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Topic: Say NO to embedded art? (Read 24872 times) previous topic - next topic
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Say NO to embedded art?

Is it best to forgo embedded album/cover art? Basically, do audiophiles prefer their FLAC files (or even MP3 files, maybe  ) to be free of embedded images? I notice that some people here appear to stick an image in the appropriate folder, naming it folder.jpg or cover.jpg, but that only works with certain players I presume. I just wondered if  the general consensus was to leave encoded files as raw as possible or is embedded artwork considered an authentic part of the final file?

--
djp

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #1 –
Not because of "leaving the audio file as raw as possible". There's no problem in having metadata. Maybe the audiophiles fear bad emissions by metadata bytes  Or other bullshit...

First I embedded album art, but now I avoid it, due to support issues and such. E.g. fb2k can only display one embedded album art image. Also, it cannot embed stuff by itself.
Also, when I need information/statistics about existing album art of the whole media library, I can only do this via a file manager. This of doesn't find embedded art naturally.

You have my NO.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #2 –
As long as whatever player you are using can play back the stream with choking on the album art there's no problem.

I use it with no problems across iPod/iTunes/winamp/foobar2000

I use mp3tag to embed it in my mp3s/mp4s
"...ambience?, I AM ambience!"

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #3 –
I use embedded album art (with MP3 files) only because my DAP can show it, but I also have a jpg file in each album folder in better quality.

I use ImageMagick to resize the picture to 150x150 and it's rarely more than 10kb, great because space is an issue on portable players.
Opus 96 kb/s (Android) / Vorbis -q5 (PC) / WavPack -hhx6m (Archive)

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #4 –
Because most of my mp3 files are in albums and in their own folder for that album, I mainly use the folder.jpg in the album's folder.

However, I embed album art in files that are not in a folder with other songs from their own album - for example, I have folders such as
My Music/U2/others/
and
My Music/_single songs/
for miscellaneous songs from U2 (and of course I also do this for other artists) and for random songs from artists for whom I don't have any full albums.

I won't embed album art and also have a folder.jpg file because foobar2000 won't display the image if there are multiple images that apply.

I also use mp3tag to embed album art in mp3 files (or remove album art in some cases).
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #5 –
I use iTunes to organize my music and play in my own computer. The same music is synchronized to the Media Center PC and used in Vista Media Center.

ALL my music have embedded Artwork  (at least 300x300 pixels and most are 600x600). I have tools such as Album Art Downloader XUI and iTSfv to ease my tasks. I also make a copy in album folder as Artwork.jpg (this is additional to Folder.jpg for backup purposes).

All my music are completely portable. Vista Media Center has never failed displaying Album Art. I enjoy iTunes Cover Flow, Grid View thanks to my Artwork.



That's my story but I see most of others don't share the same experience as me.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #6 –
I don't embed any album cover art to my files. I also use only ID3V1.1 TAGs not ID3V2.X ...

I don't understand why I should have the same meta data embedded to every song of an album...
One album art at the album's folder is not enough?

Anyway, there are so many incompatibilities ... car radios, DAPs or other stuff has a problems playing files with ID3V2.X and the embedded cover art.
So I've chosen to have raw files with a simple TAG that everything supports and I don't need to wonder whether the new device will or won't have any problems with playing my files.
Sorry for my poor English, I'm trying to get better... ;)
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist."

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #7 –
I have a pretty simple policy:
- 500x500 folder.jpg
- 1000x1000 cover.png (lossless PNG24) when possible

folder.jpg gets embedded and stays in the folder along with cover.png. folder.jpg is also loaded for iTunes album artwork (my primary player is foobar).

I've had zero issues with embedded album art in FLAC, MP3 and AAC/MP4 files. So, I say YES to embedded artwork.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #8 –
I use folder.jpg for my albums which are individual mp3s

but for the stuff that I have ripped to FLAC images w/embedded cuesheets I embed the cover art with MP3tag.

It's pretty handy to have everything in one file, IMO.
elevatorladylevitateme

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #9 –
It is very neat to sport a FLAC file with embedded cover art, with proper tagging information... but let's face it, this task can be *really* tedious... I usually embed art, but I am considering not mixing music and image for purity reasons (that is, I could have all art in one directory source, and music files left alone). For that, I need FB2k to support album art source path available which is not at the moment... I am still thinking... about a pure FLAC... no tag and no art... just pure... %artist%-%tracknumber%-%title%.flac

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Ron Jones on
I have a pretty simple policy:
- 500x500 folder.jpg
- 1000x1000 cover.png (lossless PNG24) when possible

I have another policy: Just a folder.jpg, back.jpg (and booklet) with as big dimensions as possible. No problem with 3000x3000. Why? Computing power is (or will be soon) huge enough. I don't want album art at the size of a stamp, when standard monitors use 15000x10000 screen resolution

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #11 –
Never used to do it, but I'm a reformed art-embedder, mostly using MP3Tag. Doesn't seem to affect sound quality (sorry - haven't done ABxing to verify this) or increase the file size too much, using 300x300 jpegs. Once you art-tag you don't go back, to paraphrase someone or other...

