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Album Art Question

O

obrien234

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 12, 2005
146
0
Brighton, MI
I've got a pretty decent sized music library (about 19 GB) and I'm thinking about trying to get album art for it. The only problem is I'm worried about storage space, on my iPod not on my Mac. The thing is that I have a 3G 20 GB iPod (can't even display color, nevertheless album art), that is filled to the brim.

If I add artwork, will those files transfer over to the iPod since they're somewhat embedded into the music files? or will they just stay on my computer?
 
The art is in the music file as I recall. However I am unsure if it is removed when its transfered to a ipod that does not have the ability to display the art.
 
95% sure the art IS embedded in the file, but unless you're putting in MASSIVE images, it's not a big size increase. For the sort of 200X200 or 300X300 image you get from Amazon, it's generally going to add about 20K per song. Do the math and see if that's going to cause you a problem.

I actually like that feature, because it means my work at adding the art is backed up on my no-color-no-art iPod in case of library failure.
 
The Album Art IS stored in each file (every single file has it's own individual artwork file embedded). It IS copied accross to an iPod. When I copied music across to my iPod mini, and then transferred it off my iPod mini onto a nother computer (when I went from my desktop PC to my MacBook basically), all the artwork went with it.
 
I went through my entire collection and added art and it didn't increase the size by that much. I have tried to find some really high-res ones, then I resize them for embedding in the music file. I still fit far more music than I can ever listen to on my iPod. :)
 
Does Clutter do some backwards way of applying artwork? It uses way more than 20-30k if adding a jpg of that size.

Eg. an album has 13 tracks and is 80mb in size. Adding the art via Clutter results in an album size of 81.2mb yet if I manually pull out the jp from the Clutter storage and apply it in iTunes via cmd+i and drop it in, the album goes up to 80.3mb which is what I'd expect. Try it yourself - pick an album, note the size, add via Clutter, note new size. Delete artwork from the same album and apply it manually. You can save 1-2mb per album.

Clutter takes up way too much space for some reason and with a 43gb library, that's alot of excess I can do without. A 200mb increase is what I'd expect but I'm looking at gaining at least a gig if I use Clutter. Something isn't right with it.

If you have a large library like me, I recommend using clutter to only pull the artwork. Either apply it yourself or find a better program to fetch artwork that doesn't was gigs of space for no reason.
 
Killyp said:
The Album Art IS stored in each file (every single file has it's own individual artwork file embedded). It IS copied accross to an iPod. When I copied music across to my iPod mini, and then transferred it off my iPod mini onto a nother computer (when I went from my desktop PC to my MacBook basically), all the artwork went with it.
Click to expand...

Nope, it's stored under /ipod_control/artwork on the ipod in little .ithmb files ,I think. If you disable 'view artwork on ipod' in itunes ipod pane, it will delete all those artwork files.
 
quigleybc said:
If album art really jacks up the size of a music file, i havn't noticed it...

and to get your album art use the awesome app..

CLUTTER
Click to expand...


Sorry for being off topic, but thanks so much!

Works great!

Back on topic, try and see if it would hurt it, I don't think it will... :)
 
funkychunkz said:
Nope, it's stored under /ipod_control/artwork on the ipod in little .ithmb files ,I think. If you disable 'view artwork on ipod' in itunes ipod pane, it will delete all those artwork files.
Click to expand...

Really? The artwork seems to move around with the files. If I go onto another computer, and access the same file, it's still there. Same if I put it on a USB key and listen to it somewhere else..

I can find no folder like that on my Mini?!?! No option to disable artwork copying either...
 
Killyp said:
Really? The artwork seems to move around with the files. If I go onto another computer, and access the same file, it's still there. Same if I put it on a USB key and listen to it somewhere else..

I can find no folder like that on my Mini?!?! No option to disable artwork copying either...
Click to expand...

It's an invisible file, but it should be there if there's artwork on the ipod (and if your firmware is updated). It works this way on my nano, but maybe not for older ipods.
 
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