id3v2 cover art tags??

[webwalker]

Much of my 40gb or so of music has the id3v2 embedded cover art in the file. I loaded up the contents on to my sage box, ran the import and when I look at the albums in browse view I get....a mess.

Some files that do not have embedded art are given art from some other album.

Files that DO have embedded art do not always show their embedded art in either browse mode, or in display mode during playback.

I can't imagine this being anything other than a corrupt database on SageTV's part, but if there is some secret sauce that I'm missing, please let me know before I contact tech support.

I'm going to be posting several other questions in this same forum just to keep them all separated and search able.

[gplasky]

Sage bases it's music library on your tags. Make sure the "Album Artist" tag is being used. Use WMP Advanced Tag Editor to see what I am talking about. If your track information is accurate thru there then everything should ahow up correctly in SageTV. Other tag editors and music programs will work fine but sometimes differ in the tag names or have more tag names.

Gerry

[webwalker]

OK, Perhaps I missed a turn somewhere.

ID3v2 tags have the ability to embed the cover art IN the file. If I'm reading what you're saying right, then SAGE actually IGNORES the embedded image in favor of trying to do a lookup?!?

I can understand how you might get some odd or exciting (or even humorous) mis-identifications by this method. I don't understand how it would be using piece of cover art that is only found embedded in one series of mp3 files for a different series of mp3 files that share zero attributes with the other file. (Different Album/Artist/Title/Genre/Year)

Would some screenshots help clear up the communication?

M

[gplasky]

No. What I'm saying you have to double check the accuracy of your tags and make sure you use the "Album Artist" tag for all your music. Look at the tracks in Windows Media Player and the Advanced Tag Editor. It will show you the embedded art also if it is tagged correctly.

Gerry

[pjpjpjpj]

Album art - the bane of my existence.

You probably already know this, but:

When you do an album art lookup (in WMP), it will typically create four jpgs in the folder where the MP3 is stored (make sure you have "show hidden files and folders" checked in Windows Explorer). They will be:

AlbumArt_{code of the specific album}_Large.jpg
AlbumArt_{code of the specific album}_Small.jpg
AlbumArtSmall.jpg
Folder.jpg

All four will be the same image, in different sizes.

If you have any MP3s in that same folder that do not have proper art tagging, those files will show the "Folder.jpg" as their album art (of course, if all you have in that folder is that single album, you are all set).

I have had very little luck with programs designed to do this automatically. The only way I have found to reliably fix them is to individually right click on the MP3 within WMP, do "Advanced Tag Editor" (as gplasky said above), and click the "Pictures" tab. Make sure you have the correct art showing up, and if not, click "Add..." and find it (use the "...._Large.jpg"). If you don't have a picture showing there (even if it shows elsewhere), don't rely on it showing up correctly in Sage.

It's horribly tedious... I am working through my thousands, bit by bit. Note that it's easier to go to some website (Amazon, etc.), find the album cover jpg, copy it to your clipboard, and then go to WMP, highlight a whole album, right-click on the album picture to the left (whether correct, incorrect, or blank), and choose "Paste Album Art". This will almost always put the right picture in permanently.

[Taddeusz]

I've also noticed this in my music. I have over 8000 songs in iTunes that I've imported into SageTV. Most of the music has album covers but not all the covers show in SageTV. I've done some poking around and it appears that iTunes doesn't always save the album art as a tag. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. As I have some scanned covers that appear and some that don't and some iTunes retreived covers that appear and some that don't. I'm not seeing any kind of pattern at all.

[bastafidli]

Here is little tutorial how to add Album Artist in Mp3tag editor

Go to menu Tools -> submenu Options
Click on Tag Panel
Click on Add field button on the right
Type Field: ALBUMARTISt -> Name: Album Artist
Click OK

This ensures that if two artists have the disc with the same name (e.g. in my case The Who and Barry White), Sage will display them separately rather than all under Barry White. All my music collection is in .flac files. I am adding my cover art using Mp3tag editor (as well as editing any other tags) and SageTV always displasy them, even though I have one disc (Santana, Greatest Hits) which crashes HD 100 (green screen of death) if the image is embedded therefore for this one I just have folder.jpg next to may .flac files.

[Taddeusz]

After a little experimentation it appears that iTunes does not save downloaded album art as a tag. If you download the art and drag it into iTunes it then saves it as a tag and it shows fine in SageTV.

The only thing I can think is that Apple does this for copyright reasons. Funny part is that you can drag the album art out of itunes and then back in and it saves it as a tag.

[webwalker]

OK, Now I know we're not getting anywhere.

