AAC Poor Quality Album Art vs. MP3 High Quality Album Art

[Keylonta]

When playing AAC music files in Windows 7 Media Center the album art is poor quality and does not display at it's native resolution. To test this I created an album with 2 identical songs. One song is encoded with AAC and has 1000dpi album art, the other song is encoded with MP3 and has the same 1000dpi album art. See this video example where when the album is played, the first MP3 song displays full resolution album art, then when I skip to the next AAC song the album art becomes poor quality. I then keep skipping to each song to further demonstrate the differences of the 2 songs album art quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO3Im6y ... e=youtu.be

Is this issue due to AAC album art not being compatible with MCE? If so what would cause this and can it be fixed? I have just discovered this issue after ripping 130 CDs using iTunes 10.7 AAC encoder. To get the album art to show in MCE I initially had to re-add all the album art in iTunes to embed it into all the AAC song files.

[holidayboy]

Not sure if this thread will have any useful info but cw-kid did some investigating for album art:

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=1015

[Keylonta]

Here’s how you do it.

1. Create a DWORD with the name “LargeAlbumArtSize” and give it a value of 320 at the following REGISTRY EDITOR address:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences

After doing this, all newly imported music will display 800x800 ablum artwork when playing music instead of the low resolution 200x200.

To update the album art for your current music collection that was imported before editing the registry do the following:

2. Remove all music from your WMC library.

3. Close WMC

4. Delete the “Art Cache” folder from C:\Users\USER NAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\ehome

5. In Windows Explorer open FOLDER OPTIONS, and in the VIEW tab select “Show hidden files, folders, or drives”, and uncheck “Hide protected operating system files”.

6. In Windows Explorer go to your music folder and do a search for “Folder.jpg”.

7. Delete all the files named “Folder”. This deletes all the 200x200 low resolution album art.

8. Import all your music back into WMC. WMP will create all new 800x800 album art that will now display when playing music in WMC. 800x800 is the highest resolution that WMP will create.

Enjoy the high resolution album art!

[IT Troll]

I have just rebuilt my music library based on AAC/M4A and have encountered some other weirdness.

All the M4A files have embedded art, but my understanding is that Media Player/Center won't use these. I also have a high quality folder.jpg in each folder and have the LargeAlbumArtSize registry set so that they don't get messed with.

Most of the time all works fine. However occasionally, whilst playing an album, a track will just get a generic coloured placeholder album art. If I switch to the home screen and then switch back to now playing, the correct album art will then be displayed. So I don't believe there is anything wrong with the music files or art.

Is this a known glitch? I am actually running Windows 8.1 but this thread seemed the most relevant place to post.

[Keylonta]

All the M4A files have embedded art, but my understanding is that Media Player/Center won't use these.

Media Player/Center will use the embedded art. If it's embedded using something like iTunes; Media Player/Center will use it to create the 800x800 hidden folder.jpg protected operating system files.

I also have a high quality folder.jpg in each folder and have the LargeAlbumArtSize registry set so that they don't get messed with.

That registry setting sets the resolution of the hidden folder.jpg protected operating system file (see step 5 above) when it is created in each album folder when WMP/WMC finds new music in the music folder. That's what displays in WMC when playing music.

As far as I know, the only time WMP/WMC will mess with your high quality folder.jpg, is if the high quality folder.jpg is already in the folder that your embedded music files are copied to when dragging them into WMP. In this case, WMP will use the embedded music art to create a hidden folder.jpg protected operating system file, and delete your high quality folder.jpg, it will disappear from the folder.

whilst playing an album, a track will just get a generic coloured placeholder album art.

I've noticed that happen a few times lately too with W7. You could try re-indexing the album art, or rebuilding the music library.

[Keylonta]

I should mention that the high resolution album art fix above has only been tested with music files that all have embedded album art. To clear up any confusion, in steps 6 and 7, the folder.jpg files I am referring to are the hidden folder.jpg protected operating system files, not custom folder.jpg files that have been manually placed in the album folders by the user.

[IT Troll]

Thanks for your reply.

Media Player/Center will use the embedded art. If it's embedded using something like iTunes; Media Player/Center will use it to create the 800x800 hidden folder.jpg protected operating system files.

I embedded using dBpoweramp's PerfectTUNES. I still found that Media Player did not pick this up and only showed art if I included the folder.jpg. I found some other posts which seemed to indicate this was a known issue with m4a/AAC files. Perhaps Media Player will eventually create folder.jpg files (if they don't already exist) from the embedded art once you play them (see below).

