Album Art -> iPods?

[MacRumors]

MacUnderground posts that songs with added album art consumed more HD space once transfered to the iPod.

One reader, Marco, had reported the same observation:

While adding album artwork pictures to my iTunes collection, I noticed that the pictues were actually being stored inside my mp3 files and then re-sinked to my iPod. Combine that with apple's push towards including artwork in it's new music store.

Both reports speculate on possible implications -- but so far has not been implemented.

 

[pyrotoaster]

The MacUnderground post

Here's the original MacUnderground post:

The iPod of tomorrow?

As you probably know, iTunes 4 has added the ability to put album cover art with each of your songs.

I put art on about 180 songs today, and then updated my (old 5 GB) iPod. To my surprise, each song that I had added cover art to had to be updated in my iPod. More surprising, is the fact that this update consumed hard drive space on the 'Pod.

I'm not going speculate on this (yet, at least), but it would suggest that some data is being added to the iPod after applying cover art. I haven't seen any reliable evidence suggesting that Apple will actually create a color-screen iPod, but this definitely suggests that something's up.

More details as they become available.

 

[Freg3000]

Is the implication that you'll be able to view the cover art on a....dare I say it......a new iPod color screen?

 

[pyrotoaster]

Originally posted by Freg3000
Is the implication that you'll be able to view the cover art on a....dare I say it......a new iPod color screen?

Like I said before, I haven't seen any convincing evidence of a color-screen iPod, but we obviously can't rule it out.

This could just be a hidden testing feature that's not being used for anything in the iPod's firmware. My 5 Gig Pod is running on version 1.3, so I don't know if the same thing would happen with 2.0 (although I assume it would).

 

[mrjamin]

ouch, you said it. colour screen ipod = even less battery life, we've gone from 11hrs to 8, that'll cause 8 to 6 easily!

 

[pyrotoaster]

Originally posted by mrjamin
ouch, you said it. colour screen ipod = even less battery life, we've gone from 11hrs to 8, that'll cause 8 to 6 easily!

If Apple made a color-screen iPod, I'm sure it would be bigger than the latest 'Pods. That's one of the reasons I've yet to be convinced by any color iPod rumors.

 

[testnull]

OK, people. Those cover art images are added in a special ID3 or metadata tag in the MP3 file or AAC file. When you add the images in iTunes, the files themselves are modified on your harddrive to contain the cover art.

It's elementary, my dear watson, that they're transfered over to the iPod then too. It really has nothing to do with the presence or lack of such a capability on the iPod itself. If you had a Rio, it would be transfered to the Rio.

Aren't these rumors (even the Page 2 ones) screened for a minimal degree of technical believability?

 

[shakespeare]

Well, a more realistic explanation, I think, is that iTunes puts the cover art in the file itself, so that it's transferred with the song to your other computers or to computers you're streaming it to. (The cover art by streaming is a great little feature, by the way.) The fact of the art's being transferred to the iPod is incidental, I think.

 

[mrjamin]

Originally posted by testnull
OK, people. Those cover art images are added in a special ID3 or metadata tag in the MP3 file or AAC file. When you add the images in iTunes, the files themselves are modified on your harddrive to contain the cover art.

It's elementary, my dear watson, that they're transfered over to the iPod then too. It really has nothing to do with the presence or lack of such a capability on the iPod itself. If you had a Rio, it would be transfered to the Rio.

Aren't these rumors (even the Page 2 ones) screened for a minimal degree of technical believability?

the man's got a point!

 

[shakespeare]

Ah, testnull, great minds think alike.

 

[pyrotoaster]

testnull's got a point, but it doesn't rule out speculation.

I considered this, too and figured it still worth bringing up. Also, this doesn't rule out some kind of future use. That said, I don't think Apple will make a color iPod, it doesn't make sense.

BTW, there's such a thing as being polite testnull. There's no reason to be condescending. I think this is a reasonable page 2 rumor, not nearly as interesting as the possibility of recording on the iPod.

 

[sparkleytone]

its a part of the ID3 standard. thats how cover art gets saved. it adds a little data, but you get cover art.

 

[arn]

Originally posted by testnull

Aren't these rumors (even the Page 2 ones) screened for a minimal degree of technical believability?

well, this is more of an observation... which I still think is nice to know for those who didn't know it was stored in the ID3 tags...

As for the screening of things on Page 2 .... no - that's what Page 2 is for .

arn

 

[buseman]

What's weird is that the iPod only updates the song if the ID3 tag is relevant to it. Try changing the year on a song and it will not be updated - Add a cover image, however and it does get updated.

I'd say its a bug...

