What is the secret of album artwork?

[RamenWarrior]

I have ripped my entire CD collection and stored it on a system running
Windows 7. When I play back songs, the artwork is not always displayed. The
artwork is definitely available and is displayed properly through iTunes.

However, I have also seen the artwork displayed as wallpaper in the "Now
Playing" section of Media Center. Where does that artwork come from? Why
isn't it displayed when I look at the list of albums or play a song from that
album?

 

[Tim De Baets]

What format did you rip to (Windows Media Audio, MP3, WAV)?

There are two kinds of album art. The first kind is stored as separate
JPG files in the same folder as the music files they belong to. You can
usually see these JPG files in Windows Explorer, but make sure Explorer
is set to show hidden and protected system files.

The second kind is album art that is embedded in the music files
themselves. To view/edit these, you need a special tag editor, like
Mp3tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/en

WMP's library generally only shows album art of the first kind, and my
guess is that Media Center is showing the embedded album art. You should
be able to save the embedded art to file with Mp3tag, and drag that
saved image file to the album in the library.

Regards

--
Tim De Baets
http://www.bm-productions.tk

RamenWarrior wrote:
> I have ripped my entire CD collection and stored it on a system running
> Windows 7. When I play back songs, the artwork is not always displayed. The
> artwork is definitely available and is displayed properly through iTunes.
>
> However, I have also seen the artwork displayed as wallpaper in the "Now
> Playing" section of Media Center. Where does that artwork come from? Why
> isn't it displayed when I look at the list of albums or play a song from that
> album?