As far as I know, the only time WMP/WMC will mess with your high quality folder.jpg, is if the high quality folder.jpg is already in the folder that your embedded music files are copied to when dragging them into WMP. In this case, WMP will use the embedded music art to create a hidden folder.jpg protected operating system file, and delete your high quality folder.jpg, it will disappear from the folder.

You can only ever have one folder.jpg file in a folder. So if you place one there manually there is a danger that Media Player will mess with it. Just by simply playing an album, Media Player will change the attributes of your folder.jpg so that it is marked as a system/hidden file. This doesn't always happen immediately but will happen at some point. If you don't have the LargeAlbumArtSize registry set and also have the options enabled to automatically update media information, then Media Player can sometimes overwrite your folder.jpg with a lower quality download. At this point you will also get the other "AlbumArt" hidden files appearing in the folder.

I have set to LargeAlbumArtSize registry setting to FFFFFFFF. By setting this to an out-of-range value, Media Player will not ever resize folder.jpg. This means that you can have folder.jpg which are larger or smaller than 800x800. I have some which are 500 and some which are 1000.

I've noticed that happen a few times lately too with W7. You could try re-indexing the album art, or rebuilding the music library.

I did a full delete of the existing database before importing the whole library a fresh. Is there another step for re-indexing album art?

[IT Troll]

The below thread has some registry settings for increasing the number of album art images used for the mosaic waterfall animation. I must give that a try; it is annoying that it only uses a few, closely related images, which repeat frequently.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1905

[Keylonta]

I embedded using dBpoweramp's PerfectTUNES. I still found that Media Player did not pick this up and only showed art if I included the folder.jpg.

Try this.

1. In WMP, go to an album that has embedded album art in the files.
2. right-click on one of the songs and open it's file location.
3. In Windows Explorer, copy the album folder to the desktop.
4. Open the copied desktop album folder and move the high quality folder.jpg to the desktop.
5. Make sure all the music files in the copied desktop album folder have embedded album art.
6. Delete the album from WMP. Make sure you select the option to "Delete from library and my computer".
7. Go back to the Window Explorer window (that opened when you did step 2), and delete the album folder (that WMP just deleted the songs from).
8. Close WMP and WMC.
9. Delete the "Art Cache" folder from C:\Users\Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\ehome
10. Drag the copied desktop album folder into WMP. It should display the embedded album art. This might fix the mosaic waterfall animation issue too.

I have set to LargeAlbumArtSize registry setting to FFFFFFFF. By setting this to an out-of-range value, Media Player will not ever resize folder.jpg.

If the above doesn't work, you could try changing the FFFFFFFF value to 320, and then try the above again.

I did a full delete of the existing database before importing the whole library a fresh. Is there another step for re-indexing album art?

Deleting the database folder would have deleted the "Art Cache" folder mentioned above (deleting the "Art Cache" folder re-indexes the album art). But regardless of whether you delete the existing database or just re-index the album art, WMP still re-indexes the album art from the pre-existing folder.jpg and hidden album art files in all the album folders, which is why in step 7 above, you delete the album folder. That way, when you drag the copied desktop album folder into WMP, WMP will create a new album folder, and should generate new hidden album art files from the embedded album art. Just make sure your high quality folder.jpg isn't in the album folder.

[IT Troll]

So, some interesting findings...

I followed your 10 steps and with LargeAlbumArtSize set to FFFFFFFF and folder.jpg is never created. This makes sense because the out-of-range value prevents Media Player from generating the file. Without a folder.jpg present Media Player shows blank artwork when browsing the album. But, Media Player does show the embedded artwork during playback in the Now Playing window. However, Media Center does not show artwork either whilst browsing or during playback. This matches my understanding that Media Center cannot directly use art embedded in AAC/M4A files. If you repeat the same exercise with an MP3 file, Media Center will happily make direct use of the embedded art even if folder.jpg is not present.

I then repeated the test with LargeAlbumArtSize set to 320 (800 decimal). This time Media Player generated an 800x800 folder.jpg file from the embedded art. This meant that the artwork now appears as expected in both Media Player and Media Center because folder.jpg is now available to use. The problem with using this 320 setting is that Media Player is always going to generate 800x800 folder.jpg files even if the embedded art is actually smaller or larger. I still feel that the FFFFFFFF setting is better as this prevents any messing with my existing folder.jpg files.

When you browse albums in Media Center it copies the folder.jpg from the respective album folders into it's own Art Cache folder. These are copied straight across at whatever their original size (i.e. not resized by Media Center).

