Computer illiterate, need HELP with album art

[willysson]

I am truly computer illiterate and probably need someone holding my hand here.  Just bought a Sansa Clip Zip (4GB + 32GB microSD), installed Rockbox, now can't get the album art to work.  I ripped all my old CDs to FLAC using EAC and added album art (not embedded) through EAC.  Have no idea whether I've set this up correctly.  On the microSD card, I added a new folder "MUSIC".  Copied all my music over.  Folder structure I have is Artist-Album- Track#-Track (see attached photo).  The Rockbox for Sansa ClipZip manual on page 174 describes where to put the album art, but I don't understand it.  There are 8 examples.  Some begin with a "period" followed by a forward slash, others no "period", some two "periods".  I don't understand what the periods signify.  I guess I just need someone to tell me exactly what to do.  Thanks in advance for any help.  Happy Holidays.

[melmothX]

A single period means "the current directory" (also known as "folder"), so ./folder.jpg means "a file named folder.jpg placed in the same directory of the audio files. Two periods mean "the parent directory", so "../cover.{jpeg,jpg,bmp}" means "a file named named cover.jpg or cover.jpeg or cover.bmp placed in the parent directory" .

To make a long story short: place the album art in the same directory of the audio file, rename it as "folder.jpg", make sure it's small and it's not a gigantic jpeg in super-high resolution, use a theme which display the album arts and it should work without any problem.

[willysson]

Thanks much, I'm going to give it a try now!

[willysson]

Still not working, and now I'm wondering whether I'm an idiot!  Went through folders and renamed all my album art.  Tried different naming conventions (folder., cover.) and extensions (jpeg, jpg, bmp).  Used IrfanView to make sure sizes were small and dimensions fit the ClipZip screen (resized everything to 95x95 pixels) and maximum of 99kb.  Add a new theme (Pro).  After all changes shutdown and then rebooted.  Still not working.  Since a picture's worth a thousand words, here are 3 pictures (I'm a bit over the maximum total size so will add another post.

Anyone with any thoughts?  Thanks!

[willysson]

Third photo.

[willysson]

Also wondered:  Toby Davies, who designed the Pro theme, states, ". . . As with all my themes the design is optimised for use with icons and scrollbars turned off. . . "  How do I know whether icons and scrollbars are turned off?  Could this be interfering with presentation of album art?

[saratoga]

You don't need to resize, just adding a folder.jpg will work fine.  What happens if you go back to the default theme and play a track in a folder with a folder.jpg?

[willysson]

Assuming the theme referred to as "cabbie" is the default theme, well is it supposed to display album art?  Because it doesn't, never has. 

[AlexP]

CabbieV2 is the default theme, and I assure you it does show album art.

So, to recap, you have a folder, let's call it "album 1".  Within "album 1" are two files, "song.mp3" and "folder.jpg"  "folder.jpg" is named exactly like that, and it is a jpg image file, not something else renamed.  You navigate into "album 1" and select "song.mp3".  "Song.mp3" plays and "folder.jpg" is displayed as album art.

[gevaerts]

One thing that may cause trouble is that rockbox does not support progressive jpeg, only regular jpeg

[saratoga]

You can also try opening the jpeg files directly on the device to make sure its readable.

[willysson]

Still no luck (but I do appreciate everyone's help!!!).  As a recap, I have a ClipZip 4Gb with a microSD card of 32Gb.  I downloaded Rockbox about 10 days ago using the Utility, although I needed to manually install a copy of the firmware (I think!).  Since I ripped all my music in FLAC, I decided to put all the music on the microSD card and some small mpeg videos on the 4Gb (they play fine).  On the MicroSD card (drive H), I added a folder "MUSIC".  On "MUSIC" there are now some 140 folders named after Muscians/Groups.  Within each of these there are 1+ additional folders, for each album I have.  Within the albums are individual song files (song.flac), the additional files that were produced by EAC during the rip (a text document, an MP3 audioplaylist, and a .cue file), and the jpg file of the cover art that EAC allowed me to choose from freedb.  That album art file I resized to 95x95 pixels and a maximum of 99kb.  I have since renamed each either cover.jpg or folder.jpg (I've also experimented with cover.jpeg, cover.bmp, folder.jpeg, folder.bmp).  None of these have displayed as album art in the default ("cabbie") theme, the Pro theme, nor the Neu 1.0 theme.  In the Pro theme I get the peak meters but instead of album art I get a picture that looks like the diaphragm of a loudspeaker.  The other views are like shown for Pro (volume knob, etc.).  As for the progressive scan jpegs, I'm not sure.  Most of the cover art was captured by EAC.  Some I added myself and I made sure that the checkbox was NOT ticked in IrfanView ("do you want to save as progressive scan").  I ran another little trial, putting one folder of music in the directory that has Rockbox installed (my G drive, 4Gb).  When I press "File" menu, I see this one single folder named after the artist.  When I click on it, I see the 7 songs (song1.flac, etc.), a .cue file, folder.jpg, and a .m3u file.  The folder.jpg file I can indeed view by going into the context menu, choose "open with" and "image viewer".  It's the cover art.  But it doesn't show up in any of the themes when playing music.

So that's where I am.  I do appreciate everyone's help.  I don't want to disturb your Xmas holidays.  Perhaps in the New Year, we can figure out what's wrong.  Merry Xmas!

[willysson]

Another thought.  Forgive me if this is an apples and oranges issue, but in the Rockbox album art wiki under the section about using Media Monkey it says "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. . . "  Could this be the problem?  I have:  MUSIC folder, MUSICIAN folder, ALBUM folder, and then song.flac

[[Saint]]

No, it doesn't matter how deep your folder structure is.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what is going wrong for you, mostly due to the fact that your posts provide a LOT of information that is quite badly structured. I have read, and re-read your posts but I still cannot make more than an educated guess as to the state of your installation at the present.

From reading your posts, it seems to suggest to me that you have renamed, possibly several times, your album art files from cover/folder.jpg/.jpeg/.bmp...but you don't say whether or not you recreated the files, or literally changed the file extension.

The only thing I can suggest at this point, is to limit the points of failure, with a clear recipe:

 1 - Mount the device

 2 - Before you do anything else, make sure you backup any/all data you care about on the device.
    If you care about your settings, backup your /.rockbox/config.cfg file now, as we will be clearing the settings a little later on.

 3 - Install a current Rockbox buildfor your device by extracting the .zip to the root of the device, making sure to allow the extraction process to overwrite any/all files if prompted.

 4 - Create a directory structure on either the sdcard or the internal storage that replicates your desired layout, containing a single album.
    For instance:
    /TEST/Artist/Album/Track.extension
    Make sure that the album is correctly tagged and free from embedded album art.

 5 - Add your album art to the same directory as 'cover.jpg', preferably one of the files you mentioned earlier that could be successfully viewed in the image viewer plugin, make sure it can be successfully viewed in your host OS as well.

 6 - Safely eject, and unplug the device.

 7 - Navigate to:
    Settings - Manage Settings - Reset Settings - Yes
 
8 - Navigate to:
    Files - TEST - Artist - Album - Track
    Select a track


We should now be in the WPS, with nothing but default settings, using the default theme. Does the WPS display album art as intended?


[Saint]