Size, dimension, and tagging for Album Art

[The DarkSide]

Thanks for the great album art link dfkt!!!

[lestatar]

Originally Posted 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) Is it better to embed Art work in the ID3Tag, or leave it in the folder?
2) Will most players shrink and stretch Art Work to fill the screen size?
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.

@aidedo: You are wise indeed to start pondering these kinds of issues now. Some legwork beforehand will save you much grief later on with stuff like this. Great stuff from the peeps here already, but here's my 2 cents...

1- I personally only ever embed art in my ID3 tags. Been doing it for more years than I care to admit and have never had a problem. Be sure to use standard JPG images though.

2- Not sure most players will stretch embedded art. My gear is kinda old and not so bleeding edge. I suppose this is possible. For sure, larger images get squashed down as needed to fit the displays of the particular player. When you have a target device nailed down, I would ask on those particular forums.

3- Not sure there are any standard dimensions. I am using Rockbox on several players and sadly, RB does not natively support embedded artwork. Still, there are super easy applets which automatically parse and resize my embedded artwork to the proper dimensions I need on that particular Rockbox'd player. [e.g. for my Fuze, I use 125x125 and for my Toshiba Gigabeat F40 I believe I use 240x240].

Just a note: the high side of your embedded files seems waaaaay too big and is IMO a waste of space. 2MB for a 1200x1200 image is too much overhead since you are embedding in tags and I am gonna guess that players might choke on that kinda size.

My entire 15k track library has max album art size embedded of 600x600, with file sizes no more than 75-100k.

If my experience is any indication, this is pretty ideal as I have almost never had any issues on any of my players capable of displaying artwork.

cheers, hth and welcome to ABi!
-les