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Wiki > Main > DocsIndex > CustomWPS > AlbumArt
---+!! Album Art Display on the WPS
---

%TOC%

---

---++ Introduction

This feature allows for the display of an image representing the currently playing track on the While Playing Screen. This picture can be the cover art of the album the song belongs to, or a picture specific to the track itself, depending on how you name the file. For details about how to use the feature, see [[http://www.rockbox.org/manual.shtml][the manual]], appendix C - Theme Tags (especially the section named Album Art). This page contains troubleshooting and helpful tips about programs to use for generating/collecting album art.

---

---++ Troubleshooting

Here are a few possible things that could cause a WPS not to display album art pictures (in no particular order) :
   * The syntax of the =%Cl%= tag is wrong. To see if that's the problem you can try something simple : =%Cl|x|y|||=.
   * The file names are wrong. Try using a "cover.bmp" file to see if it that's the problem.
   * Your bitmaps are invalid.
If lines are being drawn over your album art picture, there are two things you should check: 
   * Put the %C tag on the last line of your WPS. That way it will be drawn last, over the lines that were covering it previously.
   * To place text on the right of the album art picture, using a [[CustomWPS#Viewports][viewport]] is recommended over spaces. Otherwise, lines might appear over the album art picture.

---

---++ Useful tools

---+++ Embedded Cover Art
   * <a target="_blank" href="http://code.google.com/p/qartrockbox/" title="QartRockbox"><span class="foswikiNewLink">QartRockbox</span></a> (Windows and Linux) This application is for extract artwork embedded in mp3, ogg, flac, ape and mp4 files in jpeg format for display in Rockbox firmware. It saves files like "artist-album.jpeg". Also can choose the size of the picture. This application is developed in Qt 4.6.3 and taglib.

   * [[http://vcardenasblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/album-art-extracter-for-rockbox.html][Album Art Extracter for RockBox]] (for Windows and Linux with Mono) This application can extract and convert massively the album art embedded in music files, and create the necessary files in BMP or JPG format to display album art correctly in RockBox. It supports the creation on all locations and filename conventions which Rockbox looks for Album Art. Also can scale images to size desired.

   * [[http://linux.wareseeker.com/Multimedia/artwork.pl-0.1.zip/320751][Artwork Extraction Perl Script]] A small perl script to retrieve album art images from the APIC frame of ID3v2 MP3 tags. It places the album art image file in the MP3 folder with the name of your choosing. It requires the MP3::Tag, File::Find, Image::Magick Perl modules. (Automatically scales images to 175x175 (retaining image ratio), though that can be changed by editing or removing the line that scales them.)

   * [[http://easytag.sourceforge.net/][EasyTAG]] <nop>EasyTAG is a utility for viewing and editing tags for MP3, MP2, MP4/AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, <nop>MusePack, Monkey's Audio and <nop>WavPack files. Its simple and nice GTK+ interface makes tagging easier under GNU/Linux or Windows. (Embedded images can be saved to the hard drive to be edited with other applications.)

