Zune 2nd Gen. & Album Art !

[jce2005]

Hi everyone,

maybe this thread should be made sticky to help "Zuner's" who have trouble with their album art. How it's done is

of course my personal preference and not suitable for everyone, but a good help and trick for me to keep my

albumart straight.

Fore-up, I got about 30,000 MP3's so it's a lot of work but it works great.

Here are the steps :

1. Have the latest version of Windws Media Player installed

2. Have the latest Zune Software installed

3. Make sure ( by opening the Zune software ) that all your songs are imported and showing. Then close it. Do the

same with WMP and close it once done.

4. Make a folder anywhere on your HDD called " Albumart " ( or anything else )

5. Now let's search for Albumart, the example I use is, Artist : Fleetwood Mac / Album is : Rumors

6. Open Internet Explorer ( or any other browser ) and go to Google and search for " Fleetwood Mac Rumors "

7. When the results are showing, click on the " Image " link and you'll probably see many " Rumors Albums " !

8. Look for an Album Images with aproximately 300 x 300 to 500 x 500 with a size below 100KB !

9. Right click on the image and choose " Save Picture as.... " and save it as a .jpg like "Fleetwood Mac -

Rumors.jpg" ( no quotation marks )

10. Now open Windows Media Player and click on Artists and look for Fleetwood Mac ( in my example ).

11. Click and open o see all the Albums you have from this artist.

12. Open Windows Explorer ( or My Computer ) and navigate to the just saved .jpg file from the Google site.

13. Right click the file and choose COPY

14. Go back to WMP and richgt click on the blank space from the Rumors albumart and choose " Paste Albumart " !

15. Now you have successfully imported the Album Art for one Album.

PS : To check if all your file for an album got updated, just look at the date and time of your .mp3 files and it

should show the current date.

Now the following just happen : Media player embedded the .JPG Albumart info into EACH mp3 file of the album and

also placed a folder.jpg file into the folder where the album is stored. But since the Albumart is now EMBEDDED

into the MP3 file, you DON'T need all these goofy little folder.jpg, Albumart.jpg, ZuneAlbumart.jpg, etc. on your

hard drive anymore........

Do a SEARCH for the whole folder where you store your MP3's and delete all the .jpg's !! You don't need them

anymore and won't confuse WMP or the Zune Software with these dumb .jpg's. The albumart is now EMBEDDED into the

MP3 Tag and will show on any software or player correctly !!!

YES, it seems like a lot of work and a lot of steps. I detailed them a bit for novice users, but I usually can do

20 Albums in about 15 minutes. I just search for all the art I want and save it, then I open WMP and import it.

After all that is done, open your Zune Software and you'll have the correct Albumart in it, if not, just delete

the " Zunestore.sdf " file and re-import your collection into the Zune Software.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

JCE

[Man.]

Nice tutorial, but it can be done more easily using Mp3Tag

Mp3Tag - Drag the album onto mp3tag, paste album art, click save, done.

[jce2005]

Hi,

you are right with that, however, I probably tried most of the advanced MP3 tag editor's out there and the problem is, that WMP ( and Zune Software ) doing something different with the Albumart and so, some art is not showing.

I did for example all the " A's artists " and all their albums with Media Monkey. The Albumart showed correctly in Media Monkey and on my old ZEN:Vision player, but they did not show up in WMP !!!

I don't know why that is............but I certainly will give the program you use a try !

Thanks for mention it.

The other issue I have with WMP and Zune Album Art is :

I have a folder, called " MP3 " on my HDD.........and ALL I want in this folder are .mp3's, no annoying .jpg's !!! I like .jpg's, but NOT in my music folder. That's why I embedd them into the Tag.

Cheers,

JCE

[Dizzy]

Well, that certainly works. Nice job

Though I think I'll move it to tutorials, since this can probably be used for just about anything

[takkun]

Hi there, I followed your tutorial to the letter, however, for some of my album art, a completely different album art from another album shows up instead and cannot be changed at all.

I have tried deleting and re-synching the entire album, also using the "update album art" feature but it doesn't change at all. I have tried changing the album art through the way you said in the tutorial, but still no luck.

This is really annoying as with the previous firmware, everything could be changed manually realy easily, and having custom album art could be added, but now I can't change the album art at all, and i'm stuck with a totally irrelevant picture.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks

[jce2005]

Hi,

I am sorry to hear you have troubles. I'll try to help you figuring out what the problem is.

Let's start with the explanation on how this works and a few clean, freshly ripped MP3's. Put these MP3's into a newly made folder ( I call for now ) C:\MP3 !!! Now these MP3's have NO albumart at all.

Now open Windows Media Payer 11 ( not Zune software ), go to "Library"....then to More Options and remove any "monitored folders" and then ADD the new folder C:\MP3 which you just created. Now CLOSE Windows Media Player and open the Zune Software and under "Settings" change your Music folder to C:\Mp3 ! Now CLOSE the Zune Software.

