Black album art
Chris, Internet Explorer 7 Overwriting Album Art with Black JPEGs?
I don’t know if it’s IE 7, but on my Vista box some albums have black cover art no matter how hard I try to set it to set it to something else.
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Hi, I'm Matt Goyer. I used to work at Microsoft in the eHome division on the Windows Media Center team as a Program Manager.
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Yep,
Happened to all my cover art. It leaves the Folder.jpg behind intact though and any cover art embedded into MP3. But after IE7 (no previous betas installed and clean machine) I now get black cover art for any PLAYED songs in MCE (MP11 is fine).
Media Player 11 has the bug where when you rescan your library or a new user does a fresh scan of a folder, or an xbox 360 does a scan, it overwrites ALL your folder.jpg’s with what IT thinks it should be !!!!
Basically MP11 either takes a random piece of cover art embedded from one of the songs int he folder OR it will download from the internet! Only a NEW scan will overwrite existing cover art a RESCAN to update a library will leave intact BUT it will create a local cache using the algorithm mentioned. If you delete the local cache the original Folder.jpg’s will be used and all will be fine again until you rescan and the cache gets repopulated OR a new user logs on and the libary scan will then bulldoze over your data,
Also a bug in MP11 with track numbering. If you blank a track number out, it insists on labelling it as Track 0 ! grrrrrr! Not in MP10 as a bug EXCEPT for WMA. Now its WMA and MP3 in MP11 !!!
Shocking bugs and MS truly deserve a kick up the behind because various program managers even charlie owen from MCE team were told about these issues!!!!!!!!!
Yep,
Just happened to me tonight to. :( I have been using IE 7 for awhile though with no issues. I think the issue is I just updated to WMP11 tonight and then my Xbox 360 lost all my music in Extender Mode so I rescanned to add it all back and now what is weird is when I am just looking at the folders through Media Center the art shows, but once I start playing the file it shows the art as all black. If I just play it through WMP 11 the art is there. I mean this is totally weird. It is like it cannot render the art just when it is playing the file in Windows Media Center. Does anyone know if my art is gone now? I have 57 GBs of music luckily I backed it up. I hope Microsoft cmes up with a fix for this!!
This is nuts!!
Tom
[...] http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com/archives/2006/11/02/1186 [...]
Have you tried the free download album art fixer? Worth a go.
I would try Album Art Fixer, but the art is actually there it shows everywhere but when playing in MCE2005. Even iTunes shows album art because it embeds the art in the file which to me is a much better option because then it follows the file anywhere.
Not sure I want to try and fix the art since it is still there and not missing. I want to wait and see if Microsoft comes up with some kind of fix for this.
I’ve noticed that when album art is embedded into the metadata (go to ‘Pictures’ in advanced tag editor) it results in black album art in MCE.
black art is 1 of 2 issues.
Its either alpha channel support in ie7 and the image is set to lowest setting and the black background it showing through (verifable by loading pic into paint)
Or its not a jpg but has a jpg name.
Album art fixer is the fastest way to help you get correct jpgs in both cases.
Nothing like Album Art fixers will help.
This is a core issue of IE7 and needs to be patched professionaly by its developers from Microsoft.
Lets all send them reports on this to draw attention on the matter!
I did & hope for a solution to be released one day.
and yet I have 6000 albums and no black artwork.
Cover Art in MCE with IE7 FIX:
Steps to fix cover art during playback in Media Center that appeared after IE7 installation:
(THIS PROBLEM IS CAUSED BY PREVIOUSLY USING THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS LIKE “ALBUM COVET ART DOWNLOADER”)
1. Reinstall IE7 if you have uninstalled it because of this issue;
2. Install WMP11 and using the advanced tag editor assign cover art from *.jpg files into all of the songs (if you had images in music folders, the images will be gone from the folders automatically)
3. Using the “Album Cover Art Downloader” select SONGS under albums and delete all previously assigned images EXCEPT the Album main image.
4. Enjoy seeing all images in all media applications.
Windows XP Home edition. Version 2002 SP2
Intel Celeron 2.66 GHz
768MB of RAM.
I am using IE7 and WMP11.
—————————
Album Art Problem.
Since increasing my screen resolution recently, the displayed Album Art on my Media Centre is too small for my liking. I have resized my Album Art files to 365 x 365 pixels and this gives me a five-inch-square display which suits me fine.
