I finally bought my first iPod last night, a 120 gig classic. My question is when ripping CD's to itunes, why does it rarely import the album artwork? It seems like 90% of them I have to import individually. Not a big issue, just kind of annoying.

iTunes will only download album artwork for songs that it can find in the iTunes Store. even though the album you have might even be on the iTunes store, it may be classified as a different genre, etc which messes it up.

if you use a mac, this is a lifesaver due to it being extremely easy to use:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/music/amazonalbumart.html

Thanks for explaining why it does that. I use a PC unfortunately.

What if the album picture isnt showing up on itunes, but you have a .jpg of the album cover, is there a way upload the image in itunes?.... I dont know, on the older itunes, like ver 4 or 5 or something like that. Itunes would show album covers of nearly anything, even covers of some way underground hip hop stuff that isnt even available on the itunes store . I was dumbfounded as to how the older itunes can find covers of some hard to find albums on the internet, but the newer versions dont

you can add the album art by right clicking the song, then 'get info' (if on a mac) then there is an album art tab

i can't stand itunes!
it isn't easy to use.
my sis in law has a mac and itunes works so much better on that

i hate itunes but am forced to use it. It's so frustrating to use. I've learned how to use it but it pisses me off everytime. F itunes.

I have a PC. Seems like as time goes by, iTunes is less and less reliable about automatically downloading the album art. A few releases back, it was automatially downloading the art when I imported a cd...Now it does so only occasionally. Not sure if it's a bug in later releases or if it's intentional on Apple's part. Now I have to run 'Get Album Artwork' on the Advanced menu about 3/4 of the time after the disc finishes being imported..

Go to the Apple site's download section and install an app called "GimmeSomeTune." It does a much better job of importing album artwork than iTunes itself. I believe it crawls Google Images. Occasionally, it errs, which is easily manually fixed, but
the success rate is much better than iTunes'. GimmeSomeTune will also search for and embed song lyrics, if you tell it to.

Enjoy your new iPod!

how are you forced to use it? there are tons of other choices besides the iPod and iTunes for digital music management

I prefer to individually search for album artwork.
A lot of itunes covers are not the original album artwork or crappy quality.
I aim for around 500x500 pixels and up (if i can find them that size)
Search Google images or Google Blog search, dump into iphoto, boost colour and sometimes re-crop.
Then, as legoomba said, 'Select All' album songs, hit 'Get Info' and paste artwork into the 'Artwork' field. This way it replaces artwork on all songs.
I back up all the album art with my Mp3's.
A pain i know, but i'm picky like that.

If you listen to a lot of music that are not that commercially available, its best to just go to Google images and search for the artist/album name. Just drag the images in your relevant "selected" songs. I also suggest that you at least rip the CDs at 192kps or 320kps if you like to play your mp3 on a big stereo system. Especially if you have lors of dance music, heavy bass type of songs.

You're experiencing the same headache I had. The iTunes store will only sync artwork for the exact same artist/title. So any slight misspelling or odd wording will throw things off. So if you have something like "The Departed" and you want album artwork it needs to be "The Departed (Music from the Motion Picture)". Otherwise, you get nothing.

Also whoever manages iTunes artwork... They have done a better job of getting better/larger/clearer artwork. But sometimes the images are off. So if I have a particular "dog" of a cover, I clear the album artwork and have iTunes resync.

Note to anyone who wants a big idea and has a pile of $$$: There's no one good source for artwork for albums or books. I work on a site that farms images off of Amazon for their publication, and it amazes me how crappy some of the artwork is. Blurry JPEGs or just low res crap. Ditto with iTunes covers. If everything is going digital, something like this being so crappy is hard to believe/understand. Google should have their own large repository if images, but they don't. Maddening.

Could not find another thread about iTunes so I chose this one. I'm currently downloading a rentable movie in HD from the iTunes store. It's my first time so I'm not sure how it quite works? Why is it downloading to my computer if I can only watch it once in a 24 hr period? It's looking like it's going to take 9 hours! 430 mb of 2.93 gb so far. Do I just delete the file when I can no longer watch it or will it go away on it's own? Man remind me never to download a movie in HD again...

^^
With rentals..you have 30 days to watch them but once you click 'play' then you only have 24 hours to complete the video. Which kind of blows but for me I don't mind.

They will delete itself from your computer. Same thing with an ipod touch..if you transfer it from your computer to your touch...the video will delete once it's over.

OK cool thanks bryce. I was thinking I was going to have this chunk of useless 3GB lying around. Although I'm sure I could have deleted it if it didn't go away. I had no idea what I was getting myself into by downloading a rental. NEVER going to do that again! 9.99 for a rented movie with limited terms like that (and a 9 hr download time!). I mean I want to watch Goon but not that bad.