Album art does not always sync.

by **Theorize5643** » Wed Jul 03, 2024 2:20 am

Wi-Fi sync also has many problems. For example, I described how it does not work with video files: https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... 08#p520108

When I use iSyncr with iTunes, I could sync all the same files I use now without an issue, over on exactly the same phone I use now. Bot Wi-Fi and usb. So I am not convinced the root cause is apart from MediaMonkey. I wanted to stop using iTunes on my Windows laptop, so that is why I transferred to MediaMonkey.

by **rednoise** » Tue Jul 02, 2024 7:17 pm

I see I mis-read lowlander's post above and gave a non-sequitur answer... I used wi-fi sync with all those devices I mentioned, not USB. Wi-fi worked well in all cases. I had tons of problems with USB on, as I recall, the LG and Motorola phones, which made me give up in USB syncing for good.

by **Peke** » Tue Jul 02, 2024 3:46 pm

Hi,
Samsung is known that have poor Proprietary drivers and difficult to install/update (sometimes multiple system restarts are needed).

Please make sure read https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/kno ... ync-fails/ in case of any issues.

by **rednoise** » Tue Jul 02, 2024 2:12 pm

Lowlander wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2024 12:55 pm USB Sync suffers from poor drivers for Android devices. This makes wi-fi Sync the better option in most cases.

Maybe so, but I've used it now with 4 phones (2 Googles, a Motorola, an LG) it has worked well. I'm going to try it with a Samsung soon and I hope it will go well with that one, too.

by **Lowlander** » Tue Jul 02, 2024 12:55 pm

USB Sync suffers from poor drivers for Android devices. This makes wi-fi Sync the better option in most cases.

by **rednoise** » Tue Jul 02, 2024 11:39 am

Theorize5643 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2024 2:59 am Thanks for the responses.

@BArry4679 I just checked manually for an update, and it says that 5.0.5.2695 is the current version. Furthermore, this is the version I can download from MediaMonkey. So I do not understand the remark about the old version of software.

@Brutal. I get sync to work to some degree, but the album art for video's does not work, syncing large files with an usb cable most of the time does not work or it takes a long time because files are deleted and copied back.

The remark about the cable triggered me to try other cables, but with all cables (also one provided by the manufacturer) I had the similar poor results with syncing.

I agree with the syncing difference between Wi-Fi and usb. They seem not to do the same. Although the files are the same in both types of sync, they delete many files to be copied back to the device again. That takes hours because many of the files are video files of courses I watch on my device.

Overall, I do not believe the people at MediaMonkey care about proper syncing. I tried support, this forum and nothing helped. The syncing keeps being troublesome. Even a proper message what the problem is would be great and helpful.

I always had problems with USB sync (I started this thread 3 years ago) and I avoided wifi sync because I thought it would be slow and inefficient. I mean, solid wires are always better, right?? I finally gave in and tried wifi and found it to be far more reliable than USB. I'd say, based on continuing problem reports, that USB sync is never going to work well, for whatever reason. Wifi sync is quite solid.

by **Theorize5643** » Tue Jul 02, 2024 2:59 am

Thanks for the responses.

@BArry4679 I just checked manually for an update, and it says that 5.0.5.2695 is the current version. Furthermore, this is the version I can download from MediaMonkey. So I do not understand the remark about the old version of software.

@Brutal. I get sync to work to some degree, but the album art for video's does not work, syncing large files with an usb cable most of the time does not work or it takes a long time because files are deleted and copied back.

The remark about the cable triggered me to try other cables, but with all cables (also one provided by the manufacturer) I had the similar poor results with syncing.

I agree with the syncing difference between Wi-Fi and usb. They seem not to do the same. Although the files are the same in both types of sync, they delete many files to be copied back to the device again. That takes hours because many of the files are video files of courses I watch on my device.

Overall, I do not believe the people at MediaMonkey care about proper syncing. I tried support, this forum and nothing helped. The syncing keeps being troublesome. Even a proper message what the problem is would be great and helpful.

by **brutal** » Sat Jun 15, 2024 1:57 pm

I swear I've been participating unknowingly in a 10 year beta.

Constant album art issues, and now MMW-MMA sync is back to its old tricks of creating duplicate (appending_1) to every track.

Just. so. disappointing.

All current versions. Last sync was +30 days ago. Only WiFi sync "works," USB never/rarely works.

by **Barry4679** » Thu Feb 29, 2024 7:58 am

Theorize5643 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 11:59 am I hope anyone can help me?

I have some comments, but not much help because I only sync music, and I haven't paid any attention as to whether or not the art is messed up.

Theorize5643 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2024 5:17 am The software is MMW 5.0.4.2693 portable, MMA 2.0.0.1160

You are investing a lot of work into the evaluation of an early version of what is new product. MM5 was understandably fairly raw in it early versions.

You are working with something that is almost a year old.
The current version is 5.1.0.2832. There have been many bug fixes.
It is a beta release, but it is approx at Release Candidate level. It will be less buggy and more stable that what you are working with.

