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[Mike...]

I have an odd issue since looking into DLNA, which itself seems to be working fine.

When sending a music album to a device, the cover art disappears in MC... This happens intermittently, it only happens when a file is played. Although MC reports the impacted files as having no embedded cover art anymore, Windows file explorer properties show no edits have been made to those files. The folder.jpg file is also still in the album's folder. I'm currently running the latest stable version 20.0.30.

I've been trying to consistently reproduce the issue, but no luck so far. What could be causing this?

[Mike...]

I've now been able to reproduce this consistently with different renderers.

All my files are WMA 192. They play fine on the renderers in that format.

In the DLNA server settings, you have Audio > Mode. When this is set to Original (in this case the WMA), MC removes the cover art from the file when playback starts.

When set to Specified output format or Specified output format only when necessary (MP3 high bandwidth), MC does not remove the cover art.

Why it does this, is another question.

[BigSpider]

Sounds a bit like your renderer is taking exclusive control of the jpg file so poor old MC can't see it any more. Just a thought , might be completely wrong.I presume the cover art reappears once the album has been fully played.

[RoderickGI]

Confirmed.

I saw the message in the image tag in the Tag Window change from "inside file" to "unable to load image file" or similar when I played a WMA file to BubbleUPnp, and then change to "no image".

But there may be some special conditions to reproduce that:
Playing in Original Format to the DLNA Renderer.
The image is inside the file before starting playback, but it may have been placed in there before changes to MC around WMA tagging.
There may be special conditions for the capabilities of the Renderer.


For one of the affected files, if you turn on "Options > File Location > Cover Art > Also store image in the file's tag" and then run "right-click > Library Tools > Update Tags (from library)", then play the file is the Cover Art removed again? It was for me, although I had trouble just playing the files in Original Format because I don't have a good DLNA Renderer that isn't on my phone.

Tagging for WMA has been updated I think in the past, to standardise it a bit more. Maybe that has changed the way image tags are saved in WMA files, and made old files incompatible. But this does appear to be a bug.

[Mike...]

Thanks for looking into this.

I've followed your suggestion, but the cover art is indeed removed again.

I've just done a test with files created this past week, when I ripped a CD with MC to WMA. Only MC has touched those files. And this bug also happens with those new files.

[RoderickGI]

Thanks for confirming. It is definitely unintended functionality (a bug).

I did see some files where it didn't happen, some where it didn't happen immediately or on the first play, and some where it happened every play. For a while it appeared like it only happened to the first track of an Album, but then as I tested more it happened to other tracks. They were a mixture of WMA 9 and 9.2 files. All the ones I tested had a bitrate of 128. I couldn't see any pattern to why some had the issue and others didn't, but I didn't look too hard.

I ended up testing by playing from one MC installation to another via DLNA, rather than Media Network, which meant the DLNA Renderer (MC) could always play the original format.

Over to JRiver to review.

[Mike...]

Hi, just wondering if there is any news on this issue?

[RoderickGI]

I haven't seen anything.

Keep bumping until it's noticed.

[Mike...]

I'll give this one another bump.

[RoderickGI]

It will get noticed eventually, if you keep plugging it.