id3 tags with album art?

[hizaguchi]

I just picked up an Insignia mp3 player (NS-DV2G, it rocks) and it has a feature I've never had any use for before, it displays album art that is embedded in an id3 tag. This is really cool, but I'm finding the process of embedding the art to be a huge pain. The only tool I've found for this in Linux is EasyTag, and as much as I appreciate it for being capable of handling the job, it is far from user friendly. Does anybody know of a tool that will do this automatically? Or at least one that has a built-in art fetching function, like Amarok but with the ability to stick it into the tag?

[cowlip]

Yes.

Album Cover Art Downloader is the best program for this :) Cross-platform, so good on Windows/Mac/Linux

http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/

http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/2129/screenshotoi0.png

EDIT: I can't remember if it embeds it in the id3 tags but I think it might (shows up in my WMP with album art)

[maniacmusician]

I used a program called Tag&Rename on Windows...it was the greatest tagging program EVER. It's the only windows program I miss. It had the ability to download Album tags from amazon, and they usually included the album cover as well! it was marvelous. EasyTag doesn't really make it so easy. But perhaps the program that cowlip pointed out is good, I haven't tried it.

[hizaguchi]

cowlip, I'm having trouble getting the program you suggested to stick the art into the mp3 file itself. It works great for fetching the covers though. Thanks. :)

[RAV TUX]

I just picked up an Insignia mp3 player (NS-DV2G, it rocks) and it has a feature I've never had any use for before, it displays album art that is embedded in an id3 tag. This is really cool, but I'm finding the process of embedding the art to be a huge pain. The only tool I've found for this in Linux is EasyTag, and as much as I appreciate it for being capable of handling the job, it is far from user friendly. Does anybody know of a tool that will do this automatically? Or at least one that has a built-in art fetching function, like Amarok but with the ability to stick it into the tag?

You have a fever and the only prescription is more Cowbell (http://more-cowbell.org/). http://more-cowbell.org/skins/cowbell/ferrell.gif


Introducing Cowbell

http://more-cowbell.org/images/thumb/4/41/Cowbell-Screenshot.png/250px-Cowbell-Screenshot.png (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Image:Cowbell-Screenshot.png)
Do you ever pull your hair out trying to hand-edit all your tags with some arcane editor? Tell your inner OCD to take a hike because Cowbell is coming to town.
Cowbell is an elegant music organizer intended to make keeping your collection tidy both fun and easy.
Infused with Amazon Web Services SOAP-fu, Cowbell can whip your music platoon into shape without even getting your boots muddy. And, if that isn't enough to make you want to rush to the Download (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Download) link, Cowbell can also snatch album art and rename your music like a pro.
Your music. Your Way

Do you have an expansive collection of 90's era experimental polka rivaling only museums? How do you keep it tidy? Chances are, it involves a considerable amount of hand-editing, a smidgen of bash, or a smattering of expletives to complete -- and who has time for all of it anyway?
Cowbell was designed around the principle "Your music. Your way"; why should you have to conform to arbitrary guidelines set by sadistic software programmers just to clean up your music? Instead, with Cowbell, what was a tag editor becomes a music organizer and an enabler, allowing you to collect and organize your tunes any way you want.
Dive Right In

Cowbell's easy-to-use interface allows new users to dive right in to music organization. In fact, its so easy that following Cowbell's 3-step guide, entitled Cowbell, By the Numbers (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Cowbell%2C_By_the_Numbers), can get you organizing like a pro in no time. Don't think its possible? Try it out! I think you'll be surprised how easy tagging can be.
http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Main_Page
What is Cowbell?

Cowbell is an elegant, album-based, music organizer written by Brad Taylor (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/User:Brad) in C# for Gtk+. Using TagLib (http://developer.kde.org/%7Ewheeler/taglib.html), it supports many audio formats including:
Ogg/FLAC
MP3
MusePack (http://www.musepack.net/)Cowbell is tightly integrated with Amazon.com (http://amazon.com/) using its free SOAP service. Cowbell employs this service not only to fetch album cover images, as most tag editors do, but also in combination with intelligent algorithms to "guess" the appropriate song information from song titles. It can also cache these cover images in the same directory where that album resides.
Going above and beyond the call of tagging, Cowbell also can rename your files based upon a user-configurable pattern (More detail on how to use this feature is covered in the Advanced Guide (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide)) and also export a M3U/PLS playlist of your songs in album-order.
For you console junkies, Cowbell also offers a command-line based batch tagger which can tag and "guess" a whole collection of music with just a few keystrokes.
And, to top it all off, Cowbell is fully internationalized and has been translated into German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian and Swedish. If you know another language and would like to translate Cowbell, please contact us (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Help).
If you'd like to know a little more about this wiki, check out our Colophon (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Colophon).
Retrieved from "http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/About"

