Some songs hate iTunes album art

[Slewed]

I have a recurring problem on a few of my songs, (i've checked, and these files are all mp3 but are completely different from one another, ripped at different times and used to retain album art.)

Now in itunes 7.3 (it probably happened before, i've only noticed now) they don't hold onto album art. If I drag and drop a picture onto the panel on the bottom left - it doesn't appear. I then repeat the same action and the picture pops up for the first time there. If i now move away from the file and click it again, it doesn't remember the art.

Its a really frustrating problem, and i was just wondering if there is something i could do to fix it? The problem seems to happen on seemingly random files, a few in the same album will be fine, and coverflow will work fine. Then i play it on my iPod and it doesn't have the art on the songs...

On another note, i've recently heard that iTunes doesn't write tags onto files properly, i've been tagging a few in itunes and playing them in winamp, and winamp seems unable to read them. I thought the itunes buggy tagging had been fixed by iTunes 7..

[Levi- The perfectionist]

convert them to AAC. the new AAC copies will retain album art.

I think... some mp3s are just dodgy depending on what program they were created/ripped by.

but I often have trouble with them and wma files, i convert them and all is honky dory.

so that you dont loose any, type in the name of the artist and click the 'type' menu header to sort into mp3 and aac. then when you convert them all the aac copies will be bunched together below the mp3s and u can just delete the top lot out.

As for buggy tagging... well, I use itunes on both mac and pc, and i have no issues except when i go to import into windows media player, winamp or other.

itunes works flawlessly for itself.

[Slewed]

that is what i meant by buggy tagging, like the album art it greedily downloads for itself, it only writes tags for itself...

rather then converting them to aac, i converted them to exactly the same bitrate mp3, and then returned the file to its original location...it seemed to do the trick, thanks!

[alpha2zulu]

This is just the method I use, this might have worked.

Right-click any one of the songs (or the empty album placeholder in Album view) giving you problems and click Get Info.

Try uploading art using the Artwork tab in that window.

[Slewed]

a2z that does not work . Nor does any other way i've tried (dragging and dropping, adding through the menu, dragging and dropping from firefox)

[Levi- The perfectionist]

that is what i meant by buggy tagging, like the album art it greedily downloads for itself, it only writes tags for itself...

rather then converting them to aac, i converted them to exactly the same bitrate mp3, and then returned the file to its original location...it seemed to do the trick, thanks!

hmm as for the buggy tagging, try using the export option in itunes, instead of just copying the mp3s from the folder...

it may not work better, but it might... not sure :slant:

AAC is meant to be better quality (slightly larger filesize?... but these days storage is cheap), but if you're only converting from mp3 its not likely to increase the quality much.

but next time u rip a cd.... go AAC- you will notice the difference.

[dave double u]

Slewed, I've experienced the same thing not infrequently. Any tagging done in iTunes is pretty much iTunes only and doesn't necessarily carry across to other players.

For those "special" files that iTunes doesn't seem to be able to tag or carry art for, you have to remove the already existing tag, which you can do with any dedicated tagger (ID3-TagIt for instance). Then tag your heart out.

[Slewed]

For those "special" files that iTunes doesn't seem to be able to tag or carry art for, you have to remove the already existing tag, which you can do with any dedicated tagger (ID3-TagIt for instance). Then tag your heart out.

i looked at the site but i couldn't determine whether this program could add album art or not, if not i'll stick with foobar2k and then check them in iTunes afterwards.

[dave double u]

No, no, what I meant was that you should use the program to remove the existing tag (right-click on a file -> TAG ver. 2 functions -> remove Tag). After doing this you should have no problem adding the album art in iTunes as you normally would.

[Slewed]

oh, i tried that, and it doesn't seem to work. The only way i've managed to get it to work is to convert it to mp3 in itunes, and then replace the original file

edit: silly me, i didn't press save changes. Thanks davew!

can anybody with an 5G ipod please try this:

1. Find an mp3 song in your library,

2. Recode it to a higher bit rate, or find another version at a higher bit rate

3. Copy the original song out of the directory and replace it (copy over it) with the song with higher bit rate. 4. Open iTunes and play the track it thinks hasn't changed, and then add it to the iPod.

5. Does the song ever finish, or does the iPod freeze at the end of the song?

it's never finished a track for me, and i thought it was a HD error, till i realised what was causing it for me..

[dave double u]

What format were they in in the first place? What annoys me is that I'm 92% sure I'm right. Oh well.

[Slewed]

format of what?

dave, your idea for the rewriting file tags worked, until i came to the smaller items of each album (you know, the 10 second intros, the interludes), itunes really won't take the art of these things, even though the id3tagit program shows the art is present..