IPod Classic Cover Flow Customization

Cover flow on my ipod classic is arranged alphabetically by artist/album, can it be customized to be arranged in another way? Specifically I want to manually arrange my albums, based on new purchases (i suposse that means: date modified or date added, in computer terminology). I want to see the lastest album I bought first and continuing in that order. Thoughts?

BOSKMD wrote:
I would just be happy if when in cover flow, it showed each album individually, and not the same album cover for each artist thats on the same album. Its very irritating that in itunes, its set correctly, but does not transpire to my ipod.
See http://www.samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp for solutions.
tt2

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IPod Classic Cover Flow

How can I get the cover flow on my iPod Classic to show albums only once in album artist order the same as it does in iTunes. Albums with a number of artist such as those by Jools Holland with a guest artists appear a number of times on my iPod. I want them to appear only once in cover flow like compilations.

mini x wrote:
You need to fill in one "album-artist“ (in „sort-by") for all titles of album.
That approach doesn't really work...
See http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp for solutions.
tt2

IPod Classic Cover Flow Listing

My apologies up front, as I'm new to all this. I just got an iPos Classic and started using iTunes 9 to load it up. I have loaded hundreds of albums and enjoy the "Cover Flow" feature, but I'm baffled by the order. An album by various artists, e.g., "The Concert for New York City," shows up as artist "Adam Sandler," as he is the first artist on the album alphabetically. Every track on the album has got "Album Artist" set to "Various Artists," which is how I want it to show up on Cover Flow, instead of by tune artist. Any way to change this?

You'll also need to set *Part of a Complilation* to Yes. See http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp for more info.
tt2

ITunes and iPod Classic Cover Flow Discrepancies

Hello.
I'm a little impatient and haven't searched through most of the posts to see if this problem has been addressed already. But it's an unusual one (I think).
I got the 160GB iPod and have been able to upload all my music successfully, as well as getting all the cover flow artwork to run smoothly. But now I've been noticing some strange things. When I got a new CD, for example M.I.A.'s 'Kala', I uploaded it onto my iTunes library, and it fell into place nicely next to her other album 'Arular'. But after uploading the new track to my iPod, I can't find 'Kala' next to 'Arular' in cover flow - instead it's way at the end, past the number and symbol titled artists. This was also true for another CD that I recently uploaded, and even more strangely, for some older single tracks that I haven't even listened to yet.
So, basically my iTunes library looks fine in cover flow, but there are a few albums and tracks that aren't in the correct order on my iPod. I've even tried deleting those misplaced albums and tracks from my iPod and then re-uploading them from my iTunes library, but they fall in the same place, at the very very end of the cover flow list.
And, this is just a cover flow problem - in the regular 'Artists' lists, the albums and tracks in question are in their appropriate spot.
Anyone know what might be wrong?
Thanks

It looks that the album, in your example "Kala", is marked like a compilation. In the iPod coverflow, the compilations appears at the end.

White background on iPod classic Cover Flow view

The white background looks a bit pony. Is there any way to change it to black, like the iTunes Cover Flow view?

Many thanks!

IPod Classic Cover Flow Issues

Hi Everyone.
Just got home with my new iPod. Synced it all up and i've noticed in the actual coverflow view on the iPod it's really messy. Loads of covers over and over again. They are mainly from the compilations. I've checked and i've put album artist to something uniform on those albums. But it hasn't helped at all. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you,
John

I posted this in another thread. It might solve your problem:
+I was able to sort coverflow by album by changing the artist names to the album name.+
+For example, my Rhino 70's box set has 7 discs and 150+ artists. It showed up on coverflow as 150+ album covers. A real drag.+
+I highlighted all of the songs in the set and opened the dialog box to change multiple song entries. From there I renamed the artist to "Rhino 70's Box Set", and cleared the multiple disc box. When I clicked OK I ended up with one album cover for the whole set. I entertained the idea of adding the artist names to each individual song so they would show up on playback, but that seemed way too anal for me+
+BTW, I did the same single disc designation for all of my box sets, consolidating all of the discs under one cover. Works for me.+
jt

What's wrong with my iPod's Cover Flow??

