How to get TouchFLO 3D to Show Your Album Art

[adamz]

Using Windows Media player to synchronize music to your device is probably the easiest way to manage music in playlists while also getting album art to display in the Windows Mobile Media Player. Not to mention, with the automatic WMA conversion features, you can get 8 Gigs worth of MP3s to fit on 4 Gigs of storage like that of the HTC Touch Diamond.

The Windows Media Player syncing method also happens to be recommended in the Touch Diamond’s Quick Start Guide and Windows Mobile’s Getting Started guide on the device itself. When Windows Media Player on the desktop converts and copies music to your device, it creates the proper folder structure and includes the album art as a JPG image file that’s stored in the same album folder as each track. This allows the media player software to re-use the same image for each track in that album.

The problem is that HTC’s Touch FLO 3D audio manager does not read those JPG files. So if you want to use the cool Today screen flippy 3D media player, you’re not going to see any album art. As it turns out, HTC’s audio manager reads the album art from each audio file’s embedded image metadata tags. Even if your MP3s on your desktop already include album art embedded into each file’s metadata, the artwork will not carry over after being converted by WMP’s syncing process. The artwork will instead be converted to the separate JPG format (so that WM Media Player can read them).

Here’s the work around for getting your album art to display in both Windows Media Player and the HTC TouchFLO 3D media player.

1. Sync “Internal Storage” with Windows Media Player while your Touch Diamond is connected to ActiveSync such that all your music works in Windows Mobile’s Media Player and has been converted to a more compressed format that saves space. For tips on Media Player syncing, see this page.
2. Switch the USB to PC mode to “Disk Drive” in the Settings>Connections>USB to PC control panel on the Touch Diamond. The device will reconnect to the PC as a disk drive.
3. Download, install, and run Flash Renamer
   This is a batch renaming program. Many of your Album art JPG files might have filenames like “AlbumArt_{937436F0-A712-496E-B610-48576D832D91}_Large.jpg” and those need to be renamed to “Folder.jpg” in order for the embedding to be easier.
4. Using Flash Renamer, browse to the Music folder on your Internal Storage using the “Browser” tab
5. On the left, make sure the Include options are turned on for Files, Folders, and Subfolders.
6. Sort by file type and select all of the JPG files in the right pane and press the “Advanced” button on the left.
7. Choose “Set Attributes” and uncheck all of the options.
8. Click “Rename!” This will remove the write protection and hidden status on all of the JPG album art files.
9. Next, on the left, click the “General” button and choose the “Replace” tab. In the Find field, type: “AlbumArt_*_Large” In the “and replace with” field, type “Folder”
10. Click “Rename!” This will change all of the oddly named JPG files to “Folder.jpg” and they will remain in their respective Album folders
11. Close Flash Renamer
12. Download, install, and run MP3Tag
13. In the “Directory” field on the lower left, type the path to your Music folder on the Touch Diamond’s Internal Storage. Example: J:\Music
14. Select all of the audio files that show up in the list on the right.
15. Find the “Actions (Quick)” button on the toolbar. It’s the 16th one from the left. Click it.
16. In the “Select action type” field, choose “Import cover from file”, Click OK
17. In the “Format string for image filename” field, type “Folder”, Click OK
18. A progress bar will appear as the program takes each JPG image file named Folder.jpg and embeds it into each audio file within their respective folders.
19. Unplug your Touch Diamond, give it a soft reset for good measure, and when you browse to the Music tab in the TouchFLO 3D interface, you should have 3D flipping album art for all of your music.

That wasn't so bad, now was it?
Of course if all of your MP3s already have embedded album art, you can also just manually copy them to the device and the album art will display in TouchFLO 3D (but not Media Player). The downside to that method is that you have to copy/manage files manually, playlists probably won't work, and your files will take up much more space on that 4Gigs of internal storage on the Touch Diamond.

