Get Content Info does not get art work for music

I have been trying to work out why most of my music has no art work although the info is available.  The only albums/songs with art work are m4a files that appear to have the artwork included. All the other album directories contain a .metathumb file and a .xml file.  Strangely the metathumb files are all size 0 and created at the same time as the xml files.  Dates and times are consitent with the media library compilation.

Since I discovered this I have deleted the metathumb and xml files for a few albums and and then redone the get content info thru the option button.  This has generated the xml file but no metathumb file, so still no artwork…

Any suggestions?

thanks

Hello, check if you have the latest firmware update installed, you can also try pressing the reset button on the bottom side. 

Hi,

I have v 2.01.86 firmware. I haven’t tried the reset yet…

Reading around I get the impression that freebase is being used to gather the Music Metadata.  Does the album art come from there?  I looked at freebase online and it seems to have very little album art, for my collection of albums anyway.

If that’s the case then it’s not a very good source for the music content. 

I have about 120 albums, pretty mainstream and nothing rare or ecclectic, but no more than 10% have art work and many that do have the artwork embedded in their .m4a files.  Is this low hit rate normal?  What does everyone else do?

thanks

It’s still not working. Just an update on what I have done.

I decided to concentrate on a single album and selected Affirmation (by Beverly Knight…)

There is a directory named Affirmation.  This contains all the tracks as .m4a files.  These seem to have the artwork embedded in them as the artwork appears as the thumbnail for each track in Finder (Mac).

After each change below I rescaned the album using option rescan, and if it that didn’t work I then rescaned the whole network share that has my music.  I also pulled the plug and a few times and recompiled the media library (get Content set to manual so isn’t running)

  1. to start with there was a file Affirmation.metathumb file but it was empty and size 0.  I think this file was pulled in by the get info.  I deleted this and rescanned. My hope was that with no .metthumb or .jpg files it would use the embedded images from one of the trackes.  Nothing happened after scanning.

  2. Copied some artwork over and named it Affirmation.jpg.  Redid scans, still nothing.

  3. Changed the name of the jpg to Affirmation.metathumb.  Redid scans, still nothing.

  4. Changed the name of the image file to folder.jpg.  Redid scans, still nothing.

I’m at a loss now about what I can do…

p.s.  I have been following the How to show thumbnails on a WD TV (all models) FAQ page for guidance.

sorry…r u just trying to get album artwork to show? or do you want a pic for each song?

I am just trying to get the album artwork so that it will display as the thumbnail with the album folder.

I have managed to get the jpg that I copied over to display.  Turned out that doing a rescan of the album folder or music  or recompiling the whole music share or unplugging the SMP doesn’t seem to anything.  I had to clear the whole library before rescanning.  I have since read that you may be able to do something similar but just for that album by changing the album folder name, rescanning, change the folder name back the rescan.  I haven’t tried that yet…

But the initial problem still exists.  Options: Get Content info does not seem to pull album artwork in for the majority of my albums so I have to do it manually.

thanks

BarbieBear,

                                     it probably takes the same amount of time to google search album artwork and drop the one you want into each album folder.At least that way you get the artwork you want because alot of albums have alternate artwork or covers.I have done this for over 80 gig of albums and you only have todo it once.After you get all your artwork set just clear the media library and it will repopulate your collection with the new covers.

Hi

I agree.  But it’s a shame that this doesn’t happen automatically as I was expecting…

A useful tip for anyone else whose music folders are managed thru itunes.  I downloaded a iTunes script from

dougscripts.com called Save Album Art to Album Folder v4.5 which goes thru every album in iTunes and downloads the album art if there is any into the album folder. Some of the files produced have the artist and album in the file name so they have to be edited.  It’s increased my artwork substantially.

thanks