Sansa Clip Zip - Album art format

SanDisk MP3 players All other MP3 players
1

Hello,

I would like to optimize my album art for the Sansa Clip Zip. I did not find anywhere the following information:
What is the best format/resolution on the screen? 

I have seen somewhere it could be 96x96? Can we use raw format?

Thank you,

HeD

2

The limit is file size. Album art is limited to 100KB. resolution is not an issue.

For more information use the below link :- http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4301/kw/clip%20zip%20support%20raw/session/L3RpbWUvMTMyNDA0MjMwMi9zaWQvNjl6ZzlLTGs%3D 

3

mdas - Your link has nothing to do the the question (or answer) posed by the OP.

4

@hed wrote:

 

I would like to optimize my album art for the Sansa Clip Zip. I did not find anywhere the following information:
What is the best format/resolution on the screen? 

I have seen somewhere it could be 96x96? Can we use raw format?

 

You can use anything 96 x 96 up to 500 x 500. Personally, I think 200 x 200 or thereabouts is sufficient. Use  a plain 'ol .jpg format. Raw won’t work. If you re-name the the image file ‘album art.jpg’ or ‘folder.jpg’ (w/o quotes) and put the file in the same folder as the album’s music files, the player will display this image for all files in that folder.

Alternatively, you could embed the image in each of the file’s ID3 tags, but personally I think that’s a waste of memory space. As mentioned though, the (image) file size should be 100kb or less.

5

I have tried 96x96 in jpg (1x1,1x1,1x1 or (4:4:4) and saved with quality 100 using Gimp) and result is not has expected. Someone has a precise information about the optimal resolution (pixel to pixel) when using folder.jpg or embedded?

Thank you,

HeD

6

I’ve found the simplest way to get album art is to use Google Images. Type in the Artist’s name and Album title in the Search box. You’ll usually get many, many images as a result. Pick one that is 300 x 300 pixels or less and click on it (one source that’s ususally very dependable is Amazon.com). Then when the page changes, right-click on the image and select Save As . . .  Navigate to the album folder and name the image album art.jpg or folder.jpg (making sure it is in fact a .jpg image) and save it.

Note it’s ususally better to do this with the file on your computer rather than on the player itself but frankly, I’ve done it both ways with success. No manipulating with Gimp or any other image-editing sodtware needed. :wink:

7

I’ve found that most of the time the Amazon images can be even 500x500 and still work fine because their filesize is under the 100kb limit. I embed, though…with the variety of players I have and have had, it’s the best all-around solution for my particular needs.

8

I think what he’s asking is:

What’s the best format for the image to be in so it doesn’t look all washed out?

9

@color43 wrote:

I think what he’s asking is:

 

What’s the best format for the image to be in so it doesn’t look all washed out?

If that’s the case, he may be disappointed. The color OLED screen in the Zip is not that crisp and/or colorful. It’s also a little grainy-looking. Sorry, but it don’t get any better than that.

Personally, I’d rather have no album art (like on the Clip+) than the washed-out, grainy rendition of it on the Zip’s screen.

10

Wow. SanDisk keeps making the Clip better and better and you complain about the resolution on a screen that measures less than one inch across? For those of us who had to edit our own tags just to make the m200 series run properly, this is pretty comical. But I guess I can understand.

:wink:

Some of my embedded art works fine, some doesn’t. That which doesn’t, I just save a jpg as “folder.jpg” as mentioned above. The artwork is readily available from Amazon or Wikipedia or, better still, Allmusic…the saved files there weigh in at about 8 kb, which is miniscule, and they still render pretty well. Try that…it works for me.

11

I downsized the embedded art work… and it still does not show in the Clip Zip

Does anyone have a idea what could be the reason for this odd behaviour?

thankx…

12

@exus98 wrote:

I downsized the embedded art work… and it still does not show in the Clip Zip

 

Does anyone have a idea what could be the reason for this odd behaviour?

