Walkman NW-A45 - How to get artwork?

[royabrown2]

My wife has a new NW-A45 that I am tasked with setting up for her, initially from her very old iPod. No trouble there, I used iExplorer to transfer the files from the iPod into my iTunes account on my iMac, updated as much artwork as I could within iTunes, and then used Content Transfer to copy the songs across.

Because it picked up the iExplorer input folder as well as the iTunes one, it moved twice as many items as there were songs in iTunes, but it all came across without duplications, and everything we have tried plays OK.

But she wants to know where the artwork has gone to? Every music item has a blank screen, except for the three that the Walkman came preloaded with.

All the advice I can find on the web seems to refer to options my iTunes doesn’t have - like associating artwork with individual songs instead of albums - or software the Mac hasn’t got.

I would have expected that Content Transfer, which knows about albums, would have associated the album artwork, where present, with each track on that album, but no, it doesn’t seem to do that.

So how do I load the artwork she is expecting, preferably seamlessly as I load the albums?

[Thalamus.]

Hi Royabrown2,

looks like you haven’t received a response, I notice there has been a similar thread on this subject an wondered if it might offer some assistance - Sony NW-A45 Walkman Missing Artwork (help)

[royabrown2]

[Edit: my reply to @Thalamus.  seems to have now inexplicably vanished, and I CBA to state it in detail again, except to say thanks, and I’ve seen that thread, but it gets a bit tangled up with FLACs, which I wanted to keep away from]

So my initial posting above is a clear statement of the issue, which I wanted to stand alone from other threads, and this subsequent posting is some of the untidy gubbins that I have worked through on this issue.

It may help to forestall some of the questions we might get, though I fear we are being optimistic that anyone, from Sony or elsewhere, might even ask any. I have been thinking that the aging iPod Touch might still a better bet than this up-to-the-minute NW-A45 Walkman , though finding that ITunes no longer works on it, meaning that the music it holds can never be updated, has modified my view a bit.

My current working hypotheses [modified] are that:

[Edit: (i) iTunes can embed a copy of the album artwork in each track, but doesn’t by default, it just links to a single copy of the artwork at the album level;

(ii) embedded artwork can be passed across intact and unmodified track by track, by Content Transfer to the Walkman, If present, but;

(iii) the Walkman does need these details track by track, and so when the artwork is only held at the album level, it isn’t passed across, and so we see no artwork.]

My reasonable expectation is:

(i) all the artwork we have gathered is in the same format, whatever that format is, as it has all without exception been fetched using the standard iTunes Get Album Artwork;

(ii) Content Transfer should know that the Walkman cannot support album level artwork, and if it finds that no artwork is held on a particular track, but there is album level art, should take the necessary steps to ensure that this artwork is embedded in the track as the Walkman demands.

Or hold the artwork at the album level not the track level if this is what it needs to do, or can do.

I shouldn’t even need to think about any of this stuff, for G*d’s sake; Sony’s Content Transfer program should seamlessly be taking care of it.

But the alternative way of working is at the Finder/folder level is ominous, because this is simple copying, which suggests that Content Transfer has no smarts beyond determining what wants copying where, and then just copying it. Which is useful, but not enough.

I’ve tried copying at this Finder/folder level; it works, but again only for the audio with no artwork, and is both fraught with perils and not the Mac way of doing things.

My next step is to see what I can do with various tools to propagate album level art to track level art that will satisfy what the Walkman needs in order to display album artwork.

All suggestions of the best tools to use, Mac or PC, gratefully received.

Once I have mastered the tools involved here, which may send me fleeing back to do these things on Windows.

But I shouldn’t have to be doing this; and surely a lot of these Walkmans must be owned by people who could no more do this than fly?

[Sonyvores]

Why do you even need to go through Content Transfert? Walkman is not a locked player like ipod touch 

Just drag and drop the files you want from your itunes library directly to Walkman "music" folder and it's done.

If your itunes ' missing any feature then you should look further why that's not normal. 

[royabrown2]

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@Sonyvores wrote:

Why do you even need to go through Content Transfer? Walkman is not a locked player like ipod touch 

Just drag and drop the files you want from your itunes library directly to Walkman "music" folder and it's done.

If your itunes  is missing any feature then you should look further why that's not normal. 

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@Sonyvores 

Yes, drag and drop works in Finder, as I have tried it.

But Content Transfer is part of the solution at this level, not part of the problem, as it nicely manages what files need to be transferred, so it’s like Finder in a user-friendly wrapper.

But the problem with both this and the Finder approach is that they just do track-by-track file transfers, which they can mostly get away with as the Walkman then indexes for artists and albums.

And there isn’t anything wrong with my iTunes account. The problem, as I now know, thanks to researches elsewhere, is that iTunes, by default, holds Album Art at the album level - sensible, as it saves you storing 11 or so copies of the same image.

But the Walkman needs its art at the individual track level. Fair enough, I understand why.

