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Topic: What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags? (Read 22246 times) previous topic - next topic
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What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

I'm currently going with 500x500 pixels which looks fine in Winamp and on my iPhone but what if I'm gonna buy a tablet or switch to Kodi and navigate my collection on the TV screen? Despite increased HDD sizes, I'm gonna stick with lossy MP3s @ -V0 (CDs stored in the basement being the lossless backup) so I can play the files everywhere. Does it make sense to have an 10 MB file with a 1500x1500 cover inside? What do you think?

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #1 –
The biggest cover art I have is 1200x1200 and 1.1MB, embedded in 30-40MB FLAC files. Maybe that's maybe borderline excessive. But for a ~10MB MP3 file, it seems like complete overkill.

Honestly, I think 500x500 is perfectly fine, even if blown up a little bit on a HD tablet or phone. And I'd rather go for a size limit, something like 200KB, you can get a suprisingly large picture with that size allowance.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #2 –
Right, I'm a little bit hesitant cause I think about future playback options. After all, I might switch to listening to (some) music on a 40"+ TV and what if it becomes 80"+? I mean, since I've settled for MP3s in "max" quality, I'm not planning on touching the files ever again once they're properly tagged (including unsynched lyrics). And is a filesize limit really necessary in this day and age? I've seen cover CD scans of 1500x1550 @ ~400 KB which sounds big for a 6 MB song but still...

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #3 –
Why do the images have to be embedded in all the files? If you keep them as a separate image in the album's folder, you won't have to worry about excessive file sizes (since you're only storing them once), and you can go as high as you want. If you're going to transfer them to your phone, it's not a lot of work to embed 500px images, which is plenty for that screen size.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: MC Escher on
Why do the images have to be embedded in all the files? If you keep them as a separate image in the album's folder, you won't have to worry about excessive file sizes (since you're only storing them once), and you can go as high as you want. If you're going to transfer them to your phone, it's not a lot of work to embed 500px images, which is plenty for that screen size.


Because embedded album art is the most widely supported method.

For instance, DLNA streaming doesn't show the cover art if it's simply kept as a cover.jpg file in the folder, it has to be embedded in the files.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: KozmoNaut on
Quote from: MC Escher on
Why do the images have to be embedded in all the files? If you keep them as a separate image in the album's folder, you won't have to worry about excessive file sizes (since you're only storing them once), and you can go as high as you want. If you're going to transfer them to your phone, it's not a lot of work to embed 500px images, which is plenty for that screen size.


For instance, DLNA streaming doesn't show the cover art if it's simply kept as a cover.jpg file in the folder, it has to be embedded in the files.


Depends on player, as when browsing a UPnP server the server can offer art when browsing, and the player can use this when playing (rather than reading tags).

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #6 –
My current strategy is:
- keep a high quality (cover.jpg/png max. resolution i can find on the net) and a low quality cover art (folder.jpg, 900x900 max. 100kB) with the lossless source
- when transcoding to lossy ask the transcoder app to embed folder.jpg into the audio files

The pain with this is the varying complexity of cover arts. Some of them can't be compressed without visible blockiness into a 100kB JPEG file (not even with optimized JPEG compressors like mozjpeg), but smaller resolution also looks ugly on today's HD resolution smartphones when stretched to the display.

A solution would be to use something more modern for lossy cover art than JPEG, like BPG (subset of H.265/HEVC intraframe coding), WebP, H.264/AVC still image profile. But support for these formats as cover arts are nearly zero in player software/hardware. I think the "1 frame per cover art video" method used by some podcasts in the MP4 container (like Gareth Emery's Electric for Life podcast) is also only supported by the iPhone, but that particular podcast is still using MJPEG for storing the frames so no compression advancement either.

WebP/BPG cover art + Opus audio in an OGG container would be a good advancement.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #7 –
Embedded might be the "most widely supported", but that doesn't really matter if my players can handle it sitting in a separate file.  And they can, so I do  Works for my album-based listening, maybe not for everyone.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #8 –
I've always wondered what the best balance was too. Typically I shoot for 1000 x 1000 pixels, max 250kb (all embedded). It's never really given me any grief.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: MC Escher on
Why do the images have to be embedded in all the files?

