Playlists and album art questions

[GrantK]

I tried posting this over in the audio section and didn't get any response, so let's see if I do better here...

1) My Alpine head unit can display album artwork (neat!). However, the instructions don't say how it works. I have two USB tumb drives with the same album on them. One displays the artwork, the other doesn't and I can't find any difference in the files between the two drives. I've checked for hidden files so it isn't that. Any ideas how Alpine displays album art and/or what I can do to get the artwork displaying for all albums? Can I copy a jpg file to the album's folder? Does it need to be a special name. Does it need to be a special size/resolution?

2) I never used play lists and can't figure out how to create a play list file on my thumb drive. Can someone explain how play lists are setup and created, I think it's an M3U filetype but might be wrong. Is there any software that is better for creating them? I've arranged the music by albums in folders, one for each artist and under that one for each album. The files are ripped with leading track numbers so they play in proper order when I select an entire album and don't want to lose that ability.

Thanks

 

[eddiebx]

I believe depending on your mp3 sources the metadata for the mp3 files might not be complete, hence why you are missing album art and such. I went through this before too and I've concluded that it's pretty much impossible to do just by looking for hidden files.

I gave up after that, but I did find out that what you probably need is an mp3 tag editor like:

Mp3tag - CNET Download.com

Too much work IMO, but good luck to you if you have the patience!

 

[blizz86]

Messing around with mp3 tags is a huge pain the butt. The best way, of course, to get it down right and properly without a headache or the technical know-how, is the rip real CD's or hope your download has all the correct tags. I tried for a few weeks to get the tags right for my phone (same recognition stuff) to load the album art correctly. Needless to say, i failed miserably and don't care much for it anyway.

 

[GrantK]

I've tried playing with tags and they don't have any affect.