1) If you want to force Artwork to be synced as external files (instead of embedded in the media file).

2) https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/256/0/adding-images-to-forum-posts (disabled for new users to prevent spam)

Thanks for your reply, I will try that. But I've still got a couple of questions:

1) So when do you use "Sync all Artwork to file folders" anyway then?

2) Why can't we insert pictures in the forum, just hotlinks? Other forums DO have this feature, which makes problem solving much easier

3) Where is the MediaMonkey complete manual the developers where talking about? No I'm not talking about the Help files on the internet, I'm talking about a fully written manual, in which every detail of MM is explained and how to set it up properly. Because if I look at all the hundreds and [b]hundreds of questions and problems here[/b] on this forum, the users could really use such manual!

[quote=MusicKing post_id=463517 time=1575622135 user_id=88658]
[quote=Lowlander post_id=463511 time=1575570538 user_id=262]
Are you having Albums with the same name? As you're using the Mask for <Album> for the filename all Albums like Greatest Hits would overwrite each other.
[/quote]

No albums with the same name. I don't understand your second question, where can I find this Mask? Under which option?
[/quote]

The mask is the following in your example:

\MediaMonkey\Album_art\<Album>.jpg

What Lowlander means is that if any albums in your collection have the same name (e.g. 'The Black Album' by Metallica and also by Jay-Z, or 'Greatest Hits' by pretty much anyone!) then one will overwrite the other. To solve it you'd just need to add something to your mask like :

\MediaMonkey\Album_art\<Album Artist> - <Album>.jpg or
\MediaMonkey\Album_art\<Album Artist>\<Album>.jpg

(I think these are correct - I'm no expert with masks!)

So that the filenames would be written separately as "Jay-Z - The Black Album.jpg" and "Metallica - The Black Album.jpg"

But I don't think this is related to my original issue anyway because I've unticked "Sync all Artwork to file folders". My phone seems to handle jpgs that are embedded within the mp3 tags OK.

[quote=Lowlander post_id=463511 time=1575570538 user_id=262]
Are you having Albums with the same name? As you're using the Mask for <Album> for the filename all Albums like Greatest Hits would overwrite each other.
[/quote]

No albums with the same name. I don't understand your second question, where can I find this Mask? Under which option?

Are you having Albums with the same name? As you're using the Mask for <Album> for the filename all Albums like Greatest Hits would overwrite each other.

[quote=thebluemask post_id=463177 time=1574440450 user_id=21024]
Completely uninstalled everything, cleared caches and reinstalled MMA several times but it's still constantly resetting my folder choices every day.

Also even though I've specified MM not to sync artwork to the device file folders (by unticking that option in the device profile) every time I plug in the device for a USB transfer it decides to ignore that setting and copy over artwork for every single track again (taking nearly a day to complete).

And then even after many hours of a successful sync, I think that it's finally done and future syncs should only add the newest few tracks on the next sync, but MM decides to spend another half day by resyncing thousands of things again. I can see in the progress bar it says "Copying xxx of 20000 (Tags)" and "Copying xxx of 20000 (Artwork)" even though it's done all this countless times before.

Unless you can suggest anything I might have missed (I've double checked and reinstalled everything many times) I think I might have to give up on MMA and just use the desktop client from now on. The desktop app is perfect but the Android version just seems completely buggy for me.
[/quote]

I don't know if my problem has the same source as stated above, but when I sync MMW with MMA on my android phone, it looks like MMA takes Artwork from the newly added music and randomly overwrites/erases many current Artwork of many existing songs on my phone, messing up the MMA Artwork completely!

This while the Artwork of that [b]same existing songs on MMW stay the same[/b], as they should. Which makes me think the problem lies in MMA OR some settings in MMW aren't setup correctly.

The option under:

[i]Options --> Portable device sync --> Sync all Artwork to file folders[/i]

is enabled and currently:

[i]\MediaMonkey\Album_art\<Album>.jpg[/i]

I don't know if that is also causing the problem or not but this is REALLY annoying, right now after synchronizing, I have to erase all the wrong Artwork on MMA, ONE BY ONE, so that MMA can look for the right Artwork once the song starts playing.

After going backwards and forwards multiple times between wifi and USB syncing, everything finally seems to have settled down and is now in sync correctly!

Also don't know what's going on here!

https://ibb.co/YbSFNYb

Thanks Martin. Well, I thought I was getting somewhere as now at least it respects and seems to remember my device folder settings. But since then MMW has now created a duplicate of my device profile (with the label "(1)" after the same name).

Not only that but I did a USB sync several times just to make sure it was definitely all up to date, but I then did a wifi sync and got a message telling me it was going to start syncing about 5000 items again (tracks that are already on the device!)

This takes several hours so I've given up for now.

Yes, exactly, all of these paths have to be set to some folder to avoid resetting path to root on MMA side.
If you want you can all other paths set to e.g "\Other media\"

I already have '\Music\' in the path in MMW:

\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:2> <Title>

You can see in this screenshot: https://ibb.co/8xqk1TT

All the other paths are set as '\' to stop MMA creating folders I don't want/need (as discussed in a different thread). Could that be causing the problem?

If you add e.g "\Music\" on the beginning of your paths on MMW side, then you will fix path resetting on MMA side.

Hi,
this is tracked at https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=16149
We need to improve it in the future to avoid resetting paths without informing a user why it is happening.

It happens because you have on MMW side set paths without subfolders.
Verify it, go to
1)MMW/Tools/Options/Portable Device Sync, find your device and click to "Configure"
OR connect your phone via USB and select device directly
2) go to the Options tab and select "File locations", the default setting should look like for music
\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:2> $Left(<Artist>,20) - <Title>

and I think your setting look like
\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:2> $Left(<Artist>,20) - <Title>

so MMA know that you want to sync to the root folder and that's why
MMA local setting which is set to "SdCard/Music" is ignored, because it is a subfolder of Root, which is required for synchronization.

Completely uninstalled everything, cleared caches and reinstalled MMA several times but it's still constantly resetting my folder choices every day.

Also even though I've specified MM not to sync artwork to the device file folders (by unticking that option in the device profile) every time I plug in the device for a USB transfer it decides to ignore that setting and copy over artwork for every single track again (taking nearly a day to complete).

And then even after many hours of a successful sync, I think that it's finally done and future syncs should only add the newest few tracks on the next sync, but MM decides to spend another half day by resyncing thousands of things again. I can see in the progress bar it says "Copying xxx of 20000 (Tags)" and "Copying xxx of 20000 (Artwork)" even though it's done all this countless times before.

Unless you can suggest anything I might have missed (I've double checked and reinstalled everything many times) I think I might have to give up on MMA and just use the desktop client from now on. The desktop app is perfect but the Android version just seems completely buggy for me.

OK I've tried numerous things (completely uninstalled/reinstalled MMA, left/rejoined MMA beta program, deleted device profile in MMW etc.) but still keep getting the same problem so I've done as requested.

(Added just 'Music' folder to SD card via Options>Choose Library Folders and removed all folders from internal storage (see screenshot https://ibb.co/cDg7H43)
Log ID: AU1QINCGNH

Restarted phone and both folders (Internal shared storage & SD card) had both been reset to 'All' (see screenshot https://ibb.co/4g36ync)
Log ID: 1KLEE6KQ9L

It's not just restarting the phone that triggers it. Sometimes just leaving it for 10 mins and reopening the app resets the folders.