Syncing MMW to WWA - Album Art

[Jim Kelly]

The album art is a bit of a mystery to me . . . so perhaps I am doing something wrong?

The art often does not come across from MMW to MMA so I have experimented by keeping the file size below 100kb (usually much less) and the pixel size to 500 x 500 (or less - keeping it square). It seemed to work a little better.

One thing that is odd is that, if the art does not appear on the album page, if you drill in and play a song, it might(!) appear after 10-20 seconds into the song.
Since I wasn't doing this during earlier tests I might have wasted time experimenting with size (in both KB and Pixels)?

Can anyone please tell me the best practice, and steps, to get album art working with the minimum of fuss. I just want the album cover, and have been in the habit of always calling the file folder.jpg, not sure why . . .

But it could be contributing to the next bug that I am seeing at MMA: I get several albums all with the same picture!

But more, I decided to reboot the PC and the phone to see if I could shake off some of these gremlins. This caused the image to change, so I now have several albums with the same but different .jpg file!
Do I need to make each filename unique?

Thanks,

[Lowlander]

Are you syncing directly between MMW and MMA (either wifi sync or USB sync to device itself)?

[Jim Kelly]

Are you syncing directly between MMW and MMA (either wifi sync or USB sync to device itself)?

Yes, I am keeping everything as clean and simple as can be. MMW with MMA. No complications.
I have found that I need to sync with both WiFi and USB to get anywhere near a complete result.

[Jim Kelly]

. . . although perhaps using an "external" card is causing my hassles?
The card is a microSD card inside the body of the Samsung Note-2 . . .
There is insufficient free memory on the phone itself to consider using that

[dtsig]

I sync to my Note 10.1 and my daughter syncs to her new Gigantor Note just fine. Are you defining alternative locations for you sync? Am i to assume that you don't have the artwork embedded in the files?

[Lowlander]

The card is a microSD card inside the body of the Samsung Note-2 . . .

Then things should work (and do for me too). When having issues with wifi sync you can send a debug log from MMA (from About screen) right after sync completes.

[Jim Kelly]

I sync to my Note 10.1 and my daughter syncs to her new Gigantor Note just fine. Are you defining alternative locations for you sync? Am i to assume that you don't have the artwork embedded in the files?

I am uncomfortable with the whole Locations thing, as in I am quite confused (and haven't found a definitive guide to best practice with AutoPlaylists in MMW syncing to MMA).

Whilst I have found that calling the artwork Folder.jpg and leaving it in the folder amongst the music seems to work, in recent times I have gone through the steps of using properties to embed that file. Seems crazy to be saving the same file so many times though.

Thanks,

[Lowlander]

I have it set to remove Artwork from tags larger than 1kb and have all other options disabled and Artwork shows for me.

[Jim Kelly]

I have it set to remove Artwork from tags larger than 1kb and have all other options disabled and Artwork shows for me.

Ahhh,
Most of mine would be above 50KB, I might have to have a squeeze of the bigger ones!
Thanks,

[Lowlander]

Most of mine are larger (and embedded), I'm just showing the settings I use successfully.

[Jim Kelly]

Can report that by JUST using WiFi to sync, keeping (embedded) Folder.jpg size under 100KB and 500x500 pixels, I have synched about 50 folders with all Albums displaying the ART perfectly .

Thanks for the tips Lowlander, and it has been encouraging to know that you are using these things successfully.

Because I charge the device with a USB cable to the PC, I think some of the USB bugs were presenting when I initiated a WiFi sync . . .

I hope someone at head office is following along with my newb hassles and tidying up the code accordingly. It is all very well to eventually find a way through the maze of possibilities, but I am sure that many folk would give up in disgust way before I have.

[Lowlander]

Are you saying you're doing a wifi sync while the device is attached to the PC with USB? Was MMW also running?

I'm not sure you're meant to wifi sync while USB attached to the PC.

[Jim Kelly]

Are you saying you're doing a wifi sync while the device is attached to the PC with USB? Was MMW also running?

I'm not sure you're meant to wifi sync while USB attached to the PC.

Yes, not so much intentionally, when at my desk I always have connected it because that is how I charge the phone battery and get my photos off . . . so you could be onto something there that could probably explain all of the weird things I am experiencing. Hopefully, it can be sensed in the code (and dealt with) because it is reasonable to expect that to happen to others too.

When attempting any sync, I intend to have MMA running (and MMW). However, with auto sync as soon as connected 'ticked', I am sure that there were odd times when any combination was inadvertently tried . . . (I have since unticked that option).

Some how I have ended up with three copies of every track on my 32GB mSD card . . . I got a disk full message from MMA any knew that should not be the case. Pulled the card out and checked with Windows, and there they were. All in that very deep music folder, something had added an extra digit to the 2nd and 3rd files to avoid the common file name problem.

So I have now gone through the MMA uninstal/reinstal sequence including deleting that music folder, moved MMA and MMAPRO to the external card, and resynched with only WiFi.

So far everything is working!! I have found another way to charge the phone so I can avoid the USB link.

I did note that the card is formatted with NTFS which gives me another thing to try (FAT32). However, if users are using 64GB or 128GB mSD IIRC, FAT32 cannot be used . . .

[rusty]

Hi Jim,

Based on your other posts, it sounds as if the dups might also be related to the confusing terminology used in MMW i.e. the fact that 'Synchronize' appears in Send-to > DeviceName (Synchronize) even though such an operation is not the same as an Auto-sync operation.

i.e. if you set up MMA/MMW to auto-sync , and configure the auto-sync to delete all tracks that aren't on the sync list, these problems should go away (though you may have to delete the tracks completely, if artwork is missing).

-Rusty

[Jim Kelly]

That's it.
"Send to" is enough . . . perhaps a bubble help or similar to say "If you would like to Synchronise . . . "

If you take the time to check all similar traps for beginners, it will be well worth it Rusty, remember that your newbs pay for the development. The combination of MMW and MMA and AutoPlayLists is well worth perfecting, and it seems to me that you have done all of the hard bits!

And please, while you are at it, add the star ratings to all places where tracks are listed on MMA. There is a lot of feedback that this would help with in projects like I are attempting (to rate my MMW music). Next we will need to add the fields of Occasion, Mood, Tempo so that these can be tweaked whilst listening from MMA, but for now doing Star rating thoroughly is so close . . . you just need to display the stars when we are choosing tracks to play.

EG, I am just about to embark on a two week drive and will take the chance to add stars, but without syncing, it will get messy as I try to find tracks that are unrated. At the moment I cannot see how to filter by rating in MMA, surely something others would like?

Thanks for your work again Rusty, I'm hanging in here!