# CoverFlow for iPod?



## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

Can anyone give me a somewhat logical explanaition why we can't have CoverFlow in itunes for our iPod libraries, and why (even when add art to ipod is checked) 75% of the art doesn't get transfered over?
Drag and drop is annoying on 50 Gigs of music....


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## interlude (May 30, 2006)

Graphic acceleration drains the battery. Also, some people like the simple text UI.


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

interlude said:


> Graphic acceleration drains the battery. Also, some people like the simple text UI.


Considering it's plugged into the computer there is no Battery to worry about cause it's charging.


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

Just ripped the new Skinny Puppy CD, iTunes grabs the art for my library, but when I put it on my iPod it there is NO art!? This is getting incredibly annoying!

Any ideas?


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

You have tunes on your iPod you don't store on your computer?


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

dona83 said:


> You have tunes on your iPod you don't store on your computer?


My laptop is a 40 Gig and my iPod is an 80 
I have a 300Gig External, but not at work.


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## DrewNL (May 23, 2005)

Elric said:


> Considering it's plugged into the computer there is no Battery to worry about cause it's charging.



Most iPod users dont have it plugged in whenever they use it.

D


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

To be fair, I think the OP was talking about using the Coverflow feature in iTunes when browsing content _from_ the iPod (ie, in iTunes).

While this would be nice, I'm guessing that iTunes has no way of efficiently reading the album artwork cache when viewing content from the iPod. When working with the content from within the iTunes library itself, the Coverflow feature reads the artwork from a cached artwork directory on the hard drive itself. This cache doesn't exist for the iPod content (and can't be easily associated with the local cache, since it's all based on internal ID numbers that may not correlated in "manual" mode). 

The artwork cache on the iPod itself could technically be read, but at 200x200 (on the 5G iPod) it would probably not be high-resolution enough to look very good.

As a rule, Apple tends to try to avoid doing anything that they can't do _well_, so I suspect they've chosen to disable this capability outright rather than trying to take a half-assed approach to it


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## capitalK (Oct 21, 2003)

As I understand it, the reason why album art does not show up is because if you use iTunes to find art for you it is stored in a seperate folder, whereas if you import the artwork yourself it gets embedded into the audio file.

That's how I remember it, I don't have my Mac in front of me to check.


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

Yes, that's correct. But as I noted above, the Coverflow feature uses the cached artwork _regardless_ of whether it's embedded in the file or not (in other words, _all_ artwork is cached for the sake of Coverflow).

Likewise, on the iPod itself all of the artwork is stored in a separate thumbnail database, at a maximum resolution of 200x200 (for the 5G iPod), regardless of whether it's also embedded in the file.

A thread that I posted a few months back on iLounge, iTunes 7 Album Artwork Issues covers it all in more detail.


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## capitalK (Oct 21, 2003)

Ah, I did not know that. Thanks.


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## audiodan (Sep 26, 2005)

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable...firmware-coming-enables-cover-flow-239726.php


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

Nice concept, but I'm calling "fake"....

Not only is the current 5G iPod incapable of handling that (just look at the time it takes to load normal artwork sometimes), but if you look closely it's pretty easy to see that the wheel motion doesn't _quite_ match what's happening on the screen.

It's a video clip playing on the iPod, with the person finger-syncing to the action.


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

update. I just purchased some music from the ITMS and the artwork went onto my ipod with the music. Why won't CD's do this anymore? I never had a problem before. All CD's I ripped, iTunes got the art, and when I added to my ipod manually (drag and drop) the artwork went too. Now... nothing. I have to search Google for the art and drag it to the album, with 50 gigs of music, this is very annoying.


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

Have you tried manually asking iTunes to check for the artwork by selecting _Advanced->Get Album Artwork_ for those tracks that imported without it?

If for whatever reason iTunes couldn't get onto the Internet when you originally ripped the CDs, or if the iTunes Store itself was inaccessible, then the artwork would not have been added at that time. iTunes won't subsequently check for artwork for those tracks unless you manually ask it to.


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

When I click Advanced-> Get Artwork, it just searches for stuff on my hard drive, not the iPod tracks I have hi-lighted.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

jhollington said:


> Nice concept, but I'm calling "fake"....
> 
> Not only is the current 5G iPod incapable of handling that (just look at the time it takes to load normal artwork sometimes), but if you look closely it's pretty easy to see that the wheel motion doesn't _quite_ match what's happening on the screen.
> 
> It's a video clip playing on the iPod, with the person finger-syncing to the action.


