Melco N1A: AIFF Transfers and Cover Art

1. You said your cover art was manually dragged/pasted into the iTunes "Artwork" tab of the "album" after all the tracks were copied.   Where is the cover art is stored on your MAC Computer?   Is the cover art stored within your album folders or in another folder?

2. What software will be used to transfer the files from your Mac to the Melco?  Does this transfer program transfer BOTH the album content and the cover art and store it in the correct folder for your Melco?   Does the transfer program know where the cover art is stored on your MAC?   Please note my Aurender DID NOT transfer the cover art.

3. How does your Melco identify the cover art info?   For example, for me, my Aurender needs the cover art coded as “FOLDER.JPG”.  Your Melco may need the cover art named something else (call and ask them if you do not know).

Please note that iTunes does NOT STORE the album cover art within the song folder but "HIDES" it in another encrypted and hidden folder.  When I copied my albums from my MAC to my Aurender server, it did NOT copy the cover art information.

I used Doug Scripts to extract the album cover art to the same folder my albums were in. See:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=savealbumartjpeg

You need to download the Extract to Folder.jpg Script from Doug Scripts (cost is $1.99).  The Script run process is very easy but it takes time depending on the number of albums.   This script is required since it STORES the album cover art image in the CORRECT location and includes the correct name (Folder.jpg for me) for handling by the Aurender (or your Melco).   Please check the Script for any updates. The Extract to Folder.jpg Script provides some options for using a different name.  You NEED to determine what cover art file name is needed for your Melco Server (very important so the cover art can be displayed).  

Please read the "Save Album Art as folder.jpg version 3.6" instructions carefully. You must set up a new folder named Scripts (within the iTunes library) so the script can run from within iTunes.  iTunes will NOT let this script run for many albums.  I suggest you test with 4-8 albums at a time and see what happens (adjust as needed). The Script runs very fast.

If some of your albums do NOT have cover art, you need to manually add the album metadata (other automated options may be available).  You Google the album name plus “CD Image”, find the image, move it to the Desktop, change its name to Folder.jpg (whatever you need) and move it to the Aurender (your Melco) song folder (be careful to place it in the right location after the last song).  Your app will be much easier to use if your albums have cover art.  This process is not hard but take some time depending on the number of albums. A good estimate is 2-4 minutes per album (my times).

Unfortunately, I had to determine most of these instructions myself to compete my album transfer including the album cover art (my dealer was not very helpful).  If you are unclear, please ask for help.   I had to delete my transferred albums on the Aurender TWICE before I got it right.  My instructions above should ensure you get it right the first time.  Please do not rush through this process to ensure your process is correct.

When I finished transferring my albums to the Aurender (your Melco),  I immediately backed up my Aurender files to my LaCie hard drive & also to my Seagate hard drive.  I spent too much time building my album database so I backed it up twice. 

As a test, I ripped 5 CD’s to a USB Flash drive, ran the “Extract to Folder.JPG” Script in iTunes to extract the missing album cover art for these albums.  Two of these albums were missing album cover art so I used Google search to find the album cover art as I described above.   The album transfers to the Aurender worked perfectly.  

You might need contact Melco to get answers to these questions and to verify the file transfer process fro your MAC to your Melco.  I had to contact Aurender several times for help.   My cover art transfer instructions above were developed for my Aurender Server and I am assuming that they also will apply to your Melco Server but please verify this. 

I hope the above helps.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  

Thanks for the reply, there's a lot to digest. 

Album art is in a sep. folder from the music files but within iTunes folder. The file names are just letters, numbers and not viewable. 

I believe that Melco uses their own software (Linux based) for importing files built in to the OS and is menu driven. Their manual is pretty simplified and they spend more time talking about importing from a CD than anything else. they do mention drag and drop of files from computer to the Melco over the network but it's so simplified I figure they must be leaving things out. Also, you can use a USB HDD as an import source as well. 

On the third question re: how Melco handles cover art, I  don't have a real clue. There's mention of it re: FLAC files and a blurb re: cover art transferable but I'm not sure in what context they refer.

I have seen mention recently of the "dougscripts" for cover art retrieval. Thanks for the tip. Sine I don't own a server/player system as yet I can only guess at what will/won't work. I am hoping for a Melco owner reply!