Album covers missing on some songs

[hypomaniac-eric]

Ever since I've been using Media Monkey I've been having problems with Poweramp having missing album covers for some songs.    I spent 30 minutes last night trying to fix four songs and even redid the album covers in Media Monkey on the computer,  which are embedded btw and deleteing them from the phone and resyncing multiple times with no success.   I've been waiting over 6 months for a solution. I didn't get anywhere in the Media Monkey forum.  Also my i put  music on my gf's phone and the same songs are missing album covers in Poweramp on her phone.

[andrewilley]

When you put this music onto the other phone, did you just copy these files to a fresh install and get the same result - without copying any other settings data or image caches?

If so, please could you share a couple of sample files for testing.

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

On 7/21/2022 at 5:08 PM, andrewilley said:

When you put this music onto the other phone, did you just copy these files to a fresh install and get the same result - without copying any other settings data or image caches?

If so, please could you share a couple of sample files for testing.

Andre

I synced her phone with a wired connection with Media Monkey.   I bought the pro version for android so i can sync wirelessly to my phone.   I tried clearing the album covers  cache in Poweramp settings.  I'll share the files through Drive later.   

[andrewilley]

@hypomaniac-eric I would suggest avoiding using Media Monkey or any other auto-syncing programs, just copy a few folders of files directly for testing purposes first. And start with a clean fresh installation of Poweramp.

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

4 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

@hypomaniac-eric I would suggest avoiding using Media Monkey or any other auto-syncing programs, just copy a few folders of files directly for testing purposes first. And start with a clean fresh installation of Poweramp.

Andre

Here's the song from my phone.   

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ORnPA5qI5g9LynPD25XPwU2hzOBe3jIA/view?usp=drivesdk

[hypomaniac-eric]

5 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

@hypomaniac-eric I would suggest avoiding using Media Monkey or any other auto-syncing programs, just copy a few folders of files directly for testing purposes first. And start with a clean fresh installation of Poweramp.

Andre

Her's was a fresh install of Poweramp.   I didn't have this problem with Musicbee but i quit using musicbee because the dev wasn't interested in updating the app to be compatible with Android 12.  He told me i should switch to media monkey.   

[Fitzian]

1 hour ago, hypomaniac-eric said:

Her's was a fresh install of Poweramp.   I didn't have this problem with Musicbee but i quit using musicbee because the dev wasn't interested in updating the app to be compatible with Android 12.  He told me i should switch to media monkey.   

There's two album art images embedded into this file.

Have you tried using just one image and see if that fixes things?

[andrewilley]

I agree the second picture is probably pointless, as it's just a lower resolution copy of the first, however having two images is within ID3 spec so that alone should not cause PA to misread the first one.

I think there's just something a little off about the way the metadata has been saved. On my PC, neither ZoomPlayer nor VLC recognise either image. However if I then re-save the file from a tag editor (e.g. MP3Tag) it works fine in both of those apps, and also in Poweramp. So the issue does seem to be with the original file format.

Perhaps Max can track it down from your sample file and design a workaround, but in the meantime just load the problem files into MP3Tag and re-save them.

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

15 hours ago, Fitzian said:

There's two album art images embedded into this file.

Have you tried using just one image and see if that fixes things?

No because the whole album has more then one and most of my music collection has more then one cover.  many of my albums have rear covers and inside the leaflets.  Only 4 songs out of the whole album is problematic. 

[hypomaniac-eric]

8 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I agree the second picture is probably pointless, as it's just a lower resolution copy of the first, however having two images is within ID3 spec so that alone should not cause PA to misread the first one.

I think there's just something a little off about the way the metadata has been saved. On my PC, neither ZoomPlayer nor VLC recognise either image. However if I then re-save the file from a tag editor (e.g. MP3Tag) it works fine in both of those apps, and also in Poweramp. So the issue does seem to be with the original file format.

Perhaps Max can track it down from your sample file and design a workaround, but in the meantime just load the problem files into MP3Tag and re-save them.

Andre

Funny thing is i don't remember having this problem till using Media Monkey.  And on the computer Media Monkey reads it just fine or on the app last i knew.    

[andrewilley]

6 hours ago, hypomaniac-eric said:

Funny thing is i don't remember having this problem till using Media Monkey.  

You may have diagnosed the issue right there.

Just load the problem files into MP3Tag and simply resave them, that certainly fixed the sample you uploaded anyway.

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

1 minute ago, andrewilley said:

You may have diagnosed the issue right there.

Just load the problem files into MP3Tag and simply resave them, that certainly fixed the sample you uploaded anyway.

Andre

any idea what media monkey is doing to the files?  The dev never responded to my thread about it over there in their forums.  and one thing i hate about MM is there's no open in containing folder option.  or a way to manually search for albums for tagging.  it wants to auto tag by sampling the files but it gets it wrong sometimes.  if only MusicBee was still compatible with Android 12.  

