My wife would like to use album artwork on her new iPod Classic. We've had a poke around in iTunes and the only options we can find for adding artwork is either: (i) get it from the iTunes Store, for which you need an account; or (ii) laboriously add it manually, album-by-album. Neither of these options is convenient.

We already have all the album artwork as JPEGs on our music server. Is there any way to configure iTunes to load up the artwork in bulk from a defined folder hierarchy?

I don't know how to achieve this with iTunes only, but you can use Mp3tag which allows for batch importing cover art from files.

See 'Convert > Actions > Import cover from file'. Please also make sure that you specifiy ID3v2.3 with UTF-16 at 'Options > Tags > Mpeg' as iTunes doesn't support IDv2.4 tags.

iTunes actually does support IDv2.4. Unfortunately, it has a fatal flaw that makes it incompatible with the standard (it doesn't treat frame sizes as syncsafe numbers, as required by the standard). ID3v2.4 tags with album art are extremely likely to be effected by this bug.
See http://id3.org/iTunes

Right. I mean ID3v2.4 with UTF-8 which is not supported by iTunes.

The easiest solution by far is to sign up to iTunes (free) and let it add the high-rez pics automatically. This is also most space efficient since it won't modify the files themselves, as there's only one pic per album.

Exactly how automatic is this? I've signed up, waited a few minutes, disconnected my iPod, and there is no new album art present that I can find.

You must tell iTunes to lookup the album art. Highlight every track in your library, right-click on just one of them, then left-click on Get Album Artwork. iTunes has the ability to lookup album art only if that album is in the iTunes Store. I have yet to run across an album that iTunes could look up that wasn't in its online store.

I think a program called Tag&Rename can embed album artwork into mp3/aac/etc. files using a folder.jpg file. I am not sure on that one though since I embedded by album art about three months ago and mainly used album artwork that iTunes provided. Embedding was the only way for my Creative Zen, Zune, iPods, and PS3 to show album artwork.

Ahh, so then I must have it all in my library? I can't just have the files on the iPod with album art? It doesn't seem to give me that option when I go into my iPod's library, and I don't want to embed album art into the file tags because absolute consistency isn't possible with images.

Just remember that automatically downloading iTunes album art doesn't embed it in the file, it stores it in a separate folder structure as a *.itc file which somehow links itself to the particular album. There's a program called iTSfv which will actually embed this art once you've downloaded it however. Search the forum here for the link (i'm too lazy), but I use it and it works well when I have to manually embed art files!

OK, we tried that, and of the 1150 albums in her iTunes library, it found about 450 in the iTunes Store. Which leaves us 700 short

I guess the answer is to find a way to embed the artwork in the MP3 files themselves (using MP3Tag or Tag&Rename, which I will investigate). But before I go to the trouble of doing that, can someone confirm to me that iTunes will then find the embedded artwork?

Try and look at your tags (specifically: album, artist/album artist) and make sure that they are correct.

Confirmed: If you have embedded artwork in the files, itunes will recognize it and use it.

OK, I've decided to start with MP3Tag - I downloaded v2.39. Looks like a nice program, and the website says that it is capable of importing cover art and embedding it in the files. But having played around with it for a while, I'm stumped. The program help talks about "Configuration > Actions > Import Cover From File", but I can't find it anywhere.

Edit: here's a screen shot of the dialog that apears when I select "Convert > Actions". No "import cover" option I can see:
Click to view attachment
I've also searched the MP3Tag forums for discussions about the subject, but couldn't find anything. Can someone give me a pointer?

Panic over. I finally found a thread on the MP3Tag forums that explained the existence of "Shift-Alt-5" that pops up the necessary screen. So I'm now sorted.

Hi Florian,
Thanks for the pointer, and since you're the MP3Tag developer, you ought to know exactly what to do. However, if you check out the screen shot I added to post #13 in this thread, you'll see that the Convert>Actions dialog doesn't seem to include that option. Am I doing something wrong?

Actions a grouped into named action groups in Mp3tag. What you see in the dialog 'Convert > Actions' is the list of action groups. You can create, delete, rename action groups with this dialog.

Once you've created an action group, say for example and action group named 'Import covers for my iPod', you can double-click on that group and add new actions to this group (e.g. an 'Import cover from file' action).

To enable an action group, you have to click on the check mark in front of the name of the action group.

Hope that helps!

OK, got it now. What I had not understood was the additional step involved: all the posts I had seen just talked about "Convert > Actions > Import cover from file" without explaining the need to actually set up such an action.

Thanks very much for your help.