Problem with some album art on SD card

RichardT

RichardT

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I seem to have a very specific problem with some of my album art. Wonder if anyone has any experience of this - using Mp3tag.
I have assembled all my music in folders and used Mp3tag to get the album art and embed it. All seems to work in the MMI and shows the album art fine, except for one or two albums.
Now - for most albums I used the Mp3tag option Tag sources - to find the album art from the album details and embed it.
But some (older) albums it couldn't find the artwork, so I searched via google, found the artwork, downloaded to the PC, and resized if necessary to 500 x 500 max. File size was always less than 100Kb, so well within the limits.
Then I used the Mp3tag option Actions (Quick) > Import cover from file.
This seems to work fine and the artwork shows up in Mp3tag, and in Windows Media Player if the file is played.
But files imported in this way do not seem to show up in MMI. I am not 100% sure that all artwork imported in this way doesn't show - but I suspect so.
In one case I even scanned the album cover when I couldn't find it at all on the internet and this doesn't show up either.
I have looked and looked and just cannot find any obvious difference between artwork found by Mp3tag and that which I have found myself.

Does anyone have any ideas. This is not a big deal really - but it really bugs me that I cannot figure out why this does not work.
 
You can embed the album art in several formats...jpg, png, etc... Maybe the mmi can only do jpg and your scans are not?
Clutching at straws though....
 
Hmmm, if you can put a mp3 that doesn't work on google drive/Dropbox I'll have a quick look...these things anger my OCD and I can't not have a go.

RichT
 
Try just dragging and dropping the JPG onto the album art cover box and see if that makes any difference, although TBH I can't see why it would.
 
I found that on mine album art didn't work for compilations. I've no idea why not. I worked around it by setting them not to be marked as compilations in iTunes, but setting the "album artist" to "Compilation" to give the same effect in terms of sorting.
I've not had any other problems with album art.
 
Did you delete any existing album art before you put the new one in? It's possible to have multiple art files within a track, so if the first one is too big...

Actually, one thing that I remember confusing Bliss (which I used to sort out my album art) was hidden system art files in some of the album folders. Assuming that you're on a Windows machine, go into the Control Panel and then Folder Options and untick the option to "Hide Protected Operating System Files" and then see if there's anything in those folders which might be causing the problems. I had multiple instances of "AlbumArtSmall", "AlbumArtLarge" or somesuch.
 
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Try opening the image file with paint, directly save it, and then add it to the mp3.

If not upload the mp3s to somewhere like Dropbox or Google drive and I'm sure someone could help
 
AJB said:
I found that on mine album art didn't work for compilations. I've no idea why not. I worked around it by setting them not to be marked as compilations in iTunes, but setting the "album artist" to "Compilation" to give the same effect in terms of sorting.
I've not had any other problems with album art.
Click to expand...

I think the ones causing a problem are actually compilations. Do I understand from your description above that the mp3’s are in a folder (named for the album) but then edit the meta data so that artist = "Compilation" on all tracks?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "not marked as compilations in iTunes". I did use iTunes to rip the majority of the CDs, but they are just folders named for albums within folders named for artists (or a name I made up to cope with any compilations)
Hope that's clear. Thanks for all the suggestions. I do intend to carefully prepare some examples and post in Dropbox. But the sun's shining today, so it's clean the car this morning and go for a spin this afternoon! Priorities!!
 
RichardT said:
I think the ones causing a problem are actually compilations. Do I understand from your description above that the mp3’s are in a folder (named for the album) but then edit the meta data so that artist = "Compilation" on all tracks?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "not marked as compilations in iTunes". I did use iTunes to rip the majority of the CDs, but they are just folders named for albums within folders named for artists (or a name I made up to cope with any compilations)
Click to expand...
iTunes has a tick box somewhere in its properties for "is compilation" or something like that. It seems to be automatically set when ripping compilation CDs. That causes iTunes to arrange it under a "compilations" folder on disc instead of putting each track under its own artist's folder. I guess it probably writes something into the mp3's meta data too.

I found that none of my compilations had album art working in the car, even though I'd resized the jpegs etc.. To work around it I opened up iTunes, selected all the tracks in those albums, and unticked the "is compilation" box (or whatever it's called).

That would have made iTunes arrange the tracks under separate folders for each artist on disc, which I obviously didn't want, but the "album artist" property in iTunes gets around that. If you specify "album artist" then that's used for sorting on disc instead of artist. It's normally useful where there's a track that's "artist featuring other artist", but by setting album artist to the main artist of the album then they're all stored in that folder.

I bodged the compilations into a single "compilation" folder, by setting their "album artist" to "compilation". That way iTunes thinks they're all to be stored under the folder for an artist called "compilation", which is pretty much the same as when the "is compilation" box was ticked and it automatically put them in a folder it had created called "compilations".

