CDPedia needs to load my iTunes artwork...

[Driver]

Picked up the new PocketPedia for my iPhone 3G. So I also went and upgraded to the full bundle of pedias. Carrying my CD list with me will be sweet. I have a extensive iTunes collection with artwork scans I've done myself and have spent considerable time on. A lot of them you can't find on the web either so your forced to scan in. Much better results than the download artwork options anyway.

The issue I have is with CDPedia importing my CDs from iTunes and (ultimately) exporting to PocketPedia. Why doesn't it use the artwork I've exhaustivly scanned and added into my collection in my CDPedia collection? It's not like the artwork is the stuff from Apple (which is lost when you move between computers it seems). If CDpedia would use my own stuff I've already added then it should (I think) export the same artwork to PocketPedia. Right?

I don't have this issue with Book, DVD, or Game pedias of course because they ARE my collection software, but iTunes ultimately is my main cataloging program and the storekeeper. I know I could reinsert every CD physically into my computer to have CDpedia rescan it or to right click and hope it downloads the right online artwork for a item. But that's besides the point when I already have done the work in iTunes. So is there a "Import iTunes artwork" option that looks at the images I've already done, that doesn't search the online for them?


Maybe there's a way to do this and I'm just not seeing it... Any help is appreciated.

[Conor]

The iTunes import should bring in the artwork. CDpedia talks to iTunes via AppleScript in order to get the artwork. There is a timeout on how long CDpedia will wait for the artwork or more likely the format has changed on how the artwork is delivered and CDpedia might not be seeing it. Is your iTunes Library on the same hard drive? If you don't mind please email us an MP3 file or 2 with the artwork embedded so that we can try the import.

[Driver]

I store pretty much everything in Aac format these days but there are still a few mp3s on the drive. My collection sits on a second hd in a mac pro. Too big otherwhise. I'll send you samples of one of each if you'd like. it could be that I just had too much going on when I attempted the import. 500GB of music is a lot to sift through.

[lestatdelc]

I spent weeks collecting my huge music library. Making sure I had the original artwork from the original pressings of everything, and even had the 12" single artwork for many of the tunes I had as the cover art for singles off of an album so when my iPhone is in vertical orientation it shows the single cover art work, but when in landscape orientation in cover flow, it shows the album artwork.

None of my iTunes cover art got imported. It is a big deal for me that the correct cover art gets captured into the Pedias as well, and it would be great to have the ability to have more than one cover art image for an item with the ability to select the preferred one as their main image used, and/or the ability to scroll through the alternate cover art for singles, etc. This would be ideal for double album gatefold cover art, as well as allowing the ability to show front and back cover art.

[Driver]

One other thing (because I just found it in the Help menu. My iTunes folder is not (and cannot) be in the default location as the software recommends.

You can import any playlist (including your Library) from iTunes into CDpedia. (If you can't see any of your iTunes collections when choosing this option, make sure your iTunes data folder is located in the default location which is in your Home folder under User/Music/iTunes.)

I'm assuming this is what caused my import to break, or do you want me to still send the sound examples (need an email address)? Where does that leave those of us out here with serious collections on 1TB hard drives (soon to be multiple 1TBs as eventually re-rip everything into ALAC.

[Conor]

We try to following the link to the location of the music, sometimes finding another volume is complicated. iTunes saves all path information as aliases (an old Mac way), when the new paths are posix (the UNIX way). To make a long story short, we recommend in the help the default folder because we can check there without having to decipher the path from iTunes. However it should work on another drive and I will run some tests. However, do please send me two sample ACC file with the artwork for testing, you will find our email on our support page (not copied here in order to avoid spam).

[Driver]

2 files have been emailed. 1 mp3 and 1 aac. Zipped them up to try and prevent any errors in the transfer.

[Nora]

Thanks, we got them. Will take a look at those and let you know what we find.

[Driver]

Any news yet?

[Conor]

No news yet, as I haven't been able to replicate it yet; still trying different settings.

[Driver]

If it helps:

1st gen dual 2.66 Mac Pro, 10 GB memory, 4 internal drives (OS 10.5.4 on 1, dedicated Music drive and 2 others).

[Conor]

Thank you, the OS X version is good to know.

[Conor]

I think I found the changes made to iTunes Applescript that were causing the import of the artwork to fail. Try out the latest beta. I also added more error logging, so if the artwork is still not being imported take a look at your console log for any information from CDpedia.

[Driver]

That seems to have done the trick. Cover art is showing up there and on my Iphone as well.

Thanks.