album cover art problems

[AlexTGC]

having trouble getting iphone to display all of my cover art. its all there when iopen itunes, but of the 6gigs of music on phone only about 5 albums show cover art.

any ideas?

[hammockjockey]

i have maybe 6 or 7 tracks with no art showing ( but they do in iTunes), but they're not on the iPhone? All others seem fine. I'm going to try to re-sync....

[hammockjockey]

Strange, when I list the music by artists, then albums I see the cover art small to the left. But I can't see the art when it should be displayed larger like in coverflow or when the individual song is playing... syncing did not help.

[AlexTGC]

i reset the phone and re-synced. everything worked out fine.

[hammockjockey]

duh, i never thought to reset the phone. wake button + home button = reset

[925]

What is the "home" button?

[AlexTGC]

"home" buttin is the one located on the phone, center bottom -- the one that takes you back to the menu screen.

[925]

OK, then what is the "wake" button?

[iPhoneDude]

Hey guys, I just got my iPhone yesterday and am having the same problem here. I went through iTunes and did the "Get Info" to assign cover artwork (all my albums now have art) but they don't show up on my iPhone.

I tried the suggestion here of removing all music from my iPhone, then reset (wake button + home button) the phone, then sync again, but they still don't show up.

Any ideas? They are still about 50% missing...

[Surf Monkey]

OK, then what is the "wake" button?


Wake button is the one on the top right, opposite the headphone jack.

[iPhoneDude]

I finally figured it out thanks to help from this thread http://forums.ipodlounge.com/showthread.php?t=85298

Here's what I did:

For each album that did not show cover art, I did this in iTunes:

(These are instructions for PC, you Mac dudes can probably figure it out as well)

1. Select the Album from your play list.
2. Select the first song
3. Right-click select Get Info
4. Switch to the Artwork tab
5. If you don't already have artwork here, drag & drop your art in
6. Next, you need to copy this artwork to EVERY OTHER SONG
7. Right click and select Copy to copy the artwork to your clipboard
8. Hit the Next button
9. Press CTRL+V to paste the artwork to the next song

Repeat steps 8-9 until you have reached the last song.

When you're all done, go back to your iPhone device and click the Sync button.

Why this sucks:

1. It should do it automatically (you'd think, eh?)
2. It can take a VERY long time to do this, especially if you have a lot of songs
3. When you re-sync it ends up copying ALL of those songs you just modified back to your iPhone

But it works... for me anyways... and now all my albums have cover art!

[bigdipper]

I finally figured it out thanks to help from this thread http://forums.iLounge.com/showthread.php?t=85298

Here's what I did:

For each album that did not show cover art, I did this in iTunes:

(These are instructions for PC, you Mac dudes can probably figure it out as well)

1. Select the Album from your play list.
2. Select the first song
3. Right-click select Get Info
4. Switch to the Artwork tab
5. If you don't already have artwork here, drag & drop your art in
6. Next, you need to copy this artwork to EVERY OTHER SONG
7. Right click and select Copy to copy the artwork to your clipboard
8. Hit the Next button
9. Press CTRL+V to paste the artwork to the next song

Repeat steps 8-9 until you have reached the last song.

When you're all done, go back to your iPhone device and click the Sync button.

Why this sucks:

1. It should do it automatically (you'd think, eh?)
2. It can take a VERY long time to do this, especially if you have a lot of songs
3. When you re-sync it ends up copying ALL of those songs you just modified back to your iPhone

But it works... for me anyways... and now all my albums have cover art!


FYI - you can select (and highlight in blue) a group of songs in an album using the shift + down arrow keys to highlight the intended songs. Then you should be able to drag and drop the album photo into album artwork for all 10-15 songs on the record (or however many there are). This should save some time.

[iPhoneDude]

I'll be dipped in... well you know. That's awesome. Thanks for the tip!

I've blogged about it here: http://www.fullyconverged.com/archives/46/iphone-itunes-missing-cover-art

[EbolaMonkey]

here's one that I haven't seen yet:

I've added album art in the way described above. It worked beautifully for a few days. But now, 3 or 4 of my albums have a black space where the art should be. Like, not even the grey "unknown" album art with the musical note. Just an empty black space.

What gives?

[Surf Monkey]

here's one that I haven't seen yet:

I've added album art in the way described above. It worked beautifully for a few days. But now, 3 or 4 of my albums have a black space where the art should be. Like, not even the grey "unknown" album art with the musical note. Just an empty black space.

What gives?


Corrupt ID3 tags. I had this same issue. Here's what you do:

1) Select the entire effected album.

2) Right click and choose "Convert ID3 Tags..."

3) Check the box next to the popup, leaving the first option (None) selected.

This removes all ID3 tags from the songs, but retains the information.