I've absolutely no idea why having that box ticked stopped the album art working in the car though. Either iTunes must set some meta data which confuses the car, or it must embed the album art in a different way. Weird though...

Hope that makes a bit more sense?
 
I have tried deleting the hidden files but that made no difference.
So I tried the following test:
  • Made a test folder
  • Copied a track (whose album art does display on MMI)
  • Made a duplicate of that track in the same folder
  • Used mp3tag to change the art in the duplicate to an image that does not display
NB - Artist tag is the same on both tracks

Result is that the duplicate track with the troublesome album art does not display
The original one does show the art.

I have put in Dropbox a folder (Audi test) containing the test folder with the two tracks and also the problem image.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aeippzio0d9i6sb/AAAykrKvwj2Xvf6CtJJwuOFaa?dl=0

If anyone has any ideas I would be delighted.
 
I'm pretty sure that the iTunes 'Compilation' setting isn't a proper MP3 flag. Could be that it's confusing things? I've recently switched to MediaMonkey to manage my music as iTunes has made a bit of a hash of it recently. It was really interesting to see how iTunes configured things versus a "neutral" music manager.
 
Neither of your 2 tracks on drop box have that "compilation" flag, so it's not that.

I think it's your jpeg, not the way you're adding it.

I've taken your rejoice_test, removed the artwork in iTunes, then added one of my artwork jpegs and the car displays it fine.

With your rejoice (which had working artwork before), I've removed the arwork in iTunes and added the artwork from your dropbox. The car won't display that one... I added them in exactly the same way, so it must be the jpeg. I've no idea what's up with it though...
 
I've resized your picture from 300x299 to 299x299 in Office Picture Manager (just to get it to generate a new jpeg, not that the size is the problem), then re-added it as the artwork in iTunes, and it displays fine in my car.

So it's something about your jpeg that the car doesn't like, and making a minor edit in a picture editing program seems to turn it into a jpeg that the car does like.

It'd be interesting to know what it is about that picture though...
 
AJB said:
I've resized your picture from 300x299 to 299x299 in Office Picture Manager (just to get it to generate a new jpeg, not that the size is the problem), then re-added it as the artwork in iTunes, and it displays fine in my car.

So it's something about your jpeg that the car doesn't like, and making a minor edit in a picture editing program seems to turn it into a jpeg that the car does like.

It'd be interesting to know what it is about that picture though...
Click to expand...


I have some artwork on some albums and others no artwork....show up on the MMI display, a mix of purchases and my own albums.

Are you saying if I add my own jpeg as the album Art in iTunes they will show up?
 
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illingworth22 said:
I have some artwork on some albums and others no artwork.....A mix of purchases and my own albums. Are you saying if I add my own jpeg as the album Art they will show up?
Click to expand...
Yes, as long as they're not too big. For the normal basic MMI the limit is 500x500 pixels, and 100KB. It's bigger for the upgraded MMI, but I can't remember the limit.

Richard is having some other weird problem, though, where some of his jpegs aren't showing up even though they're not too big.
 
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AJB said:
Yes, as long as they're not too big. For the normal basic MMI the limit is 500x500 pixels, and 100KB. It's bigger for the upgraded MMI, but I can't remember the limit.

Richard is having some other weird problem, though, where some of his jpegs aren't showing up even though they're not too big.
Click to expand...


Ahh I see.... It is strange how iTunes functions! I have MMI and Connect with B&O. You would think Audi would have got this right from Day !
 
veeeight said:
Also, iTunes now converts all embedded album art to PNG format, so even if you drop a .jpg file into the 'Get Info' screen in iTunes, then it will automatically change it to PNG format.

http://www.haydnwilliams.com/blog/vw-golf-mk7-sd-cards-and-album-art-pt-ii
Click to expand...
Are you sure about that? I updated iTunes this morning, so I've got the latest version. I dropped jpgs into tracks within iTunes this afternoon to experiment for this thread, and the car displayed them correctly (apart from the original problem jpg which started this thread). I don't think the car supports png, so I don't think iTunes could have converted them to png.
 
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i extracted both the album jpgs (using tag&rename) from the dropbox images and used the photo viewer that came with my canon camera.......it wouldn't display the jpg you're having problems with so its not just the car that has issues with it. weird. looking at the exif/meta data etc the image you're having probs with is marked as being 400dpi (which is really high) compared to the 96dpi on the working katherine jenkins image, also the failing image has the "Resolution Unit" flag set to 2 where as the working image has that field empty.
Its far too easy to find patterns where there aren't any so those differences may not mean anything but the canon photo viewer software (image browser ex) seems to be having the same issues as the mmi. Interestingly (?) the canon photo editing software (digital photo professional) can handle both images.
It looks like there is something funny with your jpg but too much limoncello is preventing further analysis.

RichT
 
audi upgrades
AJB said:
I've resized your picture from 300x299 to 299x299 in Office Picture Manager (just to get it to generate a new jpeg, not that the size is the problem), then re-added it as the artwork in iTunes, and it displays fine in my car.

