Hello! I’m new to the forums, but I’ve had the Clip Sport for a while. I want to inquire about a problem that has been perplexing me for a long time. The first time I tried to add artwork to a song file (via iTunes), it worked nicely. The image was displayed on both my Mac and Clip Sport. After that time, I tried doing the same for other songs. The artwork showed up only on my Mac, but it did not display on the Clip Sport. I tried looking at the song info and such (properties, etc.) but I couldn’t recognize what the problem was. Now, I know it seems like I’m asking about the iTunes application, but I want to be enlightened on this whole metadata thing and what’s going on. For example, I’ve tried changing the images from png to jpg, or converting m4a into mp3, but I just couldn’t get it to work for the Clip Sport. I’m not exactly a techy person so I might not know many things about this, but I’ll answer questions and provide information to the best of my abilities.
Music files from the iTunes Store are sold as m4a files. These type files can be played on the Clip Sport (but my results are kinda variable). AND, sometimes the artworks do not display properly (or not at all) using a Clip Sport.
It is kinda funny that these same iTunes files can be used without problems on a Clip Jam (since the Jam does not display Artwork). And of course, these same iTunes files work great on iPods, iPhones, iPads, etc.
From reading dozens of messages in this Forum, and from my personal struggles, I think each Clip Sport owner comes to their own final solution for the Artwork display problem.
Here is my personal recipe for satisfactory playback and display of tag metadata and artwork on my Clip Sport(s).
-
I use mp3 files compressed at 160, or 192, or 256 kb/s. (Using iTunes for conversions from m4a files)
-
I use the software “mp3tag” to prepare metadata in my mp3 files.
-
I use embedded jpg artwork files. My jpg files are resized to 250 x 250 pixels at 72 DPI.
-
I set the ID3 tag format of my mp3 files to ID3 V2.3 (ISO 8859-1). I delete all other ID tag formats that may be included.
There is a version of “mp3tag” for Mac computers. See this weblink.
https://www.mp3tag.de/en/mac-osx.html
AND, if you regularly use your Mac to manage music files for your Clip Sport, are you aware of the accumulation of “._” (dot-underscore) files on FAT32 drives using OSX? See this weblink.
Hi! Thank you so much for your answer! I will try to do that the next time. Also may I ask, do you believe the Mp3 player is at fault here, or rather my methods are incorrect/incomplete?
The Clip Sport player was not designed to be a clone of an Apple iPod. And it was not designed to be iTunes compatible.
(It will play m4a files.)
It is up to the customer / owner to decide if the pleasant & convenient & affordable features of the Clip Sport are worth the kinda steep learning curve. This Forum is filled with long discussions of all these topics. Some do not always end up with happy customers. I love my Clip Sports and find them to be fun and useful every day.
Thanks for the help with this. In mp3tag I was able to fix this by selecting all tracks from any album, then right click on the image to “adjust…” From there I changed max size to 250, quality to low, and format to jpeg, and now the images show up on the clip.
hi ive been using image resizer on windows and i have it on custom fit 624x624 pixels and have worked perfectly