http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/About

Advanced Guide

Contents
1 Advanced Guide (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide#Advanced_Guide)
1.1 Renaming Files (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide#Renaming_Files)
1.2 Saving Album Covers (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide#Saving_Album_Covers)
1.3 Batch Tagging (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide#Batch_Tagging) if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); }
So, you've read Cowbell, By the Numbers (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Cowbell%2C_By_the_Numbers) and it left you aching for more. Whats next? Well, you're in luck! This guide purports to examine each and every advanced feature Cowbell has to offer, step by step. If theres anything that you don't see here thats included in Cowbell, please feel free to add it.

Renaming Files

In addition to Cowbell's wonderful tagging features, it can also rename your files according to a pattern when you save. To enable this option, go to Tools -> Preferences. You should be presented with a dialog that looks similar to the one below.
http://more-cowbell.org/images/c/c9/Screenshot-Preferences.png (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Image:Screenshot-Preferences.png)

If "Rename files according to song information" isn't checked, enable it by clicking the checkbox on the left. Now, the Pattern field should be completely visible. Pick a filename pattern from the drop down or make your own using the tokens listed below.
Artist -- replaced with the Artist's name
Album -- replaced with the name of the Album
Title -- replaced with the Title of the song
Track -- replaced with the track number, padded with 0s to the length of the longest track number (e.g.: if there are 10 songs in the album, the first track will be 01, 100 songs being 001, etc.)
Genre -- replaced with the Genre of the Album
Year -- replaced with the year the album was released Saving Album Covers

Since Cowbell uses Amazon (http://amazon.com/) to guess song information, it can also download the album's cover image for display, and for later use. Simply check the "Cache album cover with songs" checkbox in Tools -> Preferences (see above screenshot) to enable it.

Batch Tagging

To supplement Cowbell's excellent graphical tagging, it also offers a command-line based batch tagger for large tagging jobs. To tell Cowbell to put on its work gloves and get dirty, run it with the following argument:
$ cowbell --batch /path/to/your/music
The following is a sample session when running Cowbell's batch tagging mode:

$ cowbell --batch My\ Music/
Searching /home/brad/My Music/The Postal Service/Give Up...
Found /home/brad/My Music/The Postal Service/Give Up
Guessing Song Information...
======================================
Postal Service- Give Up
1. District Sleeps Alone Tonight
2. Such Great Heights
3. Sleeping In
4. Nothing Better
5. Recycled Air
6. Clark Gable
7. We Will Become Silhouettes
8. Place Is a Prison
9. Brand New Colony
10. Natural Anthem
======================================
Saving...
Renaming files...


Done!When the batch tagging mode is enabled, Cowbell will descend in to the deepest directory and assume that is where your albums reside. Then, for each album, it will guess the song information and allow you to either confirm or reject the changes made. If you have the preferences set correctly, it will also rename the files according to the updated track information. It will not, however, cache album covers to the filesystem because of a limitation in the current design.
Retrieved from "http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide"http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide

[maniacmusician]

Amarok also does this, it has a Cover manager built in that can fetch missing covers. I don't know if it can insert them into the tag or not, I haven't tried using this feature for a while.

[maniacmusician]

awesome! I will try that as soon as I get back onto my computer. Thanks.

[hizaguchi]

^ Yeah, Amarok does a great job at finding covers but unfortunately it doesn't put them into the tag (took me forever to figure out why the player couldn't display them).

[hizaguchi]

OK, thanks for the Cowbell suggestion, it is exactly what I'm looking for! Problem though. Is there something special I need to do to get it to see mp3 files? Could it be related to me using KDE?

[RAV TUX]

OK, thanks for the Cowbell suggestion, it is exactly what I'm looking for! Problem though. Is there something special I need to do to get it to see mp3 files? Could it be related to me using KDE?not sure I should mention for other users that Cowbell is in the Synaptic Package Manager......

[RAV TUX]

Cowbells 3 step program;


Cowbell, By the Numbers

This guide is designed to get you using Cowbell's intuitive interface in 3 easy steps.

