BUG: Album artist not syncing [#11319]

[Zbynek]

Album artist not syncing both via wifi and USB. Syncing ~30 albums with all properties properly filled in - Album Artist, Artist, Album however after sync most of them and up in Unknown artist folder under Album artists menu. When checking tags directly in MMA indeed Album artists says 'Unknown artist' despite it is correctly filled in and visible in MMW. What is interesting when I connect phone via USB and browse phone content in MMW, the Album artist shows as correctly filled in as well. Is it reading from some temporary db on PC rather than directly from phone?

Number of re-installations of MMA did not help

MMW 1658
MMA 167
Samsung Galaxy 3
Android 4.1.2

[Lowlander]

I haven't seen this. Is the Album Artist tag saved to the actual files on your PC? What file type are you working with?

[Guest]

Uff, looks really weird

- I assigned all tags in MMW where I seem Album artist properly assigned however as you raised the question I checked in Winamp and the field was blank! I re-assgined tag in MMW again, deleted the album on MMA and synced. However although MMW said it copied the files and sync on Android filesystem I only see *.alb file inside albums's directory. No mp3s...

- In one of the previous attempts it happened that after I synced additional albums to phone, MMA could not see them although files were on filesystem in correct dirs. I reinstalled the MMA and then app correctly read all files (again however with no all Album artists)

I use mp3s

Looks like a combination of multiple problems The tags visible in MMW however not in Winamp is a bit worrying.

Thanks,
Zbynek

[Zbynek]

Ok, I gave it one more try without any success. I had MMW beta installed as portable, i.e. I deleted it and "installed" the latest 1661. I also reinstalled MMA and deleted all music from phone.

1) Reinstalled both on phone and PC, configured /MM_music as a dir on phone where to store music. Starting from scratch on both phone and PC
2) Connected phone via USB
3) Configured ~20 songs in 2 directories for sync in MMW. They are tagged as 3 different Album artists (I know does not make sense but for testing). Note that I selected files for sync based on location in MMW.
Tags were verified to be identical in MMW and Winamp
4) Synced

Result:
- 3 Directories correctly created under /MM_music as per the Album Artist tags. Subdirectoreis with Album names ok as well
- in MMA under Album Artists all 3 albums are 'Unknown artist', under it correct album names, under it correct songs
- when trying to edit tags in MMA, Album artist shows 'Unknown artist'

Which means total failure sync does not work at all.

I am ready to provide screenshots, logs, whatever you like.

Best regards,
Zbynek

[Zbynek]

Forgot to say they right after sync finished, I noticed MMA showed Album artist which was in fact artis of one of the songs I synced. It incorrectly assigned that to the whole album though. It was there just for couple of seconds as refresh started in MMA and all content was put under 'Unknown artists'.

Given that dirs are created ok it looks like the 'post processing' MMA does after sync screwed it up

[Zbynek]

Hi,

am I really the only one having these issues? Album artist still getting messy, either Unknown or randomly takes an artists name from one of the songs and assignes that to the whole album as Album artists.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
Zbynek

[dtsig]

Nope. I had wiped and reinstalled mma, then plugged in and my playlist sync'd. It was correct album vs artist.

Today I added 600 tracks (all album based and fully and correctly filled in) to my playlist and plugged in. Now I have many of the new 'albums' with unknown artist. But if i go into it I get Track and Artist correctly.

Also, if i go into Artist/Album Artist a lot of the artist show 1 or more little graphics and n album nn tracks. But for a great majority of the new ones added I get, for example Canned Heat, multiple graphics and nn tracks. Not 10 albums, 70 tracks but just 70 tracks. If i go into Canned Heat ALL the albums show 'unknown artist'. BULL and PUCKY. They all have Artist and Album Artist.

Finally when in 'Artist/Album Artist' mode for many I see the little MM icon but not the album art. BUT if i go into the album (only 1 for this artist) I see the cover just fine. HUH???

To, just sync once is the answer

[rusty]

There's a regression in the last build that causes Album Artists on compilation albums to go missing in MMA or to be replaced with metadata from other Artists performing on the album. It'll be fixed in the next build (168). More detail at:
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=11319
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=11331

-Rusty

[rovingcowboy]

Not sure but i'm going to post here as its the only message that was found by search.
i'm still getting some album covers to not match the songs on the comuter when i sync with usb by converting the songs to mp3 on the fly. and i'm getting an extra file in some of the folders on the andriod phone that are .alb files what are those for what would make it show up in only a few of the folders with the song files.

oh yeah just got new mma beta today and just re sync'ed my songs from scratch.

found out that from one of the crashes my system had over the past few months that some of the data in some of the songs was changed or removed. That is why the album covers didn't match..

But I still don't know what the .alb files are for and why only in a few folders.

[rusty]

There is still a case where album art will differ between MMA and MMW: when tracks within a directory each have different album art (which can occur on compilation albums for which album art is assigned per track rather than for the album as a whole).

For details see: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=11919

-Rusty

[deejaynyc]

I just finished an initial USB sync between MMW and MMA. MMW is v. 4.1.5.1719; MMA is v. 1.0.7.0311. The size of the sync was ~45 GB. Things seemed to go smoothly enough. However, at the end of the sync, 123 albums were identified in MMA (but not in MMW) as "Unknown Artist." In MMW, the "Artist" and "Album Artist" fields are properly completed. In addition, I went back and looked at the underlying folders and files, both on the source drive, and on the Android device (a Samsung Galaxy S5). In each case, the relevant field ("Album Artist," "Contributing Artist" in Windows, "Artist" on the Android device) was filled in with the artist's name. The songs are all there, and labeled correctly. It's just that MMA isn't seeing the artist name. For what it's worth, there multiple cases where there are several other albums by the same artist where the album *does* appear in MMA.

Please advise.

DJ

[rusty]

Hi DJ,

Can you send me (via private message) a link to a zip file (e.g. using mediafire or a similar service) containing a couple of the albums that are experiencing this issue?

Thanks.

-Rusty

[bloved]

Hi,

I've solved a similar problem doing following:
1) erasing all MMA database files, form mainStorage/Android/data/com.ventismedia.android.mediamonkey
2) erasing all files in /MediaMonkey, both in main memory and SD card
3) erasing all the music library files

doing just 2 and 3 was not enough, actually step 1 was risolutive!

BTW, my problem was that, also if ALL the library on MMW had all fields (title, album, author and album author) and album picture and track's pictures, I've got about 30% of tracks stored in "unknown artist\unknown album\" folders. And the worse thing was that in the album view of MMA I all traks stored in that folder HAD THE SAME PICTURE!
Deleting all files specified in above steps solved the problem.

The cause of the problem is that I first imported all files in MMW, the I did a sync with MMA. Ater that I decided to entry all missing fields in all tracks, may traks were missing the album field and the picture. But MMA in the first sync memorized the information about the location of each track, so also if I modified the traks, the location information was unchanged (I think MMS cache that information, but never update it).

Tho the lesson is: if you make HUGE modifications to your library, then it's betetr to uninstall and reinstall the MMA and make the sync again, better maing a full sync