Database Users

Music Player "issue"

Guys,
One thing I have noticed which is annoying the heck out of me, when I copy my albums into the Music folder on my memory card, with correct ID3 tags (i.e.e correct Album name, Artist etc..) it seems to show all the individual tracks from the album in the default music view with cover art.
Is there anyway to have it show only albums until you actually select one, then show you individual tracks?

That's weird. Mine shows albums in the horizontal coverflow mode, then when you tap an album, you get a list of tracks.
HTC's audio manager is quite (unnecessarily) strict with ID3 tags compared to other players. It treats tags as case-sensitive ('Death metal' is not the same as 'Death Metal'). I've had to go through all my albums with the free desktop program Mp3tag and make sure everything was absolutely perfect.
For instance, check if the artist and album tags are exactly the same for each track. If you have compilation albums, maybe that's the problem?

hmm that is strange - just to be 100% I will check tonight including checking case's.
never thought of that, cheers
**edit** just realised i can check here and looks like you hit the nail on the head, the issue is with compilation albums having individual artists. on my iphoen as long as I set album artist to Various or VA it was all ok. silly strict rules lol

I used Conduits Pocket Player for a while, which is a great player but needs a lot of program memory.
When I switched to HTC's player (simpler but also faster, lighter and built in) on my Touch Pro, my music library, which was perfectly organized and clean in Pocket Player, appeared to be a mess. Took me quite a while to get everything sorted. HTC's player is just much less forgiving.

Mp3tag is a great program for sorting through tags, also embeds album art so they show in every player I've thrown them at (PS3, Touch Pro, Xperia, i8910 - which is S60v5 and very, very fussy on album art).
There are others with nicer UIs, Media Monkey being a good example, but I've not used anything else that "just works" like mp3tag.

Mp3tag is a great program for sorting through tags, also embeds album art so they show in every player I've thrown them at (PS3, Touch Pro, Xperia, i8910 - which is S60v5 and very, very fussy on album art).
There are others with nicer UIs, Media Monkey being a good example, but I've not used anything else that "just works" like mp3tag.

Problems with the included HTC Music Player

The included HTC Music Player (latest stock TMOUSA ROM) seems to have serious problems with its database.
Of course there are other options--such as the included Windows Media Player, and freeware solutions as TCPMP, commercial music players, etc.
But I like the HTC Music Player, how it plays from your home screen.
I like what happens when one turns the phone landscape, and sees a shuffle of album covers. Is that a gimmick? Yes, but I like it. Kind of fun to choose an album that way, like shuffling through CDs at home, rather than from a list like in WMP.
Yet, the app seems to have serious problems with its database. Although I have tons of music on it (more than 10 GB, all on the storage card), sometimes it cannot see any music at all.
Sometimes it shows no cover art (which is especially crucial for that album shuffle view), although the cover art is embedded in each song, and if one looks at the .vin file that HTCMP put in the folder, the cover art is there too, put there by the app. But somehow, it often doesn't read it. I do the "download cover art" thing, it shows a connection to Gracenote, but some albums never display their cover art, although it is already right there embedded in each song on the album.
What is going on with this app and its database?
Ia there any fix for it?
Is HTC aware of the problem, and working on a fix?
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While discussing the HTC Music Player, one other thing I am curious about. The phone also includes an HTC Video Player, in the windows folder, but with no link in the start menu to it, so most people will never discover it. (They do call that video player, though, to play the included "Transformers" movies, rather than WMP.) Why did they include their own video player, yet not even have a start menu item for it? Does it have any advantage over WMP for playing video?

