Why is my 3GS showing some incorrect album artwork when it is correct on computer?

Question

When using my ipod on my 3GS I have noticed that I sometimes have the incorrect artwork displayed. For example I have 3 Nickelback albums which on my computer shows the correct artwork but on my iphone either doesn't show the artwork or is showing Elton John albums!!! Seems a bit of a strange glitch. Anyone else have this problem or know how to solve it?

Answer 1

I've always assumed those silly strings were recording the results of the gapless playback analysis but whatever they're for it would be better if they were stored in a spare field.
Windows Media Player/Windows Explorer may be less fussy on embedded artwork formats than iTunes or the media file might actually be missing the art but the Windows Explorer cache (Thumbs.db) still shows it. You say removing-reimporting doesn't help but I assume you can still paste new artwork in and have it remembered. If so you might want to use the following tool to at least take some of the effort out of searching out which tracks you need to repair.
*How to find tracks without artwork*
To find all the tracks without artwork so that you can update them you can try http://www.stum.de/itunes-find-tracks-without-artwork/ for Windows or http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts13.php for Macs. Use Google, Amazon, Discogs etc. to locate relevant jpeg images. Ideally these should be square, 320x320 pixels or above and borderless to give the best results in the various menus. If you have artwork for some tracks of an album, but not others, select a track with artwork, right-click (Option-Click for Macs) on the art & click copy, then select all the tracks of the album, use CTRL-I or Command-I to *Get Info* and then paste the image into the artwork box.
I say 320x320 because I believe (from using TouchCopy) that it's the size used in the iPod cache so if you're going to crop or resize you might as well work to that size. Otherwise 200x200 is probably good enough.
tt2