SongKong Jaikoz

SongKong and Jaikoz Music Tagger Community Forum

Embedded album art not showing in JAT

#1

I’m using the trial version of JAT (3.8.3) on Mac OS X 10.6.5 .

I have mp4’s that have embedded artwork (I know this since I created the mp4’s (ALACs) from FLACs and embedded the artwork into each track). In Finder, each track shows the embedded artwork in the finder preview and in the preview when using Get Info.

However, if I load these tracks into JAT, the artwork column is blank. The embedded artwork was originally a .png and I used Max to convert the tracks and add the artwork.

Is this a known problem with JAT? Will some embedded artwork show and others won’t?

#2

Could you send me one of these files please for me to test out ( support at jthink dot net )

#3

Paul,

The file’s too big to email (31 MB even compresed), but I’ll upload it somewhere and post the link here.

#4

Paul,

Here’s the file for you to download:

File name: 01 - Old Schoolyard.m4a.zip File size: 30.28 MB . I uploaded it to Fileserve.

It’s from a CD that I ripped to FLAC , then used MAX to add artwork. Once I was done, I found out about Jaikoz, and decided to try it on these tracks. That’s when I noticed the missing album art.

#5

Paul,

Here’s a couple of screencaps showing you what I see on mu iMac:

#6

Hi, Ive looked at the file and the problem is that the embedded image is 14MB in size, no wonder your file is so large !

Jaikoz currently limits the image size to 4MB of images embedded in files to protect against corrupt image files and this is reported in the console when you load the file, although this size limit is a little arbitary do you really want to store images this large within your files ?

#7

Paul,

I liked Jaikoz so much that I registered yesterday. It does a lot of cleanup on my tracks before they enter iTunes (with a wireless NAS, I need most things right, or it takes forever to fix thru iTunes.

But I haven’t entered this 3 disc set of Cat Stevens, because of the album art problem (?) with Jaikoz. I’ll hold off entering them intoi iTunes until I hear from you.

#8

[quote=paultaylor]Hi, Ive looked at the file and the problem is that the embedded image is 14MB in size, no wonder your file is so large !

Jaikoz currently limits the image size to 4MB of images embedded in files to protect against corrupt image files and this is reported in the console when you load the file, although this size limit is a little arbitary do you really want to store images this large within your files ?[/quote]

Paul, I didn’t realize that the file was so large. I have terabytes of excess space for on music NAS, so I either scan my artwork at the highest res or pull-down from Google, etc, the largest artwork I can get.

Why should I limit myself to 4 MB? Some of my MP4’s are 80 MBs long or larger. iTunes has no problem displaying this large artwork (although my Sonos system won’t show the artwork due to its size (but they really should just bi-sample and downsize on the fly, but that’s for another time).

So, you’re best practices would be to keep the album art within 4 MB? That’s total? I have several tracks where I have stored the front, back, cd, and copies of the liner notes. (this is in track 1 only). Does this all have to be 4 MB, or each piece?

Is the reason why Jaikoz shows no artwork is that it’s too big? If that’s the case, shouldn’t Jaikoz put out a warning message saying the embedded artwork is too large and may cause problems? I wouldn’t have know about the large size if I hadn’t spotted it in Jaikoz.

#9

T converted those large pings to .jpgs to make them more manageable in size. When I go to paste this jpg into a artwork column, I get an error :

The artwork I was pasting is a jpg of 3.6.MB. Here’s the link of it for you to download:

http://www.fileserve.com/file/nCsRu4W

Thanks for your help.

#10

No 4MB per piece.

Yes, the limit was put in there originally because sometimes Jaikoz would encounter corrupted files which would state they were vert large but they were not really which caould cause problems. This limit was put in a couple of years ago, I’ll take another look at it to see if it is still necessary

[quote=ScuseMe]
If that’s the case, shouldn’t Jaikoz put out a warning message saying the embedded artwork is too large and may cause problems? [/quote]
A warning is written to the log in the console tab of the detail panel, but you are correct that no popup message is displayed, I agree it should be.

#11

What tool did you use to convert the images, what format were they originally in, and does the image display correctly if added to the mp3 using another tool such as iTunes ?

#12

[quote=paultaylor]
What tool did you use to convert the images, what format were they originally in, and does the image display correctly if added to the mp3 using another tool such as iTunes ?[/quote]

I use Preview, which comes with OS X. It can scale and convert formats. For heavy jobs I use PS CS5. The original was a large .png, which I converted to .jpg.

iTunes accepts any artwork I throw at it. I’ve never had a problem dropping artwork onto my iTunes tracks, nor having to worry about size or art type.

#13

For this particular example use Preview or Photoshop, I expect you’ll only have a problem with one of these, and within Preview you could use JPEG or JPEG-2000

The problem is there are many different varieties of Jpegs, its not suprising that iTunes works with Preview (they are both written Apple) , and Photoshop is such an important product on OSX they would ensure compatability.

