Forgive my ignorance...Album art

Hi
I know, I know, this subject has been covered extensively, but I just can't seem to get it to work
It seems so easy when I read what others have done.
I noticed that many of you use Windows XP. I have 2000, does that make a difference? I have firmware version S 2.003.2 and my player is an SP.

A picture tutorial would be absolutely AWESOME!

Thanks in advance and please forgive my ignorance about this subject
I got my player a few days ago, so I'm just a newbie!

Best,
MZ

Originally Posted by Mini Zuper

Hi
I know, I know, this subject has been covered extensively, but I just can't seem to get it to work
It seems so easy when I read what others have done.
I noticed that many of you use Windows XP. I have 2000, does that make a difference? I have firmware version S 2.003.2 and my player is an SP.

A picture tutorial would be absolutely AWESOME!

Thanks in advance and please forgive my ignorance about this subject
I got my player a few days ago, so I'm just a newbie!

Best,
MZ

Visit this thread: Simplify Album Art on your Meizu

Direct link to win32 version: http://www.mp3buzz.net/files/albumart-1.6.0-setup.zip



In the thread, read the whole thing it is informative, there is a link to a swf file. This is a mini tutorial on how to operate the program.

All you have to do is plug in the meizu... load it in Album Art Downloader and viola!.

This also works in linux.

Another thing... This works best if you have music that is organized. If you have downloaded from p2p sites and what not ... more then likely you have broken tags. If you rip your own music or download from online stores like URGE then this should be as easy as paris.

Thanks for the help shookie
But I can't get it to show up on the player

Here is exactly what I did...
1. Plugged in M6
2. Opened the Album art program
3. Loaded one of my albums onto the Album Cover art Downloader program. (This album is called Hotel Paper and it is by Michelle Branch)
4. Downloaded the album art for Hotel Paper (so far everything worked great)
5. Checked my M6 in Windows Explorer to see if the files had downloaded, which they had.
The files were named folder.jpg and folder.png. I know this is wrong, so I renamed the jpg file Hotel Paper.jpg (exactly like that)

6. Unplugged my player

Nothing showed up on my player
The whole album, with the new picture files, was downloaded into a folder I made under Music, called Michelle Branch. So it is under E:MUSIC/Michelle Branch/Hotel Paper.

I have tried to do everything that others have done, but I must be missing something.

Could you please, please give me a detailed step by step tutorial, from beginning to end, about how to do this?

All the tutorials I have read on the forum (Yes, I've read them all ) have not seemed very clear. I'm sure they make great sence to someone who knows how to do it, but not for those who have no idea.
They seem clear enough when I read them, but when it comes to actually doing what is says, that's where I get lost.

This is starting to get frustrating, so please, please help

Best,
MZ

Anyone??

Best,
MZ

Name the folder:

Hotel Paper_

with an underscore... the jpg and the folder cant have the same name. No idea why, its kinda stupid and unintuitive.

Mini Zuper name the album art in the following way (keeping your folder structure and tags as is, no underscores needed) :

Code:

AlbumNameAlbumArtist.jpg

(no space between album name and artist, but spaces are allowed in the actual album name and in the artist name)

So, for your own example, the jpg would be named:

Code:

Hotel PaperMichelle Branch.jpg

I use the exact same folder structure and have the exact same album on my player and this works fine.

To make it even easier, you can configure Album Cover Art Downloader to do all the naming automatically.

- Start Album Cover Art Downloader
- Click Settings / configure..
- Under "Targets" uncheck "enable" on all items except "Generic" (make sure enable is ticked if it is not already under Generic)
- Under "Generic" set the image size to 256x256 (or whatever you want really, I think the player only displays 80x80 anyway, but that might change in future so bigger might be better just in case)
- Again under "Generic" set the "file name for image" box to the following:

Code:

%(album)%(artist).jpg

(no spaces). This will save the covers in the format described above.
- Press ok then use Open to select the MUSIC dir on the miniplayer and start getting the album art


This works very well for the majority of music, but does hiccup if the album or artist name contains certain special characters such as "?" or similar. In that case, you may have to put underscores in place of those characters both in the tags of the music and in the filenames.

I don't know about anyone else but I don't have my music organized in any sort of way on my player. I just dump the new files directly into the music folder. I have no other folders inside that one.

I created an "Albums" folder in the root directory and named all the jpgs with the exact name of the album in the tag. As long as the album name matches the tag the art shows up fine.

This may be too disorganized for some people but it works fine for me. I didn't feel like putting all my music into folders like that.

Feroxy,

Thank you SO much :D
It worked!
Thanks for guiding me through it! Your directions were very easy to follow, and it worked perfectly!
I'm VERY happy

Thanks again!

Best,
MZ

Originally Posted by GetLostInIt

I don't know about anyone else but I don't have my music organized in any sort of way on my player. I just dump the new files directly into the music folder. I have no other folders inside that one.

I created an "Albums" folder in the root directory and named all the jpgs with the exact name of the album in the tag. As long as the album name matches the tag the art shows up fine.