I then moved onto to the mosaic waterfall animation. I found that setting mosaicMinAlbumsRequired to 40 (decimal) or above would result in no animation being displayed at all. Interestingly, setting it to 39 resulted in a few albums appearing on the mosaic with the coloured placeholder art. However, if I set it to 38 or below it works fine. I've left it set to 20 for now to see if that improves the randomisation (the default setting is 6). The mosaicMaxAlbumsToFind setting is set to 1000 (decimal) by default and so I have just left alone (I actually have just over 1000 albums).

I am not sure any of this really sheds any light on why I was occasionally seeing generic placeholder art even when folder.jpg was present. But perhaps the mosaic glitch mentioned above points to some general memory limitation when you have a large number of albums with large art.

[DavidinCT]

I know this falls on partly off topic but, I always have music that shows no art even though there is a folder.jpg in the root. Was there ever a tool to deal with this ?

[newfiend]

I know this falls on partly off topic but, I always have music that shows no art even though there is a folder.jpg in the root. Was there ever a tool to deal with this ?

I embed each song with the correct album art with Musicbrainz Picard or Jaikoz. Each will properly rename the albums/tracks and embed album art into each song. Works great with WMC and Plex alike. Both of which I use a ton.
Here is a good tutorial on setting up and using MusicBrainz Picard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgNLx1IehIA

Jaikoz - http://www.jthink.net/jaikoz/

MusicBrainz Picard - https://picard.musicbrainz.org/

If you use MusicBrainz Picard - Open it > Click Options / Options > Cover Art on left column > Tic the box for embed cover images into tags. This should make WMC display Cover art for all your tracks.

newfiend~

[Keylonta]

I should mention that the above 10 steps will only work if you were previously using the Rearrange music in rip music folder, using rip music settings setting in WMP that copies the files to your music folder when dragging files into WMP.

If you are not using that setting, for step 3, create a new folder on the desktop, and give it the same name as the album folder, and then copy only the album song files to the desktop album folder. That way, there will be no hidden album art files in the desktop album folder, and when you drag it in to WMP, it should generate the hidden album art in the desktop album folder.

[IT Troll]

I know this falls on partly off topic but, I always have music that shows no art even though there is a folder.jpg in the root. Was there ever a tool to deal with this ?

If you are talking about mp3 files in Media Center then, just as newfriend says, the most sure-fire way to guarantee that art is shown is to embed it in the mp3. Sadly this doesn't work for aac/m4a files within Media Center.

If you are not using that setting, for step 3, create a new folder on the desktop, and give it the same name as the album folder, and then copy only the album song files to the desktop album folder. That way, there will be no hidden album art files in the desktop album folder, and when you drag it in to WMP, it should generate the hidden album art in the desktop album folder.

Yes this is what I did. Folder.jpg files are only generated if LargeAlbumArtSize is set to valid value. But if you want full control of the size of these you need to disable this function with an out-of-range value and provide your own folder.jpg files.

[IT Troll]

I think I have got to the bottom of this. The LargeAlbumArtSize registry key is in fact the key to it.

So, if you have MP3 files with embedded art, Media Center will just use the embedded art and you don't need mess about with anything or continue reading this.

However, this is not the case for M4A/AAC. Lets say all your files have embedded art and you have existing folder.jpg files in each of your album folders. I will detail what happens in two different scenarios.

Scenario 1 - Generation of folder.jpg files by Media Player has been disabled by setting LargeAlbumArtSize to FFFFFFFF

Media Player will just use the existing folder.jpg and album art will appear when browsing or during playback.

Media Centre will copy the folder.jpg into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\ehome\Art Cache without resizing and use this when you browse your albums. As you playback your tracks, Media Center will create more album art in the same Art Cache folder for each track. This is where the bug manifests. It works fine for the initial track you play and it works fine if you skip tracks. However, if you let one track play into another the art will be missing. I believe this is because the art doesn't yet exist in the cache for that track during the seamless playback. Future plays of that track will however be fine because the art will now exist in the cache.

Scenario 2 - Generation of high resolution folder.jpg files by Media Player has been enabled by setting LargeAlbumArtSize to the desired resolution

Media Player will generate art files at the specified size into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS for each track from the embedded art. In my case that is almost 13,000 files amounting to 1.7GB.

Media Center will now use this album art cache rather than creating it's own. As all the art for all the tracks already exists, you don't experience the missing artwork bug.


In both scenarios, it is the contents of these cache folders which are of utmost importance and which are used by Media Center during browsing and playback. Media Center will use the Media Player cache if it is there, otherwise it will utilise it’s own cache. Neither scenario is ideal. In scenario 1 albums will show missing art in their first play through. In scenario 2, album art will be resized to the specified size regardless of the original size. Both waste disk space by unnecessarily duplicating artwork.