Mass Import Album Art to MP3 Files

[sjj1805]

Here's how to automatically embed album art in to many MP3 files

If you have a large MP3 collection that you want to transfer to the PS3, you'd want to have album art for each track since the PS3 can only sort one level deep for any media. If you embed album art into your media *before* transferring to the PS3, you can then group your collection by Artist and consequently view all albums by that artist with pictures for each track showing which album it belongs to. Its the only decent way to currently use music in the XMB until sony gets its act together and allows folder structures on the native PS3 harddrive (as well as supporting folder.jpg type album art on import).

Here's how you can *automatically* update your MP3 collection with album art.

Note: you must already have album art for each album in your collection. You might have a "folder.jpg" in each albums folder that you downloaded yourself or if you use something like Microsoft's Media Player, you might have automatically downloaded album art in each folder named something like: "AlbumArt_{0C2xxxx}_Large.jpg", etc. If you relied on Microsoft Media Player to get your album art, the files it downloaded are probably hidden so you'll want to show hidden files from within explorer to make sure the art exists for each album (click: Tools menu, Folder Options, View tab, Show hidden files/folders from explorer to unhide). Whatever your album art type, you just need to know the file names stored in each album folder for the art.

Download the free MP3Tag v2.37a from http://www.mp3tag.de/en/.
• Install and start up MP3Tag.
• On the left side of MP3Tag in the Directory field, type the root of your music collection (eg: C:\Documents and Settings\"Your Login Name"\My Documents\My Music).
• MP3Tag will scan all media files in your collection and display all of them in a list. Wait till its done.
• Select the first song in the media list on the right, then press CTRL-A to select every one of them.
• Press SHIFT-ALT-5 to bring up the "Select Action Type" dialog.
• Choose "Import Cover From File" in the dropdown list, then press OK.
• In the "Format string for image filename" field, type your album art filename here. (eg: folder.jpg or AlbumArt*Large.jpg, etc)
• You can delete any existing cover art in all of your MP3 ID3 tags by clicking the "delete existing cover art" option.
• Click OK and let MP3Tag import your cover art for every one of your MP3 files.
This procedure imports cover art directly in to each MP3 files ID3 tag. This means that every file grows in size by the image size for your art. Its a somewhat waste of space, but so far its the only thing that allows the PS3 to see cover art for every album.
Once MP3Tag is done, you can transfer your collection to the PS3 and it'll recognize all your cover art. This is *far* easier than embedding album art manually for every album or every track, either on the PC or directly on the PS3.
Good luck.
(ps: remember when you transfer your collection to the PS3 to store your music in a "MUSIC" folder from the root of your media, be it flash, usb key, burned DVDs, etc. That way you can directly browse the music media from the PS3 without resorting to the triangle option to Browse All Media).