So it's something about your jpeg that the car doesn't like, and making a minor edit in a picture editing program seems to turn it into a jpeg that the car does like.

It'd be interesting to know what it is about that picture though...
Click to expand...

Wow - this certainly seems to have created some interest! It's interesting that the changing the size to exactly square makes the image display. I would be surprised if that is the only issue because I am pretty sure the I have other images that do display that are not exactly square.

GrumpyEngineer said:
i extracted both the album jpgs (using tag&rename) from the dropbox images and used the photo viewer that came with my canon camera.......it wouldn't display the jpg you're having problems with so its not just the car that has issues with it. weird. looking at the exif/meta data etc the image you're having probs with is marked as being 400dpi (which is really high) compared to the 96dpi on the working katherine jenkins image, also the failing image has the "Resolution Unit" flag set to 2 where as the working image has that field empty.
Its far too easy to find patterns where there aren't any so those differences may not mean anything but the canon photo viewer software (image browser ex) seems to be having the same issues as the mmi. Interestingly (?) the canon photo editing software (digital photo professional) can handle both images.
It looks like there is something funny with your jpg but too much limoncello is preventing further analysis.

RichT
Click to expand...

It looks like the resolution could be it. I will try that and see what I find.

Thanks a lot folks. Richard
 
It's not the squareness. Lots of mine aren't exactly square. My resize was just to get it regenerated by a different bit of software. I'm sure going to 300x298 would have done the same.

I did notice the 400dpi and wonder about it, but I don't think it's that either, as my resized version of your jpg was still 400dpi but now worked in the car...
 
AJB said:
It's not the squareness. Lots of mine aren't exactly square. My resize was just to get it regenerated by a different bit of software. I'm sure going to 300x298 would have done the same.

I did notice the 400dpi and wonder about it, but I don't think it's that either, as my resized version of your jpg was still 400dpi but now worked in the car...
Click to expand...

It does seem strange then, because that image was scanned originally and then resized in Photoshop. So it has already been through the open/save process.
I will try saving in another program and see if that helps.
 
audi upgrades
AJB said:
The last post in this thread might be relevant: https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/docs/QSWVhNZBA0U
Click to expand...

so just as i was about to report my findings AJB posts a link to something suggesting the same thing.

This morning i was looking at the undisplayable jpg using a program called JPEGsnoop which shows all the jpg headers and file syntax. The program its self wouldn't display the jpg in question so i was comparing/contrasting jpg headers and going through the jpg spec and ended up questioning the baseline/progressive options. if i saved the jpg in photoshop to a new file with the format options set to progressive then it wouldn't display but if i changed it to baseline it seems to work. Its the sort of setting that will give you a smaller file for the same quality but requires more power and a slightly different method to decode, all of which are in the standard, but there is no obligation for someone building a decoder to support all parts of the standard.
I'm guessing the MMI just doesn't support progressively encoded jpg files.

If you're bored, the jpg spec is here http://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/itu-t81.pdf and JPEGsnoop is here http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegsnoop/?source=navbar
 
GrumpyEngineer said:
so just as i was about to report my findings AJB posts a link to something suggesting the same thing.

This morning i was looking at the undisplayable jpg using a program called JPEGsnoop which shows all the jpg headers and file syntax. The program its self wouldn't display the jpg in question so i was comparing/contrasting jpg headers and going through the jpg spec and ended up questioning the baseline/progressive options. if i saved the jpg in photoshop to a new file with the format options set to progressive then it wouldn't display but if i changed it to baseline it seems to work. Its the sort of setting that will give you a smaller file for the same quality but requires more power and a slightly different method to decode, all of which are in the standard, but there is no obligation for someone building a decoder to support all parts of the standard.
I'm guessing the MMI just doesn't support progressively encoded jpg files.

If you're bored, the jpg spec is here http://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/itu-t81.pdf and JPEGsnoop is here http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegsnoop/?source=navbar
Click to expand...

Eureka!!! Thanks all you guys who took some time to look at this. The solution, for me at least, is exactly as outlined above. I usually use Photoshop (Elements) and the default setting for saving jpg's is Progressive. I saved the cover image using Baseline "Standard" and that works fine. I also tried saving from Paint and that was fine as well.

So now I just need to get the last bit of my music files on SD card sorted and I will be happy. But not now - going for a Sunday afternoon spin!!

I did just look at the FAQ's and there did not seem to be a post listing all the issues with putting stuff on SD card - there are lots.
I didn't want to create one myself in case there was something I missed. But if someone confirms that there is no post for this, I will do some searching and try to pull them together. But don't want to encroach on Veeeight's work!!
 
Please feel free to create any FAQ's that will help out everyone! ;)

Just pull together all the useful threads associated with album art and MMI - there are quite a few! :)
 
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