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Topic: Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover (Read 7268 times) previous topic - next topic
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Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

I use iTunes to attach multiple artworks to each track.
When I play a song in iTunes, windows media player, or select it in windows explorer, the 1st album art (front cover) is shown.
But when I play it on foobar, it shows the back cover.

When I right click -> Tagging -> Manage attached pictures, the only album art is the back cover.

I've found many similar posts about lost album art but none of the solutions in those work. (E.g. deleting the hidden "folder.jpg" files in the folder).

Please help.

Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #1
Can you upload a sample file that has this problem to our Uploads forum?
elevatorladylevitateme

Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #2
I use iTunes to attach multiple artworks to each track.
When I play a song in iTunes, windows media player, or select it in windows explorer, the 1st album art (front cover) is shown.
But when I play it on foobar, it shows the back cover.

When I right click -> Tagging -> Manage attached pictures, the only album art is the back cover.

I've found many similar posts about lost album art but none of the solutions in those work. (E.g. deleting the hidden "folder.jpg" files in the folder).

Please help.

It appears that foobar will only show one artwork per type: front cover, back cover, disc, icon and artist (at least as far as its artwork tagging capabilities are concerned. Other types are apparently not supported). For this reason, foobar cannot be relied upon to show you all of the embedded artwork in your files. Now, it may be that you added all your artwork under one type and foobar is showing your back covers which have a front cover designation (possibly because they are larger?). I don't know how foobar actually determines which artwork to display (when all artwork of a type is of the same size or if it just picks the first or last it encounters, etc. I didn't test that much.) in this scenario.

To fix this, you'll need to accurately determine what artwork your files contain. WMP and iTunes can and will make use of cached artwork so they may not accurately depict what is present. (WMP may cache other hidden artwork in your folders besides a folder.jpg, and iTunes may cache it in your music folder if I'm remembering correctly).

I would use Mp3tag to view your files. To set the file types of your embedded artwork, open the files in Mp3tag. You'll need the tag panel to be visible. (It can be opened via the menu View > Tag Panel or using Ctrl+Q if it isn't). Now, select the relevant files. In the Tag Panel, you should see artwork at the bottom. If there are multiple pics, there will be small backward and forward arrows below the artwork display which will allow you to cycle through them. To change types, right-click on each pic as you cycle and choose from among the entries under "Set artwork type". The type will be set as soon as you click on the relevant entry and you'll be done. Hopefully this will solve your artwork problem.

There are likely to be tag editors which allow you to change the types of embedded artwork in place, but I cannot tell you which because I only use MP3tag.

I do know that media players such as MusicBee and MediaMonkey allow you to change the types of embedded artwork in place. I cannot remember if Winamp has the ability. I do not recommend using MediaMonkey (unless you make some changes to its configuration file) because it will rewrite your tags using a mixture of id3v2.3 and id3v2.4 tags by default. MusicBee only writes id3v2.3 tags so it'd be the one I'd recommend out of the two.

EDIT:

To be fair, I only tried multiple front covers embedded in a file so I cannot say this is a problem with all types, but I'd be willing to wager that it happens with all types.


Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #4
Foobar says the back cover in your file is a "Front cover" while the actual front cover is inaccessible. Opening the file in Mp3tag, it tells me that both pieces of artwork are "Other".

Using foobar, I planned to attempt to export both covers, delete them from the file, then add them back under the correct type. The back cover was successfully exported, but due to the front cover's inaccessibility, it could not be exported. Unfortunately, deleting the back cover also deleted the front cover  .

I was successful in changing the type of both pieces of artwork using Mp3tag which made the artwork display correctly in foobar  .

I made one mistake in my earlier post in explaining how to fix the artwork using Mp3tag. I said the changes are automatically saved when the correct entry is selected in "Set artwork type". This is incorrect. You must either click on the Save icon, save the tag changes via the menu File > Save tag or use CTRL+S as the final step. I'd forgotten this as I usually do my tag changes via the Extended tags dialog. I thought explaining by using the Tag Panel would be easier to understand. I'm sorry if you attempted to fix your artwork in Mp3tag and it failed.

Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #5
Your album art is not saved as the correct type of album art.

You have to save it correctly as "front" and "back" in order for foobar2000 to show it.
elevatorladylevitateme

Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #6
So...I have to manually change all my album art? It's displayed correctly in all other programs...I wonder why foobar can't do the same

Your album art is not saved as the correct type of album art.

You have to save it correctly as "front" and "back" in order for foobar2000 to show it.


Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #7
Thanks for reporting the issue.
Some other program simply attached two pictures to your MP3, without indicating what cover types they in fact are. Most of other software seems to pick the first one as the front cover. foobar2000 as for the current version picks the last one instead.

I'll change foobar2000 to pick the first one as well which seems to be more compatible with other software. I personally recommend removing the attached pictures and attaching them again, this time with foobar2000, to get them correctly flagged as what they really are.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #8
I'm very new here & I may be misreading things - are you part of the foobar team Peter? o_O
If so, awesome!
I really hope foobar changes this so that I don't have to re-tag my ten thousands of music files - it seems that this is the only option I have right now.


Thanks for reporting the issue.
Some other program simply attached two pictures to your MP3, without indicating what cover types they in fact are. Most of other software seems to pick the first one as the front cover. foobar2000 as for the current version picks the last one instead.

I'll change foobar2000 to pick the first one as well which seems to be more compatible with other software. I personally recommend removing the attached pictures and attaching them again, this time with foobar2000, to get them correctly flagged as what they really are.

Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #9
He is the team.
elevatorladylevitateme

Foobar shows the back album art instead of front cover

Reply #10
Thanks for reporting the issue.
Some other program simply attached two pictures to your MP3, without indicating what cover types they in fact are. Most of other software seems to pick the first one as the front cover. foobar2000 as for the current version picks the last one instead.

I'll change foobar2000 to pick the first one as well which seems to be more compatible with other software. I personally recommend removing the attached pictures and attaching them again, this time with foobar2000, to get them correctly flagged as what they really are.


Upon further investigation, I found that iTunes artwork tagging sets the cover type to "Other" for all artwork added using it (and this was indicated by viewing OP's file in Mp3tag).

I hope you also intend to fix the issue of foobar deleting both pieces of artwork in OP's file even though only one was visible and capable of being selected for deletion using "Remove" in foobar's artwork tagging. Perhaps this was due to both having the same cover type? I'd hate to think foobar users stand the chance of losing all of their artwork due to it all being assigned the same cover type designation.

EDIT:

If this cannot be fixed, maybe adding the possibility of exporting all artwork (regardless of type) could be a solution.