Sync Album Art to the SD Card

[TheChampJT]

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Sync Album Art to the SD Card
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I have found that you'll always want your album art tagged to your music, especially if you use S2P, here are two ways to sync, EASY and FAST.
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The EASY way
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Using this method, you simply sync your music directly from your computer to your device. The transfer rate is awfully slow, but if you use WMP on your computer, it will sync additional info like your updated ratings and play count. Don't completely worry about the speed, as it's only slow the first time you sync, after all the music is on the card, you are good to go, unless you have new tracks. I use this way myself and have found it to be the best, since it updates the track info and autoplaylists as my other data syncs.

1. Be sure your SD card is in your device first!

2. Open WMP on your desktop and select the "Sync" tab.

3. Two "devices" should have appeared in the left-hand pane, your device and SD card.
   If you use WMP on your device, completely ignore the reference to your device for
   syncing, otherwise everytime you open your library on your device, you'll have to
   set the library to the SD. Not a huge deal, but gets to be annoying after a while.

4. Right-click on your SD card in the left-hand pane, and select "Advanced Options...."

5. When the popup appears, choose the "Quality" tab.

6. Make sure the first option to convert the files according to the device is UNCHECKED!

7. Choose "Apply", then "OK", now your good to go!

The reason for this is, WMP recognizes the SD card as a device without a screen, so to save room, it removes the album art, so simply by not converting any of the media, it will keep all tagged data.

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The FAST way
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By syncing this way, you fool your computer into thinking your SD card is a device with a screen. You'll sync the music directly to your SD card through your computer with a card reader, which makes it MUCH faster than the first option. The only downside, you'll have to remove your SD card everytime you need to re-sync. A little more work required, but only once! I forget where I found this, but thanks!

1. Sync your device with WMP on your desktop, but only sync ONE song.
   To do this simply open the "Sync" tab, choose your device on the left-hand pane,
   and drop any ONE random song in the right-hand pane. I must emphasize only ONE,
   since it's all you need, and memory is low.

2. After your done with the one song, disconnect your device from your computer.

3. Make sure your SD card is in your device.

4. Locate, with a file explorer, the root of your device "\", just hit "Up", until you
   have reached the top!

5. Find the file, probably at the end, named "WMPInfo.xml"

6. MOVE, not copy, that file to the root of your SD card "\Storage Card",
   if asked to overwrite, select yes.

7. After you have moved the file, remove the SD card from your device, and insert it
   into your computer.

8. As before, choose the "Sync" tab, you'll find you SD card in the left-hand pane,
   now choose to sync the music you wish.

9. While syncing, or at any time, you may delete the one song you previously synced.

You must transfer the .xml file because it contains the info that notifies WMP that the "device" [SD card] has a "screen", so it will include the album art during the sync.

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[shadowline]

Thank you for the tip. I always had issues with WMP and syncing to my card when it came to album art. But also if you are lucky enough to get your hands on mediamonkey, it will grab high quality album art, organize, and sync it all to the card or the phone without issue. (and its a nice media player.)

Now if only I could figure out how to do it on linux easily.

 

[kidnamedAlbert]

how do you get album art for every song easily?
i mean this would be so much better for me if my songs had album art...

 

[1999TL]

how do you get album art for every song easily?
i mean this would be so much better for me if my songs had album art...

Update album info in the library in WMP. If that fails, download from Amazon and put it in the same folder as the album and name the art as folder.jpg

 

[kidnamedAlbert]

Update album info in the library in WMP. If that fails, download from Amazon and put it in the same folder as the album and name the art as folder.jpg

i didnt know wmp did that!
thanks!

 

[1999TL]

I did have bad reading comprehension though. You said for each song individually. I would like to know how to do it. I just do it for albums. But I'd like a program to add it to each file individually if I have singles. The problem with this is, HTC audio manager and WMP dont play nice with embedded art using the advanced tag editor.

 

[kidnamedAlbert]

I did have bad reading comprehension though. You said for each song individually. I would like to know how to do it. I just do it for albums. But I'd like a program to add it to each file individually if I have singles. The problem with this is, HTC audio manager and WMP dont play nice with embedded art using the advanced tag editor.

oh yeah i just realized that. i used to use Media Monkey but its not free and i messed up alot of my songs not knowing how to use it.

 

[drakfisken]

Try a program called Mp3tag

//Drakfisken