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[kwake]

I may be hallucinating this, but wanted to check here to be sure...

I admit I do have a bit of a complicated setup, which may have something to do with it:

I have 3 copies of all my MP3's, and sync them between the 3 places (PC1, PC2 and External USB drive) using SyncBack SE (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse-features.html).

Both PC's run Media Center 15 (I've been a loyal customer since version 8 I think) and I store album art inside the file at as close to 500x500 pixels as I can find on the net.

Sometimes I update the art on PC1, sometimes on PC2 and now and again I run SyncBack so both PC's (as well as the external USB drive) all have the updated version with updated art.

But what I've been noticing is that many times I'll be playing music and the album art looks 'low qual' and when I check it, I'm surprised to see that it's at 200x200 pixels and taking up 350kb in the file when I seem to recall having replaced the art not too long ago with 500x500 at a much smaller filesize hit (around 80kb on average).

Anyone else notice this with their files?

Cheers,
Kwake

[JimH]

MC won't do that, but Windows Media Player may.  Try a Google search.

[Alex B]

MC does not replace or resize existing cover art. You can add the Image File column to list views for checking the cover art status.

If MC does not find embedded or external cover art when Auto-import is running (i.e. when the Image File field would be empty) and the "Get Cover Art" Auto-import setting is enabled MC will download the most popular cover art file if any is available. In my experience, the downloaded file is usually of higher resolution than 200x200. You can check what is shown as the first choice when you run the "Cover Art > Get From Internet" tool.

Windows Media Player is known to automatically replace any existing folder.jpg files with 200x200 images, but I don't know if it also stores them inside the file tag (I don't think it does).

[kwake]

Thanks for the quick feedback.

I've done some looking around and although there are zero 'folder.jpg' files in my collection, there seem to be other hidden jpg files here and there in my collection - for example on called "AlbumArtSmall.jpg".

If I'm storing album art in my files, would MC require to create/use any external jpg files at all or are these probably being created automatically by Windows Media Player without my knowledge?

For what it's worth, I don't use Media Player at all for music (I never had it build a library at all) however I do use it to quick view avi files now and again...

Regards,
Ken

[Vincent Kars]

"AlbumArtSmall.jpg", this is typically WMP/WMC

If you use WMP, make sure none of the monitored folders points to your music files on any of ypur PCs.

There is a registry hack supposed to stop WMP from meddling with album art.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences]
"LargeAlbumArtSize"=dword:ffffffff
"SmallAlbumArtSize"=dword:ffffffff

More details: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/WMP12/AlbumArt.htm