Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

[GeekStarPilot]

A question to the collective wisdom of the forum...

I have ripped my entire CD collection to FLAC and then LAME MP3 (256kb/s) using the various components of the dbPowerAmp Reference (Version 12) suite of applications.

I also took the time to collect album art images for all of the CDs. The source for the images was either Amazon USA (typically 240px X 240px JPEGs) or I scanned them (250px X 250px JPEGs). Each album art image has been stored as "folder.jpg" file in album folder.

Below is the ripping process I used:

1) dbPoweramp CD Ripper: CD --> FLAC (Not every CD had album art at this stage).
2) Collect and copy relevant folder.jpg file to every album folder.
3) db Poweramp Batch Convertor: Reprocess all FLAC files using ID Tag Update converter to import folder.jpg as album art to ensure that every FLAC file has album art in it.
4) db Poweramp Batch Convertor: FLAC --> LAME MP3 (256kb/s CBR) with DSP action to export album art image as folder.jpg into each album folder.

The FLAC tagging options were set to Vorbis comments with ID3v2 version set as 2.3.

The MP3 tagging options were set to ID3v2 (only) with ID3v2 version set as 2.3.

When I imported the MP3s in to iTunes (Version 7.6.1.9) I was surprise to find that NO song had album art visible.

Is this missing album art in iTunes caused by quirk of how iTune interprets album art in MP3s or have not done or set something correctly in my ripping workflow?

Thanks in advance to all who take the time to reply.

Regards,
GeekStarPilot

[garym]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

Itunes won't recognize the folder.jpg files. You'll need to use dbpoweramp tool to add the folder.jpg art to each mp3 file (embedded art). Then ITUNES will recognize the art. You'll be able to do this automatically with dbpoweramp. I don't have the commands in front of me, but it is easy to go from folder.jpg to embedded art.

[LtData]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

Does dMC show embedded album art in the mp3 files?

[GeekStarPilot]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

Thanks for the replies so far.

All of the MP3 files do have the album art images embedded in them.

I have checked and I can view the album images in both the "Audio Properties" tab for the "Properties" options in Windows Vista and in the dMC "ID-Tag" tab.

BTA it is the same for the FLAC files.

[garym]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

Sorry, I misread your post. You have embedded album art. This should work. I agree, check to see that dbpoweramp thinks you have embedded art in each file. Also, if you happened to import the mp3 files to your itunes library BEFORE you added the album art (that is, you did this step later), itunes will need to reread all your files in order to update its own library/database. You should be able to select all files, right click on get info, then don't change anything but click OK. This should reread all file info for the itunes database.

[GeekStarPilot]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

To make sure that everything has been done in the correct order I trashed my current iTunes library (it had no play lists or ratings in it so there was nothing valuable to lose) and recreated it.

I did the "Get Info" thing on all the files as suggested.

The album art still does not show.

At the end of this message is a copy of the information captured from the "Audio Properties" tab for a sample song.

One interesting thing that I note from the properties information is this entry:

Contains Album Art, ID Tag [APEv2 & ID3v1.1]

It says that the ID3 tags are version 1.1 but the dMC settings said that they should be version 2.3. It is my understadning that there is a difference in the way album art is stores in the different version of ID3. Could iTune be reading this value and be thkning that because the ID3 tags are version 1.1 it cannot import the album art?

Artist The Beatles
Title The Fool on the Hill
Album Magical Mystery Tour
Track 02/11
Disc 01/01
Genre Rock
Year 1967
Rating 10
Composer John Lennon; Paul McCartney
Size 5.53 MB (18% of original, 1 to 1 compression)
Original Size 30.31 MB
Length 3 minutes
Channels 2 (stereo)
Sample Rate 44.1 KHz;
Sample Size 16 bit
Bit Rate 257 kbps
Encoder LAME 3.97
Encoder Settings Constant Bit Rate 256 kbps
Audio Quality Very High (Lossy)
Contains Album Art, ID Tag [APEv2 & ID3v1.1]
Channel Mapping Left, Right
File 02 - The Fool on the Hill
Type VLC media file (.mp3) [.mp3]

[garym]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

Aha! I think you've found the problem. You should use ID3v2.3 tags (it is ok to also have ID3v1 tags in addition). Itunes will read the v1 tags, but I don't believe that v1 tags can contain album art. Your art is probably in the APE tags, and ITUNES probably doesn't read APE tags (haven't tried that). I can say that all my art is in ID3v2.3 tags and ITUNES reads just fine. You should use dbpoweramp to rewrite the tags and select the option to write only id3v2.3 and id3v1 tags (not APE tags). P.S. I used to store both id3v2.3 and v1 tags, but found having two tags could sometimes create issues when one got updated by an app but the other didn't. I've since gone to having ONLY ID3v2.3 tags and found that to be much cleaner. All the players I use can read the 2.3 tags just fine. Mostly old car cd-rom mp3 players still need id3v1 tags.

[LtData]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

It looks like your files have APEv2 and ID3v1.1 tags, which seems to run contrary to you mentioning you set dMC to ID3v2.3 only. You might want to double-check your dMC Configuration to make sure it is set properly for MP3.

[GeekStarPilot]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

Thanks to all for the guideance.

I have solved it!!!

The problem is caused by a quirky interaction between the dMC Configuration utility and Windows Vista user access control (UAC).

The account I am using to rip and convert the files is a standard user account (i.e. NOT a member of the "Administrators" group). I do this as good security practice.

Everytime I ran the dMC Configuration utility the Vista UAC would ask for the Administrator password. That is OK I thought. It is probably making some higher level changes that require higher-level permissions. I would then select the ID3v2.3 as the tag type for my MP3s, save the changes and close the utility and re convert a few sample files. Every time the tags would have APEv2 and ID3v1.1 tags and not the ID3v2.3 tags as I had asked for. iTune then read the ID3v1.1 tags accordingly (i.e. no album art, text values no longer than 31 characters, etc).

I was starting to smell a permissions problem so I logged out, gave my account administrator permissions, logged back in and ran the dMC Configuration utility again. When ran the dMC Configuration utility I was again presented with the Vista UAC permissions dialog this time with the choice to enter either the administrator password or the password for my user account. I entered the password for my user account. I made the configuration changes, closed the utility, reconverted the sample songs and imported them into iTunes.

Success!!!

The ID3 tag version was correct, iTunes recognised the album art and used all correctly displayed all of the ID3v2.3 tags I lovingly entered when I originally ripped the song.

Finally to try my luck I removed the administrator permissions from the user account and converted the songs again. It still worked.

The specific issue seems to be that when making dMC Configuration utility changes the actual account in which the changes are being made MUST administrator permissions, not just permissions inherited from the Administrator account. Once the changes are made the permissions of the account can be downgraded.

This might be a bug in dMC that can be fixed in the upcoming version 13 release or at the very least documented as a known issue.

Thanks again to all who took the time to help.

[Spoon]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

We are aware of it but do not know how to get around it, for dMC Config to add shell extensions it need to be elevated to admin, at that point the config can not write tot he original registry of the user, even running other programs are still run as admin.

[GeekStarPilot]

Re: Why won't iTunes see the album art in my MP3 files

@Spoon,

I thought that might have been the case.

The sooner Windows ditches the registry and replaces it with a more effective solution the better things will be for developers such as yourselves.

Vista makes it easier for a normal user to regularly operate without administrator privileges but it is not perfect.