Image file from .mp3

[damnim]

I'm looking for a program that can extract image files from .mp3s.

If anyone knows of one I would appreciate the answer.

Must extract image file into a .bmp or .jpg.
Must be able to extract from multiple .mp3 files and save to folder.

:P

[nfl2k2]

don't ask stupid questions, please.

[damnim]

No question is ever stupid only stupid people don't ask!!

As to your ignorance I am seeking this to compile music DVDs with album covers that display during the playback of the song.

It's obvious you are the one in need of some substantial amounts of Vitamin C.

[nfl2k2]

I'm looking for a program that can extract image files from .mp3s.

hmm, last i checked .mp3 files didn't contain any form of "pictures" in them... stupid question.

I am seeking this to compile music DVDs with album covers that display during the playback of the song.

that makes sense, and can actually be done. i use a program called "showbiz" to create files in the form of .mpg, .mpg2, or it can export to dvd.

[damnim]

I appreciate the reply and see now that I should have been more clear.

My .mp3 files actually have images embedded in them by using MusicMatch. I have literally thousands of .mp3 files with the album art embedded into the .mp3 file. MusicMatch displays the art at playback of the .mp3 file. However, when MusicMatch displays the art the image file is assigned a number and placed in a temp folder and deleted when the program closes.

Although I could grab the files while they are in the temp folders it would be time consuming to rename thousands of files.

I learned a lesson "backup backup backup" I had all of my album art in a seperate folder until it was obliterated due to a system crash.

[EaBa]

I don't know much about music match, but I seriously doubt that the images are embedded in the file, as whoevever originally made the file would have to do it, and don't of a prgram that can, or who would waste time/space doing it. It sounds like what's going is that there is a cd database (similar to imdb, but for cd's) That this program can grab files from. Just find the album art online.

[damnim]

There are programs that can extract media files from .exe and .dll files on the web I haven't been able to find one that can extract the same from .mp3 files.

The image is actually embedded within the file I know this for absolute certainty.

[EaBa]

*sigh* listen, I'm now just going to say your wrong until you give me some real proof of what your talking about. I will say that it certainly is possible to embed pics in the mp3 file, but nobody does do it, and nobody probably ever will(which is why you can't find a program). The fact is the only way that your mp3 would have images embedded in them would be if you ripped the mp3 and embedded the mp3. But you haven't and probably got them from some p2p prog, which is why I can say with certainty there are no images in the mp3, so just find it yourself on the net. Just do a google picture search, or look for that cd db I was talking about.

[damnim]

MusicMatch jukebox which is a program that plays .mp3 files will embed the image file into the .mp3 file.

I know this to be a fact because the size of the .mp3 file enlarges and there is no possible way the album art can be displayed unless it is there.

I thought at first it was linking to the original .jpg file or getting it from the internet also but found out this was not so. I removed the .jpg file and disconnected from the internet so there would be no way to connect to the image file. It is then that I checked the size of the .mp3 file and found it to be larger.

but nobody does do it

This is presumptious on your part because if this were the case the MusicMatch Programmers would never have programmed this into MusicMatch. Having the album art displayed while playing back the song is a nice additive to the enjoyment and also a reminder to where and who the song came from.

so just find it yourself on the net

One of the purposes of a forum is to aid in the securing of help and knowledge. It is again presumptious on your part that I haven't done a search for such a program. If I would have found it I wouldn't be asking for help.

One last point; your words suggest I am Computer illiterate which is not the case and I find it to be your case.

It would be wise to engage brain before putting fingers into gear.

[pacmania_2001]

This is in fact possible to include a picture file with the MP3 although it is rarely used.

It is a feature of the ID3v2 tags that are used to name/describe the file. A couple of plugins to view them are available for Winamp. I used to have one but found it pretty pointless so deleted it.

To answer your question though I dont believe it is possible to extract the picture any other way then like you are already doing with the temporary files.

[damnim]

pacmania_2001

I was afraid that was going to be the case. Oh well, I guess I'll do it the manual way.