me said:
The included HTC Music Player (latest stock TMOUSA ROM) seems to have serious problems with its database.
Of course there are other options--such as the included Windows Media Player, and freeware solutions as TCPMP, commercial music players, etc.
But I like the HTC Music Player, how it plays from your home screen.
I like what happens when one turns the phone landscape, and sees a shuffle of album covers. Is that a gimmick? Yes, but I like it. Kind of fun to choose an album that way, like shuffling through CDs at home, rather than from a list like in WMP.
Yet, the app seems to have serious problems with its database. Although I have tons of music on it (more than 10 GB, all on the storage card), sometimes it cannot see any music at all.
Sometimes it shows no cover art (which is especially crucial for that album shuffle view), although the cover art is embedded in each song, and if one looks at the .vin file that HTCMP put in the folder, the cover art is there too, put there by the app. But somehow, it often doesn't read it. I do the "download cover art" thing, it shows a connection to Gracenote, but some albums never display their cover art, although it is already right there embedded in each song on the album.
What is going on with this app and its database?
Ia there any fix for it?
Is HTC aware of the problem, and working on a fix?
------------------------
While discussing the HTC Music Player, one other thing I am curious about. The phone also includes an HTC Video Player, in the windows folder, but with no link in the start menu to it, so most people will never discover it. (They do call that video player, though, to play the included "Transformers" movies, rather than WMP.) Why did they include their own video player, yet not even have a start menu item for it? Does it have any advantage over WMP for playing video?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as the data base goes it has a problem reading large amounts of music. Still on the stock SD card? Is HTC aware of this.....Most likely as it has been a prob from the start, is there a fix....not that I have found. The video player works from the albums tab as it pics up the movies and displays them in that tab.

zelendel said:
As far as the data base goes it has a problem reading large amounts of music. Still on the stock SD card? Is HTC aware of this.....Most likely as it has been a prob from the start, is there a fix....not that I have found. The video player works from the albums tab as it pics up the movies and displays them in that tab.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I use the stock 16GB SD card. Why? Is there a problem with that?
It is unfortunate, since that album art landscape thing is so cool, yet the HTC Music Player does not see the cover art of many albums, although it itself has created the .vin file in each folder, which is a renamed .jpg of the correct art.
And sometimes it cannot find any music!
I sure wish there would be a fix.
No registry fix or anything, that will help it?

me said:
Yes, I use the stock 16GB SD card. Why? Is there a problem with that?
It is unfortunate, since that album art landscape thing is so cool, yet the HTC Music Player does not see the cover art of many albums, although it itself has created the .vin file in each folder, which is a renamed .jpg of the correct art.
And sometimes it cannot find any music!
I sure wish there would be a fix.
No registry fix or anything, that will help it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No there really isnt a prob with the stock SD card except it is a class 2 card so it reads and writes slowly, alot of my issues were fixed when I got a 16gb class 6 off ebay. Make sure all your music is in this format, Artist\album. the album art is handled my the id3 tags so make sure those are all set right. there should be 5 .jpg files in each album folder. I have uploaded a folder with the album jpeg files for you to compare yours to so hope it helps

Thanks. I am downloading your 7z file, and will take a look at it. I have only seen one .jpg in each album folder, which the HTC audio database renames to .vin extension.
Most of the time, that ,jpg is the correct album art for that album. Funny thing is, even so, with many albums the cover art does not display.
I have found a solution (in another thread here) to the problem of when one opens the HTC Music Player, go landscape to see all the albums, and it says something like "no music found", then starts a long search for your music.
It seems like the app forgets its databse every time you reboot the phone. Then when you start the music app, and click anything needing access to the library, it then starts searching for your music to put in the db.
If you add a link to the audio manager file (something like audiomanager_en.exe (in the Windows folder) to your \Windows\Startup folder, that will make it recreate the database on startup, so it will be ready when you want to play some music.
Seems an unnecessary waste of memory and boot time though, to have to do that. You don't need to do that with WMP. It remembers its database, and is there and ready when you use it. If you have added music, you can click rebuild library, and it will then rebuild it. But it does not need to rebuild after every reboot.
Makes me think of stopping the use of the HTC music player altogether, and just use WMP or alternatives like TCPMP and Mort. (Although the latter two don't use library at all, don't know why, just files and play lists.)
But there are nice things about the HTC Music Player--its integration into Sense, and that cool landscape cover art thing. I just wish they would fix the bugs, and get it working properly! (Anyone know if HTC will issue an update for the music player?)

