Still using album cover issues

[hypomaniac-eric]

For years I've been having problems with album covers in Poweramp.   Firstly the media monkey program fails to embed covers sometimes so i have to use MP3Tag to fix it.   Then sync to my phone again.   But after 10 times of clicking rescan it still won't show the cover.   The Media Monkey app will see them and the Samsung Music app.  Poweramp shows its embedded see screenshot.   

[hypomaniac-eric]

I don't know what happened but today the album covers finely loaded.   I would like to know how to fix it the next time around or if there's a bug that needs fixed.   

[andrewilley]

You may need to do a FULL Rescan (in Settings=>Library) rather than just a quick rescan in order to detect minor content changes to existing files - especially if those changes were made by a syncing application rather than a normal file explorer.

Note: Info/Tags forces the information to be read from the content of the physical file, it is not shown based on the existing information saved in the music database.

@maxmp I've often wondered about this one, as this sort of issue does gets reported periodically about files that have been modified by two-way syncing applications. Does PA's quick rescan rely on some sort of Android notification of updated directory contents, or does it do a full old-fashioned directory crawl validating both the precise file sizes and the time/date stamps against the files it read last time, and then re-read any files where it detects any changes?

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

15 hours ago, andrewilley said:

You may need to do a FULL Rescan (in Settings=>Library) rather than just a quick rescan in order to detect minor content changes to existing files - especially if those changes were made by a syncing application rather than a normal file explorer.

Note: Info/Tags forces the information to be read from the content of the physical file, it is not shown based on the existing information saved in the music database.

@maxmp I've often wondered about this one, as this sort of issue does gets reported periodically about files that have been modified by two-way syncing applications. Does PA's quick rescan rely on some sort of Android notification of updated directory contents, or does it do a full old-fashioned directory crawl validating both the precise file sizes and the time/date stamps against the files it read last time, and then re-read any files where it detects any changes?

Andre

Andre last time I did a Full Scan i lost all my ratings.   i had years worth of ratings.  now i rarely rate anything because everytime i have this problem people tell me to do a full rescan.   But a Full Scan should be the last resort.   Not every other time i sync music.  

[andrewilley]

Full Rescan is now meant to store any ratings first, and restore them to any still-matching files afterwards. But you could always err on the side of caution and use PA Settings=>Export Settings/Data first, which can backup everything including ratings, playlists, and other stuff (tick everything you want to export, and you can also selectively restore content in the same way later if you want).

We have seen this sort of issue with syncing software like MusicBee or MediaMonkey in the past, where for some reason the copy process does not flag the copied files as modified in Android, so the quick rescan process doesn't know a modification has been made and thus ignores the modified file and carries on using its previous data.

To check this, make a simple change to one of your master audio files on your computer (just change a title or cover artwork or something) and then use a normal file explorer app (or a USB connection and Windows drag'n'drop) to copy the updated file from your computer to your phone, accepting the prompt to overwriting the existing file. A quick rescan in PA (or even the automated background one) ought to catch this. 

Andre

[maxmp]

@andrewilley @hypomaniac-ericPoweramp checks file and folder modification time. If the external tool keeps the same modification time, then Poweramp won’t re-read the file. Only Full Rescan will do that. The modification time is checked this way specifically as:

- we want fast scan to exist to pickup new files quickly
- we want to be able to have large libraries with 10k+ songs
- most tools do properly update file modification time and keeping this time while modifying the file is not a normal or standard behavior. Some of such behaviors probably can be worked around in Poweramp scanning code, but for that I need the step by step scenario to reproduce it.
- some storages (for example, usb devices and sd cards on some Chinese brands headunits have modification time code commented out in driver and many OEMs just copy paste this code as is) do not properly support modification times at all, and Poweramp then just rescans each time, or never, depending on the file last timestamp

[andrewilley]

@maxmp For such cases when the file timestamp has not been changed by an external syncing program, can you check the file size in bytes too? Again not foolproof, but might help. Assuming you even open the folder of course, if Android doesn't show any new content.

