Converting audio files and preserving album artwork with ffmpeg

Question

I am wondering if it is possible to convert audio files which have embedded artwork to MP3 and preserve the artwork using ffmpeg? I have ffmpeg installed on my server, and the conversion to MP3 works fine, including all metadata apart from embedded artwork.

Thanks,

Nick

Answer 1

FFmpeg can handle artwork embedded in mp3s. From the docs on mp3:

The muxer supports writing ID3v2 attached pictures (APIC frames). The pictures are supplied to the muxer in form of a video stream with a single packet. There can be any number of those streams, each will correspond to a single APIC frame. The stream metadata tags title and comment map to APIC description and picture type respectively. See http://id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames for allowed picture types.

...

Attach a picture to an mp3:

ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -i cover.png -c copy -metadata:s:v title="Album cover"
-metadata:s:v comment="Cover (Front)" out.mp3

Merely preserving an attached picture should be a simple matter of copying the picture stream to the mp3, though you don't mention what format you're converting from and some might store artwork differently.