and then

I also use Winamp for playback. Sometimes when editing tags using Mp3Tag, I'll notice that the art is now listed as "other", instead of "front cover". I simply remove the art from those files, then reimport the art and it again appears as front cover. Pain in the ass yes, but I don't have any issue like you do.

 

[rh71]

List of Software:

1. Automatic Cover Tool

It gives a warning to backup first, but then it doesn't do anything further after hitting Yes (I've backed up). Tested on 6 mp3 files in a temp directory.

 

[13Gigatons]

It gives a warning to backup first, but then it doesn't do anything further after hitting Yes (I've backed up). Tested on 6 mp3 files in a temp directory.

The tool works only on albums that are properly organized. Temp dir won't work.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Media Monkey does a pretty good job of it too

Media Monkey is fine if your rips are good. But for most people who have music collections built from torrents and P2P networks EVERY app is useless because the "album" is probably not quite right. The tags could be mis-matching, the file names could be off, tracks out of order, a live version of a song mixed into a studio album, etc etc. In that case you're asking the software to find art for an album that doesn't exist, of course it's going to choke.

 

[Gintaras]

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

I started using EAC for converting CDs I have to .FLAC, it always asks for cover and lyrics, when try to get album info.

 

[13Gigatons]

http://maa.codeplex.com/

One more to the list.

 

[fustercluck]

ker bump!

I got started on getting album art for my MP3s and such. Didn't get too far in yet. I'm worried I'm not doing it right. Basically just using Winamp and going to album art exchange and finding what I'm looking for, then going into the file info on the winamp playlist, and then hit the 'load artwork' button and find the album art img on my hdd.

But will that album art always be associated with that mp3 file or just in winamp only? I don't really understand how it works. Would like the album art to be associated with the corresponding mp3s universally for all programs and things in the future, not just winamp, if you know what i mean.

 

[Eos]

Artwork is embedded in the .mp3 file.