 

[hypomaniac-eric]

3 hours ago, andrewilley said:

You may have diagnosed the issue right there.

Just load the problem files into MP3Tag and simply resave them, that certainly fixed the sample you uploaded anyway.

Andre

just redid the covers in MP3Tag and resynced MM and Poweramp got the covers for all the songs in the album right away.  i didn't  have to delete anything in Poweramp to resync.  Now if i can get the dev at MM to fix whatever bug is in the program.  that's another story.  pity the best two music programs on the PC is buggy or has a buggy app.  

[andrewilley]

I'm sure Max will be able to work out why those images are not being picked up, and hopefully code a work-around into Poweramp in case other users experience the same issues. The images are clearly stored in the files (as tagging software sees them) but not in a 100% compatible way as several of my PC music programs don't see them either. Simply re-saving in MP3Tag writes the data back in a more compatible way.

Personally I rarely use fully automated tagging - other than when ripping CDs to MP3s, and even then I preview it before commencing - as much of my music is a bit esoteric. And I always drop new files into a batch tag editor to tidy them up before use. 

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

21 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I'm sure Max will be able to work out why those images are not being picked up, and hopefully code a work-around into Poweramp in case other users experience the same issues. The images are clearly stored in the files (as tagging software sees them) but not in a 100% compatible way as several of my PC music programs don't see them either. Simply re-saving in MP3Tag writes the data back in a more compatible way.

Personally I rarely use fully automated tagging - other than when ripping CDs to MP3s, and even then I preview it before commencing - as much of my music is a bit esoteric. And I always drop new files into a batch tag editor to tidy them up before use. 

Andre

what computer programs do you use?  I was using Musicbee till the dev did'nt want to make the android app compatible to android 12 so i could no longer sync over wifi.  so he referred me to MM.  I like music bee better then Media Monkey in a lot of ways.  

[andrewilley]

3 hours ago, hypomaniac-eric said:

what computer programs do you use?

For media playback on my PC, my default program is Zoom Player Max; I like the interface and it copes with most video and audio files that I throw at it. I also have VLC available for further cross-reference and testing, and of course foobar2000 which is a very versatile audio program and I often use it for applying ReplayGain to new music files or doing other tests. For tag editing I use TagScanner, or sometimes MP3Tag for cross-checking. And a whole load of assorted productivity tools, mostly open-source or freeware, which generally have old-style interfaces - some even command-line - but continue to do their particular jobs perfectly (e.g. ExifTool for testing embedded photo and media tags). A useful website for finding cover art (manual search and download) is Album Art Exchange. For ripping my CDs to files, I use Exact Audio Copy with LAME for MP3 encodes; perhaps not the easiest, fastest or prettiest, but the most accurate and reliable.

I don't use any auto-syncing programs at all, I just use Windows to drag specific files/subfolders from my master music folders (which are stored on my home NAS, and mapped as shared network drives on the PC) into my Phone folders. It's usually a one-way process, I very rarely change stuff on my phone and copy files from my phone back to the master folders (other than for testing purposes).

I use the Solid Explorer app on my phone, which give me the opportunity to easily open my NAS storage locations directly on my phone, and copy/paste stuff in either direction. I also use its built-in wi-fi FTP server feature which allows me to wirelessly open a window on my PC directly to the phone's storage and drag & drop there.

The closest thing I have to automation is the FolderSync app, which I use to move auto-downloaded podcast files from my podcatcher software into my chosen folder hierarchy in my Poweramp music location. It could also copy/sync between network folders and my phone if I wanted it to, but I only use that feature for automatically copying/backing-up camera pictures from the phone's DCIM folder to my NAS's Photos location.

Andre

[CHM]

I also have this issue, though I don't use MediaMonkey and this happened overnight, while it worked a while ago on the same device, which I haven't factory-reset, uninstalled Poweramp, reset its settings or anything.

 

Oddly, for one specific album it only affected the "discs" folders other than #1. Moving these tracks to the same folder as Disc #1 fixed it for me. I can move the tracks back to their proper folders after Poweramp has found the tracks in their new folder and started to display their embedded covers. That was strange, to say the least.

Another, perhaps related issue is that Poweramp can recognize some tracks' metadata include albums' information, but the app won't recognize the album at all. These tracks also lack covers.

 

Additional info: manually attempting to set the covers for said tracks didn't work at all. Poweramp could see and even display the embedded cover when in that menu. Selecting it or any other cover it recovered online did nothing and the tracks stayed stubbornly cover-less.

 

Build 939, SM-N986W Note20 Ultra, Android 12.