As already mentioned, it's most widely supported (also my main reason to stick with mp3) and because I also use these for my own compilations (aka mixtapes) with a different artwork for each song/artist (which is less work than it sounds).

Quote from: spoon on
Depends on player, as when browsing a UPnP server the server can offer art when browsing

Depends on the server. Some NAS/router servers aren't as fully fledged as Plex e.g.

Quote from: Hotsoup on
Typically I shoot for 1000 x 1000 pixels, max 250kb (all embedded).

Sounds nice but it's not easy to find this size on the net for every song/artist. And I really can't be bothered to scan all covers from my CDs (which is as much work as it sounds).

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Moon on
Quote from: Hotsoup on
Typically I shoot for 1000 x 1000 pixels, max 250kb (all embedded).

Sounds nice but it's not easy to find this size on the net for every song/artist. And I really can't be bothered to scan all covers from my CDs (which is as much work as it sounds).
...and quite a lot of the cover art you can find automatically, irrespective of the number of pixels, is horribly scanned. It's hard to get 1500+ clean pixels from a CD cover anyway, but when the source is worn, creased, loaded into the scanner at an angle etc it's hopeless, even if the result is saved at 1000x1000.

btw, it can be the DLNA server that either does, or does not, notice folder.jpg and associate it automatically with each file in that folder, and/or the folder itself. It can be the DLNA player that either does, or does not, use artwork associated with the folder, or the files, or looks specifically for folder.jpg. Of course if the image is embedded in the file, it will always get to the player when the file is playing without server-side transcoding, even if the play ignores it.

Cheers,
David.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #11 –
personally I have chosen a minimum of 300 x 300 pixels (absolute minimum if nothing else can be found) and a maximum of 3000 x 3000 px since I expect resolutions to increase over the next years and I see a trend to "fullscreen covers while listening to music", like most tablet/phone players already do (i think), everything embedded to each file, max size of 1 MB. I think 1 MB should be enough for jpg 3000x3000

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #12 –
By far the best site I have found has been:
http://www.albumartexchange.com

You'll find gobs at 1000, if not somewhere between 600 and 800 pixels. No creases or dents either, tastefully touched up too.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Hotsoup on
By far the best site I have found has been:
http://www.albumartexchange.com

You'll find gobs at 1000, if not somewhere between 600 and 800 pixels. No creases or dents either, tastefully touched up too.

Yep, that's where I manually downloaded 6546/4.44GB covers

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #15 –
You'll find many scans on AlbumArtExchange that are sourced from 12" covers too, which usually look sharper than CD scans (not to mention better cropping or formatting), IMHO.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #16 –
Albumartexchange is nice, but there are caveats.

People process their scans heavily. Sometimes colors are really oversaturated and such.

Generally, people choose too high quality for JPEG. The files are too big, the compression ratio is undesirable. When I take a JPG from albumartexchange, open it in MS-Paint and save it (so using MS-Paint compression settings), the file size goes down by 50-75 %. And I don't perceive much loss in quality from doing so.

Lastly, their database is not very big. I have a hard time finding art for the (non-mainstreamish) music I listen to.

So I recommend using Album Art Downloader XUI as well. It checks iTunes, Deezer, qobuz etc. for covers. Often times I find great quality. Stuff frequently is digitally sourced (as opposed to being scanned material). Typically, I find something between 800x800 and 1200x1200 at a file size no larger than 200-400 KB.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #17 –
AlbumArtExchange is great. Whenever possible, that's where I get my album art from.

As far as embedding for loading to my iPod, I generally resize images to 600x600. If I'm just storing a cover.jpg file for display in my desktop media players, I don't worry about resizing.

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #18 –
OT but not so much, if you go to Gallery then Login it gives an error, you need to remove everything after the word "login" in the URL, here is the login page: http://www.albumartexchange.com/forums/ucp.php?mode=login

What Artwork Size (resolution) to embed in my tags?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: audiophool on
So I recommend using Album Art Downloader XUI as well. It checks iTunes, Deezer, qobuz etc. for covers. Often times I find great quality.

What other tools are there? As I'm just starting I haven't checked for tools so far. I also know AlbumArtExchange but have mostly been using coverlib.com so far.