 

Are the images plain 'ol .jpg and not progressive, pro or any of that nonsense?

13

I found some of my album art failed to show because although the file size was correct 96x96 pixels the resolution was very high making the file size large. I now make my images 72x72 ppi resolution 96x96 pixels in size which make the file size about 10kb. I name the file folder.jpg and store it in the same folder as song(s). I don’t embed the album art and remove any that is already there.

14

I have sometimes problems with the album art. When I move some songs from PC to Zip via USB and after I remove the USB cable a lot of album arts are not shown. I turn off the Zip and after a few seconds I turn on the Zip and I can see the album arts again. 

I have a “various artists” folder with the Ronettes and other Spector groups. The six Ronettes songs have all the same album art but I can see only from five of the six songs the album art. The song “(The Best Part Of) Breaking Up” has the same album art as the other songs but the album art is not shown. Could this I problem of the song title with special characters () ?

I have a folder with songs from an artist. The album arts has 500x500 pixel and 67 kb. But the album art is not shown:

http://www.picfront.de/d/8sQd

http://www.picfront.de/d/8sQe 

15

@john22 wrote:

I have a “various artists” folder with the Ronettes and other Spector groups. The six Ronettes songs have all the same album art but I can see only from five of the six songs the album art. The song “(The Best Part Of) Breaking Up” has the same album art as the other songs but the album art is not shown. Could this I problem of the song title with special characters () ?

 

The problem were not the special characters. The problem was the long album title which I have truncated to three words.

16

I managed to find and name an album picture for a group (300x300 pixels)  as ‘folder.jpg’, and transferred it to my Sansa Zip Clip, but i then had this picture for ALL of my tracks!

As this is new to me, i’d really appreciate some ‘step-by-step’ instructions on how to save the .jpg picture to my device so that i get the correct album art for EACH track, and not the SAME picture for ALL tracks.

Hope someone can help!

Thanks in advance

17

@smasher wrote:

I managed to find and name an album picture for a group (300x300 pixels)  as ‘folder.jpg’, and transferred it to my Sansa Zip Clip, but i then had this picture for ALL of my tracks!

 

As this is new to me, i’d really appreciate some ‘step-by-step’ instructions on how to save the .jpg picture to my device so that i get the correct album art for EACH track, and not the SAME picture for ALL tracks.

 

Hope someone can help!

 

Thanks in advance

Where did you place the folder.jpg file? It should be in the Album folder alongside the song files for the particular album you want your Zip to display the image for.

This assumes of course that you have a typical folder hierarchy of Artist [folder] > Album [folder] > Song files.

18

I placed the folder.jpg straight into the general folder ‘ALBUM’ on my  Sansa, so that was the problem now i think, after reading your advice. I’ll now try to put it alongside the song file for each song.

Thanks very much for your help & have a good weekend!

19

@smasher wrote:

I placed the folder.jpg straight into the general folder ‘ALBUM’ on my  Sansa, so that was the problem . . .

Yes, it was. I believe if you use MTP mode (on your player) and WMP to sync files, WMP will put in a general or main Albums folder which can be confusing. I don’t remember this exactly, as it is one of the reasons I quit using WMP and MTP mode years ago.

@smasher wrote:

 I’ll now try to put it alongside the song file for each song.

 

This isn’t exactly what I meant. Your folder/file heirarchy should be

Music [Main folder]

  - Artist [folder]

     - - Album [folder] (may be multiple albums for each artist)

          - - - Track #1.mp3, Track #2.mp3, Track #3.mp3 and so on [files] Put one folder.jpg (album art.jpg will also work) in this album folder along with the track or song (.mp3) files

You don’t need an image file for each track. Alternatively though, you can ‘embed’ the image in each track’s ID3 file, but that’s a lot more work, takes up more memory space (although small) and in my opinion a waste.

20

Thanks again… i’ll have a look at this tomorrow, and see where i went wrong. Thanks again for your help… it’s much appreciated!