Is there any way I can transcode a FLAC file to an mp3 file with preserving all tags including album art? With the latest version of FLAC, it supports embedding album art... but when I use Foobar to transcode it to mp3, it seems to keep all the information except the embedded cover art file from the original FLAC.

J. River Media Center 12 can do it. MC12 adds the embedded image automatically in the ID3v2 APIC frame. It uses the latest LAME release and the default VBR settings are based on the HA recommendations. Besides the main program you'll need Scot Thompson's free FLAC plugins from: http://mcplugins.sourceforge.net/. MC12 is not free, but it has a 30-day fully functional try out period. (IMHO, it is well worth the asking price.)

Edit

A small correction: MC12 may not be able to directly convert all your custom tags if you have added FLAC tags that don't have a commonly used ID3v2 counterpart. However, you can make MC12 to read any FLAC tag to its database by first configuring a library field with the same name. During the MP3 conversion MC12 adds such custom tags automatically in additional ID3v2 comment frames that are titled as "COMM Media Jukebox: <the library field name>".

BonkEnc is able to transcode and keep all tags.

I just tried the version 1.0.2. I cannot make it correctly tag the converted files. The cover art is missing and only the following tags are included: Album, Artist, Genre, Year. When I tried to convert a FLAC file that had several custom tags the Album and Artist tags were incorrectly tagged with an Artist="artist name" string instead of the correct value. For tagging and reading the tags after the conversion I used the latest Mp3tag. I also inspected the files with a hex editor.


EDIT

I added a new FLAC sample file to my "embedded cover art samples" thread: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=487587.

An MP3 file which is converted from this sample with BonkEnc has only the following MP3 tags:
Album: Rating=5 (an incorrect tag value)
Artist: Who Knows
Genre: House
Title: Rating=5 (an incorrect tag value)
Year: 2002

Perhaps the BonkEnc developer finds the sample useful.

I just tried converting the sample with BonkEnc v1.0.2. The result is as follows:

TPE1 = Who Knows
TIT2 = 4s sample for testing embedded cover art
TALB = RATING=5
TRCK = 05
TYER = 2002
TCON = House
COMM = BonkEnc v1.0 <http://www.bonkenc.org/>
APIC = (JPEG image containing the HA logo)

There is a bug in BonkEnc's matching algorithm for Vorbis comment tags (as used by FLAC) thus making the value for album "RATING=5". I will fix that in the next release.

However, BonkEnc keeps the picture here. There is an option named "CopyPictureTags" in BonkEnc's config.xml file. It's enabled by default, maybe it has somehow been disabled in your configuration.

Other tags are not currently supported by BonkEnc. That's why most of the tags in the sample file get lost when converting. BonkEnc v1.1 will feature a complete tag editor and will support all tags.

Thanks for the quick answer, enzo.

This is starting to go a bit OT here. I replied in the BoncEnc release thread: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=52902

Edit

As discussed in the BonkEnc thread, I can confirm that BonkEnc can preserve the embedded image file. The tagging bug exists only with the Album tag.

dbpoweramp and foobar can also do this

Hmm... The OP started with saying that foobar doesn't work. Can you explain how foobar can be used so that it converts the embedded cover art?

The released version of the dBpoweramp's FLAC codec doesn't support cover art. However, I just noticed that Spoon has a new beta version under development. This version adds embedded cover art support. It is available only in Illustrate's beta test forum: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=12302. I have not tried it yet.

I added some cover art to a FLAC file using Mp3tag v2.38, then I used BonkEnc 1.0.2 to transcode it from FLAC to MP3. It seems to carry all the tags over from the file, including the cover art file. But now, when I add the song to iTunes (7.1.1.5), it doesn't display the cover art. It shows a blank white image.

Edit:
If I load the new mp3 file back into Mp3tag and "save" the tag without any changes, then the picture shows up fine in iTunes. Is this a problem with how BonkEnc saves id3 tags?

Anyway, thanks for all the help guys.

Just made some tests and I can verify this. However, it really is a problem of iTunes.

There is a description field in every ID3v2 picture frame. BonkEnc uses Unicode by default to encode the description. If the description is not empty, iTunes will read it and everything works fine. However, if the description is empty (the usual case), iTunes is confused and refuses to accept the picture frame.

A workaround is to set the ID3v2 tag encoding in BonkEnc to something other than UTF-16LE or UTF-16BE (UTF-8 would work with iTunes, but WMP does not support it; so ISO-8859-1 is really the only choice).

This should be reported to Apple as a bug in iTunes.