How do you set up your album art and why?

For "small" music libraries (<10gb) would it be best to embed or link?

For "big" music libraries (>10gb) would it be best to embed or link?

So far the issue with embedding is the filesize increase, is it worth it?

Linking to a folder.jpg has the problem of getting overwritten by 200x200px by windows media player without warning.

What do you use and why?

Personally i use a 150x150 (sometimes larger) cover.jpg files along with hi-res booklet scans.
Embedding cover the the tags is not recommended. Assuming your cover file is 15 kb, for a ten track album you will need 150 kb space, while if you go for linking there's only one file needed. I know 150 kb is nothing today, but why to waste space if there's a better solution.

Disagree. I like my album art embedded. That way it stays with the track.
I have had too many messes where tracks get moved and separated from their jpg files.
Makes a bloody mess.
My portable devices seem to like embedded art better as well.

You two have just summarised my dilemma

Pro of embedding:
-Album Art stays with mp3 tag.
-Media players compatible with IDEv2 should show it.
Con of embedding:
-Filesize = picture * tracks.
-Player has to be IDEv2 compatible.

Pro of linking (folder.jpg):
-Most media players support linking.
-15kb/album vs 150kb/album for 10 tracks
Con of linking (folder.jpg):
-Tracks have to stay with folder.jpg.
-Windows Media Player overwrites folder.jpg's when added to library with 200x200 internet downloads without warning.

Pro of linking (cover.jpg) [or other name]:
-Most media players support linking.
-15kb/album vs 150kb/album for 10 tracks
Con of linking (folder.jpg):
-Tracks have to stay with cover.
-Not all media players support other linked jpg's than folder.jpg.

Embedding a 50Kb (500x500) jpg into 10 000 tracks = 0.5 GB worth of album art... Aouch?
Linking 50Kb jpgs to 1000 albums (1 album = 10 songs) = 50 MB

Anyone else have some input?

New Idea:

What about embedding a low rez version (ex: 75x75) and having a folder.jpg or cover.jpg high-rez version that would show in media players? Because the main problem of embedding album art is when transferring to portable media, where high rez album art is hardly needed...

I didn't know that. Why not archive another copy?



I prefer not to imbed artwork in the files. I always used to even though I'd have preferred not, because I usually use iTunes, and that never used to have a database for the artwork. Now iTunes is using a database and fetching artwork when it can, I've switched to not imbedding artwork when it's possible not to. If iTunes can't fetch a cover, I try to find something at Amazon or in Google and use that. Then I have to imbed the image, because there's no way to manually get something into iTunes' database for album covers.

I have been archiving the artwork with my archival lossless FLAC rips on an external hard drive for some time. Most albums have a graphics file in there simply under the name cover.jpg. If I transfer files over to my Linux laptop to listen, I drop the cover.jpg file in with the directory containing the album tracks and Amarok seems to find it all right.

For preference I like something large: iTunes usually fetches good quality 600 x 600 pixel scans that look good in coverflow mode. Failing that, I hope that Amazon has a 500 x 500 pixel scan or I can find one in Google. (I've got a program that can also check Walmart, who also tend to have 500 x 500 pixel scans, but Walmart seems not to have a big range of stuff.) If I can't get a 500 x 500 pixel graphic I settle for what I can get - 300 x 300 or smaller. Some are not only small but of low quality, unfortunately. I haven't got a scanner, but I've begged access to one to scan the odd CD cover that can't be found anywhere: I resize the resulting graphic to 600 x 600.

Perhaps i should add that i never "move" single tracks anywhere, i always keep the whole album in one folder, even if i transfer it to portable players. And a lot of my album artwork is in 1500x1500 resolution in jpeg files that have often 5-6 Megs, so embedding them would be impossible.

I just tested embedded vs no album art on a 9 track album:

Embedded -> 58 MB
Linked -> 55.5 MB

...

You have to keep some perspective here: 10000 tracks @ about 4 MB average for a losslessly compressed track (probably more) is 40 GB of audio data. Add .5 GB and you have 40.5 GB. An increase of about 1% !

Personally, I embed the cover art because I can eg generate a playlist I want to hear and copy it to an usb stick. i take it with me and play it wherever I want and can still see the covers. I resize all art though using a vbscript I created (I found not a single application to do this...?) to 128 KB maximum. This still gives me covers averaging around 450x450 pixels. (some 300x300, some more than 800x800...)

Ooo how exactly does it work? Resize already tagged album art? Embed folder.jpgs? Care to share it?

I use embedded album art. While folder.jpg files are more efficient, not all applications read folder.jpg files as album art. As an example, I primarily use a combination of iTunes and Windows Media Player and both of those programs read embedded album art in MP3s, however, iTunes does not read folder.jpg files. I find that most apps that support album art will read embedded album art from MP3s while some will not read folder.jpg files.

Yeah I've done some testing and found that iTunes doesn't support folder.jpg... And I'm hoping to get a video iPod when my current G4 dies, so I might as well start now... Time to dig out MediaMonkey and see what it can suss out.

On a side note, is MediaMonkey under-rated? It does everything...

-Plays a hell of a lot of formats.
-Reads all my tags fine.
-Batch edits tags.
-Supports user scripts to batch edit making it SO much easier.
-Edit tags based on file-name.
-Get tag info from amazon, ect.
-Embed or link album art.
-Re-organise your music into folder according to what you specify (IE: Artist/Year - Album/Track) ect.

I'm amazed it's not more wide spread... And I'm confused why I am drawn towards Foobar ^^

Embedded. Slight size hit, but much more convenient in the long run.

Maybe this is actually of interest to more people, so I posted a topic about it here.

I'd love to opt for embedding since my collection is lossless and therefore the impact of embedding 100 KB cover art in 30 MB FLAC file is negligible.
But as of now I don't do it because of:
a) Not every tag format supports embedding of cover art (FLAC: yes, APEv2: no)
b) My favourite player fb2k still doesn't support it either (with foo_uie_albumart) afaik
So for the moment I add a 500x500 cover.jpg to my album folders and have the hi-res scans of my covers stored in zip file.

.sundance.

Do what I do and get the best of both worlds: embed AND use a folder.jpg!
mp3tag's 'export cover art to file' (or somegthing like that) works great for existing files.

Foobar actually does support album art, there's a modified albumart component that supports them.