Andre

[maxmp]

@andrewilley @hypomaniac-ericI can tweak this further, but I need some scenario I can reproduce (for example, the name of app which does that (MP3Tag), or the procedure user uses, such as uploading to sd card directly on PC, via USB cable, via some syncing app, etc.).  I need to reproduce the case when something is changed within the file but it's not picked up by Poweramp - locally, on my device.

[andrewilley]

@maxmp  This isn't something I've ever been able to reproduce either, but anecdotally it does seem to occur most often when people are using automatic syncing software to migrate modifications made on one system to another device. I mostly tend to copy files manually - using Solid Explorer (either the app on the phone, or via a wireless FTP client connection on my PC), or I use a USB connection for bulky transfers. That method always picks up changes for me on the quick background scan when PA is started.

@hypomaniac-eric With a file that exhibits this issue (where you've changed some content externally and synced the file back to your phone) could you have a look at the time/date modified stamp on the file as it now appears on your phone? Does it show a recent date (i.e. the time/date when you made the edit) or has it retained the original date for the file from before the modification? Also, out of interest, what does the last-updated stamp of the containing folder show? I'm not sure whether PA's quick rescan skips folders that don't indicate that their contents have changed since the last scan, or whether it crawls every subfolder regardless (which could make the rescan take longer).

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

3 hours ago, andrewilley said:

@maxmp  This isn't something I've ever been able to reproduce either, but anecdotally it does seem to occur most often when people are using automatic syncing software to migrate modifications made on one system to another device. I mostly tend to copy files manually - using Solid Explorer (either the app on the phone, or via a wireless FTP client connection on my PC), or I use a USB connection for bulky transfers. That method always picks up changes for me on the quick background scan when PA is started.

@hypomaniac-eric With a file that exhibits this issue (where you've changed some content externally and synced the file back to your phone) could you have a look at the time/date modified stamp on the file as it now appears on your phone? Does it show a recent date (i.e. the time/date when you made the edit) or has it retained the original date for the file from before the modification? Also, out of interest, what does the last-updated stamp of the containing folder show? I'm not sure whether PA's quick rescan skips folders that don't indicate that their contents have changed since the last scan, or whether it crawls every subfolder regardless (which could make the rescan take longer).

Andre

I'm looking at one of the songs from the other day in question on the computer and it shows it was modified on May 03rd but that's probably because i rated the songs yesterday.  the same song on the phone was timestamped for May 01 which is the day i posted about it and updated the songs.

  I know when i use the old Cheetah Sync app from a long time ago, not sure if you heard of it, but i use it to sync ringtones, notification tones, and photos to my phone.   but in the newer androids i have to reboot the phone for the ringtones and notification tones to show up in the settings and i have to access the photos through Samsung Gallery or reboot the phone for the photos to show up on the 3rd party Gallery app.  Slightly different sort or problems.  

6 hours ago, maxmp said:

@andrewilley @hypomaniac-ericI can tweak this further, but I need some scenario I can reproduce (for example, the name of app which does that (MP3Tag), or the procedure user uses, such as uploading to sd card directly on PC, via USB cable, via some syncing app, etc.).  I need to reproduce the case when something is changed within the file but it's not picked up by Poweramp - locally, on my device.

as i said, I use Media Monkey to work on my library and it sometimes fails to properly embed some songs or albums.   I've posted in their forums about it for the last 2 years but nothing ever gets done other then people telling me to use MP3Tag to tag the files with album covers.  often i have to close out media monkey when i do it.   I used MP3Tag to do redo the album covers then synced with Media Monkey app to my phone using the WIFI as the cord is less reliable and takes 4 times as long.   I always thought a direct connection would be faster but whatever.   then rescan on Poweramp.   it finally after 2 attempts found the updated songs and showed in my screenshot as embedded covers but it wasn't till the next day i pulled Poweramp back up and like magic the covers was there all on it's own.   I don't know why it took Poweramp so long to show the new covers. 

edit:  update  i resaved an album in MP3Tag just to see if it updated the modified file timestamp and it does.  

Edited May 5, 2023 by hypomaniac-eric

[andrewilley]

Many of the more advanced "power" editing and syncing tools have the option to preserve the original time/date stamps of files. This is so just adding a trivial missing comma to a Title tag in an audio file doesn't make the file suddenly seem like a newly created/ripped/downloaded song. Of course in your case, you DO want the modification stamp to be updated, as otherwise PA (or other apps, such as Gallery for photos) won't recognise that the existing file has been modified and thus needs re-reading.

