topic Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman in Portable Audio

Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

seranil — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 14:18:12 GMT

I am using a mac so can't use MediaGo. Any ideas for a easy solution to this problem. Thanks

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

chbundh — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 17:49:39 GMT

The album covers must be in JPEG (or JPG—exactly the same) format.
The chances are, your missing pictures are something else, such as PNG. If so, replace them with JPEG versions from the internet, or perhaps in the odd case, from a scanner.

I'm not sure if there is a size restriction, but up to 600x600 px seems to be sensible for covers anyway: any more would just take up extra space.

Once you correct that, you should find that the album covers transfer flawlessly.

I'm also using a Mac, and my preferred software is JRiver Media Center 20: requires purchase, although you can take a free trial. It's very powerful and customizable, and works really nicely with my A15. I still find the Sony Content Transfer program useful for file management, quick deletes etc.

I hope that helps!

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

racingjunior — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 10:16:17 GMT

The Sony Walkman products cannot display progressive JPEG files, just baseline JPEG. This is a short and informative article about the differences: http://adavu.com/what-is-baseline-jpeg-and-progressive-jpeg/.

Default cover art from music shops like 7digital and eMusic is progressive JPEG. You can convert from progressive to baseline JPEG using software like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

MK_Slinky — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 03:33:06 GMT

If I might just add I often find the best place for cover art is from Amazon, just look up your album title. Failing that a Google image search is often very good.

Windows paint can also save files to JPG format as do many other freebie paint programs.

P.S. If anyone wants any custom images made I'm a freelance graphic artist, I don't mind doing the odd freebie. Send me a PM if you do.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

-erdie- — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 19:33:20 GMT

I don't know why Sony can't have an update to enable the A15 to display more cover art. I briefly had a Fiio X1 which cost less than £90, and it displayed all of my cover art without a problem.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

chbundh — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 22:35:09 GMT

That's a fair point: one would think that most of the common image formats would be manageable. Nevertheless, it doesn't bother me to have all my cover art in JPG. I very often have to replace the images supplied through Gracenote anyway, if they don't match my source CDs.
There are a few other aspects of the menus / user interface that I'd ideally like adjusted: I emailed Sony months ago asking for a contact with whom I might discuss my suggestions... no response whatsoever.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

jumpsuit — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 15:41:17 GMT

@chbundh Did you try telephoning Head Office in the UK at Weybridge and asking for a name / department?

Unfortunately most large electronics companies (not just Sony) pay alot of people alot of money to come up with ideas / technology so I don't know how far you'd get but its always worth a go. Maybe you could share your thoughts with the members here?

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

-erdie- — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 20:51:24 GMT

chbundh wrote:

That's a fair point: one would think that most of the common image formats would be manageable. Nevertheless, it doesn't bother me to have all my cover art in JPG. I very often have to replace the images supplied through Gracenote anyway, if they don't match my source CDs.
There are a few other aspects of the menus / user interface that I'd ideally like adjusted: I emailed Sony months ago asking for a contact with whom I might discuss my suggestions... no response whatsoever.

I don't mind what format my cover art is in. But I have a large music collection and it is unfeasible to replace the cover art to an acceptable format.

I would be interested in knowing what UI changes you had suggested to Sony.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

sven_md — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 05:26:08 GMT

My problem is that the player does not show cover art of AAC (iTunes Plus without DRM) and ALAC Files. FLAC do work. All of my album covers are embedded correctly and MediaGo does show the covers as well.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

chbundh — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 09:05:37 GMT

That's surprising; I didn't think there was any difference in album display for compatible audio formats.

Your album art is definitely baseline (not progressive) JPEG?

If it comes to it, you could always convert all files to FLAC. It might also be worth trying JRiver Media Center: with that, one can set it to always put things in a particular format (such as FLAC) on the Walkman, without changing the original files on the computer/storage device).

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

chbundh — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 09:13:22 GMT

Well, I also have a large collection of music; there's hardly anything to do to convert all album art to JPEG, using software such as JRiver Media Center. It's just an option in the Library Settings.

