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Topic: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists? (Read 4390 times) previous topic - next topic
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How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

I have been able to add album art after an extraction when all of the CD tracks are stored in one folder--the CD has one CD Artist. However, I haven't figured out how to add art when the album CD Artist was setup as "various artists." Each track is stored in a different folder under the track artist's name.

When the art is available before extraction, EAC is able to store the album art somewhere when a album has various artists. It does not store a copy of the art with each track. Does anyone know where EAC stores the artwork? I assume that's where I need to add the artwork.

Thanks,
Steve

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #1 –
EAC uses a temporary location during extraction. Usually
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\ (C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Temp\) <not useful

EAC will copy this file one time per album/copy/compression method. It will usually go into the extraction folder.
As you do not rip the entire album to a single extraction folder for some reason, I would check each folder in the path. For example if your path is
C:\Users\YourUserName\Music\%artist%\
try looking in the \Music folder then move up from there.
korth

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #2 –
Thank you very much for the feedback.

Tracks from an album set up as Various Artists for CD Album are sent to different folders because of the "%artist%\%albumtitle%\%artist% - %title%" setting under Options, Filename, "Use various artist naming scheme."

I checked the folders for each of the tracks from an album that has album art. None of the folders had the album art. I checked all of AppData for anything related to EAC. The only thing I found is the CDDB.sdf file under Roaming. Any other ideas where the art could be stored? Is it maybe buried in the CDDB file?

Thanks,
Steve

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #3 –
album art is not in CDDB.sdf

I just ran a test run using your Various Artists naming scheme
%artist%\%albumtitle%\%artist% - %title%
Full Path C:\Rips\%artist%\%albumtitle%\
cover art is in C:\Rips\
%albumartist% - %albumtitle%.jpg
extraction log file is also in C:\Rips\
korth

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #4 –
I did an extensive search for album art for one of the albums where the jpg file is not stored with the track(s) or in an upper level folder. The art was very unique and would have been easy to see with a file explorer search. I searched for all jpg files on my C and D drives. The image doesn't exist after looking at thumbnail images for over 6000 jpgs. Nevertheless, Foobar2000 is able to see the image.

kroth, I re-extracted a few tracks from an album with various artists and gave the CD Title a different name. EAC had the artwork because I had extracted the tracks previously. EAC did not place a copy of the image as a separate file in any of the music directories. It did not do what your system did.

I examined the MP3 files with Mediainfo, It showed:
    Cover : Yes
    Cover description : CD Front Cover
    Cover type : Cover (front)
    Cover MIME : image/jpeg

This made me think the artwork is inside the MP3. I searched online and found that the artwork can be stored as part of the MP3 file. So, it appears that's why a separate jpg file is not showing up. So, my adding artwork at a later date after extraction will be difficult on my system since each track from a various artist CD is stored in a different folder. Adding artwork where all the tracks are in one folder is easy. I just download an image from MusicBrainz and put it in the folder.

I think I also discovered that EAC stores a copy of the album art in its database. EAC is able to pull up prior track information and cover image for CDs that I previously looked at but did not extract any tracks from.

BTW, the only reason I'm trying to add artwork on some CDs is because the artwork wasn't available from the metadata provider when I ripped the CD.

Thanks,
Steve

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #5 –
I don't know your complete EAC configuration so I can only assume defaults.
The option to save the file to the extraction folder (EAC may try to use a single parent folder common to all tracks as the extraction folder) is on
EAC  > Compression options > ID3 Tag (tab)
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=File:EAC_v1.x_Compression_options_ID3_Tag.png
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=User:Korth/EAC_Compression_Options#ID3_Tag

This is a separate option than embedding artwork within the audio files.
korth

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: SteveP on
I think I also discovered that EAC stores a copy of the album art in its database. EAC is able to pull up prior track information and cover image for CDs that I previously looked at but did not extract any tracks from.
You're certain that isn't a stored web link to where the cover was originally located?
BTW you can right-click on the image and save the cover.
The text from previously retrieved metadata is in the database.
korth

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #7 –
Thanks again for your help.

I checked the EAC Compression Options and "Add cover image to ID3V2" plus "Write cover image into extraction folder" are selected. This explains what is going on. It has been a long time since I set this area up. I forgot about these settings. I also didn't remember that the cover image could be embedded in the MP3 tag. This answers my question about where jpgs are stored.

I tried an experiment to see if EAC is keeping image data in its database, I physically disconnected my computer from the internet, closed/restarted EAC, and loaded several CDs into EAC that I processed previously. EAC had the album art. I pushed harder by moving the tracks I re-extracted from the CD that had Various Artists and closing/restarting EAC. EAC still had the artwork even though I removed any connection it might have had with the stored files. So EAC has retained the jpgs somehow--in the CDDB or somewhere else? It doesn't really matter at this point. It's nice though that EAC can somehow retain the artwork on all CDs, even un-extracted CDs.

korth, I really appreciate you taking time to talk about this,
Steve

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #8 –
Quote
This made me think the artwork is inside the MP3.
Several years ago i discovered that embedded artwork is the "most standard" and "most compatible" method,* although it's redundant and wastes space.  

