INSTALLED album artwork not displaying

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INSTALLED album artwork not displaying

When playing on my I-Pod (160 GB and also an I-Pod Touch), the album artwork for about (a seemingly random) half of the songs decides it's not going to display for some reason. Also, when viewing a playlist in I-Tunes (I updated today, 6/19/2021) it also loses about half of the album artwork on the left column (see attached screenshot), but I know the artwork is in there because when I play the song, the artwork thumbnail correctly displays in the top (again - see the blue arrows in my screenshot).

My songs are a mix of purchased I-Tunes songs and songs ripped from CD's where I manually added the artwork. The non-displaying artwork doesn't seem to correlate in any way to whether or not I purchased the songs or ripped them. Most of my current library has been in I-Tunes for over a decade, but this problem only cropped up recently, like within the past year.

I have seen all of the overly complicated processes described on here for re-installing your library. As an attempted fix, I transferred my entire I-tunes library to a completely different computer (hours of work) and still the same problem exists on both computers, one running Windows 10 and the other running Windows 7. I'm convinced this is some kind of glitch in the I-Tunes software. It's maddening because I spent an insane amount of time manually adding the album artwork for the hundreds of CD's I ripped. (Using the I-Tunes "Get Album Artwork" feature for non-purchased files does NOT work because it does not give you the original album cover on which the song was released. You usually get some greatest hits album cover). Please do not answer with "re-install all of your album artwork". because #1 It's all already in there, as my screeenshot demonstrates - I have not found a single music file that doesn't display the thumbnail on the top of the screen, and #2 it took me dozens of hours to install in the first place, over many years of accumulated songs.)

Also, as indicated in my first sentence, the missing artwork display occurs on all of my I-Pods, including the two mentioned above (160 GB and I-Pod Touch, plus an older I-Pod with 8 GB. I don't know the exact generation of any of my I-Pods, but with it occurring on 3 very different models, I'm pretty sure its a universal issue.)

iPod Touch (5th Gen)

Posted on Jun 19, 2021 12:23 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

the fiend

Level 7

22,836 points

Jun 22, 2021 1:13 AM in response to Bring Power Search Back

Bring Power Search Back wrote:

Part of my hope is that some Apple programmer will do something to fix this glitch, but I'm not sure what the chances are of this post being read by one.

I would say nil to not a chance.

Apple programmers do not follow the discussions, or at least, not formally.

Since the issue is apparent in iTunes, that suggests that there's no point in clearing the iPod's artwork cache. All I can suggest now is that you replace the existing artwork in a troublesome song (or album) with a newly found piece and see whether that fixes the issue.

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Answer 2

the fiend

Level 7

22,836 points

Jun 21, 2021 12:52 PM in response to Bring Power Search Back

Although the size (of the file) tends to indicate (to a certain degree) what the dimensions of the picture are, I was hoping you would give us the actual dimensions figures, as that seems to work for both .jpg files and .png pictures.

Look at the examples below:

and this next one:

Compare the two files: the size both pictures is about 120KB, but look at the difference in the dimensions of each. The first one (a .jpg) is 900x900 pixels, while the second one (a .png file) is 301x300 pixels.

The general advice offered here is to keep the pictures at somewhere between 300 x 300 pixels, but no more than 600 x 600 pixels, regardless of which format the pictures are in. If the picture is too large, it seems to cause problems somewhere along the line, even though the artwork is (if I remember correctly) compressed when added to iPods. There's little point in putting very large pictures into albums that you look at on a portable device such as the iPod or iPhone as you won't see any improvement.

So I suggest you try changing some of your pictures to smaller ones (300x300) and see whether that fixes the issue.

If you change artwork in iTunes, you will the need to synchronise the iPod with iTunes so that the modified artwork is added to your copy on the iPod.

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Answer 3

the fiend

Level 7

22,836 points

Jun 21, 2021 4:32 AM in response to Bring Power Search Back

I'm going to suggest that first of all you check the size and filetype of some of these rogue pictures.

