SOLUTION TO: Missing Album Art on iPod photo

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Some of us have had a problem with the iPod photo's album art disappearing from the iPod. Well Apple has posted two documents on the subject:

1- iPod photo: All album artwork is missing after upgrading to iTunes 4.7.1

2- iPod photo: Artwork missing from songs

3- I have sent Apple a third solution that has not been addressed and that one is the corrupt song with artwork in iTunes and gets transferred to the iPod making the artwork disappear. (Thanks to achoen for finding this problem and posting the solution.)

When a song is imported into iTunes you should see in the artwork window an outline of a square and the words in the center of it saying: "drag artwork here". If a song does not display this in that window then it needs to be deleted from your computer hard drive and re-imported from the CD once again.

There is no easy way to solve this problem and the solution is a tedious one but must be done since the problem is with the song and not the iPod. In iTunes open the artwork window and:

-highlight the first song in the main library in iTunes.
-Right click on the first song and select 'Get info'
-Select 'Options' tab
-Select 'Artwork' tab

Then check and make sure you have the correct artwork and only one copy of the art cover in the box. If you have more than one then highlight one copy and delete it.

Continue down the list (checking each song in the iTunes artwork display window) until you find the song(s) that displays a blank box in that window, in iTunes, instead of the 'drag artwork here' message.

Once this task is completed and the songs are again transferred to the iPod photo the artwork will display correctly on the iPod. Some of us had this problem and this is how we resolved it. There isn't an easy way if this turns out to be the reason why your artwork has disappeared from displaying on the iPod photo screen.

Additional solutions are on page #8 here.


Previous thead on the topic is here:
http://forums.ipodlounge.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68404
 
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Maroon_tiger

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honeybee1236 said:
:) Thank you but this post came out of necessity to resolve my own disappearing artwork problem.
i got a question tho... in itunes, the album art doesnt show up onless i play a song.... but heres the catch... whenever i open the "get info" for any file and go to the artwork tab, the art work doesnt show up... you know its there b/c the delete button can be highlighted, and where the artwork would usually be, you can right click and copy it....

GET THIS THOUGH... if you copy the hidden art work, and paste it in your favorite picture editing progam, the picture will show up...

and this ####es me off cuz i have over 14,000 songs and at one point every album/song showed the artwork...

recently when i try and load the songs w/ artwork, the artwork file on the ipod becomes corrupt and doesnt show the artwork on the ipod, just a blank square....

i dont want to delete my music b/c of stupid artwork problems b/c i dont have the original cds any more
man this sucks... i really need help on this..
 

mrn121

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The consistent feature that I have found in the songs that do not properly show the album artwork on the iPod is that they all seem to be VBR. Any thoughts there? Is anyone else noticing the same pattern?
 
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Sounds like you need to repair iTunes because the artwork in my iTunes was showing fine. Download it from the Apple site and click the repair and see if that helps.

My VBR showed fine. Go back and check the songs and see if you find one of the problems listed.
 

Maroon_tiger

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mrn121 said:
The consistent feature that I have found in the songs that do not properly show the album artwork on the iPod is that they all seem to be VBR. Any thoughts there? Is anyone else noticing the same pattern?
well alot of my music was 192/vbr, but i converted it to 128aac so.... :confused:
 

nagromme

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I noticed after the March 2004 iPod update (camera connector/new transitions) that two albums were now missing their art from all songs. One album was a CD rip (AAC) and the other album was an iTunes purchase. The artwork was still just fine in iTunes. I've never done any manual synching so that's not the issue. Rebooting the iPod didn't help.

I fixed it in 2 clicks:

I simply turned off the iPod's album art display in iTunes prefs, then turned it back on. The art was automatically re-built for the iPod (must be stored in a special optimized format, like the photo thumbnails). It took several minutes of processing, but now all seems to be well again.
 

Mercuris

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nagromme said:
I noticed after the March 2004 iPod update (camera connector/new transitions) that two albums were now missing their art from all songs. One album was a CD rip (AAC) and the other album was an iTunes purchase. The artwork was still just fine in iTunes. I've never done any manual synching so that's not the issue. Rebooting the iPod didn't help.