How is it not capable of handling those graphics? Seems to me if it can play games, it can handle that. I agree it's fake, it's aleady been posted on here, but I think the 5G is capable of processing graphics like that. It wouldn't be able to necessarily read the files on the fly to get the images, but if it could make one large thumbs file, and animate that, then it would work. But Apple's not going to do it.. they're saving it for the next revision.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Elric said:


> *Just ripped the new Skinny Puppy CD*


what do you think of it? i'm just listening to it now for the first time... man, i haven't listened to these guys in years. i LOVED these guys.. one of my main influences for electronic music... i spent many a days/nights in the clouds with their music....


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

Yes, for tracks already _on_ the iPod, the automatic artwork fetch won't work at this point (although to be fair I haven't had time to test it in iTunes 7.1 yet, but I suspect the answer will be the same).

As for the iPod not being able to handle Coverflow, it would be a limitation of the way that the album artwork is presently stored. You're absolutely correct that if they established a new database structure, this would be easily possible, but this would take more time and resources than it would be worth, and might even push the limits of the current OS design (requiring a significant re-write of portions of the code). iTunes would also need to be updated to handle creating this database, since the iPod creates/resizes _nothing_ on the fly (even photos are pre-converted into raw bitmaps by iTunes so that the iPod doesn't have to do any heavy lifting).

It's not that Apple _can't_ do it, it's just not as easy as one might suspect do to constraints on the current design.


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

Okay, I didn't mean that I want my ipod to have "Coverflow" per se! I just want the album art to go from itunes to iPod. It used to do it. Now it does not.
Are there any scripts that will add my artwork to my ipod all in one shot. Or do I have to Google it, then drag and drop for EVERYTHING?
Why did iTunes remove the artwork option (except when purchased from ITMS)?
That is all.


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

The option to "Get Artwork" should still be there, but you need to have an iTunes Store account, and it will only work for music in your iTunes library on your hard drive, not on your iPod.

If you have the artwork on your hard drive but not on your iPod, the simplest solution, if you're using automatic sync, is to just UNcheck the option to "Display Album Artwork" (on the iPod "Music" tab in iTunes), do a sync, and then RE-check that option.

I'd suggest checking out this thread over on iLounge and see if it clarifies the situation in any way.


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

I have tried that, all it does is delete my artwork, then I have to add it all manually again.


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

Well, as I said this is only a solution if you're using _automatic sync_, in which case iTunes should restore all of the artwork on the iPod automatically during the next sync after you re-check the "Display Album Artwork" setting.

If you're in manual mode, this is a bad idea as it _will_ still remove all of the artwork on your iPod, but there's no automated way of putting it back (since you're not using automatic sync in this case).


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

I'm okay with that, but is there any reason why iTunes "Gets Artwork" for the library, then when you manually add it to iPod it doesn't transfer with the files?


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## jhollington (Jan 29, 2007)

What version of iTunes are you using?

Also, when you say that you "manually add it" are you referring to manually adding it to a file _already on_ the iPod, or transferring the file itself? 

Album artwork fetched through the automated "Get Artwork" feature _should_ transfer to the iPod with the track, even manually. However, this artwork is _not_ embedded in the MP3/AAC file itself, but rather stored in a separate artwork cache directory, so it's transferred from the iTunes artwork cache directly to the iPod's artwork cache.

I do seem to recall that the first couple of releases of iTunes 7 (7.0.0 and 7.0.1) had a problem with transferring automatically downloaded artwork, and they most definitely had an issue with adding artwork directly to tracks on the iPod itself. The thread I've reference above goes into fairly exhaustive detail on those issues.

iTunes 7.1 _should_ have these issues solved (in fact, 7.0.2 did), but it's possible they've broken it again...


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

jhollington said:


> What version of iTunes are you using?
> 
> Also, when you say that you "manually add it" are you referring to manually adding it to a file _already on_ the iPod, or transferring the file itself?
> 
> ...


Hmmmm well this is what I've gathered.
You HAVE to "Get Artwork" in iTunes before you drag it to your Pod. Then a LOT of times it still doesn't show up when you are playing your iPod THROUGH iTunes so you have to manually add the artwork you already added twice.... sooo, I said SCREW THIS and never "Get Artwork". I downloaded Clutter and it gets it for me, it uses my Artwork if it's there, or it gets it from Amazon, then I hit Apple Shift K and it adds it to all the songs in the album. 10-20% of the time, amazon doesn't have my albums I listen to, so I have to google it. But that's WAY more productive than Googling EVERY SINGLE ONE.


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