Your version of MMA is not current either. I am running 2.0.0.1165

Theorize5643 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2024 5:17 am Regarding USB sync:
I tried USB syncing several times, but it freezes, I would say 9 out of 10 times. I tried rebooting (windows & device), installing Google drivers in windows, etc. To solve this, I tried what I read on this page https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/kno ... sync-fails. I got it only to work ± 3-4 times the last couple of days. When the transfer freezes, it is always in the first 25-30% of the process, but most of the time in the very first seconds (about 0-2%).

I had similar experience when I first evaluated MMA.

In my case I resolved this by getting a new USB cable.
There are a lot of cables that are OK for charging an Android device, but which deliver the kind of poor experience you describe when used for data transfer.

MMA will be especially prone to this kind of issue due to intensive data transfers, and the fact that there are many individual transfers, each of which could experience problems.
When i got a better cable the problems went away. ... Well almost went away. I have had a couple of glitches since, but nothing like what you describe. Nothing unacceptable.

Theorize5643 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2024 5:17 am Waiting for a long time (more than 1 hour) after the message 'The media transfer process seems to be frozen' does not help. Frozen appears to mean that nothing is going to happen anymore.

I see this message often.
In my case it is a false album. I have a phone with large capacity, and the all the auditing and checking that MMA does before it gets started, seems to trigger the message for every sync that I do.

I wish that the would recalibrate whatever triggers the message. I am sure that it would cause a lot of people to kill the sync needlessly.

BTW I am talking a period of a minute or two ... never hours.

Like you I have noticed if I switch between a USB sync one day, and then use WiFi sync the next time, things seemed to get messed up .... specifically too much deleted and recopied.

Also the falsely high count of tracks to be updated by a usb sync is alarming, and it must harm confidence in the whole process.

Good luck getting the art issues sorted, as that will improve MMA for us all.

by **Theorize5643** » Fri Feb 23, 2024 11:59 am

I hope anyone can help me?

by **Theorize5643** » Sat Feb 17, 2024 9:56 am

I believe that series are on TV, similar to Albums in Audio books.

To figure this issue with the album art out, I did the following:

1) Create a fixed playlist (Test - WI-FI - Fixed) and add one album of the type Audiobooks and one series of the type TV. Here is the information about these files in MMW:

2) Then I set up an AutoPlaylist (Test - WI-FI - Flex) that is based on the playlist I mentioned in step 1. The settings of this playlist are as follows:

3) Then, before I synced the information on this new playlist, I synced several times MMA on my Galaxy S10 with MMW until everything was synced.

4) In MMA I added the AutoPlaylist Test - WI-FI - Flex to the server content. Then I started syncing over Wi-Fi and waited until this was finished. There were no error messages. I did sync several times to make sure nothing new was left.

5) After syncing, I looked at the results of these new series and albums in MMA. Here is what it looks like in MMA:
Audiobook

TV Series

Conclusion Wi-Fi sync:
As you can see, the cover art of the audiobook is displayed correctly in MMA. The covert art of the TV series is not. I checked using X-plore and in both folders there is no file named albumart.jpg.

6) Next, I repeated the same steps for USB sync with a different TV series and Audiobook album. The playlist is Test - USB - Fixed and the AutoPlaylist based on this is Test - USB - Flex.

7) The settings in MMW regarding the USB sync are as follows:

8 ) Then I tried to sync, including the new AutoPlaylist Test - USB - Flex. I was very happy that it took me only one attempt to sync the files. However, I was surprised that the sync started with deleting about 590 files and then copied 660 files to the device. That is no problem for me, but it is confusing. My expectation was that it would copy over 48 files.

PS: I synced twice to make sure that nothing was left behind. The second time went quite fast (a few seconds).
PPS: I tried it 15 minutes later, and then I needed to wiggle, cancel, and do all kinds of stuff to get USB sync running again. Without changing any settings or playing videos, it deleted several files during the sync.

9) Then I waited until MMA had finished scanning files into the library. This took quite a while compared to previous times. Before the scanning, I noticed that all the album art was wrong. After almost everything was messed up in MMA.
For example, here you can see that the audio album 'Bach and the High Baroque' is present as a subfolder of Music/Audiobooks.

Here you can see that this album and all but one are deleted in MMA:

Another issue after USB sync: the course 'An Introduction to Number Theory' is not visible in MMA, although this should have been synced.

It had been synced to my device, as can be seen in X-plore:

Furthermore, all playlists have been deleted:

Conclusion USB sync:
On the positive side, it turns out that USB sync adds albumart.jpg to each folder.
On the negative side, it not only messes up album art in both audiobooks and videos but also hides audio and video files from MMA. I can't imagine that this is how it is supposed to work, so what did I do wrong?

Overall conclusion
1) In my situation, based on the above steps, Wi-Fi sync does not place albumart.jpg in each folder where the files are stored. However, USB sync does. Which I find very odd and unexpected. Shouldn’t it make no difference which method I use regarding what files are or are not synced?
2) Regardless of the file albumart.jpg being present, Wi-Fi sync results in album art being displayed correctly for audio books in MMA.
3) Regarding TV Series, the presence of albumart.jpg in a folder or tag does not guarantee that album art is displayed properly. It does for some series but dfor some it doesn’t. This is regardless of the method of syncing. It is possible to display albumart for a TV series, as can be seen in this screenshot. All six TV series have albumart.jpg in their folder and the correct albumart in their tag. But MMA shows the correct album art for only one TV Series.