zelendel said:
No there really isnt a prob with the stock SD card except it is a class 2 card so it reads and writes slowly, alot of my issues were fixed when I got a 16gb class 6 off ebay. Make sure all your music is in this format, Artist\album. the album art is handled my the id3 tags so make sure those are all set right. there should be 5 .jpg files in each album folder. I have uploaded a folder with the album jpeg files for you to compare yours to so hope it helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just looked at your .7z file. As you say, there are five album art .jpgs inside that folder.
It makes me wonder--what phone are you using? I think your HTC Music Player is different than mine.
The Music Player on my phone only creates one .jpg cover art file inside each of all my music folders, including those that work in showing cover art, and those that don't. (I guess it looks at the art embedded in the music file tags, and extracts the cover art in a separate file. It is a .jpg file, but renamed with the extension .vin.
Five cover art files, as exists in your folder, is non-existent on the TMOUSA HD2.
Funny thing too---In albums that do not show the cover art in the music player app, the .vin file the app created inside the album's folder--is still usually the correct album cover art. So the app can read the cover art embedded in the music files, creates its one folder ,jpg renamed .vin for the art, but still does not display it in the app.
Hey HTC, fix this app!

I wonder if it might have something to do with the resolution of the cover art?
While it might be able to read all cover art, and make the corresponding .vin (.jpg) file of it in the folder, the app only displays cover art that is in a certain pixel resolution, or a certain range of resolutions?
Could that be why some cover art displays, and others do not?
Anyone know?

I was using the HD 2. I copied the folders from my music file on my pc to my phone. so that may be the reason for the extra image files. but as it always showed the album art I left them there

HTC audio manager shuffle problem
Hi Guys,
This old issue is still unsolved on the last update 3.14, and it is really driving me crazy.
Have you been able to solve it?
Have anyone tried the latest OBOE 1.18 files?
Brgds

Which MP3 Player do you use

So now that I know the stock MP3 player wont display uncompressed album art, I think I want to try a different mp3 or media player. I really cant stand looking at blurry pixelated pics on my Vibrant. Does anyone have any suggestions of players for the Vibrant that will show album art in full resolution instead the blurry images you get with the stock mp3 player?

hmm.. that's wierd, none of my album art is blurry at all on my phone using the stock player...

I do not have blurry album art problem either, but to answer your question I use MixZing.

i don't use it much, but i tried ^3 and liked it. http://abrantix.org/3.php

I used to go crazy over issues like that too. So I gave in to a Rdio subscription. $10 a month for unlimited music that follows u in a cloud, and it all comes with correct good quality album art. No more issues.
I don't work for them either lol in just really love their service and wanted to spread the word. It's really convenient.

jeremiah_mn said:
hmm.. that's wierd, none of my album art is blurry at all on my phone using the stock player...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What size is the album art for your songs. I have used album are that is 600x600 and then add it to my mp3s with itunes. My phone is the only player that shows the album art as blurry.

Tempott said:
What size is the album art for your songs. I have used album are that is 600x600 and then add it to my mp3s with itunes. My phone is the only player that shows the album art as blurry.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My stock music player doesn't show blurry album art, but all mine was added by iTunes automatically (then embedded into the files using a script).

I use doubletwist, and it satisfies my needs.

raduque said:
My stock music player doesn't show blurry album art, but all mine was added by iTunes automatically (then embedded into the files using a script).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows media player also does this... and it is also the fastest was to sync music to your android devices... but not the most talked about for some reason....

Mix zing. Full screen album art, finds missing album art, and has a functional EQ.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

ripsphone said:
Mix zing. Full screen album art, finds missing album art, and has a functional EQ.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow... best media player I've tried. I've been looking for a good one.
This makes my music sound a little better than it did before, heh. Anyone else notice poor quality with 3.5mm jack?

Album Cover Art

Can someone please tell me the best way to save album art? Everytime I update or change roms I lose the cover art. Now I am currently using "Cover Art Downloader" which will automatically find the covers in batch mode when you want, but I was wondering if there is a way to save it with the music on the ext. sd card. Does anyone know how to do this?

I am using the same app. I don't think there's a way to save them. Every time I flash a new rom I have to redownload them too. Its a pain!
Sent from my SGH-T959

If you sort music by album, there's a way to do:
You can grab the album cover pic from amazon, scan it yourself, or search, and put it to corresponding folder with audio files.
I did the same thing and I have album cover on every album folder.