My problem: I’m having difficulty deleting the old embedded Album Art in some of my .WMA music files.
With most of them I have to play a few bars of the file, then close WMP. After restarting WMP I can then usually delete the embedded Album Art using the Advanced Tag Editor. It makes no difference whether or not the .WMA file is protected. Why should I have to close and then re-open WMP to achieve this?
Another problem is this: I delete all the Album Art files in a particular folder, but some .WMA files from that folder display Album Art even though none are shown in “Pictures” in Advanced Tag Editor.
Using the CLI I have unset these Attributes in the offending files: -r -h -s.
I have tried Album Art Fixer, but it won’t delete any embedded files either.
MP3 Tag Tools takes care of the MP3 files.
Many thanks for any help you can offer.
Another question:
If I click to “View Full Screen” when playing a music track in WMP11 I get a black screen with vertical white lines displayed. Why is this?
Regarding this post
[quote]Cover Art in MCE with IE7 FIX:
Steps to fix cover art during playback in Media Center that appeared after IE7 installation:
(THIS PROBLEM IS CAUSED BY PREVIOUSLY USING THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS LIKE “ALBUM COVET ART DOWNLOADER”)
1. Reinstall IE7 if you have uninstalled it because of this issue;
2. Install WMP11 and using the advanced tag editor assign cover art from *.jpg files into all of the songs (if you had images in music folders, the images will be gone from the folders automatically)
3. Using the “Album Cover Art Downloader” select SONGS under albums and delete all previously assigned images EXCEPT the Album main image.
4. Enjoy seeing all images in all media applications.[/quote]
No offense at all the the poster who is just trying to help… but this is CRAP. Whether or not this is something that came from MS, I am not about to completely change the way I have my music set up and organized because MS decided that we should all do this instead of them fixing their broken software.
My solution was to uninstall IE7 and disable the update. I don’t need it. Firefox 2.0 is better anyway.
Hi I agree with IE& Hater when he says that we shouldn’t bend over and change the way we use stuff because MS doesn’t fix a bug that should have been fixed before the release of IE7… but I like using Media Center Edition for music listening and I’d like a solution.. what should I do??
I have the same issue with most of my images broken at the song level (but not album level). I just wish that I could play iTunes conveniently on my plasma screen. I’m just going to wait for crappy old Microsoft to fix their software. Hopefully this will happen soon.
Quote: “(THIS PROBLEM IS CAUSED BY PREVIOUSLY USING THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS LIKE “ALBUM COVET ART DOWNLOADER”)”
This is not true. I have a fresh MCE install, downloaded all updates, IE7, WMP11 et voila: black album art playing songs in Media Center.
I too have the same issue with IE7 and MCE, only Black Images at the Song level and not the Album Level. There is no issue when using WMP11 just MCE.
Does anyone know when MS will fix this?
Well, i have another strange album art thinggie,
Some of my albums dont have art through my xbox 360, but they show up in vista mce and in wm 11.
(i`m using vista 64 rtm)
Fix the damn thing MS! It’s too hard to begin with, then I work my ass off to get the way it wants it. Now it screws me? I can deal with most everything else, but PLEASE make the music organization easier. Why can’t they just make it like winamp. Artist-Title-Time
Winamp doesn’t even require the tag to be halfway right. C’mon. My one request.
I have the bug too. I went got support from a Microsoft tech support supervisor and now Microsoft is completely aware that IE7 is the problem (because when I uninstalled, the problem fixed itself). I have Windows XP MCE2005 and WMP11 installed.
So hopefully this is fixed soon…
I too am having this exact issue. I have several songs that I recently burned from Itunes and placed back into WMP 11 and I used the advanced tag editor and they show up fine in WMP with the correct album cover art. But when playing them in mCE, the album cover shows up in black. AS stated above, can i remove the pics under the advanced tag editor and will this fix the issue?
Thanks,
Brandon
I left ‘auto-updates’ turned on one night only to find the next day that I had lost the ability to view album covers when playing mp3’s in MCE. After a great deal of trial and error, I isolated the problem to IE7 also.
After uninstalling, I immediately got all of my tagged album artwork back – which is something that I have spent a lot of time on in the past.
Suffice to say – I’ve turned off ‘auto-updates’.
