Twonky Forum

Hi,

I'm desperately seeking for a complet documentation on Album Artwork. I have quite a huge collection of M4A (AAC) files (Artist / Album / Tracks.m4a), which have, for most of them (if not all) embedded artwork in the m4a files. Artwork does not show up. I tried to put artwork as a jpg file, named Folder.jpg (with capital "F") in Tracks directory (for a few albums), which didn't work. I've read some informations regarding xml files modification to include artwork=1, but have no clue about these xml files exact usage.

Since it seems that a lot of users has problems with artwork, is there a step-by-step procedure to allow artwork to be working?

My server is a Linux TwonkyMedia Server
The clients I'm trying to make artwork work on are:
XBMC on Windows (7 and XP)
MediaLink Player Light, on iPhone 3GS

Thanks,

Christian

What version of TownkyMedia Server are you running ?

Oops, sorry, I forgot to mention this.

It's TwonkyMedia Server 6.0.32

Christian...

There really isnt a how to, there are just things that are done to deal with the different devices
and with the different versions of twonky
As to why thery are not showing up on your devices, it can happen

What tool are you using to emed the artwork and or tags
As depending on what version of tagging is used, it can be a factor
for ex: id3v1 id3v2

Christian, I you send me a test file, I'd be happy to look into this for you. Send it to tmm-beta@pv.com.

Some people forget to put each album in a seperate folder when using folder.jpg artwork -- but it sounds like you're not doing that.

- Rick

I'm updating artwork information with the help of iTunes. In fact, I'm maintaining the whole collection with iTunes: updating some tags, and updating artwork.

Christian..

Hi Rick,

What file do you need? A m4a with embedded artork, or the Folder.jpg file? Te best for me would be to make embedded artwork work, since that would simplify the task a lot. But if the only way to make this work is the usage of Folder.jpg file, well then, OK... As soon as I understand exactly how to do that.

--
Christan...

> What file do you need? A m4a with embedded artork, or the Folder.jpg file?

What I really need is the m4a file with embedded artwork.

- Rick

Test file received. Problem reproduced. Bug report created.

To check status on this issue in the future, please ask me about MM-4737.

- Rick

The cause of this problem was the embedded album art is a PNG format image, which is not supported by TwonkyServer. The only solution to this problem today is to replace those images with JPEGs or by adding JPEGs to each of your album folders.

I'm sorry I don't have better news for you.

- Rick

[quote="TMM_Product_Manager"]The cause of this problem was the embedded album art is a PNG format image, which is not supported by TwonkyServer. The only solution to this problem today is to replace those images with JPEGs or by adding JPEGs to each of your album folders.

I'm sorry I don't have better news for you.

- Rick[/quote]

Sorry to hijack, but it's related.

I have a very interesting problem, for some reason it seems like the embedded art doesn't work on certain MP3's. I've been trying to embed artwork into a particular album (Rush - A Show of Hands) for the better part of 30 minutes, I use Media Monkey to manage my music. No matter how hard I try, I can't get the art to embed into the first track so that it shows up in Twonky no matter what I do. Media Monkey shows the art as there, but Twonky won't show it for just that one track, which means it also doesn't show up for the Album in album view. But if I navigate down into the album the art shows up in twonky for every track but the first one. I have tried using jpgs of varying sizes from 15K to 210K.

Strange right?

This is happened for a smattering of my albums. Not very many, but I'm meticulous about managing my collection (i've spent enough money on it ) and it always irks me to see missing art.

I can send some files if it helps.

Using 6.0.31-RC6 Kirkwood build on Synology DS211+ (as the 6.0.32 Kirkwood build is broken in that no media shows up for clients, only in the web interface)

Sorry, I feel like an idiot, I think it was XBMC on my laptop caching the art responses. When I removed the source and readded it, it showed up. Tipped my off was a went into the web view and noticed the art there, so I figured it must be the client.

Sorry for the confusion, but 6.0.32 kirkwood build is still an issue.

I think we're still working on the Kirkwood issue.

- Rick

TMM_Product_Manager wrote:The cause of this problem was the embedded album art is a PNG format image, which is not supported by TwonkyServer. The only solution to this problem today is to replace those images with JPEGs or by adding JPEGs to each of your album folders.

I'm sorry I don't have better news for you.

- Rick

That's bad, as Apple's iTunes is probably the best (and probably the most widespreaded) music library builder on the market. When you're adding artwork with its interface (copy/paste into the artwork field), it most probably embed it as a PNG. The only way to embed JPEG artwork with iTunes is to do it on a file-by-file basis, as many-file artwork modification only allow the copy-paste thing, which seems to embed in PNG...

Do you know if media readers as XBMC can read PNG-embedded artwork? Wouldn't that be a good idea for TwonkyServer, then, to support PNG?

Bot for the moment, I understand I have two solutions, which one is to add JPEG's to every album folder. This one, I don't understand very well... How do I do that, exactly? That would be a little faster that to reinsert every piece of artwork on a file-by-fie basis... as my music collection is more that 500 albums large.

- Christian

Thanks for explaining why this is important. I'll pass this info on to our engineers.

Q: How do I add JPEGS to every album folder?

A: Save your album art as “folder.jpg”. I think other names work as well, but that's what I use, so I know that works. Move that album art into the directory/folder with the songs from each album. If you don't have folders for each album, let me know. There is a way you can automate that.

Let me know if I didn't fully answer your question.

- Rick

TMM_Product_Manager wrote:Thanks for explaining why this is important. I'll pass this info on to our engineers.

Simple enough. When managing my music library, I want to fully manage it, and that means artwork as well. iTunes is a product widely used, and there must be a way to see artwork managed by iTunes, being JPG or PNG. And Twonky server must be able to use the artwork in both formats, as an important player (iTunes) in this world create PNG artwork when modifying many music files at the same time.

Using a big library (400 CD's or more), it's a big improvement to be able to see artwork when selecting music albums, as reading slows down selection.

TMM_Product_Manager wrote:Q: How do I add JPEGS to every album folder?

A: Save your album art as “folder.jpg”. I think other names work as well, but that's what I use, so I know that works. Move that album art into the directory/folder with the songs from each album. If you don't have folders for each album, let me know. There is a way you can automate that.

If there's an easy way to be able to get the embedded artwork (getting it from first file would do the job) and create that folder.jpg file would help, while waiting Twonky Server to directly read PNG artwork.

- Christian

There are some apps like Tag & Rename that have a command which takes an embedded JPEG image and saves it as a folder.jpg file. There are probably other apps as well which do this.

- Rick