Album Art Architecture

[LittleReg]

With the exception of erratic wi-fi sync, which I will imagine will never be solved in my lifetime due to the lack of standardization, I've got MM up and running and, as I've mentioned before, as a database application, it is very impressive. Other than a couple of wishes I'd have for batching work, I don't think I could improve on MM's design and layout and data features.

The thorn in my side is Album Art. I have one question to ask of MM's developers: Would it be too much to ask how Album Art storage/management/transfer is architected within MMW and MMA? Would telling us how this works be an egregious exposure of IP? Without knowing how MMW and MMA "decide" what to do with Album Art, users are forced to grope about in the dark, trying things randomly in the desperate attempt to get this to work.

The crux of the matter is that it appears as though when it comes to Album Art, MM is poorly designed. I've experienced every combination of display of Album Art:

1. Artwork displays in the Artwork column of the main display (w/Details), but not in the Selected sidebar.
2. Artwork displays in the Selected sidebar, but not in the Artwork column of the main Display (w/Details).
3. Take either of the two above conditions, but artwork is not displaying in MMA.
4. Artwork is displaying in one area of MMA but not in another (more combinations of errors that I need to list here).
5. Artwork is displaying incorrectly in MMA (many different errors here, e.g., hijacking an image from another Track, Artist, or Album).

This is inexplicable. Why isn't there a simple fix that forces MMW and MMA to examine what is in the original record (Properties) and display the data that is in that record? A lesson in how the application is architected would go a long way to troubleshooting these issues.

I've tried just about everything I can imagine:

1. Assigning a type to the art (e.g., "Cover")
2. Deleting and reimporting the file into MM
3. Deleting the Album Art on my phone then re-sync
4. Deleting the Track on my phone then re-sync
5. Deleting the Album Art file on MMW and restoring it

With each sync, I never know what I'm going to end up with on my phone. Sometimes, something that was correct is hosed by a sync that had nothing to do with any editing of that particular record. Sometimes, a sync fixes something on a third or fourth try, seemingly at random. How can this be? All we're talking about it simple images, and the sync process should be architected to match the Source and the Target exactly. (The sync process doesn't seem to be architected to produce an indexed mirror - it doesn't seem to know what's on the handheld device in re to all aspects of the file metadata, only a subset.)

I don't believe it's valid to blame the nature of the image files as we did in the past. They are stored faithfully in the individual records (Properties) in MMW and I can't recall a single issue with something missing or being incorrect there. It's MMW's and MMA's own architecture that it hosing all this up and I would appreciate it after all these versions if this could be fixed.

Thank you.

[Lowlander]

The easiest Artwork to work with is embedded Artwork as it will always move with the file. The Artwork you want shown should be listed first in the Artwork tab of the Properties window in MMW.

MMW will sync 1 Artwork per Album to MMA. This means that you'll need proper Album tagging in MMW (Album and Album Artist the same values for files to belong to an Album).

How MMW syncs Artwork depends on your settings in the Device Profile.

With my well tagged files with embedded Artwork it's all working as expected.

You may want to delete the MMCache****_* folders from the MediaMonkey Temp folder (set under Tools > Options > General), which resets the image cache MediaMonkey uses and forces it to be created again from the files Artwork. Also make sure you're up-to-date on both MMW and MMA when using Sync.

[LittleReg]

Thanks, Lowlander. Here are my responses to each of your statements:

1) All of my artwork is embedded. I learned that lesson early on, so I meticulously went back through my database and embedded all artwork that previously was only "attached".

2) Although I would love to explore all the options for artwork (back cover, inside liners, etc.), I haven't dared to try this yet based upon this "one artwork only" thing you mention. As for Album and Album Artist having the "same values," I'm not sure I know what you mean by this. Obviously, an Album will have the name of the album, and the Album Artist will have the name of the artist - two different values. I don't assign artwork to "albums" per se, only to the songs on an album, using the "Apply to all..." checkbox which usually works well.

3) I appreciate your statement about the Device Profile, but when I went into this, it was far too technical for me to understand, so I can't be sure what's needed there. One would believe that the default settings would make sure the artwork would transfer properly, but if not, what are the appropriate settings to use?

4) I'm up-to-date with both MMW and MMA - at east according to what each tell me on their respective devices.

Thanks!

[LittleReg]

P.S. I have no cache files anywhere on my machine, and there is nothing in the default directory on the General Tab except two folders: "Previews" and "Virtual CD". I performed a search on my entire hard drive for any file names *mmcache* and there was nothing. Is this something wrong with my software?

[Lowlander]

That's very odd, you should definitely have MMCache folders in the MediaMonkey Temp folder as that's used to display Artwork in the Filelisting.

