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Album Artwork makes a significant contribution to the esthetics of the user interface of the Kenwood DNX9960 as well as many other consumer electronics that allow loading of audio files. In order to have this album art show up for music on a USB device on the DNX9960 the artwork must be embedded in the audio file. Large embedded images signigicantly slow down the user interface. 300 x 300 pixal images are about right. I did this in iTunes with the help of a puggin by Maximized Software called iCoverArt.

Bottom line up front, this can be a time consuming process contingent on the size of the music library and how it was acquired.  Audio files purchased from both the iTunes Store and from Amazon come with album artwork embedded; however, these images are usually around 600 x 600 pixals. Music personally added to an iTunes library from a CD or music acquired through file sharing over the internet is the most likely to lack embedded album artwork.  iTunes does not automatically write album art to audio files. If you allow iTunes to automatically download missing album artwork it will store the artwork in its cache. This cached artwork will also be around 600 x 600 pixals. The artwork will show up in iTunes and on the iPod/iPhone but will be missing if you try to load these audio files on devices that are not made by Apple. There are several steps to isolating audio files missing album artwork and embedding it. Without iCoverArt, this much can be done; however, not as efficiantly. The proccess is as follows:

-Step 1: In iTunes on the menu click: Edit> Preferences> Store and uncheck the block next to “Automatically download missing album artwork”.

 

-Step 2: Close iTunes

-Step 3: In My Documents click: My Music> iTunes> Album Artwork and delete both the “Cache” and “Download” folders.

-Step 4: Open iTunes. iTunes will recreate these folder, but they will be empty. All artwork that was not embedded in audio files will no longer show up.

-Step 5: Search for missing album artwork in using Google or Ask images. Large file sizes will slow down your devices. Between 300 x 300 and 400 x 400 is large enough in most cases. Right click and copy matching album art of an appropriate size.

-Step 6: In iTunes in the Music Library click to have iTunes list your music by Albums and a grid. Right click albums missing artwork, click “Get Info”, right click under Info> “Artwork” and click past. iTunes will embed the artwork in each audio file in the album.

 

-Step 7: Repeat steps 5 & 6 for each album that does not have album artwork.
Excellence is always Observed, Remembered, and Respected.

iCoverArt provides the ability to view all of the files resoursed by iTunes in a database table. It allows sorting by Artist, Album, Album Art Status and more. It also provieds a reading of what size image is embedded in each file. I decided to standardize all my music with 300 x 300 embeded album art. The follwing is the proccess I used to get this done.

1. iCoverArt alows batch proccessing of artwork. I set it up to delete all my album artwork that was larger than 300 x 300.

2. I used Google Images to then find 300 x 300 images for each album. iCoverArt helps with this by allowing posting of artist and album information to the clipboard with the push of a button. It also allows desired artwork to be dragged and dropped into each file in an album.

3. Once I had the right size artwork for each album iCoverArt embedded in in each file with another batch proccess.

This was still a rather drawn out proccess, but, the files with 300 x 300 fuction much better on my DNX9960.

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