album art on CDs ripped w/ WMP

[fchm]

I used WMP to rip all my CDs. Does this mean that even if I drag-and-drop to the S9, I won't get album art?

[EddieE]

'Fraid so.

You can add album art with MP3 Tag (it's free).

Or you could see this as a good motivation to re-rip your music into LAME MP3 which will play gaplessly on your S9.

EAC will give you perfect rips without errors, and is free.

I feel your pain though, after the mission of ripping all my CDs with wmp, deciding to re-rip them all has been arduous (and I still haven't finished yet) but it's worth it.

[RoloJam]

If you ripped to .wma or .wmal, I have to agree wi-th EddieE. As painful as it sounds, you're better off re-ripping the CD. Trust me, I had hundred of CD to rip after ripping to .wmal. I took more than a couple of entire weekends for me.

After not being satisfied with mp3 files, I went with lossless .wma. This for me was the wrong decision. I did go this route before FLAC got more popular and Microsoft went with Zune, thereby creating another .aac file clone in being sigularly linked to it's proprietary Zune. Not wanting to get stuck with files that were pinned to a specific player, this is what exactly happened when MS dumped to Portable Media Center platform (I had bought the Toshiba Gigabeat S) for Zune. I was left with a bunch of file that I found were more effort to transcode than it was to just to re-rip.

The S9, I found hates the MS format. Really. All tagging is lost. It will play the files with no problem, but if you want to listen to an album in track order, you'll have to rename the files and forget about the art. This was too much for me. Aside from Zune, I don't see a lot of others going that route. I did transcode a few albums. Waste of time. You had to decode then encode, then you had to completely re-tag from nothing, but track 1, track 2, etc. I came to the conclusion just bite the bullet and re-rip. The tags went in on the fly after the re-rip. I used both media monkey and EAC. Both pull freedb data that can fill in most of the tag data effortlessly from the metadata on the CD. I liked EAC, but, can take a lot of time re-analyzing any errors, I did end up using MM on albums I listen to infrequently and EAC for my favorites.

[fchm]

I ripped all my tunes to MP3 format -- so will that be OK, even though I used WMP? Will I get album art b/c they're MP3s?

If not, and I use MP3Tag, do I have to add album art to each tune manually, or can I just batch convert them all?

If not that, then I guess my 3rd choice would be to just go without album art, assuming the rest of the tag info will stay intact, since I don't have time to process by hand and re-ripping is not such a hot option since my CDs are in storage... somewhere...

[JunglePimp]

In most of the cases drag and drop doesn't work right. You have to either paste the album art in the folder of the album and them transfer to the S9, or use a software like Mediamonkey, foobar200, songbird, etc.

[EddieE]

The issue is that the album art windows media player adds is not recognised by Cowon players.

Sucks I know, but a harsh reality I learnt when I first got a Cowon D2.

As I said above, adding them by MP3 tag will allow them to show up - or as Jungle Pimp says having the jpeg in the folder named cover will also do the trick.

But, there are other disadvantages to WMP ripped CDs - they won't play gaplessly. LAME Mp3s will - and it is a higher quality form of compression.

Some feel LAME CBR 320kbps is audibly better than LAME VBR - I'm yet to do a listening test but since I haven't been able to tell a difference between LAME VBR and WAV files I'd say LAME VBR is good enough, and will result in high quality minimum sized files = more music on your player.

If you use EAC to rip - you will also get an exact copy - whereas there are probably errors in the wmp ripped mp3s.

It's well worth doing it properly to end up with a perfect collection.

An arduous task, I know, but a rewarding one.

[Olley]

WMP creates Album art and stores it in the same folder your ripped songs are put. There will usually be three or four files named AlbumArt-something. You may also find a Folder.jpg file. Copy the largest album art or the Folder.jpg to your relative album folder on the S9, then rename it Cover.jpg. WMP may store your songs by artist and not album on your player, so you might need to put an album cover several places. If you drag and drop whole album folder to the S9 you can still get art to work be renaming each Folder.jpg to Cover.jpg.

[EddieE]

Olley,
This would have been useful information for me a year ago

How do you view these files - they are hidden on my system and don't show up...

[Olley]

Originally Posted by EddieE

Olley,
This would have been useful information for me a year ago

How do you view these files - they are hidden on my system and don't show up...

I'm not 100% sure. I told my system to show all hidden files back when it had XP on it, and I've been able to always see them since even though I've now got 7 on it. Look for Tools, then Folder Options, then the View tab. Somewhere in the list you should be able to find a box to click on that will Show Hidden Fles.

[EddieE]

Thanks Olley, just found this reply now. Will have a look at doing that later.

[fchm]

ok i now have my S9 (w00t!) and downloaded MediaMonkey. When I look at my music, album art shows in MM. Does this mean that if I now put the music onto my S9, it will have album art? if so, do I have to sync it, or can I just drag-n-drop?

[fchm]

ok i figured out what happened -- in MediaMonkey, I had album art for all the tunes I bought off Amazon, but not any that I ripped with WMP. So within MM, I sorted by album name, highlighted all the tracks on the album, hit Ctrl+L, choose Auto-Tag, checked just the box to include the cover art, said yes to including the art as an MP3 tag, and then I got album art. This process took me about 2 hrs, but i was doing other stuff at the same time.

My only disappointment is that MM doesn't tag the art when I rip using MM - at least i don't see the option for that, and someone on the MM forum was having the same issue w/ no resolution. So I guess it's a 2-step process.

[KWildman]

Something that I stumbled across was that after ripping a CD in WMP (newest version), I then synced the file(s) to my S9 while in the MTP mode, and album art showed up.

[markmp3guy]

Friend,

I would never rip any cd with Media Monkey. I love MM for syncing but not for ripping. I use a program called FreeRip to rip all of my cd's and it does a fair job most of the time.

With Media Monkey you have to right click on each album and tell it to find the album art. Then it goes to Amazon and searches for the album art to download. I have my MM set to automatically add the art to the file because I don't want a folder jpeg. This is my cholce. Anyway, I hope the process of ripping in MM wasn't too painful for ya.

[JunglePimp]

Is it necessary to do that?