USB sync messes up the files and functionality of MMA thoroughly. After describing these steps, I again did a Wi-Fi sync and now all video's and audiobooks are present in MMA. Although the video files show no album art although albumart.jpg is in the folder where these videos are stored.

I am willing to pay for MMA, so I can use Wi-Fi sync. It seems like a less troublesome approach. But it would be super nice if album art were played correctly.

I have tried to be thorough and describe all the steps. Sorry for the very lengthy post because of all the screenshots. But I hope this helps you to understand what I am doing wrong.

by **Lowlander** » Fri Feb 16, 2024 11:41 am

You mention Series. Do the files without Artwork not have a Series (or Album) value?

by **Theorize5643** » Fri Feb 16, 2024 11:08 am

I am not very sure. For other problems, I deleted some albums, and to be frank, I tried several sync options to make it work myself.

However, I am quite sure that syncing using Wi-Fi goes without any hiccups besides the album art. This was an issue that I noticed in the first week after I started using MediaMonkey.

When I tried the usb sync because some courses are quite large, and I wanted to test usb sync, I noticed that album arts was sometimes there. I took notice and saw which albums were synced with usb, and they all had albumart.jpg in their folder. This never happened after a Wi-Fi sync.

Now I am looking at it again in MMA and notice that for 12 albums with video courses only one album (series) shows the correct album art. Although, when I look at the folders using an android file manager, all have albumart.jpg in their respective folders.

I can only say that after I wrote the previous post, I manager to have a complete sync over usb. But rescanning the information did not make the albumart.jpg files show in MMA. Clearing the cache of MMA also did not resolve this issue.

The link you provided did not work but do you mean this: https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHel ... %20tagging

This is how I set up tagging in MMW:

by **Lowlander** » Fri Feb 16, 2024 9:33 am

Is Artwork missing from any newly transferred files on wi-fi Sync (ie. it's just missing from files previously Synced)? Also are you having =https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHe ... ed on Sync?

by **Theorize5643** » Fri Feb 16, 2024 5:17 am

I have the same problem with album art. The issue is that album art does not show in MMA after syncing using Wi-Fi. The album arts do appear when syncing using USB, but more often than not the usb syncing freezes.

Here is the situation:
In MMW, I have the album art stored in a tag. Like this

The syncing settings I use for my device (Galaxy S10, SD card) are:

From this page, I understand that the settings for usb and Wi-Fi syncing are the same: https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHel ... device/5.0

Syncing over Wi-Fi goes quite fast, but results in not showing the art work. After syncing over Wi-Fi and rescanning, the album looks like this:

Remark: the albums that do show album arts have previously been synced using usb.

When looking at the folders on my device, I noticed that the albums and video's that properly show album arts have a file albumart.jpg in each folder. The folders that do no show album art in MMA have no albumart.jpg file in their folder.

The software is MMW 5.0.4.2693 portable, MMA 2.0.0.1160 and Windows 10 Home Version 22H2 (OS build 19045.3930).

Regarding USB sync:
I tried USB syncing several times, but it freezes, I would say 9 out of 10 times. I tried rebooting (windows & device), installing Google drivers in windows, etc. To solve this, I tried what I read on this page https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/kno ... sync-fails. I got it only to work ± 3-4 times the last couple of days. When the transfer freezes, it is always in the first 25-30% of the process, but most of the time in the very first seconds (about 0-2%). When the transfer goes beyond this initial phase, I noticed that MMW states that all files (about 700) need to be copied, although all these files I would like to sync (except 4-5 I already watched/listened) are already on the device. So USB sync would have to delete a few files and copy a few new ones. But it appears to try to sync all files. However, considering how fast this goes, I assume there is no actual copying, more checking and copying when necessary.

When I connect my phone to my laptop, I can see the SD card in Windows explorer and can copy large amounts of data (as a test, I copied about half of the total number of albums to a test folder) to this SD card using Windows explorer.

Furthermore, I noticed that MMW does not always recognize the device when I plug it in. However, after going to USB settings and switching back and forth between transferring files / Android auto and another setting, it is recognized after a few seconds.

Waiting for a long time (more than 1 hour) after the message 'The media transfer process seems to be frozen' does not help. Frozen appears to mean that nothing is going to happen anymore.

Regarding Wi-Fi sync:
I notice that this goes relatively fast because there are no freezes at all. Furthermore, I noticed that only the changed files get transferred. Instead of copying 700 files, the progress is about a few files that I know should actually be copied. However, the only issue I album art is not copied. Because of the issues with the usb sync, I would be interested in buying the MMA version, but the issues with the album art bug me. I do not understand why there is such a big difference between syncing over Wi-Fi and usb?

I have read quite a few webpages that deal with this issue, but I have never read or found a solution to this problem. Probably I overlooked something obvious. So help is appreciated!

Album art does not always sync.

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