For what is ailing me...
First of all, I was wrong in my earlier post about iTunes 7.0’s album art update feature being automatic. Seems as though it looks at your stuff, but doesn’t necessarily autoupdate it all.
I found that I had to go into the Advanced menu and select “Get Album Artwork” to make the system start to actually analyze my albums and add the appropriate album art.
Here are a couple quick suggestions if you decide to take advantage of this function…
- Do not use your computer or, especially, iTunes for anything else at this time. If you can, let iTunes run this feature overnight or over some extended period of time during which you will not need your computer. Maybe that’s more a testament to the sheer number of albums I have on my computer and yours will take less time, but I can’t really be sure. Took a few hours for iTunes to finish this process on my computer.
- Make sure your iPod is NOT connected to your computer at this time for any reason whatsoever. I had mine plugged in for charging and iTunes decided to still recognize it as a mounted volume and it started to autotransfer songs back and forth while the very same files were being updated by the computer. It wasn't pretty and I’m not entirely sure my iPod has fully recovered. I’ve had to reinstall the firmware once and restore all my music and videos twice... so far.
Don’t let your iPod suffer a similar fate.
Latest Fun With Dead Trees reviews - I'm adding We Were Writers for Disastrous Love Affairs Magazine by Adam Thomlison and Claire is adding Dry by Augusten Burroughs.
I'm calling iPod's Services on you. Only a real dead beat would their Pod succumb to such a painful fate.
Bastard. =)
Posted by: Dustin | Monday, 18 September 2006 at 06:19 PM
are you really trying to make me jealous you techy ho!
Posted by: jacquie | Monday, 18 September 2006 at 09:16 PM
Dustin, I'm trying to make it up to BiP. I really am! I swear!
Jacquie, hey, you finally got yourself an iPod. You're not allowed to be jealous.
Posted by: kapgar | Tuesday, 19 September 2006 at 06:49 AM
Dude! How'd you get adam's book?!?! Did he actually take it upon himself to send it out. Wicked!
Posted by: suze | Tuesday, 19 September 2006 at 11:19 AM
Yep, got his whole brown paper press kit, too. I thought it was a pretty cool and unique press kit, to be honest. Better than most I've seen so far. I figured you pressured him into sending it.
Posted by: kapgar | Tuesday, 19 September 2006 at 12:03 PM
After being forced to use (horror) Windows Media Player (AAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH) while offline (and having to reboot my PC, being able to use iTunes now is a joyous experience... except that when it was consolidating my library I ended up with three copies of everything. Fun.
But most of my songs now have artwork... except for about half a dozen of the ones I got from the music store...!
Posted by: Bec | Tuesday, 19 September 2006 at 05:42 PM
So you had a problem with purchased music and album art as well? Weird. I should really look into that. All my purchased stuff came with artwork when I bought it and, so far as I can tell, it's still there.
Posted by: kapgar | Wednesday, 20 September 2006 at 05:44 AM
Yeah, the get album art is a bit weird. First time I clicked it, it only did some of my library. There's no progress indicator that I saw so maybe it just wasn't done. Anyway, it seems to be mostly done now, but there's a lot of amusing errors.
I gather if iTunes doesn't sell the particular album, it'll substitute another cover. Some are just completely wrong though.
Posted by: claire | Wednesday, 20 September 2006 at 03:17 PM
Yeah, I got Stevie Wonder when it should've been Lionel Richie. Actually, reverse that. Plus a host of others. More that I'll find down the line, but, for now, it'll do. Mine had a status message, though.
Posted by: kapgar | Wednesday, 20 September 2006 at 04:11 PM
Who knows what happened but when I came home from work they all had artwork... and I actually remembered to switch my computer off today!
Posted by: Bec | Wednesday, 20 September 2006 at 06:58 PM
Strange how these things work, isn't it?
Posted by: kapgar | Wednesday, 20 September 2006 at 07:01 PM
hey. i had no problem getting iTunes to get me the artwork, but I seem to have problems getting my iPod to consistently disply said newly found artwork. Occasionally it will show up but more often than not, it doesn't.
Any thoughts? (I did a quick google search but that wasn't much help, so I've turned to you, my mac/football guru. please help me kapgar wan kenobi. you are my only hope :)
Posted by: suze | Thursday, 28 September 2006 at 04:46 AM
Ah my young Padawan... the question you need to answer is whether or not the artwork is there in the first place. iTunes only finds artwork for music they carry in their store. So, it will not find the art for stuff by, say, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, or Radiohead, among others. Make a list of the ones you are not seeing artwork for and check it out in the store and see if they carry it. They likely do not. Now, if it is a case of you not seeing the artwork on your iPod for stuff that does have it in iTunes, you'll probably need to reload the songs to your iPod. If you don't have "sync" set up in the new iTunes 7, it won't automatically update what you have on your iPod. Sync is a whole other story.
Posted by: kapgar | Thursday, 28 September 2006 at 06:39 AM