Both, WMP as well as the Zune Software store their library files in seperate folders :

WMP 11 : C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player ( Delete EVERYTHING in this folder, EXCEPT the sub folders ). Media Player will recreate all files when it is started again.

Zune Software : C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Zune and Delete OR rename the file " ZuneStore.sdf " !
( Note : if you can't find or see these folders, than they are hidden and you need to unhide them in Windows Explorer under Tools.....Folder Options )

O.K., where are we now : We created a few new ripped MP3's, and we cleared out the WMP and Zune Software Library.

The usual problem is, that WMP put's these stupid .jpg's for the albumart into the folder and the Zune Software does the same. So where ever you store your MP3 collection, you ALWAYS will have a bunch of goofy, totally un-necessary .jpg's which of course cause you trouble with the AlbumArt.

Now my little tutorial comes in, to "N O T" ADD ANY .JPG'S INTO ANY FOLDER OF THE MP3 COLLECTION !!!! But rather EMBEDDING the jpg ( AlbumArt ) into your existing MP3 file ( the MP3 tag ). Yes, your MP3 file will get a few kb larger after embedding the .jpg AlbumArt file, but it WON'T interfere with any player or program and won't confuse ANY other players or Software in displaying albumart.

Here is the most common trouble with that : Regardless what you do, whenever you open Windows Media Player 11, it WILL ADD these stupid .jpg's into your folders ( even if you set the option not to add any info ) and you should delete them again after you embedded them. The Zune Software does NOT automatically ADD any .jpg's if you uncheck in the settings " Automatically update album art and media information " !!!!

Basically what I am saying is : Use WMP 11 or ANY other program, like " MP3Tag" to embedd the albumart directly into your MP3's, then close WMP 11, check ( search your MP3 collection for " *.jpg " and delete them and then use the Zune Software as your Library management.
For example, I have WMP11's monitor folder option set to C:\TempMP3 since this way, WMP11 does not mess up my "MP3" Folder and when done, I just copy the files into my "MP3" folder.

I know, it's a lot of work to embedd Albumart into a MP3 collection which has possible more than 10,000 songs or so. It take time. I just finished all my ALBUMS, but now I still have about 800 or so Artists for which I need to search pics on Google, to embedd them. But in the end it's well worth doing so, since then it does not matter anymore which player ( Zune, Creative, Apple, Sandisk, etc. ) or software you are using, since they all use the Albumart embedded in the MP3 file.

This solution will probably work for most users, but not for all. So if you are not comfortable with embedding MP3's into your MP3-Tag, don't do it.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

JCE

[Vettexl]

Well, that's quite a lot, but if the software doesn't get the right album for me, I Google it and save the album
as JPEG as you said, and then open the software and right-click the album and choose Update Album Art...

If there isn't any album art originally choose Add Album Art

I'll try this MP3tag app, see if it works ok

[jce2005]

Hi,

the only problem is, that the Zune Software is NOT embedding the albumart. It is just adding or changing the " .jpg " file in the folder. When you say in WMP 11 " Paste Albumart " it actually puts the albumart into the MP3-Tag......so it's EMBEDDING it ( check your file size and date before embedding albumart ), the new Zune Software just lets you import the .jpg into the Album's folder and is NOT embedding it in the MP3-Tag.

And that's why there are sooooo many problems and confusions about the albumart.

Any good MP3 Tag editor let's you embedd the albumart, and so does WMP 11 and MP3Tag........but not the New Zune Software.

Hope this helps.

JC

[Dizzy]

There is a folder.jpg hack in the hacks and mods forum that helps a little.

[soccerdad]

On the topic of album art - Do you know if the Zune software will re-sync the individual .mp3 files if the album art does get embedded into them? I ask because the Zune software did not bring over the album art for my albums from my Media Monkey library (which I had used to rip all my music). I sync'd to the Zune device before going back to correct the album art. After fixing the album art, the Zune software does not re-sync those albums / songs.

So I'm wondering if actually embedding the art into the .mp3 file is recognized as a change by the Zune software such that it will re-sync the songs.

Thanks,

Donnie

[ChurchedAtheist]

The songs reverse synced from the zune all have embedded album art instead of jpgs, yet none show up in the software w/ album art. will it still sync the art?

[jce2005]

Hi,

so far that's my only problem too.............. After my MP3 collection is synced with the 80 GB Zune everything is fine, but then I add new Albumart to the MP3's on my desktop ( I embedd the abumart since I don't like the .jpg's ) but the newly edited MP3's do NOT get synced with the Zune. The only option I have is to delete ALL content from the Zune and re-sync.

Toooooooo bad, the Software and/or the Zune do not recognize changes in the MP3 file !!!!

JCE

[Dizzy]

I don't think the software looks for embedded album art anyway. It goes for the folder.

[mojorocker]

i just used the option on the old software, but the new software doesnt have it, that sucks

[Dizzy]

What option is that?