Album ARt

[robin0800]

root or .rockbox either rockbox dosen't mind
an alternative to an unsuported build would be to build a development enviroment and simply add the patch to it see for windows
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CygwinDevelopment
there are other sections covering patching etc but best if you start in the index
and scrolldown to For Developers section

[lights0ut]

... It is easiest if you load your music by drag and drop and in the format music>artist>album. Then put your album art in that folder with the name cover.bmp, ...

Thanks evilg123,

So I drag my music dir from my PC to the ipod? At root or rockbox root or?

Thanks Alan

The best place is in your ipod's root dir (i.e. F;\ ). the directory '.rockbox' will be hidden if you browse your files with the 'supported' option

[woodensoul]

I just wanted to add my two cents worth to this discussion.  I love Rockbox and have a hard time even wanting to use any DAP that Rockbox doesn't support.  I do like the album art feature and use it on my Gigabeat F40 and iRiver H320.  As of now, I'm using patched builds, but I've recently set up a development environment so I can patch myself.

What's been said about the future of album art has me a bit worried that I'll be forced to re-tag all of my files to include the album art.  I will probably never do this even if it's the only way to use album art in Rockbox.  I certainly hope there will be consideration for those of us that simply have a cover.bmp in the folder for each album.  Since I don't know much of the details about what is being currently developed, I'm not sure how album art is going to be handled in the future.  Anyone in the know?

[RockMyBox]

Album art isn't too tricky to figure out on a PC/ipod....don't know why there's so many complaints. The manual covers everything almost perfectly (the process using free programs to extract the images from your current collection and replace them as BMPs in your music folder), although someone from the thread where that information came from should add in the extra tips such as listing the initial drive as C:/(album art) or whatever we needed to do and making sure not to press "rename" while in the second program.

So yeah, it isn't too difficult, we just need to spread the word. Oh, and use J's builds....not only do they allow for the awesome WPS and themes of his, but they also have built in album artwork patches along with a healthy helping of the .rock plugins...

[midgey]

What's been said about the future of album art has me a bit worried that I'll be forced to re-tag all of my files to include the album art.

Based on the information I've heard regarding album art, I'm pretty sure you won't have to re-tag any of your music. Last I heard, album art will not be committed until Metadata-on-Buffer has been completed. Currently, the system used for storing metadata, including album art, can only support a fixed number of tracks. This means that it is possible for the user to have left over room in the audio buffer due to small length files. This limit occurs when you max out the number of tracks but don't max out the audio buffer. While I have not taken a look at the album art patch, I would guess that it allocates  room for the images in a similar static buffer which means that album art could limit the number of tracks in memory.

Metadata-on-Buffer would change this downfall and would allow a non-fixed number of tracks. If I understand correctly, one buffer would store the metadata appended to the end of each audio track. Since the new system will not have a fixed size for each piece of metadata, more tracks could potentially fit into memory.

Luckily, the author of the album art patch, Nico_P, has applied as a student for the Google Summer of Code. His proposed project is to incorporate Metadata-on-Buffer and album art. Hopefully this information has been mostly correct, and if not, I'll let Nico_P or another dev explain why album art has not been committed and how it will work in the future.

[Llorean]

Odds are it'll be functionally (from a user perspective) identical to the current Album Art patch. It'll load files from disk where you've put them. This isn't a guarantee, but this is more popular (among the devs) than using tags in the metadata of the file.

How it works internally is going to be mostly as described above regarding the metadata on buffer.

[saintalan]

Album art isn't too tricky to figure out on a PC/ipod....don't know why there's so many complaints...
The manual covers everything...
although someone from the thread where that information came from should add in the extra tips...
So yeah, it isn't too difficult, we just need to spread the word... Oh, and use J's builds....

Rockbox Hi

I don't think it's that there are a lot of complaints, I think we all appreciate that folk have gone to a lot of effort to give us a choice. The problem is everybody is not technical and we found this site while searching for something!

I love these type of forums but the problem is mostly that if you have not been around from the beginning it's sometimes difficult to get your head around. I got Rockbox working first time following the instructions but then having been hooked I was disappointed about no album art and that's where I came in to problems. Can you point me to the bit in the manual that covers this?

Like you say follow some tips here, use a different build there!

So it isn't too difficult? Well that depends on your level of competence/experience/starting point etc.

Anyway I am not now complaining at you, just saying because one person finds it easy and gets it working that does not apply to everyone otherwise we would not be asking.

Anyway to everyone concerned with Rockbox well done & thank you, I think it's a great alternative for me (ipod) if only to be able to play any selection in Random mode!

Cheers

Alan

[LinusN]

Album art isn't too tricky to figure out on a PC/ipod....don't know why there's so many complaints. The manual covers everything almost perfectly

There is no mention of Album Art in the manual, since it is not an official feature. It only exists as a patch.

[bascule]

I suspect RockMyBox was talking about this Wiki page...