This may be too disorganized for some people but it works fine for me. I didn't feel like putting all my music into folders like that.

I'm like you, I don't have my music organized into folders since all my music is mixed. It's all in my main "MUSIC" folder, all 422 files worth.

What I need help with, is getting the automated Album Art Downloader program to read the tags of my mp3s and download all the album covers to THAT FOLDER. It will not do it on it's own. I think it needs to see them all organized into folders, which is bunk. Anyone have a solution for this? I want to download all the %album%.jpg files into my MUSIC folder.

Originally Posted by SoupOfTheDay

I'm like you, I don't have my music organized into folders since all my music is mixed. It's all in my main "MUSIC" folder, all 422 files worth.

What I need help with, is getting the automated Album Art Downloader program to read the tags of my mp3s and download all the album covers to THAT FOLDER. It will not do it on it's own. I think it needs to see them all organized into folders, which is bunk. Anyone have a solution for this? I want to download all the %album%.jpg files into my MUSIC folder.

Okay, here's what I did - it's a crappy solution but it works for now:

1) Download and install a copy of iTunes (even if you uninstall it after this)
2) Load all of your Meizu songs into your iTunes library. (COPY) iTunes will automatically sort your music into ARTIST / ALBUM hierarchy.
3) Use Album Art Downloader. It will work now since your files are organized.
4) Do a search in your iTunes Music folder for only "jpg" files.
5) Copy all jpg's over to the Meizu's MUSIC folder. Voila.

As long as all of your ID3 tags match up, all of your songs are in "MUSIC" and all the newly downloaded jpg's are too, it should work!

Here is what I did which worked just great.
I downloaded the program mentioned near the beginning of this thread.
I put my music on the meizu then pointed the program Album Art Download to it and it loaded all the songs it found. Using the automatic method it didn't find many covers.
So I manually search for each album and it found nearly all of them. As you find each you click on the image and hit as Set as Cover.
I didn't have to mess with the jpgs or naming, it was all automatically done.
I can't see why people have trouble as this is such an easy way to do it and requires little time to do. I did my whole listing in the meizu in a half hour (but was doing other things as well at that time)

Originally Posted by feroxy

Mini Zuper name the album art in the following way (keeping your folder structure and tags as is, no underscores needed) :

Code:

AlbumNameAlbumArtist.jpg

(no space between album name and artist, but spaces are allowed in the actual album name and in the artist name)

So, for your own example, the jpg would be named:

Code:

Hotel PaperMichelle Branch.jpg

I use the exact same folder structure and have the exact same album on my player and this works fine.

To make it even easier, you can configure Album Cover Art Downloader to do all the naming automatically.

- Start Album Cover Art Downloader
- Click Settings / configure..
- Under "Targets" uncheck "enable" on all items except "Generic" (make sure enable is ticked if it is not already under Generic)
- Under "Generic" set the image size to 256x256 (or whatever you want really, I think the player only displays 80x80 anyway, but that might change in future so bigger might be better just in case)
- Again under "Generic" set the "file name for image" box to the following:

Code:

%(album)%(artist).jpg

(no spaces). This will save the covers in the format described above.
- Press ok then use Open to select the MUSIC dir on the miniplayer and start getting the album art


This works very well for the majority of music, but does hiccup if the album or artist name contains certain special characters such as "?" or similar. In that case, you may have to put underscores in place of those characters both in the tags of the music and in the filenames.

Who da Man??? YOU DA MAN :D , I finally manage to get the Album Art to work thanks to u man
Mini Zupper is right , a lot of infos everywhere , scattered , but nothing that breaks it down to layman's term , not everybody is a computer geek , that is a problem with a lot of the forums out there , if someone comes in with a noob question , it will be xplain to him but not the easy way, don't know if you guys get my drift...? , nothing wrong with that but for all of you guys out there with a lot of pc knowledge , remember you too had to start somewhere so cut the new guys some slack :D
I might get a lot of flaming for this but oh! well :P
In my case , the reason it did not work was bcause of the settings within "Album Cover Art Downloader" program , but I got it now.
Thanks to you , but also thanks to everybody else who give feedback , tips and tricks to this Big and Wonderful "Meizu" Family :D
Laters Haters , Phil

This is how I get my album art

\MUSIC\Artist\Album\Album.jpg

or

\MUSIC\Artist - Album\Album.jpg


As long as your files' tags are correct, it'll work.

Great programme this, am just in the process of putting album art onto my M6!

Though for some reason it names each jpg as 'JRR TolkienLord Of The Rings' (I have that on my player as an audiobook) and each time I download a new album jpg it overwrites the image in that file. It's not naming the files correctly, and I then have to change the filename to the exact same filename as the music file itself (e.g. change the name to Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out.jpg). I then start the process over again when it creates another file with the JRR Tolkien filename! Also if I have more than one track from one album, I have to create multiple copies of that artwork and name it after that music file's filename rather than just the one artwork jpg working for all the files from that album. I hope that makes sense!

It's a bit long winded but I'm getting there, I must be doing something wrong! I've followed the guide posted on here by Feroxy exactly though.