I think i’ve found a way around this. if you simply go into wmp11, right click an “afflicted” track (that shows a black square as album art in mce), go to advanced tag editor, then pictures, and delete every image listed and hit ‘apply’. INSTANTLY the track will show whatever album art you’ve pasted onto the album in wmp. I don’t quite understand why after deleting the pictures from every track on an album still leaves the ‘album’ picture to the left showing the cover… but eh, it gets rid of the black thing either way!
oops, i meant to say it will instantly show the proper artwork on the ‘individual track-level’ of mce for that track. just realized this might be a major pain in the ass if you have 3189091384 songs to fix, as there is no way to highlight every single track and delete all the pictures at once. :/
Still a problem for over 3 months. Is there still no reasonable fix for this yet?
I run XPsp2, IE6, WMP11
Don’t run MCE or IE7
but…
I still occasionally get black square album art.
Folder.jpg and AlbumArtSmall.jpg are replaced with the black square images.
WTF??!!??
I have a different issue but one I feel must be connected. I have the same album picture for ALL of my ripped CD’s. If I go in and refresh the artwork and select the correct image it just ignores my selction. OK, so I am a fan of The Magic Numbers but I don’t want their album cover polluting the rest of my CD collection. Anyone else seen this issue?
I join your club guys. I’ve had the problem for a while but thought it was realted having a spasm with itunes. MS have to patch this right?
NikeBoy
Man I can’t believe I am still suffering this so many months after it started. Obvioulsy MS don’t care about MCE 2005 users any more now that Vista is out. Well I tried it and have gone back to MCE2005 due to the issues with codecs etc. And i will probably not upgrade until SP1 1 now. So i hope MS do still want to keep their existing customers happy.
I have this problem for some time and it’s driving me mental. I spent 14 hours yesterday going through and re-adding art to the missing albums. And the problem persists.
I’m running Vista Ultimate. Microsoft bite!
Can someone lay out step by step, clear concise information as to how I can manually get around this bug?
You would think microsoft would at least say something about the problem. What’s the point in spending huge money on media centres and then the software fills your screen with black art?
I have the same prob, however the album jpg’s are not overwritten with blanks.
http://img179.imageshack.us/my.php?image=albumcoverzp4.jpg
Strange? ANd yes, I have IE7 installed.
OK, so I figured out this related to embedded graphics in MP3s.
MS use hidden files for their album art which is loaded by Media Player Etc.
When I bought an iPod I realised that you needed to have embedded art to get this to show on the iPod whilst playing. So stated a long a labourious task of adding the art to every single track.
OK, so the other day I ripped a new album with MCE. It looked it up and added the album art as hidden files as expected. PLayback of these files showed the art with no problem. Then, for compatability with the iPod I used the Media Players Advanced Tag Editor to embed the art into the MP3s. For some reason it failed to do a couple of these and lo, when playing back through the album again all tracks with embeded art are black where the others are still fine.
So, what do you do? If you don’t need embedded art you can remove it from the tracks and you’ll be fine. But if like me you’re pandering to the demands of both MS and Apple then you’re stuck.
Oh, I forgot to add that the small thumbs at the start menu in MCE are showing without problems.
http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=albumcover2vk3.jpg
What to say :) Microsoft?
Its funny I came across this problem In MCE 2005 and vista beta 2 . I am now using vista rc 2 and the problem seem to have disappeared. All the embedded art is showing . But Fletch said he is using vista (final release i hope ;) ) and it is still not working.
Looks like the broke it, fixed it , then broke it again !
Go Figure !!
That;s right Muddarra.. I’m using vista final release ultimate edition. I am using fixtune to remove all the album art embedded. As well as putting my folder structure back into albums, the painful legacy of itunes. it’s going to be long and laborious.
One problem.. in vista i am not allowed to change the wmdb file. it just always tells me that it is being used by another program of file… any ideas? I can’t see anything in task manager..that would use it.. i’m missing something…what?
Disable the Media Sharing feature and you can delete the *360.wmdb file. I have a large mp3 collection. 21700 tracks and 1781 albums. Just started getting the black cover art problem out of the blue today. Still looking for a valid solution. I’ve been using Mp3tag 2.37a to clean up my tags and that works pretty well.
ok, i am going insane with this. I had all my art working fine, then i installed the xbox extender and now i am getting the same album art for one album on all the albums under the same artist. but in windows media player it is fine. and it is only for certain albums, while others are fine. i even tried completely deleteing the mp3 and reload it and get the correct album art and it still does the same thing. Do i just need to wait for MS to send a patch out?