[benji]

Great that you were able to provide a solution. Anyone who might read about this here should be able to use the info and apply the fix. It's unfortunate for the average user though -- they'll just assume it doesn't work and likely find it to be an annoyance. I wouldn't imagine it to be something T-Mobile support would walk a customer through on their support line. Windows Mobile has gotten a lot better over the years, and the iPhone competition is accelerating things... still a ways to go though.

[Gasdoc]

Just two small things:

"FlashRenamer" settings need to changed to show Hidden and System files first.
"Mp3Tag" made be put "Folder.jpg" as the format string to embed the artwork. Perhaps you can put "Folder*.*" as well.

One other point:
If you go to sync via WMP, after getting the artwork sorted, using the same playlist, for example, which I already do, then the mp3/wma file without embedded artwork gets copied and labelled file(2). Do you know a way round that, otherwise the WMP sync is a one time only event.

Thank you so much for the work round though. It works great and is a big help. It's also the only place I've found a proper explanation for why the Touch Flo 3D app behaves like it does with album artwork.

Phil

[Sjoerd]

Originally Posted by adam

Hi,
i got the same error files cannot be accessed on point 18.

secondly..if I sync again in future..would it cause issues..

greatly appreciate any response..

thanks very mcuh

You have to manually select the image by clicking on the browse button (The 3 little dots)

Then select the image and it'll work

Good luck!

Originally Posted by adamz

Using Windows Media player to synchronize music to your device is probably the easiest way to manage music in playlists while also getting album art to display in the Windows Mobile Media Player. Not to mention, with the automatic WMA conversion features, you can get 8 Gigs worth of MP3s to fit on 4 Gigs of storage like that of the HTC Touch Diamond.

The Windows Media Player syncing method also happens to be recommended in the Touch Diamond’s Quick Start Guide and Windows Mobile’s Getting Started guide on the device itself. When Windows Media Player on the desktop converts and copies music to your device, it creates the proper folder structure and includes the album art as a JPG image file that’s stored in the same album folder as each track. This allows the media player software to re-use the same image for each track in that album.

The problem is that HTC’s Touch FLO 3D audio manager does not read those JPG files. So if you want to use the cool Today screen flippy 3D media player, you’re not going to see any album art. As it turns out, HTC’s audio manager reads the album art from each audio file’s embedded image metadata tags. Even if your MP3s on your desktop already include album art embedded into each file’s metadata, the artwork will not carry over after being converted by WMP’s syncing process. The artwork will instead be converted to the separate JPG format (so that WM Media Player can read them).

Here’s the work around for getting your album art to display in both Windows Media Player and the HTC TouchFLO 3D media player.

1. Sync “Internal Storage” with Windows Media Player while your Touch Diamond is connected to ActiveSync such that all your music works in Windows Mobile’s Media Player and has been converted to a more compressed format that saves space. For tips on Media Player syncing, see this page.
2. Switch the USB to PC mode to “Disk Drive” in the Settings>Connections>USB to PC control panel on the Touch Diamond. The device will reconnect to the PC as a disk drive.
3. Download, install, and run Flash Renamer
   This is a batch renaming program. Many of your Album art JPG files might have filenames like “AlbumArt_{937436F0-A712-496E-B610-48576D832D91}_Large.jpg” and those need to be renamed to “Folder.jpg” in order for the embedding to be easier.
4. Using Flash Renamer, browse to the Music folder on your Internal Storage using the “Browser” tab
5. On the left, make sure the Include options are turned on for Files, Folders, and Subfolders.
6. Sort by file type and select all of the JPG files in the right pane and press the “Advanced” button on the left.
7. Choose “Set Attributes” and uncheck all of the options.
8. Click “Rename!” This will remove the write protection and hidden status on all of the JPG album art files.
9. Next, on the left, click the “General” button and choose the “Replace” tab. In the Find field, type: “AlbumArt_*_Large” In the “and replace with” field, type “Folder”
10. Click “Rename!” This will change all of the oddly named JPG files to “Folder.jpg” and they will remain in their respective Album folders
11. Close Flash Renamer
12. Download, install, and run MP3Tag
13. In the “Directory” field on the lower left, type the path to your Music folder on the Touch Diamond’s Internal Storage. Example: J:\Music
14. Select all of the audio files that show up in the list on the right.
15. Find the “Actions (Quick)” button on the toolbar. It’s the 16th one from the left. Click it.
16. In the “Select action type” field, choose “Import cover from file”, Click OK
17. In the “Format string for image filename” field, type “Folder”, Click OK
18. A progress bar will appear as the program takes each JPG image file named Folder.jpg and embeds it into each audio file within their respective folders.
19. Unplug your Touch Diamond, give it a soft reset for good measure, and when you browse to the Music tab in the TouchFLO 3D interface, you should have 3D flipping album art for all of your music.

