How to store images in mp3 files using eyeD3

(This post refers to version 0.7.1 of eyeD3)

eyeD3 is a powerful python utility for manipulating id3 tags from the command line, but it also exposes these function as a python module.

Unfortunately the documentation on the site on how to use it as a python module is sparse, although it covers most use cases:

import eyed3

audiofile = eyed3.load("song.mp3")
audiofile.tag.artist = u"Nobunny"
audiofile.tag.album = u"Love Visions"
audiofile.tag.title = u"I Am a Girlfriend"
audiofile.tag.track_num = 4

audiofile.tag.save()

Information on how to access images are not readily available. But being open source, you can look at the source code to find out:

Example on how to append an image

import eyed3

# load tags
audiofile = eyed3.load("song.mp3")

# read image into memory
imagedata = open("test.jpg","rb").read()

# append image to tags
audiofile.tag.images.set(3,imagedata,"image/jpeg",u"you can put a description here")

# write it back
audiofile.tag.save()

The constant 3 means Front Cover, 4 means Back Cover, 0 for other.
The complete list can found at eyed3/id3/frames.py

"image/jpeg" is the mime type.
u"...” is a description, which must be provided in a unicode string. EasyTAG e.g. stores the original file name in this field.


Example on how to access the images

import eyed3

# load tags
audiofile = eyed3.load("song.mp3")

# iterate over the images
for imageinfo in audiofile.tag.images:
   ...

Amoung the infos available via imageinfo are:
 .image_data - image binary data
 .mime_type  - e.g. “image/jpeg”
 .picture_type - 3, 4, 0, see above
 .description - the description field

You can access the imageinfo also like this:

audiofile.tag.images[x]

Where x is the index into an array starting with 0. Eventually you will get an out of range exception.