I have an iPod Touch 3rd Gen, 32Gb, and recently updated to IOS 5.
Since then, the iPod's cover flow feature is extremely slow, doesn't flow smoothly, and crashes after a few (15-20) seconds.
Today I noted something else: some album covers appear pixelated and blurry, even though HD. Those covers looked just fine until now.
As a side note, I have in use 30 of the 32 Gb (that's a lot of music, I know). Could this be related? I never had those problems before IOS 5, though.
What's wrong with my iPod?
Thanks for your help!

so as I see it people with this problem have 3 options
- Make all of your album art a maximum of 500X500 pixels
- Wait for an IOS update that fixes the problem
- Scrap ipods and buy another brand of music player
Using photoshop to do it with, it took me about an hour to resize, change, and resync all of my 1400 songs(86 albums)

Is there a way of making my iPod's "cover flow" sort in the same way the software can . Artist -- Album by Year . It only seems to do Artist -- by Alphabetical Album . I want it look like it does on the PC .

Is there a way to make the "cover flow" on the iPod match the sort style that I use on the software . I go with Artist -- Album by Release Year . But the ipod seems to only do Artist -- Alphabetical by Album , and then there are a handful of albums oddly out of place . Can it be done ?

Ottonomy, here's what to do.
Connect your iPhone to your computer and open the iPhone's playlist in an iTunes window. Copy/Paste the entire playlist into a new(!) playlist in iTunes, not on your iPhone. Then resort the playlist. After you sort it, Copy/Paste it to a new(!) playlist on your iPhone. Now delete the old playlist on your iPhone and rename the new playlist the name you want it to be (probably the same name as the old playlist).
The downside to this method is that you have to do it every time you add a song to the playlist. Unfortunately, I don't think there's another way.

Ipod nano - cover flow sort order nano 5th gen

hi community,
i'm using different ipods (3rd gen, 4th gen, 5th gen, nano) and i love tagging my mp3s (artist, album, _but not_ album artist)
the sorting in cover flow for my ipod (3rd, 4th gen, touch, _but not 5th gen_) is fine for me: first regular albums then compilations.
with the nano 5th generation sorting is as follows: regular album + compilations mixed - base is artist name ( not fine for me ).
what i want is: first regular albums, than compilations (analogue ipod nano 4th). workaround for this should be: setting of album artist.
my question: do i have to setup my album artist for the desired sort order in nano 5th, and how will be the sort order in cover flow for the future? (e.g. nano 6th gen., + followers (because i don't want to reset my tags weeks later once again ....)
thanks for your reply.
best regards
itunes_gef

Hi Damon et al:
I agree with you that you shouldn't have to screw around with the file names. The iPod should allow you to sort in a variety of ways (e.g. any of the fields in the MP3 metadata, and in forward or reverse order). I'm going to keep checking back on this thread to see if more information comes out of it, but it looks to me like a flaw in the iPod OS, not a user-education issue.
Cheers,
bkengland
P.S. One would hope that the Apple program managers look at these threads for RFE ideas!
iPod Nano Other OS

80g Classic: Cover Flow Not In Alphabetical Order

Actually, most of it is in alphabetical order. But I have an album by "Mandalay" that shows up last (yup, after the "Z" artists) when in cover flow. Also an album by "Ohgr" shows up twice, both with the complete set of songs (1st instance is correct alphabetically, but shows up a 2nd instance way towards the end in cover flow). Plus a couple other artists with the same "alphabetically-challenged" metadata. I've typed and re-typed every single meta-data and tags several times to no avail. I've even deleted them then put them back but the issue persists. Anyone have any idea?