 

[Jaykay]

Originally posted by buseman
What's weird is that the iPod only updates the song if the ID3 tag is relevant to it. Try changing the year on a song and it will not be updated - Add a cover image, however and it does get updated.

I'd say its a bug...

Or maybe does'nt take long enough to update the year as to tell you about it....?

 

[Seamaster]

Album art = buggy as hell = AVOID AT ALL COSTS

This is a pain in the ass, and is DEFINITELY a bug.

Add album art and do an "Update iPod". See your iPod's remaining capacity disappear at an alarming rate.

Then, REMOVE the album art, and do another "Update iPod". Now, bizarrely, see your iPod's remaining capacity FALL EVEN FURTHER!!!!!

WTF is going on???

--
Seamaster (with a 2G 20GB 'pod)

 

[shakespeare]

Re: Album art = buggy as hell = AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Originally posted by Seamaster
This is a pain in the ass, and is DEFINITELY a bug.

Add album art and do an "Update iPod". See your iPod's remaining capacity disappear at an alarming rate.

Then, REMOVE the album art, and do another "Update iPod". Now, bizarrely, see your iPod's remaining capacity FALL EVEN FURTHER!!!!!

WTF is going on???

--
Seamaster (with a 2G 20GB 'pod)

This isn't as big a problem as you think. In my experience, songs that need to be updated are deleted from the iPod when the update begins, causing the amount of used space to immediately decrease. As they are added back in with the correct information, the amount of used space increases. If the user doesn't notice that the used space decreased when the update began, it would seem to him that he was losing disk space with each update, even though that's not the case.

I suspect that if you record the numerical 'free' or 'used' space before and after an update, the numbers should be more or less the same if only updating the ID3 tags.

 

[requies]

sheesh. paranoia.

what? do you people think it's putting megapixel pictures in each of your mp3 files? i recently re-encoded one of my albums as AAC. on an average song i saved about 3MB of space. the cover art that i then scanned is about 100k. 3MB = 3072k. so i was still saving 2972k on that file. so if you're going back and adding the art to your mp3s, be aware that it saves the image in each file, so make sure the image you pick is reasonable and when multiplied over thousands of songs you might be out a few songs worth of space. however, if you're going through the effort, why not encode in aac and you'll still be able to fit hundreds more songs on your ipod.

 

[Seamaster]

According to a posting on one of the iPod sites, deleting the album art does not reclaim the space it previously occupied. You have to delete the whole track and re-rip it. Bummer.

--
Seamaster

 

[Grimace]

Taking out the cover art is not going to save you much space in the short or long run. Might as well have it in there - some day you may want it.

 

[pyrotoaster]

Originally posted by carletonmusic
Taking out the cover art is not going to save you much space in the short or long run. Might as well have it in there - some day you may want it.

After testing out more cover art with iTunes and my iPod, I've come to the same conclusion.
Might as well have it, who knows when it'll come in handy.

 

[evoluzione]

does it really take up that much room??? the cover art is a tiny file, not even big enough to get a decent print out right? or is it? say if you had a 5gig iPod and cover art on every song, how much space would you lose?? one a couple of tracks worth surely????

 

[bennetsaysargh]

speculation about the album art...
it could be used in color iPods, or it could just be another selling point in iTunes 4 and the music service. it could be both. who knows. and it won't take up that much space. you have to be really paranoid to worry about probably less than 100k added to a file.. it might just be a feature that a bunch of people requested, or foreshadowing.

i am not currently going to amazon and taking all of the album cover art pictures, but it is cool for the ones i find here and there.

 

[Tequila Grandma]

Originally posted by bennetsaysargh
i am not currently going to amazon and taking all of the album cover art pictures, but it is cool for the ones i find here and there.

I did. It me took 3 days spending about 10 hours each day on it (Considering I had to resize some of the images to make them perfectly square, and I had to search out images for some of my harder to find albums and singles), but now that it's all done, my iTunes is perfect

...oh, and I don't think there will ever be an iPod with a colour screen. If Apple were to introduce such a product, which I find to be unlikely, it would probably have a different name.

Arigato,
Brook

 

[bennetsaysargh]

Originally posted by Tequila Grandma
I did. It me took 3 days spending about 10 hours each day on it (Considering I had to resize some of the images to make them perfectly square, and I had to search out images for some of my harder to find albums and singles), but now that it's all done, my iTunes is perfect

...oh, and I don't think there will ever be an iPod with a colour screen. If Apple were to introduce such a product, which I find to be unlikely, it would probably have a different name.

Arigato,
Brook

what you say about the iPod with color screen is absolutly positively true. never gonna happen. i wish i had that much time, but i have to go to school