Command line program for adding covers to tags

2005-09-29 12:39:47

Hello!

First of all, I know that it's not wise to include cover arts and other files in tags, so please don't tell me how evil this is.

Now to the question: is there a command line program available which can embed a JPG cover art into an MP3 file? I tried using TAG.EXE with the -f switch, but I don't know what field to specify.

Regards,
Sebastian

Command line program for adding covers to tags

Reply #1 – 2005-09-29 16:32:05

The tag you should use is APIC, if you're interested. I don't know of any command line programs to do it, however.

Command line program for adding covers to tags

Reply #2 – 2005-09-29 16:34:11

There are no command line tools that can do this currently. If you want a "proper" mp3 file with cover art, you must embed the JPG picture it in an id3v2 tag. Several free GUI tools exists which can embed pictures. I use http://sourceforge.net/projects/massid3lib, which is small and simple, but works well.

- TAG.exe does not write id3v2. It can write APE2 tags, so you could embed a picture in e.g. -f "PICTURE=mypict.jpg". The touble is that there are no tools that will make use of it, and you can't extract the picture with TAG.exe either.

- ID3.exe can write text only id3v2 tag frames, so that won't help you.

FYI: I have started to write a tool that will do what you want, but it could take some time (if ever) before you see it.

Command line program for adding covers to tags

Reply #3 – 2005-09-30 09:25:07

>First of all, I know that it's not wise to include cover arts and other files in tags

That is just some peoples views, depending upon your audio file I would say it is probabbly a good idea for Lossless audio (what difference is 40KB going to make?), where small bitrate streamble audio no.

The only issue with Album art is a lack of standards, any program which implements it just seems to do their own thing.