Best way of storing the cover-art?

[Lapiovra]

Sometimes I have problems with finding the cover-art (SBT and Synology NAS)
SO I would like to know what is the best way to store the cover-art: as a jpg in the same folder as the music or embedding it into each file?

[JJZolx]

I don't think one is more foolproof than the other. Squeezebox Server has always struggled to find and display artwork. But SBS 7.6 (in beta testing) is much better than previous versions.

I prefer to use cover.jpg files in the album directory, as I think they're a lot easier to manage than embedded images. If you want to replace a cover it's a simple matter to replace a file.

[paulster]

I find that embedding the artwork is rock solid, at the expense of more disk space used.

It doesn't require a full rescan to spot changes to artwork this way, as it will detect the changes to files after a regular scan for new and changed, so is definitely the simplest way to manage your artwork.

[wowo]

You can also use both.
Although embedded is rock-solid, I also like to see the cover-art.jpg if I look with a pc in the album-directory.

[sander]

I don't think one is more foolproof than the other. Squeezebox Server has always struggled to find and display artwork. But SBS 7.6 (in beta testing) is much better than previous versions.

I'm glad to hear that. I'm mainly on older devices that don't use artwork, but the artwork has been so flakey that I wonder why I keep cleaning it up.

I'll never understand why they went with the goofy layout with placeholder art instead of just making the text bigger when there was no artwork. When the artwork isn't there the majority of the interface is just wasted.

[ralphpnj]

I find that embedding the artwork is rock solid, at the expense of more disk space used.

It doesn't require a full rescan to spot changes to artwork this way, as it will detect the changes to files after a regular scan for new and changed, so is definitely the simplest way to manage your artwork.

With respect to embedded cover art and its impact on file size I'm fairly sure that the metadata in flac files is stored at the beginning the file and that a certain of space is allocated for this information. Therefore how large (in kilobytes) can embedded cover art be before it has an impact on the overall file size?

The reason I'm asking is that I try to obtain cover art (either by scanning or downloading) which is has close to 1MB as possible. I like high resolution cover art because I use Moose (http://www.rusticrhino.com/drlovegrove/) as the front end for controlling my various Squeezeboxen and high resolution cover art looks great when using Moose. At present I do not use embedded cover art instead place in the same folder as the flac files in a file named "cover.jpg".

Everything works fine except that getting SBS to recognize new or revised cover art usually requires a full clear and rescan. Which of course raises the question of when will SBS,s scan function be updated to handle new and revised cover art without having to do a full clear and rescan?

[paulster]

With respect to embedded cover art and its impact on file size I'm fairly sure that the metadata in flac files is stored at the beginning the file and that a certain of space is allocated for this information. Therefore how large (in kilobytes) can embedded cover art be before it has an impact on the overall file size?

The answer is there is no answer!

When the metadata is written to a FLAC file it can be truncated right at the end of the metadata itself, or it can be written with some buffer space to allow for updates.

Depending on how a FLAC file was created and what last edited it, I've had adding a single character to a track title cause a complete file re-write whereas on other occasions adding a larger image was just able to use the buffer space available.

Essentially, you can trim your FLAC files down to be just the metadata, no spare room and then the music, so if you do that then of course having the image embedded is going to increase the size of the files.

I don't worry about it though, even though I use high-quality artwork in my files. It's only a bit of an issue in my shadow MP3 library when I want to copy some stuff onto an iPod Nano (and quite why we have one of those is beyond me anyway) when the size of the albums limits how many you can fit on.

The disadvantage of filesize was completely outweighed by the fact that SBS works perfectly with artwork in this setup, and also that my shadow MP3 library (maintained by flac2mp3) would also transfer over all the images seamlessly, which further means that iTunes automatically updates the images. And I never have to do a full clear and rescan. I couldn't have done all this with cover.jpg.

[ralphpnj]

The answer is there is no answer!

When the metadata is written to a FLAC file it can be truncated right at the end of the metadata itself, or it can be written with some buffer space to allow for updates.

Depending on how a FLAC file was created and what last edited it, I've had adding a single character to a track title cause a complete file re-write whereas on other occasions adding a larger image was just able to use the buffer space available.

Essentially, you can trim your FLAC files down to be just the metadata, no spare room and then the music, so if you do that then of course having the image embedded is going to increase the size of the files.

I don't worry about it though, even though I use high-quality artwork in my files. It's only a bit of an issue in my shadow MP3 library when I want to copy some stuff onto an iPod Nano (and quite why we have one of those is beyond me anyway) when the size of the albums limits how many you can fit on.

The disadvantage of filesize was completely outweighed by the fact that SBS works perfectly with artwork in this setup, and also that my shadow MP3 library (maintained by flac2mp3) would also transfer over all the images seamlessly, which further means that iTunes automatically updates the images. And I never have to do a full clear and rescan. I couldn't have done all this with cover.jpg.

Thank you Paul for very thorough answer. Since I have just under 15K of albums in my music library I'm not about to re-edit all the file tags to include embedded cover art so I'll just have to hope that some future version of SBS includes improved handling of cover art. I can also hope to win the lottery since there's a much better chance of that happening than SBS finally getting improved handling of cover art

[paulster]

It would actually be reasonably easy to write a script to traverse down the directories and call metaflac to embed the cover art in each flac file in directories which have a cover.jpg file.

You could always leave cover.jpg there afterwards for the benefit of Windows, as SBS will then ignore it.

It might be worth considering, and then your library will be self-maintaining thereafter, without relying on SBS 7.6 being a panacea.

[ralphpnj]

...without relying on SBS 7.6 being a panacea.

I think SBS 7.6 with respect to improved handling of cover art is more of pipedream than a panacea.