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Neasden on
It is very neat to sport a FLAC file with embedded cover art, with proper tagging information... but let's face it, this task can be *really* tedious... I usually embed art, but I am considering not mixing music and image for purity reasons (that is, I could have all art in one directory source, and music files left alone). For that, I need FB2k to support album art source path available which is not at the moment... I am still thinking... about a pure FLAC... no tag and no art... just pure... %artist%-%tracknumber%-%title%.flac
"Purity?" 

Dude, this isn't like you're breeding dogs or something.
elevatorladylevitateme

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: ~*McoreD*~ on
That's my story but I see most of others don't share the same experience as me.

I just got done setting an ipod up for a friend of mine who really likes the cover flow feature.  The only way I could get iTunes to display artwork for albums where it cannot be downloaded (or was wrong or of low quality) was to embed the images.  At least I assume that's what iTunes is doing.

So there's someone else with the same experience.  Once I get hardware that has the ability to display artwork I too will have to figure out how to make it work.  If it means embedding 500x500 jpg images, then that's what I'll do.
 

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #14 –
I embed album art in all my FLAC and MP3 files (and I would in my Vorbis files too if I knew of a standardized way of doing it).

I don't see any reason why not to embed it.  Adding ~150 KB to a 5 MB MP3 or a 25 MB FLAC is not that large of an increase.  I also don't see it as a problem of redundant (and thus unneccessary) information as the ALBUM, ARTIST, REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM tags are all redudant but still placed in every file.

I also have an external (both jpeg and a higher res PNG if possible) but I am not a big fan of the folder.jpg or cover.jpg naming scheme.  I would rather have a unique name like "%artist% - %album%.jpg" but media players don't seem to agree with me.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #15 –
I can't listen to album art. I don't usually even bother. foo_discogs grabs it for me for free while I tag. Beyond that, I don't care enough to waste much of my time at all on it.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Squeller on
I have another policy: Just a folder.jpg, back.jpg (and booklet) with as big dimensions as possible.

Off the subject, but I've gone with a 1000x1000 "standard" primarily because my scanner is garbage  Usually, I can remove enough noise to make usable 1kx1k images, but not always.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #18 –
I usually embed the cue and the front cover (500x500 .jpg) into my flacs (they are mostly CD backups), making a separate folder for other scans like back cover etc (~1500x1500 png) as archive.

For my MP3 Player, i embed the front cover (200x200) into my mp3. The size of the jpg ranges from 44 - 80kb and it's not really an issue to me.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #19 –
Quote
End Apartheid!


For a small collection, it's neat to have embed art...
When you have a vast catalogue and think about tagging and embedding over 2000 files, specially if you are scanning/grabbing all art at a minimum least resolution of 500x500... the task can be daunting. It would be easier to have all music separated from the art, because let me tell you, it's not all art you find in 500x500...

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #20 –
Quote from: Barock on
Never used to do it, but I'm a reformed art-embedder, mostly using MP3Tag. Doesn't seem to affect sound quality (sorry - haven't done ABxing to verify this)
Neither the embedded album art nor the hard disks master boot record will be interpreted as audio material (-> played back) by your playback software, you can be sure. Lets stop this tech clueless audiophiles crude ideas here.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #22 –
Quote from: Neasden on
It would be easier to have all music separated from the art, because let me tell you, it's not all art you find in 500x500...
I see no need to search for the cover arts - i have my originals and my scanner. The only case where you need to search for it is when you lost your original (happens pretty rarely) or when you got your music.... elsewhere

I agree that it's a huge task to scan and embed everything, but you're doing it only once. For me, doing this is worth it.... for others it may not.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #23 –
Quote from: k.eight.a on
I don't embed any album cover art to my files. I also use only ID3V1.1 TAGs not ID3V2.X ...

I don't understand why I should have the same meta data embedded to every song of an album...
One album art at the album's folder is not enough?

Anyway, there are so many incompatibilities ... car radios, DAPs or other stuff has a problems playing files with ID3V2.X and the embedded cover art.
So I've chosen to have raw files with a simple TAG that everything supports and I don't need to wonder whether the new device will or won't have any problems with playing my files.


Pretty much everything supports ID3V2.3 nowadays, just don't use UTF-16 or UTF-8. Using V1.1 is a bit odd, half my track titles would be cut off as well as album names and artist names.

Say NO to embedded art?

Reply #24 –
Quote from: ChronoSphere on
I see no need to search for the cover arts - i have my originals and my scanner. The only case where you need to search for it is when you lost your original (happens pretty rarely) or when you got your music.... elsewhere

I agree that it's a huge task to scan and embed everything, but you're doing it only once. For me, doing this is worth it.... for others it may not.

For the record, I think it's less of a huge task to search online for album art than it is to scan the cover art to each CD you have. Using Album Art Downloader, Amazon and Google Images, it's easy to find 500x500 art for most cd's - and for the ones you can't, then you can pull out the scanner. Still takes a lot of time, but I think less than scanning each CD liner individually.
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320