[SOLVED] Whats the easiest way to add album art to a file with ffmpeg?
Have not been successful with this, best Ive been able to do was add an image to just the thumbnail view of the file but otherwise just a horrible pictureless checkerboard placeholder shows throughout the file during playback
Edit: [used Shotcut] discovered if import the cover jpeg in with the other file(s) and drag it to the playback window (it will be checkerboard pattern if no image) it embeds the album art thruough the entire output file.
10 replies
Use Picard from musicbrainz. Its Foss and available on most Linux distros. Even windoze/mac, idk, most likely it'd be there. The GUI is self helpful or maybe watch a YouTube video explaining it. Otherwise try searching for a album tagger application, I remember there was something like Kid3, but Picard is more than enough.
Thanks for the recommendation, I will add it to my arsenal just in case.
Discovered yesterday (experimenting with Shotcut, its also FOSS) that if I add the cover in with the audio/video files I import to merge and export, I can drag the imported album art to the play window and it includes it to the entire output so the problem is officially solved.
Shotcut is amazing
Does it have to be ffmpeg? If you need a CLI option, I ended up using eyeD3
Can be anything, whatever's easiest and most reliable
I use Mp3tag. It’s free on Windows, but $30 on Mac. I guess I could have opened the Windows version in Wine, but I paid. Been using the tool for over a decade on Windows. It’s good stuff. Not sure I can recommend it at that price if you can find something that does it for free.
How do you make it apply to the whole file during playback?
I might be referring to actually needing to add it to the duration of the file and might need a video editor for it...it worked for the thumbnail but i think i want it to actually be embed in the playback
I want the album art to be part of the playback so its not just blank
Yeah, you weren’t clear on file type, so I assumed audio.
You want to make a video with a static image like you see on YouTube? That’s probably a job for mkvtoolnix, which is free on all three computer platforms, but there’s a bit of a learning curve.
I might have figured it out. Using Shotcut
The other question I had was if I want to convert an mp3 to a video file like mp4 containing the audio from it, how do you best do that without lossiness? The mp3 is 320 kbps
I assume if you just straight up convert it there will be compression, should I use Apple lossless to encode it or something? Should probably try it both ways and see if i can tell the difference
If you have the original source and you want the highest lossy quality (I'm assuming because you didn't say MP3, you said mp3 320), you should use the AAC low complexity setting (I'm using fre:ac to rip CDs) and jack the bitrate up all the way. It'll be slightly bigger than the 320k mp3, assuming the same album art, but the quality will be much higher.
You can use mp3 as an audio track in an mkv (and possibly other container files), though. I don't see why you couldn't. MP4 is just straight up video. I'm not sure what plays MP4 but not MKV, so I'd just use MKV with the audio track you already have.
You can also use ALAC (Apple Lossless) if you like, or FLAC, if you really want that level of quality. I'm not 100% sure MKV supports them.
Lastly, keep in mind MP4 is a video format. MP3 and M4A (or AAC), ALAC, and FLAC, are audio formats. MKV is a container format, so basically you dump a bunch of streams in it (audio, video, subtitles, chapters, etc.) and they just all come together.
Happy to buy it if it solves the problem.
I should be more resourceful but ive spent enough time on the problem I need it resolved.