Multiple Album Covers in files

[glassdesigns]

I am showing multiple album covers in some files.  Some as many as 1000+ covers.  Where are these coming from and how do I get rid of them?  MusicBee is slow to open and I suspect it has to do with all these album covers.

[frankz]

How are your music files organized (each album in it's own folder / all files in one big folder / etc), what is the order that you set MB to look for art for your music files (Edit->Edit Preferences->Tags(1)...artwork), and how do you actually store album art for your music (embedded / folder.jpg / etc)?

[glassdesigns]

One folder with sub folders for artists. Album art is embbeded.

[frankz]

...what is the order that you set MB to look for art for your music files (Edit->Edit Preferences->Tags(1)...artwork)...

If all of your artwork is embedded and you have set this list appropriate to that, having multiple art for each song would indicate multiple artwork is embedded in each file.

If you have this set to look for formats of art other than embedded, then multiple artwork indicates you have random jpg (etc.) files in your music folders. If you don't want to use them, you should delete them or set MB to ignore their presence.

[glassdesigns]

Yes the artwork is embedded in each file.  What I want to know is how is possible for over 1000 artwork photos to get embedded and how do I get rid of them without having to delete one at a time.  I'm not sure I will live long enough to finish that task.

[hiccup]

Yes the artwork is embedded in each file.

Do I understand it correctly that you have a lot of files that have thousands of artwork files embedded?
How the hell did that happen? What software have you been using that may have caused that?

I have no suggestion at the moment on how to use MusicBee to solve this.
I suggest you take a look at/do a search on: mp3tag, mp3diags, Picard.
I'm pretty sure these tools can solve/repair this.

[frankz]

I guess anything is possible if you misconfigure the tools you use badly enough, but I am still dubious that 1000 images have gotten embedded in multiple files.  You can set MB to search for "missing artwork" and automatically embed it, but that would not embed 1000 images it would take files with 0 images and give them 1 image and then not affect them again.

I think you should pull up one of these files in the tag editor (shift+enter) and then go to the artwork tab and hover over each of the the pictures (or as many as you can in a sitting) and see how they're really stored.  Any time anyone here has come with this problem, it's been an issue of rogue image files sitting in folders.  

Or open the directory where the files are in mp3tag and display the artwork column and see how many are actually embedded.

I don't think there's a way to delete them all at once in MB (I may be wrong - I've never mistakenly embedded 1000 images in a music file before so I'm kind of flying blind) but I know if you go the mp3tag route you can right click the displayed image and select remove cover and then save.  That will wipe it so you can start over.  If you select all the problem files and do this on the box where the image would be, it will clear them all out.

[glassdesigns]

thanks for trying, I will try your suggestion.

[hiccup]

thanks for trying, I will try your suggestion.

I'm still curious, do you have any idea, and could you share with us what software may have caused this very rare issue?

[glassdesigns]

MB is the only music software I have installed.  I don't get it either.

[hiccup]

MB is the only music software I have installed.  I don't get it either.

So the artwork 'corruption' was already there when you imported the files.
(it's probably better not to elaborate on how you acquired these files ;-)

[glassdesigns]

No, this happened recently

[hiccup]

No, this happened recently

The only person that could and should guess what recently happened to your files, on your system, is probably you.
MusicBee itself wouldn't add thousands of images to files.
Perhaps you are using some plugins or 3rd party software you forgot about?

Hopefully you can solve it and repair your files with the suggestions provided here.