I had the same problem with the black artwork on MCE. Uninstalled IE7 & they all went back to normal
I don’t believe that the problem is with the album art in the folder. MS (be it WindowsMCE or WMP) caches the album art somewhere, and when the cache is emptied the black square is displayed rather than the album art which is still in the folder. I write protect all my music just in case my 360 or another computer on the network tries to update album art so I only have the ones I put there. Still many black squares. If I’m not mistaken, the fix is to delete library and re-add all music. I’ll double-check and post later.
ps. by saying delete library, of course I don’t mean delete all your music files, just the catalog that WMP makes of them.
No luck yet, tried uninstalling IE7 also deleting library files in WMP11 and recreating
this problem was driving me nuts forever. i looked through countless discussions boards and finally gave up. same problem, the album cover would show up for each album individually, but never for a single song. and once a song starts playing, the album cover goes black in the bottom right of media center. the other day, however, it caught my eye that the album art for one of my albums was actually showing up! i fooled around with it, and went on the folder properties, looking for the sole difference with this one folder(album) and all the others that don’t show up the album art.
right-click on the folder and select properties.
select the customize tab.
under “what kind of folder is it? use this folder type as a template:” SELECT “music album (best for tracks from one album” from the drop down menu.
the default on my folder was either “music (for a single song or playlist”) or “documents”.
that’s it! it seems so simple, but it works for me and now all the album art is showing up again WITH IE 7 installed.
hope this helps.
Masoud Shafaee; I tried your method but it doesn’t seem to work, however your method lead me in the right direction.
I have figured out how to fix it for my situation so hopefully it will help others.
What I’m running
WMP11, IE7, WinXP
In WMP select a single song that you are having an issue with the album art.
Right click on the song and select ‘Advanced Tag Editor’
Click the Pictures tab, then click Add
Select ‘folder.jpg’, you will need to have system files unhidden in order to see this file. This file should be the black album art that you are getting.
Click Open, and that should bring you back to the Picture tab. Now the black album art should appear. Click Ok and that will bring you back to the song.
Now go back into the Advanced Tab Editor, and delete the folder.jpg file that you just added, then click OK.
Right click on the song again and this time select ‘Find Album Info’, select the correct album cover you like and then that should replace the black album cover.
I have done this several time to test it out, and it seems to work every time, but let me know if it works for you.
I hope I explained this clear enough.
Just to add further confusion to the matter.
I have a MCE2005 machine, all patches applied.
Since installing WMP11 and IE7 Ive also had the black art problem.
It only affects MCE, and NOT WMP11 (WMP11 has all album and song art displaying correctly in the library and in ‘now playing’)
MCE displays the album art correctly (in My Music), but wont display any song art (even though, switching to WMP11 while playing in MCE, the song art is displaying fine).
Checking Folder.jpg and AlbumArtSmall.jpg all is OK and no black images, with the correct 200×200 and 75×75 sized images (I have my shared drive set to read only as I dont trust WMP or Itunes not to bugger it up!).
So my sum up, is that since WMP11 and IE7 (cant confirm thats its either/or as Im not going to uninstall and risk screwing up my MCE system) is that MCE cant display album art correctly.
Hurry up and fix it MS…pretty please!!!
Sorry, should add that I tried Quick_Clicks fix above, and afraid it still doesnt work for me…ah well. Thanks for the info though.
disregard what i was saying a few posts before—it’s not even working for me anymore, i don’t know what i was thinking. microsoft is being too lazy on this one.
Why do we have to be punished just because we want secure web browsing. It look like it’s back to IE 6 and wait for microsoft to fix this while my pc gets zombiefied with spyware (Firefox here I come !!! :) ).What’s even worse is that you can’t remove IE7 to fix this in vista. It life without parole.
Hey folks,
Thank you for bringing such attention to the problem. We have an idea of what’s causing this and we’re working to see what we can do about it.
Noah
Program Manager, Media Center
Noah,
Glad to hear a voice that shows some interest here. I hope you can accomplish something on this…it has been months and its a major frustration to media center users.