That wasn't so bad, now was it?
Of course if all of your MP3s already have embedded album art, you can also just manually copy them to the device and the album art will display in TouchFLO 3D (but not Media Player). The downside to that method is that you have to copy/manage files manually, playlists probably won't work, and your files will take up much more space on that 4Gigs of internal storage on the Touch Diamond.

Hi,

I get stuck when I press "Set attributes" There are no options to uncheck? I tried to just move on and do all the other stuff, but using the MP3Tag it ended up saying that all the "Folder.jpg"s could not be accessed! What am I doing wrong?

If I can´t get this to work is there any other way? People are talking about creating a "folder.jpg" in each MP3 song folder, but is that done by opening the "Music" folder on the device or should I create all this stuff before hand and then transfer it to the phone?

Sorrý, I´m a bit novice at all this, so PLEASE help

Hi.

This driving me mad!

All my mp3 files are on my Diamond under 'Music'/artist/album/files on the internal memory.

All are tagged with the correct images as per the posts above.

All work and look great in WMP on the Diamond.

The HTC player still only shows the picture of the track that is playing!

Some tracks don't have a picture even though they are there in MP3TAG!

Is this back to my Touch Dual????

All I had to do was change the JPG file name to folder.jpg and reload the phone. All the albumn art came up without running through the mp3 tagging, etc.

Hi. Got the album art working ok. But I still can not get individual albums on touch flo. i.e tabs representing individual albums.

Any help?

Hi. I'm very grateful that you've explained why the cover art doesn't appear in Touchflo.

But all my music is on the 4 gb SD card, not the internal memory. I'm using Touch Pro, not Touch Diamond, so i can't put my music in the internal memory (It's really small).

When I set the USB to PC device to treat as hard disk, it shows the SD card instead of the internal memory. And thus in those music folders, I don't have the folder.jpg alongside the mp3 files. It's probably embedded. So there's nothing for me to rename.

How do I get round this problem?

Well, it is basically enough to access Content/Music from USB and in each album folder place a cover image under filename Folder.jpg

Yes, pretty much just make sure you have the "Folder.jpg" image in the album folder on your storage card. I haven't tested to see if that works on it's own. I just put that image in the album folder and run MP3Tag to make sure the cover art is embedded properly in the file.

I do sync with WMP just so it compresses the files and creates the nice structure though. I always have a Folder.jpg image in my album folders on my desktop, for some reason WMP doesn't copy that file across when I sync so I have to do it manually afterwards.

Tonio: From what I've just seen on TF3D, I don't think you can make albums show. It will display the cover art and let you go through a playlist or the now playing list.

optimus8: If you notice, every post has mentioned "Internal Storage" not "Internal Memory". "Internal Storage" is 4GB and "Internal Memory" is way less, like 74MB or something. Don't confuse the 2, you can use your 4GB Internal Storage with these steps.

