enzso
01-05-2014, 11:21 AM
I've been trawling the net trying to find a straightforward solution to getting album artwork to display when playing music from USB or SD. I've managed to cobble together explanations from a couple of different sources and worked it out myself, so thought I'd post the workflow here.
Note this applies for those using a mac with iTunes 11. If you have a PC there's a good blog here
VW Golf Mk7 – SD Cards and Album Art | Haydn Williams Blog (http://www.haydnwilliams.com/blog/vw-golf-mk7-sd-cards-and-album-art)
First you need to embed your existing iTunes artwork into each individual track, so that when you move them from your mac to your USB or SD card the artwork stays with the track. This is pretty easy if you use the script from Doug's AppleScripts: Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes ♫ Embed Artwork v2.0 (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=embedart)
If you follow his installation instructions you'll get a little "S" logo in the toolbar of iTunes next to "Help". Highlight the tracks you want to embed then click the "S" and select "Embed Artwork". Doug recommends only doing one album at a time. You won't see anything happen in iTunes when you do this, just trust that it's working.
Once that's done copy your music onto the USB or SD card. I got the music files in Finder under iTunes>iTunes Media>Music and I simply copied across the artist folders I wanted. You can arrange your music any way you like on the USB or SD card. If you look at the tracks once they're copied onto the USB or SD card you'll see the artwork has come across too.
Once that's done you need to resize your artwork so the Golf can see it, as the default size in iTunes is too large. I found a program called Bliss was free and relatively easy to use: www.blisshq.com
Once installed, tell Bliss to use your USB or SD card as the music location and in the "cover art" section tell it to use artwork of a minimum and maximum size of 300x300 (the Golf will read 400x400 but that's not an option in Bliss). Tick "shrink art automatically" and click "apply rules". Bliss will then scan the tracks on your USB and automatically resize all the artwork. This takes some time, depending on how many albums you have. Once it's finished, Bliss will tell you whether each album is "compliant" or "non-compliant". Most, if not all your albums will probably come back as "non-compliant". That's OK, just quickly check by selecting "why?" and make sure there's a green tick next to 300x300. Don't worry that it says "missing cover.jpg", this isn't relevant. Then you're good to go! Bliss can also find missing artwork if you need it to.
Chuck the USB or SD card into the Golf and, voila!
Note this applies for those using a mac with iTunes 11. If you have a PC there's a good blog here
VW Golf Mk7 – SD Cards and Album Art | Haydn Williams Blog (http://www.haydnwilliams.com/blog/vw-golf-mk7-sd-cards-and-album-art)
First you need to embed your existing iTunes artwork into each individual track, so that when you move them from your mac to your USB or SD card the artwork stays with the track. This is pretty easy if you use the script from Doug's AppleScripts: Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes ♫ Embed Artwork v2.0 (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=embedart)
If you follow his installation instructions you'll get a little "S" logo in the toolbar of iTunes next to "Help". Highlight the tracks you want to embed then click the "S" and select "Embed Artwork". Doug recommends only doing one album at a time. You won't see anything happen in iTunes when you do this, just trust that it's working.
Once that's done copy your music onto the USB or SD card. I got the music files in Finder under iTunes>iTunes Media>Music and I simply copied across the artist folders I wanted. You can arrange your music any way you like on the USB or SD card. If you look at the tracks once they're copied onto the USB or SD card you'll see the artwork has come across too.
Once that's done you need to resize your artwork so the Golf can see it, as the default size in iTunes is too large. I found a program called Bliss was free and relatively easy to use: www.blisshq.com
Once installed, tell Bliss to use your USB or SD card as the music location and in the "cover art" section tell it to use artwork of a minimum and maximum size of 300x300 (the Golf will read 400x400 but that's not an option in Bliss). Tick "shrink art automatically" and click "apply rules". Bliss will then scan the tracks on your USB and automatically resize all the artwork. This takes some time, depending on how many albums you have. Once it's finished, Bliss will tell you whether each album is "compliant" or "non-compliant". Most, if not all your albums will probably come back as "non-compliant". That's OK, just quickly check by selecting "why?" and make sure there's a green tick next to 300x300. Don't worry that it says "missing cover.jpg", this isn't relevant. Then you're good to go! Bliss can also find missing artwork if you need it to.
Chuck the USB or SD card into the Golf and, voila!