1. Import

Import your music into Cowbell using the File -> Open menu, the Ctrl + O shortcut or by dragging your music from the File Manager into the list on the left.
http://more-cowbell.org/images/thumb/8/8e/Screenshot-Import1.png/350px-Screenshot-Import1.png (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Image:Screenshot-Import1.png) http://more-cowbell.org/images/thumb/e/ee/Screenshot-Import2.png/350px-Screenshot-Import2.png (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Image:Screenshot-Import2.png)


2. Edit

Edit your tags or have Cowbell intelligently guess your song information by using the File -> Guess Song Information menu or pressing Ctrl + G.
http://more-cowbell.org/images/thumb/1/1d/Screenshot-Edit1.png/350px-Screenshot-Edit1.png (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Image:Screenshot-Edit1.png) http://more-cowbell.org/images/thumb/d/d3/Screenshot-Edit2.png/350px-Screenshot-Edit2.png (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Image:Screenshot-Edit2.png)



3. Save

When you are satisfied with the changes you've made, just save your music by clicking File -> Save or by using the Ctrl + S shortcut.
http://more-cowbell.org/images/thumb/8/80/Screenshot-Save.png/350px-Screenshot-Save.png (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Image:Screenshot-Save.png)

If you want a more in depth tutorial of Cowbell's advanced featureset, check out the Advanced Guide (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide).
http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Cowbell%2C_By_the_Numbers

[RAV TUX]

Cowbell Help page:


Help!

If you are confused with how to use Cowbell, take a gander at one of our very helpful guides:

Cowbell, By the Numbers (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Cowbell%2C_By_the_Numbers) -- a 3-step guide to help you jump right into organizing your music.
Advanced Guide (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Advanced_Guide) -- an advanced guide which takes you on a whirlwind tour of Cowbell's various advanced features.
Frequently Asked Questions (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions) -- a list of the most frequently asked questions and their answers. If you need additional help with installing, configuring or running Cowbell, there are several support methods available.

You can send a message to the Cowbell Mailing List (http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/cowbell-list),
You can ask a question on the Cowbell IRC channel; #cowbell on GIMPNet (http://www.xach.com/gimpnet).
Or, you can always email me (brad@getcoded.net) with any questions, comments or suggestions. If you want to contribute to Cowbell, check out the Hacking (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Hacking) page.
Or, if you would like to request a feature, look at the Feature Request (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Feature_Request) page.
Retrieved from "http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Help"
http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Help

[RAV TUX]

Cowbell FAQ:


Frequently Asked Questions


Why don't you support MusicBrainz? Its new, cool and buzzword compliant!

Cowbell was originally written for MusicBrainz (and in fact, the code is still all there for it), but I found it to have the following flaws:
TRM generation is way, way, way too slow (on the order of 30s per song on a reasonably fast machine).
Matches returned by an untuned TunePimp are often quite numerous (with my music collection, MusicBrainz returns on average about 10 matches per song) and as such, the user has to hand-pick the correct match (defeating the whole purpose).
Often, MB doesn't return the correct match or any match at all, despite having the same Artist/Album/Song Title or similar TRMs in the the database.
The order of commands required to get the data from the database is _black magic_. Even though the API is publicly advertised and the code is open source, the samples provided are so basic to not be useful and the only more sophisticated examples are applications written by the primary MusicBrainz developer, Robert Kaye. This does not speak volumes for the quality of the API.However, I am slightly biased since it took me almost a month and a half to write proper C# bindings due to poor documentation and confusing code comments.
I had plans to revive the MusicBrainz code that I wrote at some point, but to be truthful, the work that I've contorted Amazon into doing works fantastically for my music collection, so I have little motivation to dive into the depths of hellfire again.

I've heard Entagged support is on the way -- where is it and why can't I use it?

Entagged support is planned once entagged-sharp has completed the port of the writing code. This may take a while, but we'll have a version out the second they finish.

Does Cowbell work on Windows?

As of yet, no. I've made a few attempts to compile TagLib on Windows and was unsuccessful getting the C wrapper to work. However, once we integrate Entagged, we should be completely cross-platform.

What are all your release names based on, and why "More Cowbell"?

More Cowbell was a Saturday Night Live (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php?title=Saturday_Night_Live&action=edit) skit hosted by Christopher Walken (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Christopher_Walken). Walken plays a record producer (Bruce Dickenson) on a show called "Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult" who is assisting the production of the song "Don't Fear the Reaper." A full transcript is available (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/99/99pcowbell.phtml) as well as a video (http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/12491/) of the famed skit. All the release names are taken from that transcript.
http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions

[RAV TUX]

Get Cowbell Now!


