Hopefully a simple Coverflow clarification

[lvgdgts]

This is my first post and I just want to say thanks to everyone as I've learned alot.

I just upgraded to a 160GB Classic. This caused me to finish ripping all my cd's to iTunes which, in turn, led to a mess with Coverflow. I spent alot of time straightening out the issues in iTunes and now coverflow looks great. It's still a mess on my iPod, though. In doing a search, it appears that if I de-select artwork, synch, then re-select it may correct the problem. I hope that's correct. If it is, where do I de-/re-select. I must be missing something simple and would appreciate any help.

[paranoidxe]

Originally Posted by lvgdgts

This is my first post and I just want to say thanks to everyone as I've learned alot.

I just upgraded to a 160GB Classic. This caused me to finish ripping all my cd's to iTunes which, in turn, led to a mess with Coverflow. I spent alot of time straightening out the issues in iTunes and now coverflow looks great. It's still a mess on my iPod, though. In doing a search, it appears that if I de-select artwork, synch, then re-select it may correct the problem. I hope that's correct. If it is, where do I de-/re-select. I must be missing something simple and would appreciate any help.

You must be referring to "Display Album Artwork", highlight your iPod in iTunes, click the music tab, uncheck "Display Album Artwork" Click apply, then wait...then click it again click apply..this deletes and then optimizes your album art.

[lvgdgts]

Geez, that was fast! I should have stuck around longer last night.

Thanks, I'll try that tonight.

[lvgdgts]

Well, that didn't work. I still have a big, sloppy mess of artwork in Coverflow. Specifically, I have multiple images for the same album. Anything else I am missing?

[Surf Monkey]

Check your artist and album tags sometimes extra spaces are causing the problem.

/The Who/
/ The Who/
/The Who /

Those will all show up as different artists.

[Germansuplex]

Originally Posted by lvgdgts

Well, that didn't work. I still have a big, sloppy mess of artwork in Coverflow. Specifically, I have multiple images for the same album. Anything else I am missing?

The iPod sorts your cover flow artwork by artist, so you may see multiple album covers. If your tags are correct and you still see multiple instances of art, this is why.

For instance, an album by various artists will show up many times. If you have a soundtrack with 15 different songs by 15 different artists, you'll see the album cover 15 different times going through cover flow on the iPod.

i.e. "Bob Dylan
"Tom Petty
Prince
Curtis Mayfield
John Lennon"

If those guys are all on the same album, you'll see an instance on cover flow under each of their names.

Apple could easily remedy this by sorting the cover flow art by album artist or album name, but they went with artist for some reason. If you sort your iTunes library by artist and look at cover flow, it'll make sense. Then sort by album or album artist and look at the improvement it makes.

[markmcrobie]

This happens even when it's not a compilation/soundtrack. For example Snow Patrol's first album has one track which is "Snow Patrol featuring <someone>". If you tag that track correctly, then set the Album Artist to Snow Patrol (which, IMO, is exactly the point of the Album Artist tag), that album will show up twice in CoverFlow.

A huge mistake by Apple.

[girlface]

sorry if this is completely off the mark, but has anyone started playing with the "sorting" tab in iTunes? I'd never noticed it until yesterday, and entering the title of my soundtrack into several of the "sort by" fields (though I know the title doesn't really belong under Sort by Artist) helped to FINALLY fix issues with organizing the track orders correctly in my library.

[lvgdgts]

@ Surfmonkey: Yeah, I went through all of this in iTunes and cleaned everything up and the Coverflow there is nice and neat. I was just hoping that would transfer over to the iPod. Germansuplex gave the explanation I just read by another poster that seems to define the issue. I think I'll email Apple and hope for an improvement with the next firmware update.

[Surf Monkey]

Originally Posted by girlface

sorry if this is completely off the mark, but has anyone started playing with the "sorting" tab in iTunes? I'd never noticed it until yesterday, and entering the title of my soundtrack into several of the "sort by" fields (though I know the title doesn't really belong under Sort by Artist) helped to FINALLY fix issues with organizing the track orders correctly in my library.

I've never had any problem with compilation albums because I use the sorting options every time I add one.

[markmcrobie]

I made the sort artist on all compilations "Various Artists". This makes the album show up only once in Coverflow, and sorted under V, but still has problems:

1) The iPod still shows the artist of the 1st track as the artist for the whole album
2) It causes the artists of all the tracks on the album to be listed under V when browsing Music > Artists
3) You lose the iPods own sorting of The (for example the iPod sorts The Beatles under B and not V simply because it automatically puts Beatles in the Sort Artist field). Effectively you're overwriting this with Various Artists. This will be a problem when (if) Apple fix the whole compilation/coverflow problem - if you then go back and remove Various Artists from all your compilation tracks, you'll have to manually reset all arists starting with The back to what they were.

If like me you have hundreds of compilation albums, that'll take forever.

[Surf Monkey]

1) The best way to make sure that they sort correctly is to put Various Artists under Album Artist, Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist. That's how I do it and they always sort correctly for me.

2) There's nothing you can do about that.

3) I make all my ID3 tags read Beatles, The and so forth. Apple's automatic "the" sorting isn't consistent or reliable enough for me. Doing it manually insures that the artists show up correctly in iTunes and on iPod.