The albums that come up last are probably marked as compilations.
See http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp
tt2

IPOD CLASSIC COVER ART // HELP

OK with the new itunes, ive organized all my album art, and on my itunes its all in order, but on my ipod, the bands have random album art from other bands..which it is not organized on my ipod like on my itunes. any ideas?!
HELP

and i tried to restore it but that didn't work
Why, what happened?
You could try a format of the iPod in Windows. A full format does a check and remap of bad sectors on the iPod hard drive, and you would need to restore the iPod as normal (using the iPod updater) afterward. This can also work when the iPod is recognized by the computer, but not by the updater.
First, put the iPod into forced disk mode.
See: How to put the iPod into disk mode.
On your PC, go "my computer" and right click on the iPod, then choose "format". Ensure the settings are at "default" and that "quick format" is not checked. Now select "format". It will take a while, but when that's finished, restore the iPod using the updater.
To exit forced disk mode, reset the iPod.

Does the iPod follow the iTunes "sort filters" in Cover Flow?

Two quick questions:
1) Is it now generally agreed upon how Cover Flow is sorted on the iPod? (i.e. Is it by +album title+, by artist, or by +album artist+?) Can you change how it's sorted?
2) If you have used the "sorting" tab feature in iTunes when editing song info, (for example, I have "album artist=Foo Fighters" in song info, but I also have album artist Foo Fighters sorting as "A1 Foo Fighters" for various listing reasons to keep it ahead of other album artists), will the iPod know to follow these sorting decisions?
The main reason I ask, is that I am digitizing my collection of 400+ cds, 100 of which are classical, 100 are musicals, 100 are rock, and 100 are other genres. I've had a lot of fun in iTunes with the Sorting tab in the song info box, which has allowed me to really sort my albums the way I want. For a classical album, like Bach's St. Matthew Passion, I leave the actual album title "as is," but then I have the Sorting album box sort this as "Classical, Bach's St. Matthew Passion," so that when I sort by album, all my classical cds show up together, in alphabetical order by album title, then my rock cds, etc. I do the same thing for album artist...I'll insert my own prefix, like "A1" or "Classical" or "Musicals" before the album artist name to make sure the genres stay together, even when I sort by album artist.
I'd like to use the iPod's Cover Flow, so I NEED to know the way the iPod Cover Flow will sort...If it sorts by Album Artist, I'll be much more careful with how I apply Album Artist "sorting" filters to my song info in iTunes. And I need to make REALLY sure that the iPod will actually abide by the iTunes Sorting tab, because otherwise all this tagging work I'm doing is for nothing.

As far as I can tall the tracks are initially sorted by the *Sort Artist* field. If this field doesn't exist it takes the value of the Artist field, with the provio that a leading "The " is ignored. Once grouped by artist the albums are sorted by the *Sort Album* field. Again, if this field doesn't exist it takes the value of the Album field with a leading "The " ignored. In iTunes artist names begining with numerals are listed first but on the iPod they are listed after those starting with A-Z and before the compilations.
When displaying the covers the iPod displays a new cover every time the album name and/or album artist changes. If you have one album by a given artist it should show once, even if there are guest artists listed in the artist field. If you have two albums however you may end up with four covers shown. This can be fixed by setting the *Sort Artist* to the main artist for each track with guests.
When the album is selected every track with the same album name is listed, most obvious if you flip over *Greatest Hits* and find 100+ tracks listed. To fix this you need to give every album a unique name. e.g. append ", Artist" to affected album titles. You can do this invisibly by making this change to the *Sort Album* field but it's worth noting this bug exists in iTunes too and it's probably better done visibly when using other views. The *Sort Album* field comes into it's own however when you want a group of albums displayed in a specific, non-alphabetical order. I have the Hitchhikers Guide radio series which I have reoganised to appear as single albums and set the fields as *Hitchhikers Guide 1*, *Hitchikers Guide 2* etc. to list them in the right order while still displaying the full album title.
Lastly the albums are displayed with the Artist field of the first track rather than the album artist. Looks odd on compilations and where the first track has a guest artist. No fix or workaround that I know of...
It took a while, but every one of my albums is listed in Cover Flow exactly once.
tt2

Cover Flow on iTunes and iPod not syncing properly...help!

