Album art

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

I read this in one of the messages on this board:  viewed the video that showed how to copy/paste the jpeg into the album folder…problem solved.

Does anyone know where I can find this video?  I like album art on my players.

BTW, this is a terrific discussion group!

Carol

2

HOW TO VIDEOS

3

Thank you for the link.  I followed the directions for installing album art using MSC/XP; the art did not show.  So I tried  MTP/XP.  The player still is not showing the album art. 

What am I missing?  I can tell you that when I connect my player to the laptop (I am using a 4 port hub with a fairly new HP laptop) the Sansa only shows the revolving blue logo which says “connected” above it.  I have to disconnect the Sansa in order to get the menu to see if I have been successful.

Any ideas?

4

What are the dimentions of the images?

Message Edited by gabe565 on 08-21-2008 07:59 PM

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I deliberately picked a 300 x 300 image.  Smallest one I found.

6

OK, so in MSC mode, you have the folder.jpg (or Album Art.jpg) in the same folder as the songs?

7

One thing I noticed about that video is that it doesn’t mention about graphic file format. As far as I know, it only supports jpg (also sometimes called jpeg). If its some other format, the Fuze won’t recognize it.

One other thing they did, which I don’t understand, is copy the original filename to the desktop the rename it. It allows you to set the filename when you save it, so you can save a step by renaming it to folder.jpg then.

Rather than Google searching the art (which will turn up any format), try getting it from Amazon.com. Their album art always works for me. 

8

I knew it had to be a jpg and that the directions said save to desktop and then rename.  I did it that way and the saving a step way–but neither worked.  I will try Amazon as you suggest.

Frustrated in RI…Carol

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@gabe565 wrote:
OK, so in MSC mode, you have the folder.jpg (or Album Art.jpg) in the same folder as the songs?

Yes in the folder for that album.  I have tried both names also, one at a time. 

10

Hmm…then I’m not sure, I’ll try to help more tomorrow.

11

OK, I have a question, was the image actually a jpeg? Or was it a png, bmp, etc. and you changed the extention?

12

It was actually a jpeg.  Bit of info on me:  I am a technology disaster responder for the American Red Cross, which means I do have a medium high level of technology experience, especailly in computer operations.  That said, I am a newbie to the world of mp3 players.  Until now I had a little Creative Zen which had no option for album art.

Carol

13

Hmmm, sorry for the late response again, I’ve been busy with school!

Try syncing the player with Windows Media Player and see if album art shows up…

14

Another issue may be the JPG’s resolution (DPI).

Since the Fuze’s screen is 220 x 176 (although less than the whole screen is used to display alum art), try resizing your art down to 176 x 176 (or smaller) and insure the resolution is 100 DPI or less (96 DPI and 72 DPI are common settings on computers).

I use Amazon’s art, but some of it is 500 x 500 at 300 DPI which can choke the Fuze.  I store the “high quality” version under the name %album_title%.jpg (which is Winamp’s first choice when playing on the PC), and make a second file 176 x 176 at 96 DPI named “folder.jpg” for transfer to the Fuze.

15

You only get the huge picture if you click the smaller one and get the popup. I copy it in the page and get the smaller picture that’s more like 300x300.

Really? that’s pretty useful!

16

I’m another one that’s having problems with the album art downloading with music. I’m using WMP 11 to sync my Fuze. I’ve got it set to MSC setting. I’ve tried following that everyone has written here. I really don’t want to have to resort to downloading images from Amazon or something like that. I would enjoy the album art accompanying the music but it just doesn’t seem worth the effort to have to make downloading images another whole project. Any suggestions?

17

@kgassman: I think you’re mixing apples and oranges: if you’re going to let WMP manage your files, your Fuze should be in MTP mode.  (Or Auto, though not everyone has success with that).  If you want to handle it manually or through other utilities, then use MSC mode.

@gabe565: Yes, if you use Winamp for playing on the PC, it displays art by searching the track’s folder for %ID3_album_title%.jpg, then cover.jpg, then folder.jpg.  So I have higher quality for Winamp, and lower quality for the Fuze in the same directory.  The other advantage of keeping %album%.jpg files is when you make a “mix” folder with tracks from different albums, you can have multiple albums’ art files without conflicts (as you would if they were all named folder.jpg) for Winamp.  Although, I suppose, you could also get this effect with a playlist which points to the appropriate directory/track.  Winamp can generate playlists for you, including the option for UTF-8 encoded .m3u8 files, however I really haven’t really played with it enough to get it to work without tweaking the generated file (making it relative to the root /MUSIC directory, removing the leading BOM characters (which is a Fuze deficiency), etc.).

18

@kgassman: I think you’re mixing apples and oranges: if you’re going to let WMP manage your files, your Fuze should be in MTP mode.  (Or Auto, though not everyone has success with that).  If you want to handle it manually or through other utilities, then use MSC mode.

Ok. I now have 8GB worth of music on the Fuze. Will switching to MTP mode help me achieve my desired results if I update?

Or do I need to format (delete) and start over?

 What direction do I go From here?

19

Yes, you will need to format and re-sync if you want all the songs to show up under MTP mode. The fastest way to format is in WMP. Just plug in the Fuze, right click on the Fuze, and click Format. WMP is made to sync devices in MTP more than MSC, so it should work a lot better in MTP mode.

20

OK. I just want to make sure I’ve got things clear.

WMP. This stands for Windows Media Player, not Winamp.

Format=deleting everything. Then putting them back into the Fuze.

The response referring to Winamp threw me for a bit of a loop.