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Author Topic: Flac cover art not working  (Read 3520 times)

AoXoMoXoA

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Flac cover art not working
« on: November 04, 2007, 10:20:07 am »

FLAC files - same issues still exist with file corruption from adding Cover Art to the files

When MC give message of "Failed to Update Tags":
File from after MC affixed cover art = Corrupted
Backup file copy from before cover art attached by MC = Not Corrupted

Please address this ASAP as corruption of files is a serious issue that can cause loss of data.
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JimH

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2007, 11:15:57 am »

Any more details?  Which plug-ins are you using?
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #2 on: November 04, 2007, 11:58:02 am »

Any more details?  Which plug-ins are you using?
\
see my post in the last build of MC where I went into detail (MediaCenter120338)
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #3 on: November 04, 2007, 12:19:27 pm »

perhaps this will help:

Media Center Registered 12.0.358 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
AMD Unknown 2001 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 429 MB

Internet Explorer: 7.0.5730.11 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2900 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2900 / Shell32.dll: 6.0.2900 / wnaspi32.dll: 4.71 (0002) , ASPI for Win32         DLL, Copyright ? 1989-2002 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.71 (0002)

Ripping /   Drive D: LITE-ON DVDRW SHM-165H6S  Mode:ModeSecure  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive D: LITE-ON  DVDRW SHM-165H6S   Addr: 0:2:0  Speed:48  MaxSpeed:48  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
  Removed devices:


Interface Plugins:
  last.fm
  Library Server
  TiVo Server
  UPnP Server
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JimH

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #4 on: November 04, 2007, 12:36:41 pm »

12.0.363 is out.
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #5 on: November 04, 2007, 12:43:54 pm »

12.0.363 is out.

Ooops, thought I had gotten around to updating all my machines. Guess I missed one.

Be back in a bit after some testing of .363, although I saw nothing regarding flac files on the list of updates & fixes.
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Alex B

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #6 on: November 04, 2007, 01:19:32 pm »

AoXoMoXoA, I copied your post from the 358 thread:

Quote
I have a slight flac problem that comes up occaisionally.

I import & tag a flac file, rename by properties to it's new home (Artist\Album\filename), add cover art, and run audio analysis.

OK, here is where the problem arises: I sometimes come across a file that fails audio analysis. When I test the file in FlacTester it results in "ERROR MD5 CHECK"

When attempting to convert to a wav file MC fails to convert, and dbPower results in: "Error converting to Wave, md5 did not match decoded data, file is corrupt"

Since I habitually save a backup copy before most of this proceedure (for protection until I get to run a real backup), I was able to check the original file copy that had been untouched by MC only to find it is not corrupted like the one MC had processed.

I strongly suspect this corruption occurred while attaching cover art, but that is just a hunch brought about by the fact that this often has crashed MC.



edit: Just attempting to add cover art to a newly tagged/renamed/imported album and MC said it failed to update the files/tags. I went to the folder and using "Unlocker" I found that MC had the files "locked". Once I closed MC and re-openned it several minutes later it was now able to add cover art and update the tags with no issues and much faster that it has been doing.
What operations would cause MC to maintain a lock on the files it has already finished tagging and subsequently re-written to their new location?
Hoping this helps lead you down the right path to resolving this.

Do as Jim said and install the latest build, even though FLAC isn't mentioned in the change logs. It is important that you have the same build with the development team when they try to reproduce the problem.

I tried quickly embedding cover art to a few FLAC files and it worked without problems, but I didn't try to reproduce exactly what you explained and not with a large number of files.

Adding cover art to FLAC files is a heavy process because the tagging component usually must rewrite the compete FLAC files. The FLAC tags are in the beginning of the file and the default size of the padding block is only 4 kB, which is not big enough for usual cover art fles (padding block = empty area for additional tags).

Probably the In_FLAC.dll plugin needs to use a temp file when it adds cover art. After tagging is finished it deletes the original file and renames the temp file with the original name.

I am only guessing, but here are some questions that came into my mind:

Do you have enough disk space in the file location and in your temp location? Are the files local or on a networked drive? If you access them through network what is the connection type and speed?

Do you by any chance use the Auto-importer? I wonder if it could interfere the process and occasionally lock files when it shouldn't. Or maybe an antivirus program could do the same if it is allowed to scan all possible file types.

Perhaps the Flac plug-in doesn't have all the same safeguarding mechanisms that the MP3 plug-in has (also the ID3v2 tags are in the beginning of the). I'd quess that we would see a lot of bug reports if MP3 tagging had a similar problem.
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #7 on: November 04, 2007, 02:44:42 pm »

AoXoMoXoA, I copied your post from the 358 thread:

Do as Jim said and install the latest build, even though FLAC isn't mentioned in the change logs. It is important that you have the same build with the development team when they try to reproduce the problem.

I tried quickly embedding cover art to a few FLAC files and it worked without problems, but I didn't try to reproduce exactly what you explained and not with a large number of files.

Adding cover art to FLAC files is a heavy process because the tagging component usually must rewrite the compete FLAC files. The FLAC tags are in the beginning of the file and the default size of the padding block is only 4 kB, which is not big enough for usual cover art fles (padding block = empty area for additional tags).

