Cover art and formats

I got fed up about the cover art, so today I did a bit of experimenting. I tested this mainly in combination with m4a/AAC, since this is the format of my preference.

COVER ART FORMATS AND SIZE
JPG and PNG works, however as always, size matters. Both pixel-wise and byte-wise there seems to be a limitation of around 500px AND ~200KB. This limitation is probably also valid for mp3.

ITUNES
I believe there is a chance this only happen to m4a/AAC and not mp3 unless there has been a change in iTunes:
If you add cover art that is a JPG of 500px and ~100KB - for some reason it changes it to a PNG. It keeps it at 500px, but of course due to the nature of PNG, the file size is suddenly 426KB - hence not showing up in the car.
"Get Album Artwork" as far as I know only gets saved in the "Album Artwork" folder of iTunes and not into the files themselves.
It seems like if you use some other program like Tag&Rename to embed cover art into the files, iTunes won't change it.

MUSIC FILE FORMATS OTHER THAN MP3
m4a/AAC - works, also with cover art
m4a/ALAC - does not work at all
FLAC - does not work at all
wav - works, but no cover art or meta data

AAC/ALAC/M4A - I BEG YOUR PARDON?
m4a is just a container. It may contain audio encoded with for instance AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) which is a lossy codec similar to mp3 (MPEG1-Layer3) or ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) which is a lossless codec similar to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec).

zitek

I did some tests also... only on mp3's as I don't use itunes and aac format.

My Discover Nav Pro can only display max 800 x 800 pixels
cover art (72dpi and 300dpi works)

So I'm making sure all my cover art is max 800x800.
- my mp3's bought from amazon all seem to be 600x600 and works okay.

I pick up my Mk7 on Saturday with Navigation Pro. I have no idea about all these music formats, but I do know that I have all my music on the computer in iTunes and nearly all on Windows Media Player. What do I need to do to prepare for getting music onto a 64GB SD Card Class 10? Is it just a case of just copying the folders over onto the card and then the album artwork and all the music will be carried with it? I am not good with these things.

Yeap, just copy the files/folders over.
(the album art should be embedded in the mp3 file itself)

The Nav Pro can read a 64Gb SD card thats formatted in either NTFS or exFAT.

That's great and thanks for the help. I can't wait to get the car now. When you say SD card formatted, do I need to do this? My MK6 SD card reader doesn't recognise the SD card with iTunes on it at present.

When I got mine it needed formatting, not sure why.

My 64Gb SD card was "SDXC", it's fairly new-tech so might not be compatible with older readers.
- if it works on your PC, then it should be okay in the Mk7.

Hey guys, about the cover art, should it be renamed "folder" for exemple or just any name and it should work?

My cover art is embedded into the mp3 file itself.

I use a program called mp3tag to do this.

I can't get any album art on wma files. All my art is 300x300, shows up fine on my android phone and windows 7 PC, but no joy on the discover navigation unit I have. I've been in contact with VW customer services for the past 3 weeks and it seems they are stumped as well....

I've tested tracks without art with a separate jpg in the album folder, and embedded art in wma. No joy

Hopefully someone can help me, but I am trying to playback lossless audio on the VW Composition Media + Dynaudio combo.
Have tried a USB stick with FLAC (don't show up) and m4a/Apple Lossless (shows up but fails).

Can it be played back from an Ipod which contains apple lossless files with an appropriate cable?
Or do i need USB/SD with a different file format? Am confortable with transcoding and don't care about cover art

Hi

I have the same question as my (hopefully built soon) GTi will have also Dynaudio and Composition Media.
FLAC or similar would be a great file format instead of CD-s.

And if somebody knows: does Composition Medai support 64GB SD cards?

Thanks

You can play anything you like over bluetooth, but I too get no cover art via that method. Despite my phone's player being able to read the cover art just fine.. The media player should support all capacities of SD card, right up to theoretical limits and cards that don't exist yet. It says so in the book ..

As far as I can tell, the album art is never embedded in the MP3 file unless you take the extra steps to force it to be embedded. Often the album artwork consists of hidden files stored in the same directory as the tracks for the album, sometimes named something like ".art932104312". If you have turned off hidden files you may not see them or notice when they disappear. The simple solution is to find the artwork you want to use and save that file in the directory as "folder.jpg". Once I save the artwork file as "folder.jpg" it never disappears.

I use iTunes on a Mac as the source, and copy the contents of Home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music onto an SD card. That always displays album art without taking any other steps, including MP3 files.

I use OptimUSB to automatically delete hidden files from the card, so the art is definitely embedded.

I have just edited all my itunes folder with mp3tag and still no album art, doesn't work for me