Originally Posted by adamz

Using Windows Media player to synchronize music to your device is probably the easiest way to manage music in playlists while also getting album art to display in the Windows Mobile Media Player. Not to mention, with the automatic WMA conversion features, you can get 8 Gigs worth of MP3s to fit on 4 Gigs of storage like that of the HTC Touch Diamond.

The Windows Media Player syncing method also happens to be recommended in the Touch Diamond’s Quick Start Guide and Windows Mobile’s Getting Started guide on the device itself. When Windows Media Player on the desktop converts and copies music to your device, it creates the proper folder structure and includes the album art as a JPG image file that’s stored in the same album folder as each track. This allows the media player software to re-use the same image for each track in that album.

The problem is that HTC’s Touch FLO 3D audio manager does not read those JPG files. So if you want to use the cool Today screen flippy 3D media player, you’re not going to see any album art. As it turns out, HTC’s audio manager reads the album art from each audio file’s embedded image metadata tags. Even if your MP3s on your desktop already include album art embedded into each file’s metadata, the artwork will not carry over after being converted by WMP’s syncing process. The artwork will instead be converted to the separate JPG format (so that WM Media Player can read them).

Here’s the work around for getting your album art to display in both Windows Media Player and the HTC TouchFLO 3D media player.

1. Sync “Internal Storage” with Windows Media Player while your Touch Diamond is connected to ActiveSync such that all your music works in Windows Mobile’s Media Player and has been converted to a more compressed format that saves space. For tips on Media Player syncing, see this page.
2. Switch the USB to PC mode to “Disk Drive” in the Settings>Connections>USB to PC control panel on the Touch Diamond. The device will reconnect to the PC as a disk drive.
3. Download, install, and run Flash Renamer
   This is a batch renaming program. Many of your Album art JPG files might have filenames like “AlbumArt_{937436F0-A712-496E-B610-48576D832D91}_Large.jpg” and those need to be renamed to “Folder.jpg” in order for the embedding to be easier.
4. Using Flash Renamer, browse to the Music folder on your Internal Storage using the “Browser” tab
5. On the left, make sure the Include options are turned on for Files, Folders, and Subfolders.
6. Sort by file type and select all of the JPG files in the right pane and press the “Advanced” button on the left.
7. Choose “Set Attributes” and uncheck all of the options.
8. Click “Rename!” This will remove the write protection and hidden status on all of the JPG album art files.
9. Next, on the left, click the “General” button and choose the “Replace” tab. In the Find field, type: “AlbumArt_*_Large” In the “and replace with” field, type “Folder”
10. Click “Rename!” This will change all of the oddly named JPG files to “Folder.jpg” and they will remain in their respective Album folders
11. Close Flash Renamer
12. Download, install, and run MP3Tag
13. In the “Directory” field on the lower left, type the path to your Music folder on the Touch Diamond’s Internal Storage. Example: J:\Music
14. Select all of the audio files that show up in the list on the right.
15. Find the “Actions (Quick)” button on the toolbar. It’s the 16th one from the left. Click it.
16. In the “Select action type” field, choose “Import cover from file”, Click OK
17. In the “Format string for image filename” field, type “Folder”, Click OK
18. A progress bar will appear as the program takes each JPG image file named Folder.jpg and embeds it into each audio file within their respective folders.
19. Unplug your Touch Diamond, give it a soft reset for good measure, and when you browse to the Music tab in the TouchFLO 3D interface, you should have 3D flipping album art for all of your music.

That wasn't so bad, now was it?
Of course if all of your MP3s already have embedded album art, you can also just manually copy them to the device and the album art will display in TouchFLO 3D (but not Media Player). The downside to that method is that you have to copy/manage files manually, playlists probably won't work, and your files will take up much more space on that 4Gigs of internal storage on the Touch Diamond.

Is there a way to get teh TouchFlo Media player to 'reset' or rellok at the library? I deleted the two demo albums that came witht hte Diamond Pro and have my music on the 4G storage card. It now shows "No Music found". Yet when I go into the Library all of the mucic on the SD card is listed?
It looks like the 'easy' solution is to put the music on the device memory.

also the device seems slower after I go the the Music player.