But with Jaikoz I use Java and that is designed to work on many different platforms, but isn’t so closed aligned with Apple. Ive found a few Java bugs regarding this error but none that quite seem to match your circumstances.

http://search.oracle.com/search/search?search.timezone=0&search_startnum=&search_endnum=&num=10&search_dupid=&exttimeout=false&q=java.awt.color.CMMException&group=Sun+Defects&sw=t&formTop=Submit+Query&search_p_main_operator=all&search_p_atname=&search_p_op=equals&search_p_val=&search_p_atname=&search_p_op=equals&search_p_val=

#14

[quote=paultaylor]For this particular example use Preview or Photoshop, I expect you’ll only have a problem with one of these, and within Preview you could use JPEG or JPEG-2000

The problem is there are many different varieties of Jpegs, its not suprising that iTunes works with Preview (they are both written Apple) , and Photoshop is such an important product on OSX they would ensure compatability.[/quote]

Sorry for the misunferstanding. Preview is a program that converts one format to another. It ca also do rudimentary cropping and resizing. I use it all the time to change 3000x3000 tiffs intgo 500x500 jpgs. It’s fast, easy, free, and supported by Apple of course (since it comes with the OS). In Preview I always use jpg. But you’re saying that Jaikoz might have problems with tiffs or BMPs or pngs? I do embed them from time to time. If that’s the case, I’ll be sure to use jpg

[quote]But with Jaikoz I use Java and that is designed to work on many different platforms, but isn’t so closed aligned with Apple. Ive found a few Java bugs regarding this error but none that quite seem to match your circumstances.

http://search.oracle.com/search/search?search.timezone=0&search_startnum=&search_endnum=&num=10&search_dupid=&exttimeout=false&q=java.awt.color.CMMException&group=Sun+Defects&sw=t&formTop=Submit+Query&search_p_main_operator=all&search_p_atname=&search_p_op=equals&search_p_val=&search_p_atname=&search_p_op=equals&search_p_val=

[/quote]

I’ll take a look at that and read what I can.

#15

I think I found the problem with that jpg. It is in progressive format, which java can’t handle.

I got this pic off the web, so I didn’t do any conversion on it, I’ll remember next time to re-save them as normal jpg’s again.

Paul, you could use isImageFile to be sure that the artwork’s a valid image, or else put out an error - just a thought.

#16

Hi, thanks for looking into this further although I think you misunderstood by earlier replay a little.

I know what Preview is but you were not clear about if you used Preview or Photoshop to create the image you sent me. you mentioned both earlier, from your last reply it turns out you used neither in this case :wink:

My point was that a program doesn’t simply supoort/not support jpegs, tiffs. png because there are different flavours of these image formats, most should work but occasionally may not. To make things harder there are the cases of images that are not ‘valid’, either because they are slightly corrupted or because they create an image that doesn’t adhere to the specification, but that image may still be capable of being displayed by some programs but not others.

I wasn’t advising to use JPG rather than PNG, I would actually recommend PNG over JPG but there doesn’t seem to be an option to create compressed PNGs from within Preview.

I’ll try isImageFIle() to see if this would catch the ugly exception we got in this case.

#17

Paul,

I found another set of tracks that Jaikoz says there’s no album art, yet there is. Artwork Gofer says the image is 600x600, so at first glance, it doesn’t seem too large (the 4MB limit). But maybe it’s a progressive jpg?

I uploaded it here - File name: 01 Four Leaf Clover.m4a.zip. It’s about 25 MB. Could you please take a look at it to see why Jaikoz doesn’t read the album art?

Thanks.

p.s. - I’ve been looking thru my music with Jaikoz, and I’ve found many tracks like this one (i.e. OS X/iTunes display the artwork fine, but Jaikoz doesn’t). I’d like to get a handle on what I’m doing wrong and correct my problem now, before adding anymore new music rips to my DB.

#18

Ive checked this file with AtomicParsley Mp4 decoder as well as Jaikoz and Winamp and there is definitently no artwork (not even corrupt artwork) in this file.

If you can see artwork for this file in iTunes I expect it is because you have used iTunes ‘Get Album Artwork’ feature to find artwork, artwork downloaded by iTunes is not stored in the file itself but only within the iTunes library, and hence is not visible outside of iTunes. However there are some tools that can copy the artwork from out of iTunes and into the files themselves.

#19

Paul,

Then I don’t understand why I can see the artwork directly from the Finder window:

Or from a Get-Info:

Of course, I can see the artwork from within iTunes too.

Thanks for taking the time to work with me. I want to get my library in the best possible shape; that’s why I bought Jaikoz.

#20

It would do this if you had a cover.jpg file in the same folder as these files, try copying the file to another location and see if still shows the artwork