So Content Transfer, whose whole raison d’etre is to move iTunes music to the Walkman, should, as part of its transfer process, take art at the album level, where available, and apply it to the transferred tracks at the track level, for any tracks that don’t already have an image of their own.

Finder can’t reasonably do that, of course, but Content Transfer can, and should.

Fortunately, iTunes does allow artwork at the track level, and I have downloaded a utility that takes album-level art and applies it at the track level. After which either Content Transfer, or even just Finder, will do transfers that result in the Walkman being able to show the art as you play the track.

I’ve done three albums as proof of concept, and now just need to stick another 63 through, hopefully in batch. Once I have rectified the 18 albums Apple can’t find artwork for; though that is a different and further issue, and one to be laid at Apple’s door, not Sony’s. Or at mine, for owning obscure albums. Like Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’, for instance...

Content Transfer could so easily add this album-to-track capability, though; I don’t know why it is missing from it.

[Sonyvores]

I see. You wanna have a the music files to be organized within the walkman. It does make sense

Well don't know who those "special apple" people said that but artwork is incapsulated within the files too in itunes (only exception is WAV) . FYI you can add cover art to tracks directly with itunes too, why using an extra software?

So if it's done right like the files you 've done recently you can see that the transfer is done properly.

Content transfer does what its name says, it just "transfer" the content. It's not meant to do anything else

The feature you request are done by Music Center software already and in a much better way than itunes thanks to database gracenote. Only issue (for you) is that it's not compatible with Mac.

The only thing you can complain for and I can only agree with you would be for Sony not making Music Center compatible with Mac coz it would sort out everything. In my humble opinion it makes more sense to request to make "Music Center" compatible with Mac than making evolving "Content Tranfer"

[royabrown2]

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@Sonyvores wrote:

I see. You wanna have a the music files to be organized within the walkman. It does make sense

Well don't know who those "special apple" people said that but artwork is incapsulated within the files too in itunes (only exception is WAV) . FYI you can add cover art to tracks directly with itunes too, why using an extra software?

So if it's done right like the files you 've done recently you can see that the transfer is done properly.

Content transfer does what its name says, it just "transfer" the content. It's not meant to do anything else

The feature you request are done by Music Center software already and in a much better way than itunes thanks to database gracenote. Only issue (for you) is that it's not compatible with Mac.

The only thing you can complain for and I can only agree with you would be for Sony not making Music Center compatible with Mac coz it would sort out everything. In my humble opinion it makes more sense to request to make "Music Center" compatible with Mac than making evolving "Content Tranfer"

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I don’t know about iTunes on PC (though I have several PCs, I render unto Macs that which is Apple’s), but on the Mac, the art is held at album level and not track level, by default.

You can move the art to track level with a utility I’m using, and then you can see the art on the Walkman after  transferring the content.

I am getting whatever album art I can with the usual Mac iTunes menu option, but I am still a few albums light, so I need to get those another way. But one of them is ‘Rumours’, and I can’t believe  Apple don’t hold artwork for that, so there may be something slightly awry here....

Encouraged by you, I just took a look at Music Center, which does indeed seem more capable than Content Transfer. And does seem to be capable of holding artwork at album level, and maybe even putting it on the Walkman at that level. Or maybe just of putting it the tracks individually, as I note you can use Windows Explorer, a la Finder, to transfer the tracks.

So I think maybe Music Center employs its smarts at import time.

Anyway, I can try it with a couple of CDs on a Windows laptop, see how I go on.

Still got the issue that the main music is in iTunes on the Mac, though. But I don’t think the transfers would fare any better, artwork-wise, from iTunes on Windows through Music Center.

I’ll try it on Windows though, again for just a couple of CDs, see where I get to, and let you know.

[Sonyvores]

yep get back to us, it's also interresting for us to know!

I'm using PC and all my music library is in itunes but thankfully Media Go is compatible with  AIFF (Media Go was let down by Sony and became Music Center now) And all my files transfer are done properly

[paramount7force]

Hi, I know how to get the artwork working for you. I personally don't have any flacs, I use mp3s however this will work regardless.

Download Tagscanner, once you've downloaded it launch and add your music, drag and drop will be fine. Only add a few thousand at a time as your virtual memory will run out when performing the following tasks otherwise. once you've added your music select them all in Tagscanner. Next on the top right near the middle of Tagscanner there should be a little blank image box with keep written next to it. while all your music is selected click on keep then first off resize your music artwork to 600x600 and click apply. after that is done resizing click on keep again, this time click on recompress and then apply.

these actions will change your embedded artworks from progressive format to 600x600 basic format images. The artwork should now show up perfectly in your NW a45. this method also makes the artwork work universally on 99% of devices and media players.

Cheers.

[miketex90]

Hi, I am glad I found your post. I tried probably 5 different ways to get my artwork to show up for one particular album. A few of them being different methods I have used before. Your recommendation worked perfectly though.