MP3 player and Artwork

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ajdedo
Posts: 17
Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:49 pm

MP3 player and Artwork

Post by ajdedo »

Hi,

I do not have an MP3/PMP player yet, but I'd like to know a few things before I started organizing my MP3 files.

Currently my Album Art file size varies from 40kb - 2MB, and the dimensions range from 150x150 - 1200x1200. I have all the software needed to resize the images if needed.

1) Will most players shrink and stretch Art Work to fill the screen size?
2) Is it better to embed Art work in the ID3Tag, or leave it in the folder?
3) If not, what is the best standard Dimension for Art Work?

Thanks.

P.S. When I get a player, I'm leaning towards an Android one.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by Lowlander »

2) I believe embedded is better as you'll never loose the Album Art from your files.
3) I prefer larger as screen resolutions keep going up
ajdedo
Posts: 17
Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:49 pm

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by ajdedo »

3) Do you resize you images to a standard size, say 800x800, or are each of your images whatever you get them as?
Eyal
Posts: 3116
Joined: Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:27 am
Location: Québec

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by Eyal »

I use embeded and resize them with AdionSoft Fast Image Resizer (freeware): http://adionsoft.net/fastimageresize/

Also see this thread: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=37669
Skins for MediaMonkey: Cafe, Carbon, Helium, Spotify, Zekton. [ Wiki Zone ].
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by Lowlander »

3) I don't resize, I get the biggest I can get, although laziness dictates that most is from Amazon at 500*500. But now with EAC being able to embed art before ripping I get the biggest I can find that is of good quality.
gege
Posts: 866
Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2006 2:10 pm
Location: Brazil

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by gege »

ajdedo wrote: 1) Will most players shrink and stretch Art Work to fill the screen size?
2) Is it better to embed Art work in the ID3Tag, or leave it in the folder?
3) If not, what is the best standard Dimension for Art Work?
1) AFAIK, all 'iDevices' will manage any image size fine. On the other hand, from my experience I can say that cell phones based on Symbian OS can't show Album Art if filesize exceeds 100KB. I can't say nothing about Android devices on this matter...

2) Looking only from MediaMonkey point of view, I think there's no difference. But if you embed a large image file in every track of an album, you'll end up wasting a considerable storage space. Maybe it's not a big issue if you have lots of terabytes in some NAS storage, but it IS an issue in a small 2GB device.

3) I think 600x600* is a nice standard for all my current use (I mean: an iPod 5G and MediaMonkey itself with MonkeyFlow add-on sometimes running fullscreen at a 1680x1050 monitor). So, I use the following approach:
- ONE image file stored in the album folder as 'Front.jpg'** in the biggest resolution I can find (at a maximum of 1500x1500), just to guarantee my album art is future proof.
- The same 'Front.jpg' resized to 600x600 and stored in tags. Normally, these resized images will have 200KB or less, so I don't waste too much space storing then in each track.


* A very nice place to find album art is http://www.albumartexchange.com. Their 'standard' size is 600x600, but recent submissions are also being uploaded in 800x800 and 1000x1000 resolutions, which is great. As a side note, I'm a regular uploader there. :)

** I advise you not to store your images as 'Folder.jpg' if you plan also to store them in tags, because if you do this AND eventually you use Windows Media Player, it will overwrite your nice, hi-res 'Folder.jpg' images with lo-res, over-compressed versions created from those stored in tags. Yeah, it already happened to me. Fortunately, I had a backup...
ajdedo
Posts: 17
Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:49 pm

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by ajdedo »

** Yes Thanks. That brings me to another question.....

Before I embed my Images, I currently have them stored in their individual folders named this ->

Folder.jpg
Back.jpg
Insert 1.jpg
Insert 2.jpg
etc...

What would be the best way to name them when I'm ready to embed ?

Thanks!
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by Lowlander »

Embedded doesn't use filenames.
Eyal
Posts: 3116
Joined: Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:27 am
Location: Québec

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by Eyal »

ajdedo wrote:What would be the best way to name them when I'm ready to embed ?
I know these names are recognized by MM to set the correct image type:

Front.jpg, Cover.jpg, Back.jpg, Inlay.jpg, Booklet, Inside.jpg

I never saw any documentation about that, but it seems to be an accepted standard...

:~)
Skins for MediaMonkey: Cafe, Carbon, Helium, Spotify, Zekton. [ Wiki Zone ].
Guest

Re: MP3 player and Artwork

Post by Guest »

Can someone help me with my problem? Im using media monkey version 4.1.11 and my phone is samsung galaxy grand 1. What is the default size for album picture? When I'm doing copy paste album pictures from google with the size of 500x500 and when all of that are done and start sncying songs on phone there is a glitch with album pictures not all of them are match with the songs. But when it is on the download folder there is nothing wrong with that and all of them are match with the songs. What seems to be the problem?
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