I had my suggested UI changes noted down—I'll check later and post back.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

Citizen_Erased — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 22:36:47 GMT

Can you clarify how to convert album art in JRiver Media Center to JPEG? I have over 14000 songs, all with album art embedded in the ID3, but nearly half of my library is "missing" album art on my NWZ-A15 because it's not the right JPEG format.

Additionally, I manually converted a handful of album art files to baseline JPEG, but my Walkman still doesn't want to show them. I have no idea what the problem could be.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

chbundh — Sat, 20 Jun 2015 11:56:26 GMT

Sorry, I thought there was a quick way of converting all, but it appears not. What you may have to do is clear all the album covers from the library (select all—right-click: Cover art—Remove Cover Art), and get JRiver to find images (I believe it then saves jpegs).

First check your cover art settings: Tools—Options—File Location... under Cover Art menu, make sure the box is ticked for 'Also store image in the file's tag'.

Regarding the ones you've already converted: what audio format are they? In the event that they're WAV (I presume not since you have a large collection), images cannot be embedded. Otherwise, try right-click: Library Tools—Update Tags (from library). Then delete the tracks from the Walkman (Sony's own software is quick & clear for this) and redo the transfer.

With the Walkman connected, you can set up JRiver sync and transfer options for the individual device under Drives & Devices or Tools—Options—Handheld. I find this very useful, as I store almost everything as AIFF on an external hard drive, but anything dragged to the Walkman will automatically transfer as FLAC to save space.

I hope this helps...

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

Citizen_Erased — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 21:38:59 GMT

Thanks for the reply! Your input is really appreciated. The song files for which the album art was converted and still isn't showing up are all MP3s. What might make my situation unique is that all the editing I'm doing is being saved directly to my Walkman - I copied my music from my external HD to the Walkman (all just drag and drop in Finder). Since I've started using JRiver, some of the changes I've made to album art have saved properly - primarily, copying album art from Google and pasting from the clipboard; once I've made any changes, I can see the "Updating tags" notice at the bottom of the window. But perhaps making changes directly to the device is part of the problem? This wouldn't make any sense to me, but then the fact that some baseline jpeg cover art isn't showing up doesn't make much sense either. I've tried using JRiver to find album art, but the images it saves to the tag aren't showing up on my Walkman, leading me to believe that it is not specific in searching for baseline jpegs. For now, it sounds like the only solution is to live with having some albums without cover art.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

chbundh — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 22:37:35 GMT

No Problem! While I haven't needed to drag & drop with the A15, I had tried that with an earlier model and phone, and I don't think I could get all artwork to show. I have found allcdcovers.com to be a good source of reliable, decent-quality album art. I agree: it's annoying to see the 'W' logo instead of an album cover.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

keithmanaton — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 17:03:33 GMT

If you're a Mac user; you can use Dapper to organise your file transfer, especially useful with the new split disc Walkmans, A15, ZX100 etc. Use definition A15. The if you download and add Kid3 to the application folder Dapper (choose embed from the Utilities menu) will use it to embed all your iTunes artwork in the music files.

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

keithmanaton — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 14:55:13 GMT

The other APP - or Script - is Doug's Scripts:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=reembedartwork

This works similar to the Dapper/Kid3 combo. Save in your iTunes Library folder, you'll probably have to creat a Scripts folder. Select the ablum you want to embed and double click on the Doug's Script icon and it's done!

When you first launch the Script it might automatically go through your whole library! It did for me. Problems solved. Not a bad thing!

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

feline1 — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:06:16 GMT

Interesting! How did you find out this fact?

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

keithmanaton — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:12:35 GMT

was that question for me?

Re: Missing album covers on new Sony A15 Walkman

feline1 — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:16:26 GMT

No, sorry, I clicked Reply on racingjunior's post - the forum software seems to be rubbish in this regard!

I wanted to know how he found out that the Walkman firmware cannot handless progressive JPEGs, as this information is not in the user guide or online help guide.