I'm not sure of the quickest method to achieve this, but here's my method:

- in iTunes, go into the song information and copy the artwork (by clicking on the picture {so that there's a blue border around the picture} and then using the Windows command CTRL+C)
- go to a spare folder in Windows Explorer and paste the copied picture into the folder (CTRL+V)
- select that pasted picture and right-click/Properties
- on the General tab, note the file type
- switch to the Details tab and note the dimensions (the size) of the picture

Try this on several pictures. What do you find? What is the range of "dimensions" of the pictures and is there a common file type?

While you're about it, can you positively conform that this happens on at least one song that you purchased from the iTunes Store - and which came with the artwork?

Let's see if that provides any clues about the nature of the issue.

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Answer 4

Jun 21, 2021 10:12 AM in response to the fiend

Hello, and Thank you for replying to my question.

As requested, I am copying some rogue pictures into a folder to view their properties. They are all JPG files ranging in size from 17 KB to 672 KB. I also checked some non-rogue pictures and they have similar sizes and are also JPG's.

An interesting thing happened as I was going through your process. Some, but not all, of the album art files started to appear where they were not previously, as I was looking at them in the Song Info window. Not all of the album art did though - and I noticed that the ones that did not appear were the three largest files I examined, having sizes of 672 KB, 431 KB, and 398 KB.

If the issue is the I-Tunes is having difficulty with album artwork files of that large a size, then I would wonder why the song I purchased two days ago from the I-Tunes store came with album artwork size 420 KB? A song I purchased a few months ago has album art file size of 2,045 KB, which seems to be displaying properly.

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Answer 5

Jun 21, 2021 2:46 PM in response to the fiend

Sorry - I didn't understand what you meant by dimensions.

Here are some dimensions of the rogue

(non-displaying) artwork:

320x320; 600x600 (3 files);

1400x1400. A sampling of artwork that is displaying without

problems is similar, and sometimes larger.

The I-Tunes store sells songs right now with album artwork of much larger dimensions. For example, just minutes ago I purchased a song from the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa album which came with artwork of 2000x2000 pixels. (I tried to attach it, but it wouldn't post.) I really appreciate you helping me here, but I'm having difficulty accepting the picture size recommendation when I-Tunes itself includes artwork that is much larger than that recommendation. I noticed in the past that I-Tunes always provides hi-res album artwork, while the lo-res artwork that you'd find in my library are ones that I installed myself for my ripped CD's because I couldn't find a higher resolution picture on the internet. BTW - I often play my music on my desktop computer, and I-Tunes used to be capable of displaying the album artwork for whatever is playing in a window that you can stretch to be a big as your monitor can fit - which is practically the size of an actual 12-inch vinyl record. The hi-res really matters then, and the artwork provided by I-tunes when I purchased songs was always great even when stretched that large. I was frustrated when later versions of I-Tunes reduced the maximum size you could display the artwork on your computer (quite a few years ago).

I've come to the conclusion that the artwork display failures are not happening within the I-Pods, but within the I-Tunes program on my computer. Looking at the playlist on I-Tunes (the way my first picture shows) exactly predicts which songs will fail to display artwork on the I-Pod. So I'm pretty sure the I-Pod's at fault here. And to reiterate, this problem never happened prior to about one year ago. And most of my library is 10+ years old. It's some recent version of I-Tunes that is somehow fumbling the artwork. Part of my hope is that some Apple programmer will do something to fix this glitch, but I'm not sure what the chances are of this post being read by one.

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Answer 6

Jun 22, 2021 10:14 AM in response to the fiend

Yeah, I figured as much. You'd think that a self-respecting programmer might care enough about glitches to monitor this forum (especially since it is the official Apple forum for support), but I guess not.

I appreciate your help, and you're idea to look at the artwork in the song info was definitely productive. I was able to recover the display of about 2/3 to 3/4 of songs that were missing on a playlist by using the arrow keys inside the "song info" to scroll through the songs on the list while on the "Artwork" tab. It works best if the song(s) you are trying to fix are visible on the screen at the time.

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Answer 7

Jun 21, 2021 2:49 PM in response to Bring Power Search Back

Correction to a typo in the 3rd sentence of my last paragraph: "So I'm pretty sure the I-Pod's NOT at fault here."

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Answer 8

the fiend

Level 7

22,836 points

Jun 22, 2021 10:34 AM in response to Bring Power Search Back

Glad to hear that you've made some progress.

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INSTALLED album artwork not displaying

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