Any iPod type gurus out there?

brundles · 29-03-2009, 23:04

I recently got hold of a second hand third gen iPod Nano. Cleared it out, got it running with Ubuntu using gtkpod and am quite happy. Never expected the covers functionality to work on it though.

What I can't figure out is how it's picked up the covers for some albums that are nothing more than MP3s pulled from a remote computer. Is there some bizarre encoding I'm not aware of that includes the album cover art in the MP3 or has something else triggered it?

Long term I'd hoped that I could swipe the album covers from XBMC (running on the HTPC) and feed them to the iPod but wasn't expecting the short cut that seems to have happened so far.

Any thoughts anyone? Thanks in advance!

bopdude · 29-03-2009, 23:20

IIRC ipod / iphone / itunes adds the covers by default, internet search, i could be wrong

brundles · 29-03-2009, 23:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by bopdude

IIRC ipod / iphone / itunes adds the covers by default, internet search, i could be wrong

Thanks for the reply bopdude. However it's only connected through Ubuntu and using gtkpod - iTunes doesn't get a look in. I did try running it through VMWare before (last week while the albums in question were added today) but gave up after a combination of iTunes/USB passthrough issues.

Keyz333 · 30-03-2009, 01:22

The same happened to me on my iPod Touch. I got a load of Album art that I never actually had.. I have no idea how it gets them. Magic!

mac10 · 30-03-2009, 01:33

thats happened to me when playing a cd thru wmp, The player seemed to come up with the art cover whilst it was burning the cd to the library, it seemed to recognise the tracks/album and download the cover art from the net somehow.?

popper · 30-03-2009, 03:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by brundles

I recently got hold of a second hand third gen iPod Nano. Cleared it out, got it running with Ubuntu using gtkpod and am quite happy. Never expected the covers functionality to work on it though.

What I can't figure out is how it's picked up the covers for some albums that are nothing more than MP3s pulled from a remote computer. Is there some bizarre encoding I'm not aware of that includes the album cover art in the MP3 or has something else triggered it?

Long term I'd hoped that I could swipe the album covers from XBMC (running on the HTPC) and feed them to the iPod but wasn't expecting the short cut that seems to have happened so far.

Any thoughts anyone? Thanks in advance!

on a quick search

it seems the "libgpod" library and related API is what does the magic , it might also be related to the libid3tag0 + libid3tag0-dev code too OC
http://sourceforge.net/project/shown...ease_id=654705

gtkpod being the GDK GUI front end that uses that OC

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...group_id=67873)

its been going for a long time now, as seen in this useful thread
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=316244

http://search.virginmedia.com/result...pod+cover+code

brundles · 30-03-2009, 09:06

Thanks for the replies folks.

Popper - that UbuntuForums thread answers my original question nicely - I hadn't realised that you could encode images into mp3s as well as the audio tracks. And the other links give me plenty to keep me going with the XBMC link

Stuart · 30-03-2009, 09:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by brundles

I recently got hold of a second hand third gen iPod Nano. Cleared it out, got it running with Ubuntu using gtkpod and am quite happy. Never expected the covers functionality to work on it though.

What I can't figure out is how it's picked up the covers for some albums that are nothing more than MP3s pulled from a remote computer. Is there some bizarre encoding I'm not aware of that includes the album cover art in the MP3 or has something else triggered it?

Long term I'd hoped that I could swipe the album covers from XBMC (running on the HTPC) and feed them to the iPod but wasn't expecting the short cut that seems to have happened so far.

Any thoughts anyone? Thanks in advance!

I think the tagging protocol ID3v2 allows embedding of album art. If so, the covers are embedded in the MP3.

Uncle Peter · 30-03-2009, 09:55

That's right: the vast majority of media management software will embed the album artwork in each track whether it be mp3, aac or wma etc. One notable exception being Windows Media Player which stores the artwork as hidden image files in your media folder(s). Probably worth mentioning itunes as well which I believe pops all of your artwork in a database, not as messy as the Media Player method but it's not rocket science to copy them across to the tag manually or using an app.