I fixed it in 2 clicks:

I simply turned off the iPod's album art display in iTunes prefs, then turned it back on. The art was automatically re-built for the iPod (must be stored in a special optimized format, like the photo thumbnails). It took several minutes of processing, but now all seems to be well again.
my problem is that the artwork shuffle itself, in other words wrong picture for most albums despite being correct on itunes. I shall try your fix method and post back. But is there a permanent fix as this happens a lot.......
 
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Yes, when it happened to me what I did was did a restore and then re-imported the songs & artwork onto the iPod.

If it happens a second time after that then it means you need to check the 'artwork' section on the song (right click>get info>artwork) and see if any of the songs have more than one copy of the artwork on them.

I found this problem when I had to go through my entire library to find the corrupted song that was causing the artwork to disappear.

I don't know how the artwork ended up with 2 & 3 copies of artwork on a song but I did.
 

Mercuris

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Mercuris said:
my problem is that the artwork shuffle itself, in other words wrong picture for most albums despite being correct on itunes. I shall try your fix method and post back. But is there a permanent fix as this happens a lot.......
Hi all.
the trick worked, I just wish there was a permanent fix as it's bound to happen again and it's tedius.

M
 

greyspace

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Problems with Album Artwork..

So I noticed that I started having this problem as well.. I've restored the ipod, reset it, did what was suggested on the Apple website.. and I'm still getting the same problem.. some songs have artwork, some don't.. but they all appear in iTunes. I read the other suggestion about going into preferences>ipod>music>show/hide artwork.. and the thing is, that option is NOT in my preferences.. I actually think I remember seeing it before.. but it's not there anymore. I'm using iTunes 4.71.

So, now I don't know if it's just a configuration problem, or if there's actually something wrong with the iPod. I just recently bought it about a month ago, and had to exchange it three times.. so it wouldn't surprise me if it was something wrong with the actual unit. Anyone have any suggestions?
 
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The option is only when the iPod photo is connected. You won't see it if it is not connected.

See the 3rd solution and try that since it may be corrupt song.
 

jordan23

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i've been having a problem the last week or so.

when i add new songs to my ipod library, seems to be maybe 1-2 albums which were already in my library lose their album art.

it seems like if its from the same artist , one of the albums from that artist which was already in my library would lose its album art, but not 100% sure about that.

any help is appreciated, thanks. :)
 

greyspace

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Re: Album Artwork disappearing

Yes, the iPod is connected and the option is STILL not there. I've reinstalled the software several times, and still nothing. And I have reformated the iPod a dozen times too... I know it's not a corrupt song because I've reformated and only added one song... and still no album artwork. It's odd.

honeybee1236 said:
The option is only when the iPod photo is connected. You won't see it if it is not connected.

See the 3rd solution and try that since it may be corrupt song.
 

nochilinopity

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This is driving me nuts...everytime I update my iPod with a new song with album art, all songs already on the iPod have their art disappear. When I try simply un-checking then re-checking the option to display art, I get:

"The iPod cannot be updated. An unknown error occured (-50)."

Which has led me to just format and reload the iPod out of frustration. Any ideas on what's causing this error?
 
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jordan23 said:
i've been having a problem the last week or so.

when i add new songs to my ipod library, seems to be maybe 1-2 albums which were already in my library lose their album art.

it seems like if its from the same artist , one of the albums from that artist which was already in my library would lose its album art, but not 100% sure about that.

any help is appreciated, thanks. :)
Delete the album/song and reimport it.
 
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Re: Re: Album Artwork disappearing

greyspace said:
Yes, the iPod is connected and the option is STILL not there. I've reinstalled the software several times, and still nothing. And I have reformated the iPod a dozen times too... I know it's not a corrupt song because I've reformated and only added one song... and still no album artwork. It's odd.

That one song could have the that problem. You need to check the box not assume.

If the option isn't in iTunes to show/hide artwork then you need to reinstall the disk that came with the iPod.
 
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