troymess Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 So, I opened iTunes today and most of my album artwork is missing for no joke, at least a THOUSAND albums. I have a large library that took a long time to find artwork for. I believe it's because I recently cleared out the cache file for my Firefox browser. Maybe the art wasn't being embedded in the mp3 file like I assumed? However, I still have artwork for SOME of my albums. What's funny though is I did that over a week ago and today is the first time it has not brought up my artwork. Could this be an iTunes issue? I like having high resolution artwork and usually use google image search to find artwork. All the songs are in tact, just no artwork... HELP?!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidamnesiac Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 iTunes keeps a cache of artwork it downloads from the iTunes store using the "Get Album Artwork" feature in the /iTunes/Artwork folder. If you (like me) keep your library somewhere other than the iTunes folder, you may have unknowingly deleted the folder thinking it was unnecessary. It's not tough to remedy. Just select your entire iTunes library in iTunes (CMD+A or CTRL+A), right click or CTRL+click and select "Get Album Artwork." It may take a while, but iTunes will go through your library and get artwork for every track that doesn't have it. Bear in mind it stores these images in the iTunes folder and doesn't embed them in to the music files themselves. If you want high quality images and feel like hand tagging everything yourself, check out http://www.albumartexchange.com/covers.php It's what I use for the majority of my album art. Anything I can't find there, Google usually has in a decent resolution. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troymess Posted June 29, 2011 Author Share Posted June 29, 2011 I looked into more and it appears that even the songs that I purchased that had embedded art inside of them were definitely deleted as well. This is very odd. Like I said, some albums still have artwork and were not affected. Also, I looked at my Album Artwork folder and it does in fact have a Cache folder in it and its 1.82 GB! I don't know what's going on here... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troymess Posted June 29, 2011 Author Share Posted June 29, 2011 Ok, something is really messed up with iTunes: So I started going back and adding album art and I noticed that after I add the artwork (embedding it into the file) iTunes starts ROUNDING the bit rate of the mp3 I added art to off to the nearest constant variable bit rate available. It has never done this until my artwork disappeared. What the hell?!?!? I included a screen shot: Before, Coldplay "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" was V0 bit rate quality between 260 - 300, and now it looks like random constant bit rate mp3s. I'm lost. UPDATE: MORE AWESOMNESS! After I added the album art and double-clicked the song above, "Politik" to play, of which I just added artwork to, it played Bayside instead! So, it's also completely fucking up the actual mp3 file as well. God DAMMIT! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troymess Posted June 29, 2011 Author Share Posted June 29, 2011 Well, I'm chalking this up to a external hard drive issue. I can still access the drive but it's too odd for iTunes to be responsible for this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 Try playing the songs with another media player. It seems very odd to me that the external hard drive would do this, unless it's completely failing and crossing paths to files and such. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troymess Posted June 29, 2011 Author Share Posted June 29, 2011 It's definitely the hard drive. I was finally able to unmount the drive (after it kept telling me I couldn't with no processes running on it) and verify and repair the hard drive. This worked for about an hour and then it started doing the same thing all over again. It's definitely the drive and not iTunes. Songs that weren't playing in iTunes weren't playing in any other media player as well. DAMMIT! My 1TB Western Digital External bites the dust. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidamnesiac Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Raw deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
000000 Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 i've had bad experiences with putting my itunes library on an external, so i've just been saving all it on the hard drive and putting everything else on the external, haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troymess Posted June 30, 2011 Author Share Posted June 30, 2011 i've had bad experiences with putting my itunes library on an external, so i've just been saving all it on the hard drive and putting everything else on the external, haha. I considered this myself, but my library is almost 360 GB itself so keeping on the local drive I think would only slow it down considering how often I access the music folder and it would just eat up too much space.I bought a 2 TB external and I'm shuffling my files around on various external drives including the new one to get the bad one out of the mix. What a nightmare... Thanks for all the suggestions guys! I appreciate the help Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidamnesiac Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 I've kept my iTunes library on an external drive for years and never had one issue. Mine totals 230 GB and I keep it on a 2.5" 500 GB Seagate Go drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saxamaphone Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 I think the real problem here is that you have that Coldplay album. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidamnesiac Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Don't listen to this guy ^ I have the complete Coldplay discography in my iTunes. Guilty pleasure. Hate the band, but they have written far too many great songs for me to exclude them from my life Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 If you want high quality images and feel like hand tagging everything yourself, check out http://www.albumartexchange.com/covers.php It's what I use for the majority of my album art. Anything I can't find there, Google usually has in a decent resolution. Good luck! Thanks for this link. Google images is usually good, but this has a bunch of different resolution options for most my stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impact Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Before, Coldplay "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" was V0 bit rate quality between 260 - 300, and now it looks like random constant bit rate mp3s. I'm lost. >=320 kbps is the way to go Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidamnesiac Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Thanks for this link. Google images is usually good, but this has a bunch of different resolution options for most my stuff.Yeah! Been trying to get the word out. I love Album Art Exchange.>=320 kbps is the way to goNot trying to start a fight or anything, but I find V0 VBR to be far superior to 320 CBR. I mean, let's face it. MP3 files are lossy. The point of using a lossy format is to conserve space. 320 CBR is kind of overkill. You could use a variable bitrate that varies the level of compression during soft/loud parts of the song to conserve space. V0 fluctuates between 320 and 192, I think. It's my favorite. That said, my beefy Nine Inch Nails collection is in 320 CBR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silentgods Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Don't listen to this guy ^I have the complete Coldplay discography in my iTunes. Guilty pleasure. Hate the band, but they have written far too many great songs for me to exclude them from my life COLDPLAY BE FRYING YOUR FILEZ. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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