---+++ Cover Art Downloading
   * [[http://skyline.radio.googlepages.com/][Rockbox Album Art Downloader]] (for Windows) Quick, easy to use, and many options. Saves in .JPG.
   * [[http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components_0.9/AlbumArtDownloader_XUI][Album Art Downloader]] (for Windows)
   * [[http://team.thenexusnet.com/nexus/AAA/][Album Art Aggregator]] (for Windows) The link seems broken, but the soft is avaliable on a [[http://www.pcwelt.de/cgi-bin/download/download.pl?fileid=36602][mirror site]] -- Main.ClementPitClaudel - 01 Sep 2008
   * [[http://amarok.kde.org/][Amarok]] can download cover art, but stores it in its own database. [[http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Copy+All+Cover?content=138284][This script]] or [[http://aendruk.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/an-inefficient-method-for-extracting-amarok-2-album-art/][this script]] can be used to extract album art from Amarok 2.
   * [[http://unrealvoodoo.org/hiteck/projects/albumart/][Album Cover Art Downloader]] (Python/Qt) works on Linux and Windows.
   * [[https://sourceforge.net/projects/rockaa][RockAA]] (Java) This tool can save Cover art in .bmp in many different ways: 
      * For a folder (cover.bmp)
      * Single file (Artist - Track Name.bmp)
      * Multiple files (each cover gets named according to the files you selected)
   * [[http://angusj.com/aa4mp3/][Album Art 4 MP3]] (for Windows) This tool not only downloads cover art, but also resizes cover art to user defined dimensions (using image resampling) and saves images in bmp, jpg and png formats.
   * [[http://createsoftware.users.sourceforge.net/index.php?ref=software&id=rbtools RB Tools]] intends to allow easy cover art manipulation for rockbox. It can download, resize and convert album art files, using Amazon Cover Search And Yahoo Image Search for missing covers. Updated on Jan. 28, 2009.
   * [[http://coversearch.sourceforge.net/ Create CoverSearch]] is a sourceforge project for downloading cover files.

---+++ Format Conversion

   * [[http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm][FastStone Photo Resizer]] (for Windows)
   * [[http://www.irfanview.com/][IrfanView]] -- freeware: supports batch conversion (for Windows)
   * [[http://subterraneanp.googlepages.com/iriverh3xxalbumartmanager][ iRiver H3XX Album Art Manager]] (for Windows). Note that despite the name, there is nothing iRiver specific about it. It looks for jpegs, resizes, converts and renames (either cover.bmp or <album>.bmp if enough files in the folder can be ID3-identified to belong to the same album) them, leaving the copy in the same folder as the original. It works perfectly as long as your image files have some easy to recognise name, such as folder.jpg.
   * [[http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=38747][RockBox WPS cover creator]] script for Amarok 1
   * Here is a small bash script inspired by "macgabhs" (original [[http://www.misticriver.net/showpost.php?p=399199&postcount=68][here]] on MisticRiver) that should do the job (uses [[http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php][ImageMagick]]). *Run it from your music directory on your DAP*. <verbatim>
#!/bin/sh
find -iname "cover.jpg" -o -iname "cover.gif" -o -iname "cover.png" | while read file
    do convert "$file" -thumbnail 130x130 "${file%/*}"/cover.bmp
done</verbatim> To convert all the pictures and not only "cover.*" files, use this instead : <verbatim>
#!/bin/sh
find -iname "*.jpg" -o -iname "*.gif" -o -iname "*.png" | while read file
    do convert "$file" -thumbnail 130x130 "${file%.*}".bmp
done</verbatim>

   * [[http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=55679][Rockbox art converter script]] (for Windows Scripting Host) Install leadcommandlineutils.exe from the archive, extract content of progbar.zip to x:\Windows\System and run progbar.reg. If you want to use the outputname option you need to overwrite the rockboxartsupdate.vbs with the updated version that is uploaded in a more recent post of the linked thread.<br /><br /> Accepted parameters:<br /> <verbatim>
/artname: (default: folder.jpg) /size: (default: 150) /outputname: (default: cover.bmp) /source:"x:" (default: ask)</verbatim> Example commandline: <verbatim>
RockboxArtsUpdate.vbs /artname:cover.jpg /size:140 /outputname:cover.140x140 /source:"F:\Music\"</verbatim>

   * [[http://createsoftware.users.sourceforge.net/index.php?ref=software&id=rbtools RB Tools]] also has a GUI to convert cover files automatically to bitmap format (Windows only). It's also able to resize and copy pictures to your player.

---

---++ How to Use Embedded iTunes Cover Art On An iPod

---+++!! For Windows Users

---++++!! iPod Album Art Extractor

This application can extract the album art embedded in the music files in a iPod, and create the necessary files in BMP format to display album art correctly in RockBox. The entire process in fully automated. You just need to make sure your files are properly tagged.