Downloading

Cowbell is available for most current Linux distributions including, but not limited to:

Ubuntu Breezy (http://packages.ubuntu.com/breezy/sound/cowbell)/Dapper (http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/sound/cowbell)
Debian Etch (http://packages.debian.org/testing/sound/cowbell)/Sid (http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/cowbell)
Fedora Core 4 (http://www.nrpms.net/Packages/fedora-4-i386/mono/cowbell.html)
FreeBSD (http://www.freshports.org/audio/cowbell/)
Gentoo (http://packages.gentoo.org/packages/?category=media-sound;name=cowbell) Note that these packages aren't maintained by this project, so your mileage may vary.
If your distribution doesn't package Cowbell, you'll probably have to install Cowbell from source. Step-by-step instructions are available (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Installing_from_Source).
Also, if you just want to grab a source tarball, check out the Releases (http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Releases) page.
http://more-cowbell.org/index.php/Download

[hizaguchi]

Err, yeah, that's alot of website cutting and pasting there. Anybody using this for mp3s? I'm still not able to open them with it, and I've installed all the restricted format plugins for gstreamer and xine. Am I missing something?

[golem3]

Just out of curiosity, are embedded album art ID3 tags compatible with all programs? (Banashee, Amarok, Windows Media Player...etc, etc)

Really cool if it was.

Other question is - why doesn't the file size become larger after I input some art? It should, right?

[jethro10]

Just out of curiosity, are embedded album art ID3 tags compatible with all programs? (Banashee, Amarok, Windows Media Player...etc, etc)

Really cool if it was.



My music was originally tagged with embedded artwork on windows-->itunes. On moving to linux, all files play ok in every player I have tried.

Hope this helps

j

[Brunellus]

be advised that adding id3 tags to ogg vorbis or ogg flac files is NOT recommended. Rockbox, for instance, treats ogg files with id3 tags as mis-tagged and therefore "corrupted." Use only the ogg comments section to store file metadata. For most of you, that means turning 'add id3 tags to all files' OFF in the ripper/tagger of your choice.

[deusdiabolus]

I installed Cowbell, but the Amazon album art tagging function doesn't seem to work now (either SOAP has changed or been deactivated?). Are there any other suggestions as to a good program for tagging music files with album art, short of my old-school technique (look it up with Google Image Search, download it, resize it with an image editor and manually add it with some tag editor)?

[rcragun]

Same deal for me - I installed Cowbell but it can't connect to Amazon's server. Try Picard from MusicBrainz.
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Picard_Tagger

The fact that Amarok doesn't store the cover art in the song files (ID3 tags) is pretty annoying unless you only ever plan on using Amarok.

[hyperdude111]

Songbird and rythmbox automatically search for all the album art your library is missing.

On windows and mac itunes does the same

[DJ_Peng]

Yes.

Album Cover Art Downloader is the best program for this :) Cross-platform, so good on Windows/Mac/Linux

http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/ (http://louhi.kempele.fi/%7Eskyostil/projects/albumart/)


cowlip, I'm having trouble getting the program you suggested to stick the art into the mp3 file itself. It works great for fetching the covers though. Thanks. :)
I also looked for ACAD since it's recommended by the good folks at Misticriver, the iriver support forums, as the best tool for adding album art to audio files that can be played on iriver media players. I'm looking for something since although I already have cover art attached to my Ogg Vorbis files bet my E100 refuses to acknowledge their presence. Of course the ACAD website seems to have gone to the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky, but I did manage to find the page on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (http://web.archive.org/web/20070324042046/http://kempele.fi/%7Eskyostil/projects/albumart/). I was even able to snag the latest version's Debian package from this page (http://web.archive.org/web/20070323002339/kempele.fi/%7Eskyostil/projects/albumart/albumart-1_6_0.blog/).

I'm having some issues when running ACAD but I found a fix in this post on another thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2809331&postcount=15).

THIS JUST IN: It turns out Sami Kyöstilä has moved his site to a new URI (http://www.unrealvoodoo.org/hiteck/), and there's an update to ACAD (http://www.unrealvoodoo.org/hiteck/projects/albumart/)! I purged my old install and installed the new version (1.6.6) and it launched with absolutely no issues whatsoever.