2) Album Artist needs to be the same value for all files on the Album, whereas Artist can be any value. So for example, compilation Albums would have something like Various Artists as Album Artist to make sure they all belong to the same Album.

3) I have it set to copy Artwork to tags and the option to remove larger Artwork disabled.

You could always try to reinstall the latest release: https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... =8811&sd=d

[LittleReg]

Yeah, I found the files (they were set to "hidden"), but after the six hour restore, nothing worked with it. The album art is still mismatched. The question on the table is this: how can the artwork be correct in MMW and incorrect on my phone? In other words, why does the phone app not mirror *exactly* what MMW has? Why is there some sort of 'hidden' set of instructions that is causing these problems? Why isn't the architecture WYSIWYG?

I have three _albums_ for the Artist Hank Snow:

I Don't Hurt Anymore (single)
I'm Moving On (single)
Old Shep (single)

Hank Snow is the Artist and Hank Snow is the Album Artist. In MMW, I see three different line items for the three tunes, and each is accompanied with its proper piece of album art. I cleared the cache and performed this lengthy restore. How is MMA able to ignore what MMW is telling it? Or, why isn't MMW telling MMA what to do? What is the Use Case for performing a so-called "sync" where a user would *now* want a mirror image, and even if you could come up with someone who would want this odd condition, why is it that in order to have MMA mirror MMW, that the burden is on this user and not the user who doesn't want the mirror?

I am going to install the latest release that you provide (thanks). However, as you know from your history of responses to me on this *same issue* that this is the third time that updating the software is expected to fix this problem.

Thanks.

[Lowlander]

Is the wrong Artwork in MMA the Artwork that is associated with 1 of the other files on the Album?

[LittleReg]

P.S. I already have v1897 installed, thanks.

[LittleReg]

Yes, all three files have the artwork for the "I'm Movin' On" album.

[LittleReg]

There is only one track per album, since the last time we corresponded you advised me to get rid of the common album names since that might be "confusing" MM. You were correct: ever since I made unique "album" names for singles, MMW is now fixed (with the exception of the problem between the Artwork column in the Main Display and the Selected window). This correction, however, did nothing for MMA. Thanks.

[Lowlander]

Have you tried removing files from device and re-syncing with MMW?

[LittleReg]

Yes, I've completely deleted offending files from my phone and attempted to resync. Very rarely, does this work, and interestingly, there are times when I don't get the same error - an error, yes, but not the same one.

My current example of the Hank Snow tracks is a perfect example. Before I started this thread, the three tracks were displaying the artwork for "Old Shep". After I deleted the cache and went through the massive restore, the three tracks now all display the artwork for "I'm Movin' On." To me, this is simply inexplicable that this sync process can perform this poorly.

I had written previously about all the problems sync'ing with a USB cable, and the advice was to ditch USB and use wi-fi, which for me, is considerably slower than the direct cable connection. The switch to wi-fi seemed to take care of the sync operations freezing and dropping as they did with USB (although even the wi-fi goes to abnormal EOJ on occasion), but the artwork transfer isn't nearly as accurate.

I know there is something wrong with this architecture because I have actually removed everything from my phone - music and app - and reinstalled from scratch. I have to endure a massively long restore process, but when it's finished, nearly all of the original errors are still there. In MMW, there are no errors, but on the phone...errors. The fact that the metadata is getting lost in translation means only one thing: MM is not architected to *validate* its processes, only to *perform* them.

Thanks.

[LittleReg]

Regardless of the "fixes," I've attached two simple photos. These photos were captured after performing a Restore. Plain and simple, no frills: you can see that MMW shows one thing, and that MMA shows another. It's not about what to do to "fix" this particular case. It's about how can this possibly happen in the first place?

With iTunes, although I had problems displaying artwork (it was either there or not), for nearly 60,000 songs, never was there a case where a track was displaying *incorrect* artwork. The fact that there are all these things that I'm supposed to try to fix this problem only means that we're hoping that with one of them, the problem magically goes away, not that we understand how the artwork sync process actually works and what we can do to prevent problems like this from happening in the first place.

Serious offer: $100 to anyone who can fix this problem.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0aosrjepp1vu7y/MMA.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ufty93i9f6xmqfe/MMW.JPG?dl=0

[LittleReg]

P.S. I inserted Dropbox URLs for the images, but they're not showing up. I clicked the "Notify me" box for responses and the board doesn't notify me when they occur. I pay money for a license to a product that doesn't work.

Welcome to the quality of computer software 40 years into the industry.

[LittleReg]

Will the URLs display on their own? Let's see...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0aosrjepp1vu7y/MMA.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ufty93i9f6xmqfe/MMW.JPG?dl=0