Program to remove Album art ??

[whs]

I am looking for a little program that removes album art from the folders and the files. I have tried the recommended methods via WMP, but that did not really work. I have about 30 folders to work on and I do not want to make that an evening filling occupation.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

WHS:

The only time I see album art, is in certain of my folders that contain mp3 music. These files always have the text string "album art" somewhere in the file name.

I don't like album art either and delete it whenever I see it. I just use a disc search tool (Everything) to scan my drives for the text string "album art" and then delete whatever hits that search finds, directly from Everything.

Not sure that helps or even if it's what you need. Album art to me is a pest that I have no use for, so I just use my cave-man approach to delete any and all instances. It doesn't show up in my mp3 player or tags, but it does occupy space on my drives and distracts me.

 

[whs]

Those are not MP3 files. Most are .wma. Years ago, I put that silly album art there myself (some came from I don't know where). Now I want to clean up the files. I don't even remember how I did it at the time. But I know there are programs that remove the art. Just cannot find them.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Is the "art" actually an image, like a JPEG, separate from the audio file? Or is it somehow contained within the WMA file, about which I know little.

The only album art I've ever seen is actually a jpeg that exists as a different file than the audio (mp3) file. It's typically found in the same folder as the mp3, but is not part of the mp3. Typically, they show an album or CD cover. For instance, I might get my hands on a Sinatra CD, and it will contain 16 songs and 2 or 3 "album art" jpegs, which are extraneous and unneeded---but they can be easily searched for system-wide with the term "album art".

 

[whs]

It is .jpg images I pasted in at the time. I think I did it in WMP.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Do you have a search tool that can find all files containing "jpg" in a folder or anywhere on your drive?

Are these "album art" files recognizable by file name?

I'm just wondering why an ordinary file search can't find them if they have some common characteristic--such as being a jpg in a folder that otherwise contains only wma files. Or a file name containing a certain text string. Or are they for some reason not easily searched for?

 

[whs]

That won't work. I have thousands of .jpg files. I need a program that can do the job.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I've got about 20,000 images and 25,000 songs. But my song folders shouldn't contain images. Any images in my song folders are unwanted, regardless of name.

I assume your songs folders contain some desired images as well as unwanted album art and that you can't keep the desired images in separate and distinct folders that don't contain audio?

 

[Callender]

Possible solution

Hi,

I admit that I'm no expert on this topic but assuming that the album art exists in .jpg format and that no other images are stored in the directory and subfolders perhaps consider:

Navigate to the directory ie: C:\Users\Chris\Music

Highlight then Shift+Right Click

Choose "Open command window here"

In the command window type (or copy & paste):

attrib -S -H *.jpg /S

Press enter

That should remove hidden/ system attributes.

Then repeat the whole thing but use:

del /S *.jpg

Then the album art should be gone from the directory and all sub folders.

Aplologies if this doesn't work. Found on a couple of other forums and tested on my machine but then again I only had a few images that were classed as Album Art!

 

[whs]

Thank you. That worked great. Only a few where I had .wma it did not work. I, of course, modified the commands to say .wma, but it deleted the whole files in the folders (which were only copies). Better be careful, LOL.

 

[Callender]

Album Art (Embedded)

Hi again,

So I've discovered that not all cover art is removable using the technique posted earlier. That prompted me to try:

TagScanner - the ultimate Tag Editor - the portable version is probably the best to use.

Need to right click the executable once extracted and "Run as administrator"

The program does connect to the internet to send usage statistics but can be blocked via firewall. The downside is that auto tagging from web will not work as a result.

The interface is slightly confusing at first but there's a reasonable help file.

I've only tested on .mp3 format but .wma support is claimed.

The procedure for removing all album art for .mp3 files is as follows.

Run the program and at the bottom of the window Browse for your music library. Switch to the Tag Editor tab and any files with embedded album art can be seen.

It's possible to select multiple tracks using Ctrl. Then click clear field - it's the button to the left of the album picture. Then click Save. All images are removed. Hopefully that's the job done!

 

[whs]

Thanks again. I'll try that. But it is not a big problem. It is just a couple of Albums with .wma that did not work.