Probably the In_FLAC.dll plugin needs to use a temp file when it adds cover art. After tagging is finished it deletes the original file and renames the temp file with the original name.

Yes, I have updated that machine now and will see how things go from here.
I honestly thought I had updated but now recall that I was processing some files and postponed the install.

I am only guessing, but here are some questions that came into my mind:

Do you have enough disk space in the file location and in your temp location? Are the files local or on a networked drive? If you access them through network what is the connection type and speed?

Do you by any chance use the Auto-importer? I wonder if it could interfere the process and occasionally lock files when it shouldn't. Or maybe an antivirus program could do the same if it is allowed to scan all possible file types.

Perhaps the Flac plug-in doesn't have all the same safeguarding mechanisms that the MP3 plug-in has (also the ID3v2 tags are in the beginning of the). I'd quess that we would see a lot of bug reports if MP3 tagging had a similar problem.

There is plenty of free disc space on both the system drive (where the temp file is located) and on the drive where the files are located.

I avoid the use of Auto-Import features as I prefer to maintain control and avoid interference.

I am not familiar with the inner workings of the flac plug-ins. I do know I rarely have any issues prior to adding cover art into the formula.
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #8 on: November 05, 2007, 09:48:24 am »

12.0.363 still does the same

1) Test newly tagged & imported flac files with FLACTester - files test as OK

2) Locate album in MC, right-click/add cover art from file -
MC gives an error that it was unable to save tags "please check that file exists and is not in use by another program"

3) check file location, files do exist and are not in use (Unlocker.exe shows only MC had threads to those files)

4) test using FLACTester - MD5 error

5) using dbPower converer attempt to convert to wav -
"Error converting to Wave, md5 did not match decoded data, file is corrupt."
   
This does not occur every time to every file, but is intermittent.
It does occur only to flac files and only when adding cover art.


It appears to me that MC is either:

a) discovering an error in the flac file during the cover art process which was undiscovered by previous operations MC performed and undetected by other software (FLACTester, dbPower)

-or-
 
b) causing corruption during the writing of the cover art into the file

-or-

c) I have a strange disk read/write error that only occurs occaisionally and only to flac files which have had cover art added by MC



If this cannot be fixed, can there be a way to set for covers only to be inside mp3 files but not inside flac files?
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bob

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #9 on: November 05, 2007, 10:02:12 am »

I can't seem to reproduce this.

Can we narrow it down some? Can you make it happen with ONE and only one flac file?

What are the images? jpeg, gif, etc. Color depth? Can you attach a non-working image to a post here so I can try it??

Thanks..
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #10 on: November 05, 2007, 10:14:18 am »

Can you make it happen with ONE and only one flac file?
No, I can't control when it happpens or to which file, but I can isolate an affected file after corruption.

What are the images? jpeg, gif, etc. Color depth?
The images are jpg files of 500x500 pixels 24bpp color depth.

Can you attach a on-working image to a post here so I can try it??
I can attach an image, however since it may correctly attach to 9 tracks and only corrupt one or two I doubt it is the image file as the cause. Also after replacing the corrupted file with a good backup the same image correctly attaches.

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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #11 on: November 05, 2007, 10:37:39 am »

new error code from FLACTester:
ERROR_LOST_SYNC @ 0m 0 s

how about I email you the corrupted file, the uncorrupted backup file, and the cover art file?


I think MC has threads to the file in question and is tripping over itself trying to write the tags to include cover art. Sometimes instead of giving an error regarding inability to update tags MC will crash, after which it is fully able to process cover art without error or issues.
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JimH

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #12 on: November 05, 2007, 10:44:39 am »

Do the "bad" files play?
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #13 on: November 05, 2007, 11:01:17 am »

Do the "bad" files play?

Have not tried that    :o

Will do so the next occurrances and have an answer.
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bob

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #14 on: November 05, 2007, 03:52:46 pm »

I've finally been able to duplicate this. The .flac files do seem to fail the integrity test though they seem to play ok. The coverart seems to be broken in Scthoms version as well but I wasn't able to get a bad integrity test from it, so you should probably use his .dll until we can track it down.
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #15 on: November 05, 2007, 04:28:39 pm »

Thanks Bob,

Glad you were able to find something, hopefully it is related to what I am experiencing.

My first indication was MC saying it could not update the tags of a particular repeatedly. Only out of frustrsation did I look further and stumble across the bad test result.

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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #16 on: November 05, 2007, 08:54:27 pm »

Interestingly, I closed MC after tagging/importing/renaming from properties to new location. Upon re-starting MC all files were tagged with cover art without incident. Surprisingly, MC also did this much more swiftly than normally.

Coincidence?
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bob

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #17 on: November 05, 2007, 09:25:59 pm »

It appears that when the artwork doesn't need to increase the size of the picture block, the whole .flac doesn't need to be rewritten and as such is quite a bit faster. I did compile a new plugin late tonite with a newer flac library which MAY solve the problem you see. When I went to a fresh set of tag free flac files and put the artwork into them it was faultless. I'll do more testing tomorrow before giving it a passing grade.
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bob

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #18 on: November 06, 2007, 04:56:33 pm »

The flac tagging/corruption problem should be fixed in the next build.
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: Flac cover art not working
« Reply #19 on: November 06, 2007, 04:58:58 pm »

excellent!

thanks
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