Just want to corroborate the comment from Nikeboy on the issue (of MCE displaying “black square” for album art when playing a track, but not when browsing the albums) to be due to album are being embedded in the MP3s. I had used “MusicBridge” to get all the MCE artwork into Itunes (which just seems to write the art into the MP3 files) last week and now I get the issue
Hi there.
I joined, long time ago, the list of frustrated Integrators/Users of this equation: MCE2005+IE7=black cover arts
As far as I can see the first posting regarding this bug has been posted in Nov. 2006.
6 Months later – April 2007 – Noah, a Program Manager from Microsoft has posted on this forum that this bug will be looked at…
How about my MANY requests to Microsoft’s tech support or the MANY postings people left on the MSDN site regarding this issue?!?!?!
Noa – you may have seen this issue only recently but I know Microsoft has been aware of this issue for a long time…
Sorry about that outburst but I spent countless hours helping my customers cleaning out their music collections…
The same customers, who I pushed to test drive MCE users instead of going with other Media servers such as Escient, Requests etc…
Hi All,
I have been struggling with this one for months… I guess I never put in the right search terms in Google because I found this forum for the first time today. I just finished my 2nd HTPC MCE 2005 build and when I got the same black boxes as I had in my previous system I was devastated! On this system I have not upgraded to WMP 11 (WMP10 came with my copy of MCE) but I had installed IE7 (during windows update). It was like magic, but I uninstalled IE7 and everything went back to normal! I had always been a casual Firefox user… I am officially a convert as of today!
I would not consider the removal of IE7 to be a fix, it is a work around…
The fix should come from our friends at Microsoft!!!
Eytan
Choices, Choices.
Get your art to display in MCE, or display in iTunes?
I picked the former having created the “black art” issue by accident when using MusicBridge to get my MP art into iTunes (that I only use to get music onto my iPod).
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/11/30/how-to-fix-your-itunes-artwork/
ne explains how you can, in batch, get rid of all the embedded artwork in your MP3s, which will then get MCE to display the folder.jpg when playing a track. To paraphases, in iTunes 7, select all your music collection, right click, get info, place a checkmark in the “artwork” box, click OK. Wait (a long time if you have a large music collection). This will remove all the embedded art from all your MP3s.
THis is ridiculous already. I, and others, have reported this black album art mce problem in Nov 2006 to forums, MSDN lists etc.
Nothing addressed by MS.
No Fix
Btw, teh fix to “remove your embedded album art” is simply crazy – some of us like our iPOD or Zunes, or Cinglular Blackjacks that USE THE EBEDDED album art!!!!
I have the same problem as listed above. How many more months do we have to wait for a fix.
Hi all.
I’ve been some of the same problems about album cover in MCE 2005 (and Vista Home Premium) and have spend about 2 months now, trying to figure this bug out. Let me start with, that I’m only on “user-level”, but still it should work for common users.
My music library has the structure of first Artist name, and below (in Explorer)comes name of the album whith MP3 files and Album Cover.
I have struggled with different problems and most of them has already been described in this forum, never theless I think it is important to show the MCE guys at Microsoft, that we are many who have this problem – every day – and my wish is they soon (and I mean SOON) will solve this problem/bug.
I havn’t got the black Arts like many users, but have embedded the Album Cover in the MP3 folder. I tryed the plug-in called: Album Art fixer, but it fuc… up my 7.000 MP3’s – so be aware of the chekboxes in that program.
I allso tryed to use MediaPlayer 11, but often experienced, it could split an album in 2, so again a lot of work in trying to bring it back to one album (in the MP11).
I’m also a little confused about MCE. When I go to My Music in Album Art mode – I can see the information of both Artist and Album text under the Album logo, but when open the Album – it often is missing one of the informations, so I have to manually write it in.
I also have the same problem like others here about MCE is not showing the Album Cover, when it plays song number 2 and so on – why is that?
My last problem is that I have one number I just can’t delete. I can rightclick on the album and it offers to delete, but nothing happens! It is the same in MP11.
The number contains no music, but only a rest of some Artist information. I can’t rightclik at ex. go to Album destination folder, so I could delete it in Explorer.