I use mediamonkey to organize my mp3s and it has the ability to embed the cover art into the mp3 itself so it always stays with the music. Media monkey also has the ability to sync playlists using the media player usb mode on the phone.

where do you get media monkey? i don't see it in the market.

roly17 said:
where do you get media monkey? i don't see it in the market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, you wouldn't - it is a PC application.
It also has the ability to reencode all your music on the fly while transferring. I keep all my music in archive quality MP3 and Flac files, but I don't want it to take up that much space on my phone, so I have it automatically transcode everything to 64Kbps WMA on transfer, which sounds ok in my cheap earbuds anyhow. The downside is that I lose my embedded album art, so keep in mind that the embedded album art and the transcoding to save space are mutually exclusive if you use Media Monkey. Both features are great, you just have to pick which one is more important to you.

mingkee said:
If you sort music by album, there's a way to do:
You can grab the album cover pic from amazon, scan it yourself, or search, and put it to corresponding folder with audio files.
I did the same thing and I have album cover on every album folder.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just be aware that if you do this, all the album cover pictures will now show up in the gallery which kind of sucks if you have a lot of albums.

what does music player look for?
Where does the music player look for album art, and where? An image file with the same album name? It is ok with embedded art too?

If you use poweramp it will just re dl the set for you or you can manually do it through album art app. I know this didn't answer you exactly but it's a solution
Don't blame me, blame my keyboard's autocorrection algorithm.

shrapnelx said:
Just be aware that if you do this, all the album cover pictures will now show up in the gallery which kind of sucks if you have a lot of albums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had this same issue and my way around that was to delete all of my old cover art and then use "Album Art Grabber" from the Market, which collects everything automatically and puts it into 1 folder.
In the end, I have 1 folder in "My Gallery" with all of my album artwork and everything is nicely organized in one place. I also think you can choose the folder you want to save your artwork to....At the very least, you could always copy the artwork folder and place it wherever you want (SD Card or Internal HD).
Hope that helps!
- Mat

shrapnelx said:
Just be aware that if you do this, all the album cover pictures will now show up in the gallery which kind of sucks if you have a lot of albums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
.nomedia - As in create a file named .nomedia in the folder and nothing from that folder will show up in the gallery.

T313C0mun1s7 said:
.nomedia - As in create a file named .nomedia in the folder and nothing from that folder will show up in the gallery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Won't that also keep your MP3s in the folder from showing up in the music player?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

If you guys dont mind spending a little money Poweramp does all this automatically.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1UO6DakowM
I listen to mostly hiphop and r&b and the audio is great. I plug it up to my car auido jack and sounds amazing through my ported subs. Also really good thru headsets.
I personally started using this program when stock android and touchwiz music player was playing the audio from installed games, ringtones, some videos, movies, and podcast.
This program only plays music form the folders you select. THis works great with the vibrant having 2 seperate memory cards. Because I have music in the internal/external.
Edit: I also wanted to add that cover art got on my nerves when I have atleast 100 albums on my sd cards. Its not always simple as adding a picture to the album folder. You usually have to rename them to Cover.jpg/Cover.jpeg/Albumart.jpg etc. I have majority of my music on my external 16gb and it had compatibility problems when having certain albums in the same folder. Poweramp takes care of all of that. I dont pay for a ton of apps but this one I would recommend.

if you get the "donate" version of cover art downloader, there is an option in the settings to "embed cover art into id3 tag (mp3 only).

shrapnelx said:
Won't that also keep your MP3s in the folder from showing up in the music player?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't believe so because it is a flag used by the gallery app, not the music player app. Any application can behave however it is programmed of course, but most picture apps honor the file and most multimedia apps don't.

The best way is also the biggest pain-in-the-butt way.
Use a computer program on a desktop computer to embed the album art into the mp3 itself. Then transfer the mp3 files back to your vibrant.
I use MP3 Tagger, which also lets me correct MP3 ID data.
It is a work in progress for me. I have done all of my mp3 files beginning with 'A' and 'B'.
At my current pace I should be done in about 5 years.

T313C0mun1s7 said:
I don't believe so because it is a flag used by the gallery app, not the music player app. Any application can behave however it is programmed of course, but most picture apps honor the file and most multimedia apps don't.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm positive the .nomedia file will keep audio from showing up in the music player. I did this to keep lets golf sounds and other game sounds from showing up there. So that file would keep the image from showing up in the gallery, but also the mp3's wouldn't show up in music player either.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA Premium App

Hide Album Arts from Photo Gallery?!?

