How to sort (fix) album artwork on numerous .mp3s

B0bbyEwing

After a hard drive recover, of the mp3s that made it, many many many of them somehow ended up with the same artwork. 
File artwork seems to have been messed up throughout a number of folders actually. Some videos with artwork from different videos for example. 

But for these mp3s, most of them seem to have the same artwork...



Not all of them but I'd say a good 80% of a 550 item folder.

When I highlight a file & use mp3 tag in the hope to remove the artwork, there's no artwork to actually remove.

I also used the first method in: https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/remove-mp3-album-art-embed-images/

but where it says to delete 2 files, of the image that appears a lot there's only 1 file & there's none of that {GUID} stuff. It just says albumartworksmall. I deleted it all the same but it made no difference.

Is it possible to reset it somehow?

Or because of how it ended up happening, in a not so traditional way, is it maybe not even possible to reset it all to default?

PHK

Are you looking at these is a file explorer? Most operating systems keep a cache of icons rather than recreate them on each load. If you've recovered the hard drive it's possible this cache is corrupt and its showing you a default. 

What OS are you using? If not looking in a file explorer what software are you seeing this in? 

B0bbyEwing

This is in windows 10 file Explorer. 

I couldn't honestly tell you which of these files were recovered (as in originally lost when tge drive had its fit) & which were still accessible in the music folder on the drive anyway. 

All files have been transferred from drive A (problem drive) to drive B (which the image is taken from. 

wongataa

I would use some music management software that can display album artwork to double check what artwork is actually embedded in the files.  Then, if any artwork is incorrect, the music management software should have a function to replace the artwork with some you supply or over the internet.

B0bbyEwing

wongataa said:

I would use some music management software that can display album artwork to double check what artwork is actually embedded in the files.  Then, if any artwork is incorrect, the music management software should have a function to replace the artwork with some you supply or over the internet.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I think you're talking about something like mp3tag? 

But as I say, when I open a file using that, there's no album artwork tied to the file at all, apparently. 

CookieKing7

There is free software called MusicBrainz Picard which I use regularly. It's quite hard to use if you are not used to it, but it does the job of writing meta data (including album artwork) to individual music files. 

So whenever I rip a CD to my computer, I drag and drop the albums (which contain the individual .flac files - or .mp3 files in your case) into the left hand side of the interface. When all the files have been added, I click on the "Cluster" button which sorts all the individual files into their respective album folders. I then click the "Lookup" button which is where the magic happens - the software will scan the files and try to find an album match in the database. 9 times out of 10, it finds the correct match (indicated by a gold star icon) - you can then click on the "Save" button and it will write all of the correct meta data (including album artwork) to the files and relocate them into the final destination folder.

As I say, the software is a bit hard if you are new, but it does a great job once you get used to it. I would recommend making some copies of your music and having a play around with it (make sure you use copies of your music and not the originals - just in case something goes wrong). There are also some settings in the program which you will want to run through - the main ones are the final destination path (i.e. the folder you want your processed music to be placed in) and also the file naming script (this is basically the format for how you want the MP3 files to be named - I use a custom script for this and find it works well - here it is:

$set(album,$replace(%album%,:, -))<br><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">$set(title,$replace(%title%,:, -))<br></span><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">$if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)/<br></span><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">$if2(%originalyear%,$left(%date%,4),0000) - %album%/<br></span><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),CD %discnumber%/,)$if($ne(%albumartist%,),$num(%tracknumber%,2) - ,)$if(%_multiartist%,%artist% - ,)%title%
</span>

CookieKing7

Sorry, my code did not post right. Here it is again:

$set(album,$replace(%album%,:, -))

$set(title,$replace(%title%,:, -))

$if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)/

$if2(%originalyear%,$left(%date%,4),0000) - %album%/

$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),CD %discnumber%/,)$if($ne(%albumartist%,),$num(%tracknumber%,2) - ,)$if(%_multiartist%,%artist% - ,)%title%

uknick

B0bbyEwing said:

wongataa said:

I would use some music management software that can display album artwork to double check what artwork is actually embedded in the files.  Then, if any artwork is incorrect, the music management software should have a function to replace the artwork with some you supply or over the internet.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I think you're talking about something like mp3tag? 

But as I say, when I open a file using that, there's no album artwork tied to the file at all, apparently. 

I'm sure you checked, but MP3Tag does allow you to store the artwork in a number of places; front, back, other etc.  I've found iTunes sometimes stores in under "other" instead of "front" which then fails to display in my car.

B0bbyEwing

uknick said:

B0bbyEwing said:

wongataa said:

I would use some music management software that can display album artwork to double check what artwork is actually embedded in the files.  Then, if any artwork is incorrect, the music management software should have a function to replace the artwork with some you supply or over the internet.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I think you're talking about something like mp3tag? 

But as I say, when I open a file using that, there's no album artwork tied to the file at all, apparently. 

I'm sure you checked, but MP3Tag does allow you to store the artwork in a number of places; front, back, other etc.  I've found iTunes sometimes stores in under "other" instead of "front" which then fails to display in my car.

I probably haven't checked that tbh as I'm not sure what you're saying. Front, Back. That's sounding like CD cover art to me & I'm not sure how you'd do multiple covers to a file. 

CookieKing - thanks for the write up. I can make album art via mp3tag. Had been doing it loads for a DJ I downloaded many files from. Thing here is, deleting artwork that seemingly isn't there, yet is. Or just reverting to normal, somehow. 

I'm going to guess that the only way to do it is to find the image of the default image, if that's possible (haven't yet looked) and make it the image for all files.

CookieKing7

B0bbyEwing said:

CookieKing - thanks for the write up. I can make album art via mp3tag. Had been doing it loads for a DJ I downloaded many files from. Thing here is, deleting artwork that seemingly isn't there, yet is. Or just reverting to normal, somehow. 

Artwork should either be a separate file that exists in the same folder as the MP3 track (e.g. cover.jpg) or it should be embedded into the actual .mp3 file itself - it sounds like it's the latter, so it seems strange how it's been overwritten somehow. Probably more likely a display glitch - can you plug your hard drive into another computer to see if it displays the correct images on that?

B0bbyEwing

CookieKing7 said:

B0bbyEwing said:

CookieKing - thanks for the write up. I can make album art via mp3tag. Had been doing it loads for a DJ I downloaded many files from. Thing here is, deleting artwork that seemingly isn't there, yet is. Or just reverting to normal, somehow. 

Artwork should either be a separate file that exists in the same folder as the MP3 track (e.g. cover.jpg) or it should be embedded into the actual .mp3 file itself - it sounds like it's the latter, so it seems strange how it's been overwritten somehow. Probably more likely a display glitch - can you plug your hard drive into another computer to see if it displays the correct images on that?

No I can find the file. Some of the mp3s in the folder have various images it seems but this one that appears more than any other by far only has 1 image file in the folder if that makes sense?