Well – a lot of words/thoughts and frustration from me here in Denmark, but beside the Cover Bug here – I still think MCE is a great frontend (combined with Binnerups: My Movies) :-)
Ok, I have had this problem for ever and just happened to come across this forum. WOW… I thought I was all alone on this one. To bad we can’t march onto the grounds of Microsoft and demand immediate action. Maybe if we could dedicate a day to send Microsoft an email requesting immediate action. If we had enough people pulled together on this, we could cause a serious jam on their servers and maybe finally get something done. Anyone?
I had this problem on about 9 albums. I fixed this problem by deleting the hidden AlbumArt.jpg’s and using Album Art Fixer to manually set an image. Now all 1050 albums in my collection show up properly in MCE. Ultimately that tells me there was something funny about the original album art image that MCE couldn’t handle. Should MS fix it?…that depends, maybe all they did was expose a problem that already existed and the correct fix isn’t in the program.
…on another note, some of you guys seriously need help. The emotional outpouring some of you make over a relatively trivial problem is kind of sad. It’s just album art. No matter how you try to swing it the world will not end just because you can’t see the album art while *listening* to music. Anonymously belittling Microsoft over it isn’t going to motivate anyone to move any faster and I’m sure they have larger emcompassing things to fix in the process.
Hi all.
Hi all. Same problem for me for more than a year struggling through MCE, then WMP 10, then 11. Never added IE7, but I have another PC that accesses the library with Vista Ultimate and IE7.
Bottom line…this SUCKS. I’m an MCSE, and do IT for a living. I’ve been cussing this album art issue for months and months.
By the way ROB…HELL YES it’s important. It’s my hobby. I’ve spent countless resources on my monster song library, and it’s BROKEN. I’ve invested THOUSANDS of $$ in Microsft hardware/software,and this is one thing I REALLY want to work.
I’m off to try “un-imbedding” Microsoft? Are ya out there? Hello?
ok guys i know for a fact it is IE7 not wmp or mce. i update my systme to vista with IE7 all art black. i went back to xp on one of my systems becasue my extender will not work with vista. redid my system all album art came back update xp with IE7 and WMP worked for about 2 week then all os a sudden black album art when playing songs in media center. called microsoft they know about the problemtold me it was ie7 and dont if and when a fix will come. i remove IE7 and all is well… its IE7
ok guys i know for a fact it is IE7 not wmp or mce. i update my systme to vista with IE7 all art black. i went back to xp on one of my systems becasue my extender will not work with vista. redid my system all album art came back update xp with IE7 and WMP worked for about 2 week then all os a sudden black album art when playing songs in media center. called microsoft they know about the problemtold me it was ie7 and dont if and when a fix will come. i remove IE7 and all is well… its IE7
Hi guys,
I use Media player 11 and I think someone changed a setting on it because it used to display all the album art in my library and I have looked and looked to try and get it back up but to no avail. I have even reloaded the player and still no joy. Is it something to do with Urge??
Ok ROB…
We are all impressed with your Harvard School Psych eval of us here (not really), but how about keeping it at the office. This is a forum for discussion of issues that concern people about something that they paid good money for. So, if you don’t like what you read… go somewhere else! In the mean time, I have removed both WMP and IE7 and all my album art is back to normal. Since I have a 56 inch big screen TV and my MCE box is connected and it is my primary source for entertainment in my house, it is important to ME that my album art is showing correctly. For those of us that like to know that we get what we pay for… pray that the Big M fixes this bug, for all the rest… Bug Off…
Scooter
Hi everybody,
I had also the same problem that almost all my album art was black when i played it in MCE. I found out that all album art that was tagged “illustration” was shown good. So using media monkey i changed all the album art tagged “cover (front)”, “cover (back)” or anything else, to “illustration”. It took me about 3 hours to change 9000 songs manually using mediamonkey (with wmp it would take 3 days…). Maybe there is a better program you guys know to change it but my collection is now playing perfect in MCE and all the album art is shown as it should be. Hope I could help out everyone.
I run Xp Pro and WMP11 but had never installed IE7. I had album art for about 700 albums laboriously obtained and embedded using iCoverArt. I bought a Zune from a friend, installed the software, went to transfer songs to it and noticed that about a third of the album art was black boxes. I looked at proposed fixes here and elsewhere, uninstalled WMP11, tried to roll back IE even further, and uninstalled Zune. I fixed all the art by hand and re-embedded. Then I reinstalled Zune and the black art came back, though not necessarily to the same albums as before, but to some of them and to some art previously unaffected. I also looked at the folder.jpgs in CorelDraw and Photoshop and it shows up black in all those programs, so I don’t think it’s just a rendering thing. Now I don’t know what to do, except for keep replacing art until it no longer shows up black. Not a very good prospect.
