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Hwæt
January 17th, 2010, 06:35 PM
Please excuse me if this is a stupid question, but is it legal in the United States to download album artwork off the Internet and attach it to the corresponding audio file via a program such as Rhythmbox or EasyTag?

Note: I bought all of the music that I plan on adding artwork to. I lost all of the metadata when I converted them from AAC -> WAV -> FLAC.

Kevinlittleton
January 17th, 2010, 07:38 PM
I never thought about it being illegal... iTunes and the like usually do it for you automatically right? I think you should be fine.

SuperSonic4
January 17th, 2010, 07:41 PM
I believe their use is covered under fair use

Hwæt
January 17th, 2010, 08:20 PM
Okay, thanks for the help. :)

Just one more question: Where does Rhythmbox fetch the covers from?

SuperSonic4
January 17th, 2010, 08:21 PM
I don't know but my best guess would be amazon

koleoptero
January 17th, 2010, 09:34 PM
...when I converted them from AAC -> WAV -> FLAC.

http://ui18.gamespot.com/2897/whywouldyoudothat_2.jpg

Hwæt
January 17th, 2010, 09:46 PM
http://ui18.gamespot.com/2897/whywouldyoudothat_2.jpg

Because ACC is encumbered by software patents in my country, and because WAV files are huge.

Martje_001
January 17th, 2010, 10:13 PM
koleoptero: No information - ok, his ID3 tags - is lost in the proces. Wav is a loseless (actually, it's raw sound-data). FLAC's pretty much the same story, but it's compressed (loseless, of course).

thatguruguy
January 17th, 2010, 10:22 PM
For the record, if Rhythmbox doesn't fetch the album artwork for you automatically, you can do so manually pretty easily. Just go to amazon, open up a picture of the album artwork, and drag it into Rhythmbox.

BugenhagenXIII
January 18th, 2010, 01:10 AM
Because ACC is encumbered by software patents in my country, and because WAV files are huge.


That's not really why the question was asked. I believe koleoptero was asking why you would convert from a lossy codec to a lossless codec. To get the small file sizes that make lossy formats convenient, data is thrown out. This is usually fine, as the data that gets thrown out is frequencies that humans either have trouble with, or can't hear at all. However, going from lossy -> lossless, you can't get that data back, and, as a result, sound quality drops, sometimes quite significantly. So you end up with lower quality audio + a much larger file size. Your best option would be lossy -> lossy (such as aac -> ogg vorbis, or any other lossy codec).

Hwæt
January 18th, 2010, 02:47 AM
So you end up with lower quality audio + a much larger file size. Your best option would be lossy -> lossy (such as aac -> ogg vorbis, or any other lossy codec).

But wouldn't that make it twice as lossy, since it was already compressed to begin with, and then got compressed again?

Tristam Green
January 18th, 2010, 03:00 PM
I believe they all capture from Amazon. Some of the images are pretty rough, but some of them work just fine. I'm currently in the process of retagging all my music in mp3tag.

koleoptero
January 18th, 2010, 04:42 PM
But wouldn't that make it twice as lossy, since it was already compressed to begin with, and then got compressed again?

Yes. I didn't say it because sound-quality would drop like this. It wouldn't. Both wav and flac are lossless so you get the same sound quality as in the original aac. But.. OMG the wasted disk drive space!!! :lolflag: You now have lossy sound quality in a lossless size. :P You should have kept the original aac files, they play fine in linux, and a lot mp3 players play them as well (even my sony ericsson phone does).