In many cases I still have a separate image in the album folder (even more redundant and more wasteful of space).

MP3Tag can embed the artwork if it's not already done.   Or it can extract it,

If the artwork isn't found automatically I'll usually just scan it.  Or sometimes look for it online and a couple of times I've used Album Art Downloader.   (Vinyl artwork won't fit in a regular scanner so I've used "photo stitching" software a couple of times.   Once I took a couple of rare vinyl albums to Kinko's because I assume they have a large format scanner but they refused to do it because it's copyrighted artwork!)

In some cases I think I've used the original album artwork instead of the compilation CD artwork. 

And...  With various artists or greatest hits CDs I ALWAYS try to find the original release date, or if the music was originally released on vinyl, that's the year I want to show.   That's sometimes VERY time consuming but I don't want to have a 50's song dated 2020, I have playlists by decade and I have an "early 60's" playlist, etc. 


* Audacity doesn't support embedded artwork so if you edit with Audacity the artwork won't be copied to the new-edited file.

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #9 –
There is a lot of metadata to be found in Musicbrainz, using the Picard tagger. Sometimes, scanning by audio fingerprint it will point you to the original release - but there seems not to be any consensus on fields to use for original album release date and original track release date. (You can just make up your own, but ... how to auto-populate?)

Note for ID3, Picard uses some fields that e.g. foobar2000 won't read.

But ... who the flac wants MP3 and ID3 for their CD rips? Rip to lossless, and convert later.

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #10 –
Thanks for the feedback.

I've been using MusicBrainz's web site lately to find art that wasn't available when I ripped a CD in the past. I place the art in the folder where the songs are and Foobar can find the art in the folder if it's not in the MP3. It becomes difficult to place the art in a folder when I'm trying to add art for a CD that had various artists. The songs are scattered to different folders that relate to each track artist--maybe not the best approach. From here on, I'll start scanning the cover at the time of ripping if the metadata site(s) don't have an image.

I primarily use MusicBrainz for metadata in EAC. My secondary source is CUEtools. MusicBrainz tends to not have the latest CD releases such as those from 2022 so I switch to CUEtools when MusicBrainz doesn't have the data. But, CUEtools has very small artwork and sometimes doesn't have any art. Oddly, I can find better artwork in MusicBrainz after downloading data from CUEtools even though MusicBrainz supposedly didn't have any metadata.  I found that after downloading data from CUEtools I can switch back to MusicBrainz, go to the CD Cover area in EAC and then "Get New Image Data from Metadata Provider." Many times MusicBrainz has an image but didn't have the other metadata.

What are you using for a database? I've been using MP3Collector since the early 2000s. I have the older PC based version and didn't switch to the newer subscriber version. The PC-based version can do a lot in altering MP3 tags, sorting, playlists, etc. I stuck with the PC version because I didn't want to run the risk of loosing a lot of work when, not if, the company goes out of business or stops supporting the subscription. I've seen too many companies just stop supporting a product leaving users with nothing.

I'll keep MP3Tag and Album Art Downloader in mind as additional resources.

Porcus, what is Picard tagger?

For MP3 vs Flac, I ran several tests between the two formats years ago on very good equipment and couldn't tell the difference. I use MP3 with variable bit rate of 192kbps with v2 quality which yields about 200kbps on average. I know that sounds Lame ::), but I set it up this way because my hearing was partially destroyed at a concert in 1988, which limits what I can hear. I have ringing in both ears with one ear limited to about 8khz and the other to about 5khz. I went with MP3 to save space when using the music on external players such as iPods.

Steve

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: SteveP on
Porcus, what is Picard tagger?
MusicBrainz' tagging software. https://picard.musicbrainz.org/  Can identify music by "listening" to it.

Most cannot tell MP3@192 from lossless anyway, sure - I doubt I would ever need even that much myself. Indeed, I happily transcode to less than half of that for portable use.
I maintain my library as lossless though, in a checksummed format that will warn me about corruption (I've had some, then I retrieve from backup), can be retro-verified against AccurateRip and the CUETools database - and even, CUETools could repair this one: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,113978.0.html 
Also, it stays gapless - seems to be less of an issue nowadays though.

Re: How can I add album art after EAC extraction when the CD has various artists?

Reply #12 –
Porcus, thanks for the information. Interesting feedback on file corruption. . I hadn't considered random audio file corruption that could go undetected for long periods.

One thing I have noticed, is that some of the downloaded metadata has text characters that confuse MP3 Collector. The characters look fine, but for an occasional track or whole CD the track(s) will show 0 size and time and won't play. If it's one or two tracks I'll manually retype the track-level data. If it's a whole CD that shows 0 size, I'll retype the CD-level text. Then the file(s) will play fine.

Again, thanks,
Steve