[hypomaniac-eric]

On 7/23/2022 at 9:44 PM, hypomaniac-eric said:

just redid the covers in MP3Tag and resynced MM and Poweramp got the covers for all the songs in the album right away.  i didn't  have to delete anything in Poweramp to resync.  Now if i can get the dev at MM to fix whatever bug is in the program.  that's another story.  pity the best two music programs on the PC is buggy or has a buggy app.  

now i'm still having problems.  i used MP3Tag to redo the covers even though they're still there and save then sync with MM to my phone but Poweramp isn't showing the covers.  but get this the song  info, in Poweramp,  shows it does have embedded covers and when i click on album art it shows the embedded cover and ones to download.  but the play screen and playlist screen still won't show it.  i think there's a bug with Poweramp as well.

[andrewilley]

@hypomaniac-eric Stop using syncing software, try copying the files directly from your master copy on your computer to the phone (e.g. USB cable) and see if that works. Also, as an experiment, try renaming the file on your phone (just add an extra character to the name) which may force PA to treat it as a completely new song rather than having any existing cached data.

Also, check the image cache folders to ensure there isn't a blank entry present which could be overriding the embedded data:

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

On 8/4/2022 at 5:55 PM, andrewilley said:

@hypomaniac-eric Stop using syncing software, try copying the files directly from your master copy on your computer to the phone (e.g. USB cable) and see if that works. Also, as an experiment, try renaming the file on your phone (just add an extra character to the name) which may force PA to treat it as a completely new song rather than having any existing cached data.

Also, check the image cache folders to ensure there isn't a blank entry present which could be overriding the embedded data:

Andre

That isn't a long term solution to manually copy each changed file and playlist to my phone.   There's too many changes when making a playlist to remember what all needs copied over.  It's hard to keep track of my library as it is let alone try to remember what changes i made and manually copy over.  And then do the same thing for my tablet and my GF's phone.   when you sync automatically it  copies new or changed files and or playlists. 

Edited August 10, 2022 by hypomaniac-eric

[andrewilley]

3 hours ago, hypomaniac-eric said:

That isn't a long term solution to manually copy each changed file and playlist to my phone.   

No, but it might help track down where the problem is in the short term. I've never had a problem with PA not recognising that a file has changed when I've copied a modified file manually, but occasionally users do report that stuff synced using other apps does sometime not flag up as new/modified. You of course ideally don't want to be cleaning your whole library and/or doing a Full Rescan after your sync software has done its stuff, but there is clearly something that is not allowing PA to identify that a file has changed and needs rescanning. 

Andre

[MotleyG]

On 8/4/2022 at 6:55 PM, andrewilley said:

try copying the files directly from your master copy on your computer to the phone

@hypomaniac-eric I think this is the important step to try, at least to isolate the issue. If you can manually update your library by directly copying the music files, and have all correctly display album art in Poweramp after a rescan, then you can confirm where the problem is coming from.

If this works, then you can look further into the syncing software and what needs to be fixed there. If not, then the problem is elsewhere.

The album art can’t just magically disappear though. If they are all truly embedded in the original files, and the sync is making a 1:1 copy, the art should remain in the copies you made. If the copies truly do not have the embedded art, it was either dropped during the sync, or didn’t exist in the first place. Poweramp can’t show it if it isn’t there, nothing to fix in PA.

[MotleyG]

Or at least look at it this way;

1. Identify one or two songs files in your current Poweramp folder that you know are missing artwork.

2. Using mp3tag on your PC, verify that the ORIGINAL file there still has the artwork. Is it there? If yes, then you need to continue on with the below steps. If not, then your source files are the issue.

3. Also using your PC, with your phone plugged in and accessible as a USB source, open the internal or SD card drive and locate the files with the “missing” artwork again using mp3tag. Does the file located on the device show the artwork? If yes, then there is a problem on the device side. If no, then the sync is dropping the artwork somehow.

If both the source and sync files contain the embedded artwork, and Poweramp is not showing it after a rescan, there must be some other reason that access is being limited. It makes no sense that Poweramp can see and play back the music in those files, but not access them to get the artwork from the embedded metadata. Especially if all other tags display correctly as well.

[andrewilley]

I strongly suspect that the modified file (i.e. re-saved in MP3Tag) will be fine - especially as PA sees that the image is there in Info/Tags and Album Art.

However if it does not realise that the file has been modified since it last opened it, it might not be re-reading the content during a background scan. That could be down to the way the file is being modified by the syncing software.

Andre

[MotleyG]

That’s exactly what I was trying to get to by eliminating all other factors. I don’t use MM at all. But from their help site, their is a section on syncing to devices. In the section for “non-iPod” devices it has this line that seems to apply in this case; 2.3.Try enabling 'Save all Album Art to track tags' OR 'Save all Album Art to track folders', if Album Art doesn't sync correctly. Found that here https://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/frame/index.html?exportingtracks.htm

One other thing to check, since you use mp3tag, is to ensure your files do have the “Modified Date” updated whenever you make a change to any tags including album art. Otherwise PA won’t know to refresh during a rescan. This is in Tools>Options>Tags>Preserve timestamps of modified files (make sure this is UNCHECKED).