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[sithlord0338]

I am using MC version 12.0.401 and a 160gig iPod Classic with the newest firmware update. I have a few questions about how album artwork is supported using MC to sync an iPod. Also, a couple of related problem.

Here are the two questions:
 
1. Is it necessary to have the "Enable album artwork support if possible" box checked and cover art stored in the tags of the files on the iPod for the iPod coverart to work properly? because it seems like overkill and a waste of space to have the cover art stored in the iPod's database as well as in the files.
 
2. In the handheld options dialog box under cover art I have it set to remove tags on conversion. Now does this only remove cover art from the tags of files that have been converted, or does it do this for all the files that get sent to the iPod?
 
Here are the two problems I've been having:
 
1. On the iPod, album art displays properly in cover flow and on the now playing screen. It also shows up fine in the display that pops to the right of the iPod menu. But when I try to browse my music library through the artist or album menu items the album art comes up scrambled in the icons to the left of the listed albums. It's displaying the proper cover art however the images are slanted and stretched. They're split diagonally down the center and what should be the left side of the image is displayed on the right and vice versa. It kind of looks like what an old TV screen will look like when the horizontal hold is not set properly. I have tried reinitializing the iPod 2 or 3 times with Media Center but that has not helped with this problem. With the cover art option under the audio conversion setting I have tried all three settings and the same thing seems to happen with each one. There is actually one of my albums which doesn't have this problem for some reason.
 
2. Here is the other problem I'm having. I'm trying to keep "remove from tags" selected under audio conversion/coverart, but it keeps setting itself back to "no change" and most of my files on the iPod end up with the album art inside the files. Though some of the files end up without the cover art inside them as well. I'm finding this behavior a little strange.

Are these cover art problems unique only to MC version 12.0.401? Or is there an older build of Media Center which I can downgrade to in order to fix this problem?

I suppose that these aren't huge problems but I would like to have my new iPod working properly and also not wasting disk space if I don't need to.

Thanks.

[hottuna]

On the iPod, album art displays properly in cover flow and on the now playing screen. It also shows up fine in the display that pops to the right of the iPod menu. But when I try to browse my music library through the artist or album menu items the album art comes up scrambled in the icons to the left of the listed albums. It's displaying the proper cover art however the images are slanted and stretched. They're split diagonally down the center and what should be the left side of the image is displayed on the right and vice versa. It kind of looks like what an old TV screen will look like when the horizontal hold is not set properly.

I had the same problem with 12.0.401 and upgraded to 12.0.403 - no change.

[Lossless Dave]

I can confirm having similar cover art issues in 401.

[bwaldron]

1. On the iPod, album art displays properly in cover flow and on the now playing screen. It also shows up fine in the display that pops to the right of the iPod menu. But when I try to browse my music library through the artist or album menu items the album art comes up scrambled in the icons to the left of the listed albums. It's displaying the proper cover art however the images are slanted and stretched. They're split diagonally down the center and what should be the left side of the image is displayed on the right and vice versa. It kind of looks like what an old TV screen will look like when the horizontal hold is not set properly.

After updating to 403 today (from 396) I am seeing the same problems with the small thumbnail images on my iPod classic 160.

[lalittle]

I can confirm this as well as of build 400.  The art is skewed diagonally in the "lists," but not in the coverflow, now playing, or main screen.

Larry

[sithlord0338]

Should I change back to build 399?

[lalittle]

Should I change back to build 399?

I'm honestly not sure when it started -- it may have been prior to 399.

The potential problem with reverting at this point is that there was recently a library format change, and I "think" that if you try to revert to a version of MC prior to this change, it won't be able to read the library that was being used with the recent builds.  I'm not entirely clear on this, however, and I can't remember when the change took place.

Please post if you try it an it solves this issue -- it would help to know exactly when this started.

Larry

[dtabuenc]

I'm seeing this same problem, the art is skewed to when browsing by artist/album on an IPOD Classic 80 GB latest firmware and build .399

[SwellGuy]

1) You should Enable artwork if you want artwork information transferred to the iPod. The iPod doesn't use the artwork in the tags.

2) Don't remove cover art from tags during transfer if you want artwork to show up on the iPod - MC transfers the artwork in the files to the iPod during the transfer.

We'll look into the scramble skewing on Monday.

[lalittle]

We'll look into the scramble on Monday.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, the issue that's being reported here is not a "scrambling" issue per se, but rather a "skewing" issue, where the cover art is diagonally skewed in the iPod's list views.

Thanks for looking into this,

Larry

[SwellGuy]

I got that - I'll change my reply.

[brippon]

Pleased I'm not alone (MC12.399, Classic 80Gb f/w 1.0.3) with the skewing problem. Looks like Apple have changed the image size or padded the scanlength of each line to align to a quadword or something.

It's the only issue for me with this great software. I have 100Gb of FLACs waiting to convert and download, so I'll wait and see how this thread develops - I don't want to have to convert it twice!

Thanks in anticipation, Brian

[SwellGuy]

Skewed and scrambled artwork will be fixed in build 12.0.404. You will have to re-sync.

[sithlord0338]

Thanks for the speedy response on this. Will I need to redo my handheld cache too?

[Phydeaux]

Ah, what good news!

If it helps (perhaps make someone else feel better ;-) ), I have update 1.0.3 on my 160GB iPod Classic and MC12.403 and can confirm the skewing.

P.

[sithlord0338]

The Media Center 12.0.404 update fixed this problem for me. Thanks for the super quick fix.

sithlord0338

[dtabuenc]

Still seems skewed for me. What is meant by a resync? Is it just plugging the ipod in and hitting the sync button or does it involve emptying it and re-uploading everything?

[SwellGuy]

The later. The damage is already done you should Initialize (format) the iPod and re-sync.

[sithlord0338]

It worked fine for me after I deleted all my files off the iPod and re-synced it. I didn't seem to need to initialize the iPod. So you might want to try and add a couple of albums once it's empty before you sync. Although, I suppose once everything is deleted off the iPod it won't be much more of an effort to initialize the thing.

[TB2]

I have this problem in Media Jukebox. Is it already fixed in 12.0.023? Because the latest "Pulled in latest MC12 bug fixes." was on 12.20.07 and MC 12.0.404, where this has been fixed was on 12.31.07. There's nothing about that in the MJ changelog. And I wouldn't want to resync 120GB just to find out if it is fixed