When I add an album to my iTunes library, it works fine (i.e. it's grouped properly) in Cover Flow, but when I sync it to my iPod, it doesn't show up properly on my iPod's cover flow. How do I fix this?
I guess I should add that the album has an Album Artist because there are three tracks with different artists. Get my drift? PLEASE HELP!

JulianMauricio wrote:
... it doesn't show up properly on my iPod's cover flow.
It will probably help if we know what it does do.
Is it:
1. you turn the iPod to landscape so that covers display, but there is a problem here?
2. while in portarit mode, the cover is displayed - but in your case - what?
3. something else?
Oh, and by the way, 21 views (from other users, not trained Apple staff) in 1 hour and four minutes - probably not from everywhere in the world! (Take note of where I am.) It can take a day or two before someone who knows the answer reads your post - usually after they have finished work, getting home, eating, etc etc.
Phil

Cover flow with ipod

I just downloaded itunes 7 for windows, amd running windows XP and I have an Ipod nano.
cover flow works fine with my libarary on my computer, but I am not able to use it when I play music from my ipod through itunes on my computer. Is this not an option or am I doing something wrong.
help?

Well actually you've always been able to play music via your iPod on the computer.
The point of being able to do this is if you have a situation in which you plug your iPod into a computer other than your own (or the one the iPod is associated with) that doesn't have any of your music on it, like a computer at work or in a school computer lab, etc. I use this all the time at the office.
It would be neat to see cover flow on the iPod, but I'm fairly certain that would require some 3d graphics acceleration, which iPods don't quite have yet. Hopefully once they get to that point, they'll be able to do fullscreen visualizations :-D.

Cover Flow sorting is wacky (not a compilations issue).

I just purchased a 120GB Classic with the hope that I'd be able to browse my collection of music by album artist. After all but giving up hope, it looks like Cover Flow is almost doing it (on purpose or not, I don't know).
Here's the issue: I tag my .mp3s so that on tracks with multiple artists, they're separated by a "/" -- so, for example, on my Aesop Rock album, "None Shall Pass", track 6 has an artist field of, "Aesop Rock/Breeze Brewin/Cage". I always include the artist in the artist field before I put any of the guest artists.
When I sync this to my iPod, the Cover Flow only shows this as one album (there are four tracks scattered throughout the album with different artists). If Cover Flow was sorting purely by artist, it would have multiple covers. So I'm thinking that I figured out a way to get what I want.
Except the iPod seems to randomly decide which albums it wants to treat this way -- some, such as the Kid Rock album "Cocky" (the one with "Picture" with Sheryl Crow"), are shown as two separate albums in Cover Flow. This doesn't make any sense to me.
All the "sort" fields are blank for all the files, so that can't be what's doing it. If I go under the Artist menu, it shows all the artists just as they're written in the tags.
So what's the deal here? How does Cover Flow really work?
[EDIT] Nevermind, I figured it out. Apparently when you sort by artist, it will give me all the songs with just the artist, and then give me the songs with that artist and any other artist (the slash comes after all the letters alphabetically). So if the artist has more than one album, it doesn't group them together by album.
I guess the "sort field" is the only way to fix it for now.
Message was edited by: Psyact

Using the sort field to try to force things together doesn't quite work, and certainly not when the album artist has more than one album with guests. I think you'll also find there are some enumeration issues in the album menu which may cause the wrong cover to be displayed as you progress through the library. See my recent post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums for a somewhat long, but hopefully comprehensive, exposition of the issues.
tt2

IPod Classic Cover Flow Customization

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