4) Click Okay.

5) With the songs still selected, right click again and select "Convert ID3 Tags..." again.

6) This time, use the popup menu to select either V 2.3 or V2.4 tags.

7) Click Okay.

8) Add your artwork back to the files. It should stick now.

What happens is that the file ends up with either one set of corrupt ID3 tags or two sets of conflicting tags. Removing and replacing the tags clears out and resets everything. Works like a charm for me.

[av1atrx]

I am having the same problem where the album artwork isn't showing up, just the black screen. When I went into iTunes to try the above fix, there was no "Convert ID3 Tags" option when I did the right-click. How could I be messing that up? Any other ways to fix the problem?

[Surf Monkey]

I am having the same problem where the album artwork isn't showing up, just the black screen. When I went into iTunes to try the above fix, there was no "Convert ID3 Tags" option when I did the right-click. How could I be messing that up? Any other ways to fix the problem?


It's not in the contextual menu when you right click? It should be, unless it lives somewhere else on the Windows version of iTunes...

[EbolaMonkey]

Corrupt ID3 tags. I had this same issue. Here's what you do:

1) Select the entire effected album.

2) Right click and choose "Convert ID3 Tags..."

3) Check the box next to the popup, leaving the first option (None) selected.

This removes all ID3 tags from the songs, but retains the information.

4) Click Okay.

5) With the songs still selected, right click again and select "Convert ID3 Tags..." again.

6) This time, use the popup menu to select either V 2.3 or V2.4 tags.

7) Click Okay.

8) Add your artwork back to the files. It should stick now.

What happens is that the file ends up with either one set of corrupt ID3 tags or two sets of conflicting tags. Removing and replacing the tags clears out and resets everything. Works like a charm for me.


**bump**

because this method will fix any artwork problem you have. Fixing my entire iPhone library as we speak. :D

[EbolaMonkey]

Okay, I'm bumping this because it won't always work.

I have some stubborn albums that won't even revert to the grey music note after I remove the ID3 tags. Usually they will, but now no matter how many times I try the above method, I just cannot fix the artwork. Any other ideas, guys?

[ReyZero]

I'm assuming you've deleted all the album arts in each song file (not by album, by each song) and have automatic album art turned off

[EbolaMonkey]

I'm assuming you've deleted all the album arts in each song file (not by album, by each song) and have automatic album art turned off

Well, upon checking the album art, the "delete" button is greyed out, so there isn't really an option there. I'm stumped, and almost ready to delete the songs and then re-acquire them ... but there's a LOT :o

[DavidWest]

I read this thread and tried everything, but had limited success. I did figure something out that is simple and, for me, has worked 100% of the time.

1)In iTunes, make sure you're in album view and double click an album to view its contents. You need to make sure that the 'Track #' column is visible. Press 'CTRL + J', or go to 'View' then 'View Options' (from the drop down file menu). Make sure that you tick the 'Track Number' box, then 'OK'. This column will be displayed as 'Track #'. If you can't see the 'Track #' column, you may need to scroll to the right, as that is where it will have been added.

2)Now, click the heading 'Track #', which is to say, actually click the title of this column, and an upwards arrow appears next to it, arranging all the tracks by track number (if there's a downwards arrow, you need to click it again).

3)iTunes uses this first track for showing the album art. Select the first track, then right click, 'Get Info'. Go to the Artwork tab. You now have to delete all instances of artwork for that album. If there's an image already in the preview window, click it, then click 'Delete'. Then press 'Next', if there's artwork there, delete that, too. Keep going, until it's all deleted. Click 'OK'.

4)Now, click on the first track (the top track of the list) and then right click, 'Get Info', then click the Artwork tab (I know, you're in the same screen you just were, but it can take a long time clicking 'Previous' to get back to the first track), then click 'Add' and add just one image to that first track.

5)Done. You can now Sync this to your iPhone/iPod and it will show the artwork.

So basically, you only need one instance of artwork, and it needs to be assigned to the first track in the list, arranged by track number.

Hope that fixes the issue for most of you. Do note, that you might not have a track number, so the column might just be an empty space, you can still use the first track on the list so long as you have the upwards arrow, but it's good practice to have track numbers.

Regards,
David West

[DavidWest]

With regards to my above post, it doesn't work quite like I thought.

If you assign the album art to Track # 1, then the list of albums on your iPhone will certainly look complete. But, when you play that album, you only get the album art for that first track, so track two onwards has no album art.

Therefore, other than using the methods described in the other posts on this thread of pasting the album art into every single track, I can't see an alternative solution. I'm sure that pasting the art to every track takes up more space, but maybe that is negligible. It is certainly more time consuming.

So again, sorry everybody.

Regards,
David West.