Thanks

8)

[liquid217]

reading this thread got my noodle a crankin and i came up with an idea. Its not a total solution by no means, but it might be a good starting point for you to look into. It ocurred to me that the jpeg data is more than likely stored squentually in the mp3 file, and you could write a simple program to read the data and output it to a file. Now... i have no experience with jpeg headers (although all you would need to do is just open a hex editor and look at the file), but if you knew what the data or flag was in the mp3 that lets you know where the jpg data begins, you could write a program that separates it for you. below i have saome sample code of a perl program that does something like what i would think you would need to do. If you have any experience with perl (its really not that hard to learn), you may be able to figure it out. The below code, when executed (just copy and paste it into notepad and save with a .pl extention), this code will scan the directory it is in, and split all the mp3s in that directory into a .jpg, beginning from the $pattern that it finds. hope this will give you an idea what to look into.
btw, you can find a perl interprater for win32 at http://www.activestate.com/

#!/usr/bin/perl

#the pattern for it to search for to determine where the jpg data begins
$pattern =join('', chr(255), chr(216), chr(255), chr(224), chr(00), chr(16), chr(74), chr(70));

#read the contents of the current directory
opendir THEDIR, ".";
@allfiles = readdir THEDIR;
closedir THEDIR;

#filter out only the .mp3 files
foreach $r(@allfiles) {
if ($r =~ /.mp3/) {push (@list,$r)}
}

#read in the binary data of each mp3 into $data
foreach $i(@list) {
open (INF, $i);
binmode(INF);
@rawdata = <INF>;
close (INF);
$data = join('',@rawdata);

#scan and split the data where the pattern is matched
($unneeded,$jpeg) = split(/$pattern/, $data);

#write the split data to a separate file with a .jpg extention
if ($jpeg) {
$jpegname=$i;
$jpegname =~ s/.mp3/.jpg/g;
open (OUTF, ">$jpegname");
binmode(OUTF);
print OUTF (join'',$pattern,$jpeg);
close (OUTF);
push(@total,$jpegname);
}
}

print join ("\n", @total);
print "\nfiles created....press enter to exit\n";
$waitforkey = <STDIN>;

edit: i modified it slightly so it will look for the actual jpeg header, this might work by itself (i don't have one of these mp3s to test it properly)

[liquid217]

btw, for all those superior perl coders out there, please don't be too harsh on my lame perl coding skills

[EaBa]

All right, I'm going to swallow my pride on this one. I actually researched the thing(which I should have done from the beginning), and apparantly your right with the image actually embeded in the mp3. It's pretty interesting, but seems pretty worthless to me. Anyways, you talked about wanting to display it on a DVD, but is the resolution of the pics they embed going to look all right when it get's streched to DVD resolution? I saw the screen shot of musicmatch displaying the album, but it could just be a resize. Since it stores them temporarly, my suggestion to you, is to maybe just make up a playlist, and put the songs in the order you want them on the DVD, and then just go through, and only play like a second on each song, so that you can get the art. Then when you make your DVD, since you said that it names them in sequential order, you shouldn't have to worry about renaming them, or looking at each file. Anyways, no hard feelings I hope, and hope the DVD things works out.

[sterno]

If you want to do it in perl you can install a module to natively handle ID3v2 tags, including the embedded JPEG data. I know that one is available from CPAN (somewhere under MP3::Tag), but I'm not sure if ActiveState has a PPM version.

[damnim]

Now we are cooking!!!!

liquid217,
I appreciate the brainwork and tho I am not into perl you set my mind off into a different track. By using my trusty MS Visual Basic which I have a small project that will read and extract image files, I can modify it to pull the images out of the .mp3s.

Thanks Much!!

EaBa
I thought about the image size before I ventured into this. MusicMatch doesn't change the pixel dimensions of the file but does compress it. However, the quality of output is excellent. The image files are 300x300 on the average which centered on a 720x480 letterboxed screen with a drop shadow added and some text looks really sharp to me. The picture isn't distorted at all because there is no change in picture pixel size. I put jackets unto all my DVD's and this is when I learned this could work. I have already compiled 4 Disc music compilation of cd's into a DVD format and it really is cool. The reason for the images are some of the image files are very very hard to comeby or are obsolete because some of what I have dates back to the early 1930's. I want to get all this archived on DVD which I am sure you can appreciate.

Thanks!!