Discover media - contacts photos and music album art?

[JoeGTI]

Time to give up and go for a drive...

I've done the following

Converted all files to mp3
Added tags
Resized cover art to 400x400
It works great on an SD card - but not on the iphone cable or bluetooth (exact same mp3 files).

 

Good stuff. So did you convert all apple format (m4a, m4p?) files to MP3? What application did you use to do this? I'm looking for the easiest, least hassle approach possible!

[allycat45]

I am pretty sure that Apple / iTunes stopped using the DRM protected *.m4p format some time ago.

If you purchase music through iTunes now you get it in *.m4a format which has no DRM. You can ask iTunes to save any *.m4a file (or multiple files) as an *.mp3 copy if you want it to. Not sure if it embeds the artwork in the mp3 that it produces though. I have checked some music I bought recently and it is definitely in m4a format, not m4p.

Of course that doesn't help those with music bought in iTunes before they moved off m4p and onto m4a. The only route I knew of then was to burn them to an audio CD (which it let you do despite DRM) and then re-rip it back into mp3 format (losing quality each way). There are many utility programs available now to do practically anything you want with media files, and the ones already mentioned earlier will more than likely do everything you need eventually.

[Gryzor]

Good stuff. So did you convert all apple format (m4a, m4p?) files to MP3? What application did you use to do this? I'm looking for the easiest, least hassle approach possible!

I use a paid piece of software called "EZ CD Audio Converter", but a mate of mine uses this:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonkenc

Can't vouch for its ease-of-use, but it's free, and anything from SourceForge usually gets a thumbs up from me.

[GolfTi]

I used Mp3tag tag to tag the mp3s.
sanse Mp3 Art Sizer to resize images

both quite easy to use and free to download.

The real pain was converting to mp3 (as the above programs don't work with mp4), as alleycat mentioned you have to burn protected mp4 files to Cd and then re import them. You can then convert within iTunes to mp3.

What a kefuffle. I'm just going to buy a large SD and use that.

As mentioned already the exact same mp3 file works from SD but not iPhone 4.

[matchboy]

The reason android outsells apple 3:1 is price, pure and simple. Lots of people can't afford an iPhone or an iPad so an android device is a way of getting nearly the same product but at a cheaper price.

The reason apple products are more expensive is because they're better. You pay for what you get.

And I often buy music off amazon instead of iTunes so I'm certainly not locked into apple in that respect.

Just my opinion of course. 

[Gryzor]

The real pain was converting to mp3 (as the above programs don't work with mp4), as alleycat mentioned you have to burn protected mp4 files to Cd and then re import them. You can then convert within iTunes to mp3.

I'm pretty sure the SourceForge hosted one I linked to above handles MP4/M4A.

[GolfTi]

Will it resize album art jpeg files from mp4?

[Bill_the_Bear]

Time to give up and go for a drive...

I've done the following

Converted all files to mp3
Added tags
Resized cover art to 400x400
It works great on an SD card - but not on the iphone cable or bluetooth (exact same mp3 files).

 

On iPhone Bluetooth does some of the artwork display and some not?
How about with the cable?

Are the files that work different, or the same, as the ones before you made the changes?  i.e. say track 1,3 and 8 showed artwork before the change, is it 1,3,8 that still work or is it say 1,5,7,8 that work now?

[GolfTi]

I can't get any of the artwork or contact photos to show from the iphone -  cable or bluetooth.

[Gryzor]

Will it resize album art jpeg files from mp4?

That SourceForge app does not resize artwork.  That's the Sansa software that I linked to and talked about previously.  I'm not sure if it will resize artwork in MP4, but if not it's no big deal because it's trivial to convert a bulk load of MP4s to MP3.