Here's the option in MP3Tag for example, which you need to leave turned OFF as shown (the same option is available in TagScanner): 

Checking for a match to the original exact file size might help too, but that won't be foolproof either as an in-place modification which does not need to re-write the entire file won't change the overall size.

Andre

[maxmp]

@andrewilley ok thanks, will try to test with this.

[hypomaniac-eric]

On 5/5/2023 at 6:27 AM, maxmp said:

@andrewilley ok thanks, will try to test with this.

well i found another album that should have had embedded artwork as i had it for many years so i had to fix it.  synced it to Poweramp.  it shows embedded but still blank cover screen.   and i even did a manual rescan on Media Monkey on the computer to make sure it was updated there as Media Monkey didn't detect the embedded cover.     It didn't detect the MP3Tag change right away .  so it detected it after the rescan.  but now Poweramp is'nt doing it's job.  

[andrewilley]

Back to the original question: does the newly modified file on your phone have an updated modified date, or is it the same as it was before? And even if not, a FULL Rescan should catch it.

Andre

[MotleyG]

43 minutes ago, hypomaniac-eric said:

well i found another album that should have had embedded artwork as i had it for many years so i had to fix it.  synced it to Poweramp.  it shows embedded but still blank cover screen.   and i even did a manual rescan on Media Monkey on the computer to make sure it was updated there as Media Monkey didn't detect the embedded cover.     It didn't detect the MP3Tag change right away .  so it detected it after the rescan.  but now Poweramp is'nt doing it's job.  

In the mp3tag preference , do you have the option to preserve file modification time enabled? If so, most programs won’t pick up any changes.

[hypomaniac-eric]

1 hour ago, MotleyG said:

In the mp3tag preference , do you have the option to preserve file modification time enabled? If so, most programs won’t pick up any changes.

i already explained everything in detail further up the thread.   No, it changes the timestamp.  I've already confirmed it and mentioned it. 

I said it here:  "I'm looking at one of the songs from the other day in question on the computer and it shows it was modified on May 03rd but that's probably because i rated the songs yesterday.  the same song on the phone was timestamped for May 01 which is the day i posted about it and updated the songs."

1 hour ago, andrewilley said:

Back to the original question: does the newly modified file on your phone have an updated modified date, or is it the same as it was before? And even if not, a FULL Rescan should catch it.

Andre

Like i said awhile back:

"I'm looking at one of the songs from the other day in question on the computer and it shows it was modified on May 03rd but that's probably because i rated the songs yesterday.  the same song on the phone was timestamped for May 01 which is the day i posted about it and updated the songs."   

and to add to that the computer did show the timestamps was updated after using MP3Tag before.  I haven't looked this time.   And yes i already checked the settings on MP3Tag last year and last time we talked in this thread.  it's not selected to keep the timestamp.   

Edited May 17, 2023 by hypomaniac-eric

[andrewilley]

@hypomaniac-eric And did a FULL Rescan resolve the problem? Or copying the modified files manually using a proper file explorer, or via USB cable, rather than using syncing software?

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

21 hours ago, andrewilley said:

@hypomaniac-eric And did a FULL Rescan resolve the problem? Or copying the modified files manually using a proper file explorer, or via USB cable, rather than using syncing software?

Andre

I haven't tried it yet.  was waiting to see if it resolves on it's own.   by the way when i refreshed the page Kaspersky blocked the website saying it's suspicious or whatever.  i had to override it to get back here.   has anyone else had this problem? I am getting tired of websites that look legitimate being blocked for being bad when i don't think they are.  

[andrewilley]

Website issue was an expired SSL (security) certificate that hadn't been renewed on time by the hosting company. Sorted now.

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

14 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Website issue was an expired SSL (security) certificate that hadn't been renewed on time by the hosting company. Sorted now.

Andre

that's good they got it fixed.   thanks for letting me know.   Glad it isn't a problem with my antivirus.  I hate how annoying they are.  and the freaking upsale ads for VPN and stuff popping up all the time.