Gerry, if you're right on this one, only the mp3 files that have completely compliant album and artist tags should successfully display their album art.

But that's not what's happening.

Some songs are displaying album art from other albums. If the tag data fails its check and the image is not displayed, then fine. Irritating and unnecessary, but fine.

What I'm seeing is that files with Album Artist tags such as 'A Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Gauraldi' are showing up displaying album art from 'Welcome Race Fans - Dakota Motor Company'.

I have a recording of Louise Armstrong that doesn't exist on CD; I brought it in from Vinyl. But I didn't have any coverart, so I used some stock art of Armstrong.

THAT shows up fine, even though the Artist Album is a complete fiction.

Appears fine when I browse the file tree.

Appears fine when I open a file with mp3tag.

Does this provide more complete info?

[gplasky]

I've seen that happen before. What I think I did was remove that Music Import directory for a while and then set it back up again. I hope that helps.

Gerry

[webwalker]

OK, so now I know what I'm up against.

I'm up against a corrupt database.

Why an application (ANY APPLICATION) would rewrite tag info without the user's approval I don't know. But something has.

I finally found that the tag data was completely crapped up. So I'm having to go through all 6000 files and recheck all of the tag data. I figure if I do 100 per night, I'll be done in about 3 months.

Thanks everyone for the comments, especially Gerr.

M

[gplasky]

Sorry t hear that. Are you saying the tags in the tracks are corrupt or the tag info that is stored in the SageTV database is corrupt? Or your app that does the tagging was corrupt? Just curious.

Gerry

[CollinR]

That's not corruption in Sage's database it's that you have 6k songs and you have been messing with the tags. If you wait long enough it would adjust to your changes. Also there is a menu command for rescan imported media, that will have Sage go and look for changes right now.

In general the best practice i have found is a combination of tagging and directory structure.

Genre/Album/Album Artist/track-title-artist
and for art
Genre/Album/Album Artist/folder.jpg

[UgaData]

I would throw my vote into the "Sage does screwy things with displaying cover art for music files" bin.

For me, the cover art that Sage is displaying is from deleted video files that I recorded and not the cover art that was part of the ID tag.

Windows Media Player shows the correct cover art. Music Match shows the correct cover art (yeah I know Yahoos got a hold of it and ruined it but I jest). Sage doesn't.

This strange behavior has persisted through several updates/upgrades of Sage and even some rebuilds of OS and Sage. Some rebuilds were completely clean, I started fresh, no keeping the old WIZ.BIN and/or sage properties files and still strange cover art graphics were appearing for my music files.

I don't really use Sage for playing music so it hasn't become much of an issue to me.

[webwalker]

What I mean is that from transferring data between my ipod and its host (I don't and WON'T use iTunes) the database that held the tag info for the files was corrupted. I have no one to blame but myself. Sagetv was merely reproducing the corruption...correctly.

As for 'messing with your tags' that's what its called when you are using applications that don't have paid access to the proprietary databases like Gracenote (CDDB) to fetch tag data.

The issue that still seems to baffle people is that I embed the cover art IN the file itself. No 'folder.jpg'. Yes, I consume more space replicating the cover art for embedding in every file, forcing each mp3 file to grow slightly for the privilege of always (ALWAYS!) having the cover art appear when the song is played.

So that's the deal. I've found a way that gets me around the problems of proprietary access to CDDB: After using AudioGrabber to rip and encode the files (using the FreeDB) I run a pass through Mp3Tag, which allows me to do lookups against providers like Amazon who (for many titles, anyway) do have access to the CDDB, as well as the coverart. So I use that gathered data to make new rips compliant, and rewrite old rips to add the cover art and correct any 'messing' with the tag data.

M

[Taddeusz]

Ok, I just had this come up. I've always been tripped out because this album cover for a "Yes" album keeps on coming up for various songs.

If you've ever used Windows Media Player to organize your music know that it stores the cover art as hidden system files. It also has the ability to assign art to entire folders which also happen to be hidden system files. And they are named "folder.jpg". If you're having problems with mysterious cover art and you've used Windows Media Player to organize your music set your Windows Explorer to be able see hidden and system files and search for these files. I bet they'll start popping up.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

If you've ever used Windows Media Player to organize your music know that it stores the cover art as hidden system files. It also has the ability to assign art to entire folders which also happen to be hidden system files. And they are named "folder.jpg". If you're having problems with mysterious cover art and you've used Windows Media Player to organize your music set your Windows Explorer to be able see hidden and system files and search for these files. I bet they'll start popping up.

That's exactly what I said above.