Cover Art Handling

[TB2]

Ok, to not make you read the entire posting:

1. What's the native cover art resolution used by the iPod Classic? Should be something around 80x80, but I need the exact resolution used in coverflow, "Playing Now" and "Albums".
2. Does iTunes convert the cover art when transferring files to the iPod or does it leave it as it is?

Thanks.

And why? ...

I own this piece of scrap metal called an iPod Classic and I'm desperatly trying to make it work. If I just grab all my music and throw it on the iPod, the result looks like this:

Link to Video

Comments for the video:
1. Changing from {Genre} to {Artist} takes 5-10 seconds (as demonstraed with Deep Purple and Elvis)
2. Changing into coverflow takes 20 seconds (backlight turns off)
3. Playing a track takes another 20 seconds (backlight turns off)
4. Going back to cover freezes the iPod for 60 Seconds. After that I'm back to playing now. I do this twice and the only exit is a reset...

So this is absolute nonsense. I can't believe that Apple actually releases a product that "just doesn't work".

( By the way: I went to the local "Apple Premium Reseller" and the guy told me that this is normal, but that I could come again tomorrow as the iPod "specialist" will be back. So I came again, and that guy also told me that it's normal, but that I could call the Apple Support and get a "Case Number". I did so, and the nice lady told me that this behaviour isn't normal at all, and showed a lot of compassion. She gave me the case number and I went back to my "Premium Reseller". I showed my iPod to a third guy, and he told me, that this is of course not normal, and that it would be replaced. He didn't need the "case number" btw, so that was in vain anyway. So they took my iPod and told me to wait, for whatever reason. I came again after a week and everyday after, and they told me that my iPod is still with the technician and that I will receive an SMS when it's ready. So after 2 weeks, when I dropped by the shop again, that guy there told me "Oh yeah, now that you're here anyway, I can give you the replacement". I mean wtf, why didn't he give me that earlier. Back at home with my "new iPod" I tranferred all the music again, and the iPod behaves just the same crappy way again making me wait minutes... )

Anyway...

I now used J. River Mediacenter to remove all the cover art On-The-Fly while transferring the songs, so that I have no cover art left on the iPod at all, and now it runs smoothly most of the time. It's a bit of a shame that I had to get rid of cover art for the iPod to work but at least it's usable now. By the way that stupid morron at the "Premium Reseller" made me wait two weeks and then gave me a new device instead of knowing the problem, I had to figure this out by myself.
But I would of course like the cover art to be displayed, so I want to convert all the cover art On-The-Fly to the right resolution and downsample it so that the iPod doesn't get too busy scaling the cover art down all the time, which should be the reason for the huge lags. The performance dropped from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3 dramatically by the way, and I tried both version on both devices I had. 1.0.2 was bearable, 1.0.3 is horrible.

So I would be greatful if someone could answer me the questions at the top.

Thanks!

[TB2]

Sorry, Found it But does this also apply on the Classic? This seems to be written for the 4G and 5G models

Album artwork is stored on the iPod in the \iPod_Control\Artwork directory. There should be three files in this directory -- the artwork database file (presumably an index of which artwork belongs to which song), and two ITHMB files. These ITHMB files store the exact same artwork, in the two different resolutions. The larger file (F016 on my iPod) stores the 140x140 version used in the album artwork screen, and the smaller one (F1017 on my iPod) stores the 56x56 version used in the "Now Playing" screen.

[Deaddy]

That sounds terrible, how large was your cover art originally? I'm getting a classic for xmas, hope I don't experience the same problem.

[TB2]

Most cover art is around 150x150 to 500x500. Some but not much of it is up to 2000x2000.

Many people don't experience this kind of problems, especially if the iPod isn't loaded, but I have the 160GB version and around 140GB of music on it, around half of it with cover art.

[Sparkee]

That sounds terrible, how large was your cover art originally?

The original size of the artwork should not make any difference on the iPod since iTunes has already "Optimized" the artwork for the iPod.

[Galley]

Add artwork that looks good on your computer screen, or on a device like Apple TV. 300 x 300 is a bare minimum, but I recommend 600 x 600. iTunes will create a smaller version or use on the iPod.