How can I batch import JPEG album art into MP3s?

December 15, 2008 2:59 PM

How can I batch import album art into MP3s from JPEGs on my hard disk?

Hi,

I've got a fairly extensive music collection (10,000~ tracks), and I would like to batch import album art, which I already have on my computer into the MP3's ID3 tag.

I know how to do it one by one in a few different programs, but it would be very laborious to add each and every album's art manually.

The art has the filename;

Artist - Album Title [Front].jpg

and resides in the same folder as the album.

Any help, or a point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

ilumos

posted by ilumos to technology (6 comments total)

What OS? I've done it on Linux with a plugin for Amarok.
posted by zsazsa at 3:22 PM on December 15, 2008

zsazsa asks a good question - what OS - but if you're on Windows, I think MediaMonkey should be able to do this. I'm not sure about using the art you already have - you may have to use the art it acquires from Amazon's servers, but it should work. Again, Lifehacker comes through with a detailed how-to.

Actually, I just found another Lifehacker how-to that covers embedding solutions on all 3 major platforms..you should certainly be able to find a solution there.
posted by mistikle at 4:05 PM on December 15, 2008

Using mp3tag, create a new action (open any file to have access to the menu) with the following parameters:

"Import cover from file..." and set the file name to "%artist% - %album% [Front].jpg". Name this script something useful so you'll remember which one it is in the future. Close the actions dialogue, and point mp3tag to the root folder of your music folder structure. Select all songs, Go to "Convert"->"Actions", make sure only "embed thingy" is checked, and hit OK.

Just tested this and it works fine!
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:19 PM on December 15, 2008

Ah, apologies. I'm on XP SP3. I'll just try your solution inspector gadget, looks good.


Many thanks!
posted by ilumos at 4:55 AM on December 16, 2008

Inspector.Gadget that worked a charm! Thanks loads.


One thing I'll note for anyone else who wants to do this is that for my naming convention of album art, I needed to escape the braces [] with apostrophes ' like this;

%artist% - %album% '[Front]'.jpg

because braces are a reserved character for something or other.


Thanks again inspector gadget and mefi!
posted by ilumos at 5:22 AM on December 16, 2008

Ah crap forgot about the braces. In mp3tag and foobar2000, braces are a conditional function: [%artist%] is equivalent to IF ARTIST THEN PRINT ARTIST ELSE PRINT NOTHING.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 11:18 AM on December 16, 2008