Ripping to MP3 WITH album art?

OK, first off, lemme say, I did some search on here and have also gone to Yahoo... I have just realized that when I ripped my entire CD collection (about 400 or so CD's), I used Window's Media Player and didn't realize it ripped to WMA... well... thats fine and dandy except MediaEngine doesn't use them... I have looked at some other rippers but they seem to be missing something that my WMA's have... at least as far as I can tell... my WMA's have the tag information AND they have album art in the folder so when they play, there is a clip-art of the album showing too... If my CD's are ripped to MP3 and have album art, will the art show in the upper right hand corner while playing? If not, no big deal... but if they would show there, I'd really like to have that information there... I'm fine with ripping the collection again even though it took me a couple weeks of work after my son went to bed each night... just want things as complete as possible... if you have any info on how to get the album art saved with the files, lemme know. Thanks in advance.

Coach... aka Randy!

Well one easy thing I would suggest so you don't have to go through and rip all of your cds again, you can download a free WMA to MP3 converter to do them all for you while you sleep, no cd swapping! There are plenty of them out there, most of them free to try then you have to buy them. One I came across can be found:

http://download.com.com/3000-2140-10...l?tag=lst-0-20

Is completely freeware.

That will help if you're just concerned in converting them. As far as the albulm art, I've never really ripped audio cds with the art- I used to use a nice free program called CDEX that does a good job as far as ripping and naming, but now use Winamp Pro. Since I use it with my remote setup it is very convienient for me, and with my network internet connection it easily grabs the cd art as well as other helpful links, reviews, other albulms, bios, etc.

Hope that will help you some, and hopefully someone will know offhand and help you with the albulm art portion- Good luck!

Thanks for the reply... the WMA to MP3 convertor sounds like a decent option, but would be concerned about converting an already compressed file... would the outcome be that much different than if I had ripped to MP3 in the beginning? Also, I did the ripping on my home PC and then copied to CD's (about 20-25 FULL CD's) and I don't have my carputer set up yet... and haven't started the bench setup and testing yet... if I don't come up with a better idee by then, I'll just load the CD's to the carputer hard drive and then do the WMA to MP3 conversion... again, if that doesn't mean REALLY bad sound qaulity. Thanks again!

Coach!

Converting from one lossy compressed format (WMA) to another lossy compressed format (MP3) will lose quality.

The very best thing is to use EAC w/LAME for ripping, then use GotchaCovered or hijinks21's Album Art Downloader for getting album art.

Once you've ripped/converted your CDs (my preference is to use the format Drive:\Media\Music\Artist\Album\Artist - Album - TrackNum - TrackName.mp3), fire up GotchaCovered or hijinks' program, and point it at the Music directory, and it will go away and download cover art and place the album art in the album directories, and MediaEngine will then use them (set it to name them folder.jpg and it will use them ;)) :)


Garry

You can also try these FREE programs:

Album Art Downloader
MA3D

Thank you! I guess I can start re-ripping this weekend... not that its a major hurry... my carputer won't even begin to be installed for at least a few more weeks... gotta get the LS1 into the VX... then its time to play.

Thanks again guys!

Randy!