For more information and downloading this app, visit the author's [[http://vcardenasblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/ipod-album-art-extracter-for-rockbox.html][website]].

---++++!! Media Monkey procedure

This procedure was posted by ryan2632 on the forums (original topic [[http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=7052.0][here]]). I haven't tested it so I can't guarantee it will work as expected.

%X% NOTE: This method does *NOT* work for files in AAC format if you use !MediaMonkey 2.x

%X% NOTE: This method does *NOT* work if your music directory structure is more than two folders deep. It was written assuming you were using the iTunes database directory structure.

   * Extracting and resizing the art 
      1 download [[http://www.mediamonkey.com/][MediaMonkey]]
      1 grab the Album Art Tagger Script from [[http://trixmoto.net/mm/scripts.php?id=1][here]]. (about 1/3 way down the page)
      1 install both, and launch the app
      1 click on your iPod in the left pane, and let the song list load. select all (or whichever you want) and go to Tools -&gt; Scripts -&gt; Album Art Tagger
      1 select option 4 "Extract artwork and resize external image"
      1 in the text box below type in: <verbatim>D:\art\<album></verbatim> replace 'D:\art\' with wherever you want it to extract the images. *make sure you have created the folder first.*
      1 click go and let it do it's work. after it scans, it will popup a confirmation dialogue. press OK, and it will pull all the art and resize it into that folder.

   * Generating Album Art of different sizes 
      1 Instead of putting in <verbatim>D:\art\<album></verbatim> you can put in <verbatim>D:\art\<album>.100x100</verbatim>
      1 Change the album art size in the same window to the album art size you inputed in the step above. This will generate out album art images with a name such as "cover.100x100.bmp".
      1 You can do this multiple times and generate out different sizes this way for pictureflow and different WPS'.

   * Converting from JPEG to BMP 
      1 download [[http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm][Faststone Photo Resizer]] from [[http://www.faststone.org/download.htm][here]] and install
      1 under the 'Conversion' tab, Navigate to the folder with your extracted JPG's and press Add All
      1 Set the output format to BMP and click Options. Make sure it is still at 24 bit
      1 Choose your output folder
      1 Press Start and sit back.

   * Finishing up 
      1 Move all the BMP's to IPODDRIVE:\iPod_Control\Music. Or up to *one* folder down. See [[http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/AlbumArt#Where_to_put_the_pictures][above.]] Pay attention to the limited number of places you can put the cover art.
---+++!! For Mac OS X Users (with iTunes)

In order to extract id3 album art to the album folder<br /><br />1. Download and install Doug's Scripts for iTunes - Save Album Art to Album Folder - from here <a target="_blank" href="http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=savealbumart">http://dougscripts.com/it...ts/ss.php?sp=savealbumart</a><br /><br />2. Highlight the albums or tracks you would like to extract from. You can chose to extract from track art to album folder or album art to album folder. Choose album art, especially for larger libraries.<br /><br />Voila!<br /><br />If art is extracted into a form which Rockbox cannot read, you can create an automator workflow to search for .png, etc within your music folders and convert them to .jpeg or .bmp.<br /><br />To create the workflow, open Automator, choose Custom.<br /><br />1. Drag "Find Finder Items" into the workflow.<br />2. Choose the folder where you store your music in the Find Finder dialogue.<br />3. Choose "Extension" "is equal to" "png" or other undesirable image extensions.<br />4. Drag "Change Type of Images" into the workflow.<br />5. Choose To Type: "JPEG" or "BMP" whichever you prefer.<br />6. Save the file and run it.<br /><br />When you create the workflow, you are able to choose whether you would like to save the original image file, I chose "no" for this, you can choose to save it if you would like. The program will automatically add this step if you decide to do this.

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r79 - 25 Apr 2012 - 00:08:59 - MichaelGiacomelli
Parents: DocsIndex > CustomWPS