Originally Posted by SpecialBlend

Yes, pretty much just make sure you have the "Folder.jpg" image in the album folder on your storage card. I haven't tested to see if that works on it's own. I just put that image in the album folder and run MP3Tag to make sure the cover art is embedded properly in the file.

I do sync with WMP just so it compresses the files and creates the nice structure though. I always have a Folder.jpg image in my album folders on my desktop, for some reason WMP doesn't copy that file across when I sync so I have to do it manually afterwards.

Tonio: From what I've just seen on TF3D, I don't think you can make albums show. It will display the cover art and let you go through a playlist or the now playing list.

optimus8: If you notice, every post has mentioned "Internal Storage" not "Internal Memory". "Internal Storage" is 4GB and "Internal Memory" is way less, like 74MB or something. Don't confuse the 2, you can use your 4GB Internal Storage with these steps.

I have followed all the instructions and still have not gotten the Album covers on the touchflo. I could not get to the folder through MP3Tag so I simply inserted the SD into the PC and did it that way. thereis an interesting artifact though. In each of the CD folders there is a new file HTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg, where did that come from?

[adamz]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have followed all the instructions and still have not gotten the Album covers on the touchflo. I could not get to the folder through MP3Tag so I simply inserted the SD into the PC and did it that way. thereis an interesting artifact though. In each of the CD folders there is a new file HTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg, where did that come from?

That's the image the TouchFLO 3D music panel creates. Maybe if you click the library button or do a soft reset, the album art will show up? It sounds like it was done correctly.

[adamz]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Is there a way to get teh TouchFlo Media player to 'reset' or rellok at the library? I deleted the two demo albums that came witht hte Diamond Pro and have my music on the 4G storage card. It now shows "No Music found". Yet when I go into the Library all of the mucic on the SD card is listed?
It looks like the 'easy' solution is to put the music on the device memory.

also the device seems slower after I go the the Music player.

Try deleting "HTC/AudioManager_Eng/AudioManager_Eng file" and then resetting the device. That will rebuild the library.

There's another thread here with other troubleshooting options.

Resets, Library, nothing works! Songs play, songs scroll, covers show up in everything but Toouch Flo.

Called HTC Tech Support as well as Sprint today, they know nothing . . . .

Just found the final fix

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...=397819&page=3

After you change all the files to Folder:

1) Go to the registry
2) Change the registry key HKLM/software/htc/audiomanager */audiomanager from 1.5 to 0
3) Soft Reset
4) Go to TouchFlo Media Player
5) Go to Library/All Songs (the Note icon)
6) Play the first song on the list
7) Done!

[adamz]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Just found the final fix

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...=397819&page=3

Excellent!
I've come to prefer using native Windows Media Player with the Manilla style skin instead since it can be controlled with Microsoft Voice Command and it's not such a hassle to get album art to display. You miss out on the animated album flipping, but it's easier to manage.

Simple but timeconsuming with 16GB memrycard..

Edit albumart .jpg file in explorer to Folder.jpg.

wait....

wait another minute...

HTC generates a new .jpg file.

wait even longer...

albumart visble in library.

wait (again..)

albumart visble in TF3D.

[bboyneko]

this worked great for me, it took a little while for touchflow to show my album covers but it worked. Thanks a bunch! They really need to make this easier. Like click a song, in menu have option ADD ALBUM ART then it would let you pick a image.

[smicale]

I just got my new fuze and was playing with the issue of trying to get the album art working and when i first put my sd card in my fuze it saw the music but no album art. Then I tried the option of turning off the TF 3D and then going into explorer and deleting the file everyone has been talking about. I then reset my fuze and re-enabled the TF 3D and now some of my art work is showing. Any ideas how to get the rest showing?