Now that uncle Sam fixed the media scanner not reading properly iTunes tags and album arts, there are tons cover arts appearing in the photo gallery!
Wonder if this is by design or a sort of bug?
There should be a way to hide those cover arts from the photo gallery....

Make a emty file called .nomedia and place in the folder or use program from Android Market to do it for u.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.studiokuma.nomedia

In what folder should I place the .nomedia file? I wish to use the album arts ONLY in the music player....

I see... maybe you mean in the Music folder? This will prevent the gallery to use those icons? But will it keep the music player to show correctly tha arts?

Yes it will prevent the art from showing in the stock media player. Get a media player where you set the folders, like poweramp, and then you can have the .nomedia file in the music folder to stop gallery from seeing it but the player will still pick it up

Humm...but i'd like the stock media player to show the album arts now that it works! What I'd like to disable is showing the album arts in the photo gallery

RixNox said:
Humm...but i'd like the stock media player to show the album arts now that it works! What I'd like to disable is showing the album arts in the photo gallery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well i hate to say it but your stuck. You can't remove them from the gallery without the nomedia file. In turn will hide the album art from stock player

Oh well! I will post a message to Samsung customer support!
It looks like they listen customer requests

RixNox said:
Oh well! I will post a message to Samsung customer support!
It looks like they listen customer requests
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Samsung can't do much it is a limitation in android.
I really hope you were joking about Samsung lol

I have all of my photos named folder.jpg/jpeg (I forget which extension) and they don't show up in the gallery.

zelendel said:
I really hope you were joking about Samsung lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haha! No, really, I'm serious! I mean I've been messing with Nokia customer support for years, and basically it didn't exist, no wonder they're collapsing.
When I've noticed the .m4a missing tags and cover arts I have posted a message to Samsung customer support here in Italy and the day after I got a phone call from them and I was astonished when the guy told me that "Samsung is aware about this problem, because the media scanner is faulty when dealing with ID3 tags in .m4a" !!!!!!!
At the moment they're doing pretty well!

I just don't use default photo gallery. Try QuickPic for example. It can't show Picassa albums, but it allows good control about what folders to display and what not.

Good to know, I'll take a try, btw I was tryng to remove Picasa album showing

RixNox said:
Haha! No, really, I'm serious! I mean I've been messing with Nokia customer support for years, and basically it didn't exist, no wonder they're collapsing.
When I've noticed the .m4a missing tags and cover arts I have posted a message to Samsung customer support here in Italy and the day after I got a phone call from them and I was astonished when the guy told me that "Samsung is aware about this problem, because the media scanner is faulty when dealing with ID3 tags in .m4a" !!!!!!!
At the moment they're doing pretty well!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I,wish you better luck then most,others have found when we have pointed out huge issues with them, and got we are working on it. That,was almost a year ago and guess what. Still not fixed.

I recommend QuickPic, it's a much faster and better gallery than that comes with Android. Also you can tap on a folder and exclude/hide it from the listing.
Awesome app, still wondering why Google hasn't bought the app and replaced the stock Android one with that one.

Well i hate to say it but your stuck. You can't remove them from the gallery without the nomedia file. In turn will hide the album art from stock player
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wells it's not true. You can hide album arts from gallery simply by changing their names to "folder.jpg". Than gallery will ignore them, though player will still use them.

urfel said:
Wells it's not true. You can hide album arts from gallery simply by changing their names to "folder.jpg". Than gallery will ignore them, though player will still use them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NIce one this, worth it giving it a try... maybe with a subfolder-recursive script that does the job...

urfel said:
Wells it's not true. You can hide album arts from gallery simply by changing their names to "folder.jpg". Than gallery will ignore them, though player will still use them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Learn something new everyday. But there is no way I ma changing the files just for the system to change them back the next time i sync to my pc

Ahhh!!! I have just realized that those arts are related to mp3 with external album art only! The trick would simply be to repack cover art into the mp3 itself.... correct?
OT: now that the cover art is being used at larger resolutions,whne the music player plays the track, it shows some album arts with very poor resolution. I wonder if there's a tool that could list what tracks are using low resolution cover arts so they could be fixed...