Album Art

Posted by: DaveBk on 02 January 2012

All my music is now streamed, and I use an iPad to control everything which has the nice feature of displaying full screen album art. I have become increasingly irritated by the poor quality of much of the artwork found automatically by dBpoweramp so have decided to scan my original CD covers, touch up in Photoshop, and scale to 1000x1000 which looks fine to me.

Some questions:

Has anyone else done this?

Is is legal to share high quality album art without infringing copyright?

Thanks...!
Posted on: 03 January 2012 by Jan
Hi Dave

I've to deal with the same issue and was not able to find a solution yet. During my research I found out that it must be a problem with the upnp language or the NAS (I'm using a Synology DS210j)

Jan
Posted on: 03 January 2012 by Bart
Originally Posted by DaveBk:
All my music is now streamed, and I use an iPad to control everything which has the nice feature of displaying full screen album art. I have become increasingly irritated by the poor quality of much of the artwork found automatically by dBpoweramp so have decided to scan my original CD covers, touch up in Photoshop, and scale to 1000x1000 which looks fine to me.

Some questions:

Has anyone else done this?

Is is legal to share high quality album art without infringing copyright?

Thanks...!

I was getting a little OCD myself about album art, but then I noticed that on my UnitiServe, the system software shrinks the .jpg file to an ~17kb (I'm sorry I don't remember exactly, but in any event it is small) file.

 

I can usually grab 500 x 500 files online and they are plenty good for my uses.

Posted on: 03 January 2012 by andrew mcmullins

Most of the time I applied my favourite search engine to the problem.  For graphics - I use google and select "image" at the top.

 

I then went into the relevant folder and put a .jpg there and called it folder.jpg.

 

I then highlighted all the FLAC files - right click - Properties - ID Tag - I then remove any art shown there - hit apply - then import from the folder.jpg.  That keeps everything consistant to the same file.   

 

I think those extra options are in there because I use dbpoweramp.

 

I have noticed with some large jpgs from the net that if I open them in Fireworks and then save them - they shrink. 

 

Hope this helps.

Posted on: 03 January 2012 by andrew mcmullins

Ohh - I found it best to have all the FLAC files local as doing it across the network was painfully slow.

Posted on: 03 January 2012 by DaveBk

Thanks for the replies, but you are missing my point a little... I'll explain:

 

I use Squeezebox Server and iPeng and they both seem to handle album art well in that there is no loss of resolution when the image is displayed. I know there are loads of issues with various uPnP implementations where album art is scaled down - not a problem for me.

 

I had 2 questions - Bart's reply touched on one which is whether I'm starting so suffer with OCD by caring about this.

 

The other question (assuming my mental state is sound) is whether high resolution images can be shared without feeling the long arm of the law for infringing copyright... Someone on the forum asked me about this on another thread.

 

Thanks! 

Posted on: 03 January 2012 by Tog
Vortexbox - choice of streaming options including slim-server (Logitech Media Server) and Bliss to handle album art. Bliss will follow the rules you set regarding resolution but if you want to scan your own copies it will add them as well. Epic Tog
Posted on: 03 January 2012 by andrew mcmullins

Dave

 

I don't know if the use of the image is illegal but ripping the CD in the first place is.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14391725

 

Andrew

Posted on: 03 January 2012 by DaveBk

I know - hopefully the law will be amended to reflect reality. However... It's clear that if I post my CD rips I'll be moving through the grey area towards being illegal, but it's generally accepted that posting album art it OK - take a look at various threads here. Most album art is relatively low resolution so gets covered by the 'fair use' exceptions, as it's enough detail to give the viewer the info required, but it's nothing close to a replica of the actual artwork. So, my question stands... is it OK to share high resolution artwork?

Posted on: 03 January 2012 by james n
Dave - why not email Naim label and ask their opinion. They provide high res artwork to support downloaded files so would probably know of any legal implications of sharing hi res album artwork.

James
Posted on: 03 January 2012 by Bart
Originally Posted by DaveBk:

 

The other question (assuming my mental state is sound) is whether high resolution images can be shared without feeling the long arm of the law for infringing copyright... Someone on the forum asked me about this on another thread.

 

Thanks! 

Technically, from a US law perspective, I suspect that your own scanning of the cd art and putting it on your own in-home server, is just fine. It's akin to making a backup copy for personal use.  Me -- I would have no fears or trepidations, legal OR ethical, about that.

 

The posting of the art online as many do probably is an infringement, as is the downloading and use of it by individuals.  Practically, I would worry about downloading album art MUCH less than I'd worry about, say, using bittorrent to download illegal copies of the music itself.  While the recording industry, to some extent, tries to monitor for the latter, I'm rather certain that they do not monitor for the former.

Posted on: 03 January 2012 by Fernand Bos

I use http://www.albumartexchange.com/ for most of my album art and I'm very impressed by the quality of the images.  No idea if it's legal but I'm not worried about that since I'm only downloading covers of albums that I already own.

Posted on: 02 March 2012 by Aron

I just bought a Synology DS212 NAS and when I rip CD to WAV using DBpoweramp, I see the album art in the NAS music folder but when I play them from n-stream on my ipad2, I only see the song title and not the album art. Is there something I'm missing? 

Posted on: 02 March 2012 by Bart
Originally Posted by Aron:

I just bought a Synology DS212 NAS and when I rip CD to WAV using DBpoweramp, I see the album art in the NAS music folder but when I play them from n-stream on my ipad2, I only see the song title and not the album art. Is there something I'm missing? 

Others will chime in but I suspect that DBpoweramp does not name the image as "folder.jpg" which is what the Naim software looks for.

 

With nServe, if I go onto my usb sticks and look at the album art, it only works right if the .jpg file is named "folder.jpg."

Posted on: 02 March 2012 by Aron
Originally Posted by Bart:
Originally Posted by Aron:

I just bought a Synology DS212 NAS and when I rip CD to WAV using DBpoweramp, I see the album art in the NAS music folder but when I play them from n-stream on my ipad2, I only see the song title and not the album art. Is there something I'm missing? 

Others will chime in but I suspect that DBpoweramp does not name the image as "folder.jpg" which is what the Naim software looks for.

 

With nServe, if I go onto my usb sticks and look at the album art, it only works right if the .jpg file is named "folder.jpg."

Thanks for helping, I've checked on my files and they indicate "Folder.jpg" too.

 

I have Asset installed when I made my Dbpoweramp rip purchase and with Asset, the album art shows however one of the main reason I purchase a NAS was to rip non-english album which sadly the U-Serve doesn't support non-english characters. Playing from the NAS thru the n-Stream, non english characters works but album art doesn't appear and Asset although shows album art but chinese,jap and korean characters are like Userve.....

 

Please tell me there is a solution to this other then converting them to FLAC....

 

Update:

 

Just downloaded DS audio for the ipad and it works just fine, however I will have to use DS audio to control my NAS and n-Stream to control my u-Serve....