I’ve discovered the infamous bug with black album art in MCE when i got my media center up and running the other day and it’s good to know I’m not alone :)
My fix was to use Media Monkey to strip away all other embedded artwork entries and leave one entry in each file that is tagged as illustration. This seems to work every time but the prosess is very tedious and time-consuming.
Even abum art fixer doesn’t seem to fix this problem. What would be great is if any of the developers of the various tag editors and tag fixers would implement an automated prosess of some kind to fix this problem.
[...] I take my previous comments back about Windows Media Center. It’s a piece of shite. XD. Here’s why. I booted up WMC only to find much of the cover art was now displaying as a black square. I skimmed through that page a bit to see if there was a solution, but no. Well then, it’s completely useless to put any effort in retagging and adding cover art this way. ok guys i know for a fact it is IE7 not wmp or mce. i update my systme to vista with IE7 all art black. i went back to xp on one of my systems becasue my extender will not work with vista. redid my system all album art came back update xp with IE7 and WMP worked for about 2 week then all os a sudden black album art when playing songs in media center. called microsoft they know about the problemtold me it was ie7 and dont if and when a fix will come. i remove IE7 and all is well… its IE7 [...]
It’s been almost a year now and we still haven’t seen a fix for this. I’m right royally fed up.
I’m seriously considering going back to IE6 but that’s not what I really want to do.
I have this problem too. It stinks
Thulsa Said….
“My fix was to use Media Monkey to strip away all other embedded artwork entries and leave one entry in each file that is tagged as illustration. This seems to work every time but the process is very tedious and time-consuming.”
That’s what i did. I have 1700 albums on my machine. It was a very painful experience . I have only done 600 albums and my joints are sore.
So much for the work smarter not harder mantra of Microsoft. :(
Microsoft , Why do you hate me ? Is it because i am using your products ?
Please, I beg you, fix this now .
MCE 2005 sucks for music anyway. It is good for watching movies about it.
Using the standard WMP 11 is better for music.
Has anyone tested if Windows XP SP3 fixes this issue?? If not then I give up on this issue forever. Means I will never upgrade my MCE machines to IE7.
Just went back to XP from Vista, and now I’ve got this same black album art problem. Guess I’ll take IE 7 off for now, but it’d be nice (and about time) for a fix for this!
I did the media monkey thing as well, on a completely new install of Vista. So far, so good.
I think that it has already blacked back a couple albums, however.
Anyone tried IE8 Beta to see if the problem has been fixed ?
I was having this problem with the art for one of my album covers as well. The solution that worked for me was to open up Windows Media Player 11, right-click do a “Find Album Info” on the problem album, and ensure that I chose the correct album details in the ensuing prompts. At this point the album art still appeared black until I clicked on the “Library” dropdown menu and selected “Apply Media Information Changes”. Problem solved (in WMP and in the Zune software).
FWIW, I’m running Windows Vista w/ WMP11 and IE7.
I went the Media Monkey route, deleting all of the hidden album art, folder.jpg, etc. files by hand, then using media monkey to get new art, then updating.
So far, so good (one week, none have changed back) but we shall see. Media monkey is very very nice. And free for this purpose.
OK found this site since I had the black cover and no covers problems within MCE. From reading here and a few others and a lot of testing I have found a solution that is working fully for both MCE and embedded art for iTunes.
Within your music folders the only hidden file that you need is the “Folder.jpg” and that should be 200×200, delete all the other hidden files “AlbumArtSmall”, “AlbumArt_{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}_Small” and “AlbumArt_{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}_Large”.
This has worked for my entire collection
Forgot to say that I used “AV Art Fixer for WMP and MCE” http://www.avsoft.nl/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=80&Itemid=4 after file deletion to embed the art.
bearb’s solution as well as the solution to change the art to the “illustration” type in the mp3 header only works because MCE doesn’t notice the album art in the mp3 anymore. The problem lies in media center’s desire to show embedded art and its failure to display the found art. The other hidden files in the folder have nothing to do with it and changing the type is only hiding the symptom not fixing the problem.