Just installed iTunes - coverart and ratings questions

[steveklein]

I've got most of my music from ripped CDs not from the iunes store and had a qusstion. Upon my initial import, it went out and got a lot of cover art, but didn't get a lot of cover art as well.

I've got all my albums sorted in individual folders with a .hpg file in each one called [Artist] - [Abum Title].jpg

Is there any way I can force iTunes to detect these jpgs and assign them to the mp3s in their directory?

Also... my media center software of choice is J River Media Center 12 (I think it obliterates iTunes, but apple forces me to use this to sync with an ipod, lame). Anyway... I've rated 1000s of tracks from 1 to 5 stars in Media Center and iTunes doesn't recognize these ratings even though I'm pretty sure (>99%) these are stored in the ID3 tags. Anyone know why or how to get these ratings to show up in iTunes?

[Cold Irons]

For your first question, don't know of any way to have iTunes automatially get this artwork file & apply to the mp3's. Easy enough to just drag & drop this picture into the iTunes coverart "box" in the lower left of the screen - but it is a manual operation.

Also - if you use the iTunes "get artwork from iTMS" option, as far as I know, this does not embed the artwork within the mp3 files. I prefer my artwork to be in the files so that it always transfers with the mp3s where ever they go - so in this sense, the manual method is better for me.

Don't know anything about Media Center, but iTunes "star" ratings are stored in the iTunes Music Library database file, not the individual mp3's tag data. Bad oversight on Apples part - should always use tag data when it exists - but that is the way it is.