Monday, November 7, 2005
Windows Media Player 10 Mobile and Album Art
Posted by Darius Wey in "ARTICLE" @ 08:30 PM
I have a love-hate relationship with Windows Media Player 10's Sync feature. On one end, it works great. Tracks are compressed to deliver the best balance between size and quality whilst simultaneously being copied over to my Pocket PC. On the other end, it's catastrophic when things fail to work properly. One of these involves that mystical case of missing album art. "Where's my album art?!" - This is a question I see being asked time and time again on forums, newsgroups, and even amongst friends. Yes, welcome to the world of album art gone AWOL.
You soon discover that no amount of hair-pulling makes it work again, and Microsoft's FAQ offers very little help either. Note that Windows Media Player 10 Mobile has issues dealing with album art embedded in media files, so what other options are there?
Luckily, there's a solution. It's a manual fix, but it works. Whether you use the Sync feature or not, the best way to organise your media is as follows:
<Artist>\<Album>\*.*
So, looking at a real-world example such as the Extraordinary Ways album by Conjure One (one of my newly-discovered favourites), your music might sport the following folder structure: \SD Card\Music\Conjure One\Extraordinary Ways\
In that folder, you should have your media (whether it be MP3 or WMA) and your album art (as a JPG file). If you find you have a whole collection of leftover JPG files from a failed synchronisation, find the one you want to keep as your album art and delete the rest. Alternatively, you could pop over to Amazon and download their album art. The most important step now is to rename that album art JPG file as Folder.jpg and ensure that it resides in the same folder as your media (for that particular album). Don't worry about resizing the album art as Windows Media Player 10 Mobile will perform that step automatically. Take a quick look at the screenshot above if you need some guidance.
That's it! Restart Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, sit back, relax, and enjoy your album art the way it should be.
You soon discover that no amount of hair-pulling makes it work again, and Microsoft's FAQ offers very little help either. Note that Windows Media Player 10 Mobile has issues dealing with album art embedded in media files, so what other options are there?
Luckily, there's a solution. It's a manual fix, but it works. Whether you use the Sync feature or not, the best way to organise your media is as follows:
<Artist>\<Album>\*.*
So, looking at a real-world example such as the Extraordinary Ways album by Conjure One (one of my newly-discovered favourites), your music might sport the following folder structure: \SD Card\Music\Conjure One\Extraordinary Ways\
In that folder, you should have your media (whether it be MP3 or WMA) and your album art (as a JPG file). If you find you have a whole collection of leftover JPG files from a failed synchronisation, find the one you want to keep as your album art and delete the rest. Alternatively, you could pop over to Amazon and download their album art. The most important step now is to rename that album art JPG file as Folder.jpg and ensure that it resides in the same folder as your media (for that particular album). Don't worry about resizing the album art as Windows Media Player 10 Mobile will perform that step automatically. Take a quick look at the screenshot above if you need some guidance.
That's it! Restart Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, sit back, relax, and enjoy your album art the way it should be.
