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[jkemers]

Hi,

I have library with Apple losseless music (ripped with iTunes) all nicely tagged with cover art, which I converted to FLAC to use more easy in MC13.

I have issue of MC13 not reading cover art from FLAC files.
The cover art is there, I can see it with dBpoweramp "Edit tagID", but MC13 doesn't read it out.

Any idea? Should I send the FLAC file sample for your testing.

At the same time, if I encode new FLAC file from CD with dBpoweramp, then MC13 can read it out from FLAC file. Or also I can add second cover art tag to FLAC with MC13 from jpg file, and then MC13 shows it too.

BR, Janis

[Matt]

This should work.  So please send a FLAC file that shows the problem to matt at jriver dom com.

Thanks.

[Alex B]

I'll test your sample files and report what I found (if anything). I couldn't reproduce the problem with my FLAC files.

[Alex B]

I downloaded only the smaller file pair (the about 14 MB files) because the connection was slow.

The dBpoweramp converted file has the picture stored as "Other". MC accepted it after I converted it to "Front Cover" using Mp3tag.

From: http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_tools_flac.html#flac_options_picture  (options for stand-alone FLAC.EXE)

--picture={FILENAME|SPECIFICATION}    Import a picture and store it in a PICTURE metadata block. More than one --picture command can be specified. Either a filename for the picture file or a more complete specification form can be used. The SPECIFICATION is a string whose parts are separated by | (pipe) characters. Some parts may be left empty to invoke default values. FILENAME is just shorthand for ||||FILENAME. The format of SPECIFICATION is

  [TYPE]|[MIME-TYPE]|[DESCRIPTION]|[WIDTHxHEIGHTxDEPTH[/COLORS]]|FILE

TYPE is optional; it is a number from one of:
0: Other
1: 32x32 pixels 'file icon' (PNG only)
2: Other file icon
3: Cover (front)
4: Cover (back)
5: Leaflet page
6: Media (e.g. label side of CD)
7: Lead artist/lead performer/soloist
8: Artist/performer
9: Conductor
10: Band/Orchestra
11: Composer
12: Lyricist/text writer
13: Recording Location
14: During recording
15: During performance
16: Movie/video screen capture
17: A bright coloured fish
18: Illustration
19: Band/artist logotype
20: Publisher/Studio logotype
The default is 3 (front cover). There may only be one picture each of type 1 and 2 in a file.  ...

From: http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#def_PICTURE

PICTURE: This block is for storing pictures associated with the file, most commonly cover art from CDs. There may be more than one PICTURE block in a file. The picture format is similar to the APIC frame in ID3v2. The PICTURE block has a type, MIME type, and UTF-8 description like ID3v2, and supports external linking via URL (though this is discouraged). The differences are that there is no uniqueness constraint on the description field, and the MIME type is mandatory. The FLAC PICTURE block also includes the resolution, color depth, and palette size so that the client can search for a suitable picture without having to scan them all.

I don't know if this would be easy for JRiver to fix.

For now, as a workaround, you can use Mp3tag and change the picture type to Front Cover (= type 3).

I attached two small samples that can be used for testing.

[Alex B]

By the way, you could also report the problem in the dBpoweramp support forum. Mp3tag reported "Front Cover" when I checked the contents of your m4a sample. dBpoweramp shoud not change the picture type when it saves FLAC tags to the converted file.

[jkemers]

Thank for quick analysis.
I realy hope that MC13 team can fix the issue of reading the picture from the flac file, even it is not doesn't have type 3. To do convertion for thosands of files from m4a to flac, and then edit each soungs tag is quite a nightmare.

I didn't find the picture type settings in the MP3tag software. But MC13 is now taking cover art from the file - where you changed the type of the picture (it is now just very low resolution comaring to original?).

Interesting, when I open both the original m4a or flac files in the dBpowramp Edit ID-tad utility, it doesn't show type of album art in both files. I'm not sure if the problem is coming from how iTunes were encoding/ tagging the files, or from dBpoweramp converter.

BR, Janis

[Alex B]

The sound clip has a duration of 2 s and the embedded picture is 2 KB (i.e. I resized it to make the new sample files smaller).

In order to change the image type in Mp3tag you can select all files, right-click the image and select the new type from the menu. After that you must save the changes before changing the file selection.

You could export a playlist of the files and drag the list to Mp3tag. Mp3tag is a reliable tagger. Mass tagging a few hundred files is not a problem for Mp3tag, but I have never tried thousands. I suppose it should work, but perhaps you could split the task to a few batches.



EDIT

I am sorry, I didn't remember that changing the cover type in Mp3tag is not possible when the cover varies so mass tagging would be impossible -- unless it is possible to use its scripting feature aka "Actions" for that.

[Alex B]

However, it has an "Action" called Export Cover Art. If you have your albums organized in separate folders you could export all cover art images to folder.jpg files, remove cover art with Mp3tag and use the "Quick Find..." cover art tool in MC.

[jkemers]

Thanks sounds like a workaround - however too much manual work.
Would be better to fix the picture search in the file by MC13.
Also I will check with dBpoweramp people - what they think. ;-)

Janis

[JimH]

Would be better to fix the picture search in the file by MC13.

As I understand it, this isn't an MC problem.  The art is incorrectly stored.  Alex, please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Alex B]

I guess the format is correct for the "Other" type. Unfortunately Scot programmed only the "Cover (front)" code in the plug-in. It would be better if the plug-in would read any image type if there is only one image and prioritize "Cover (front)" if there are many.

Probably Matt could say how MC's ID3v2 tagger handles the various APIC "types" in MP3 files. The same format is used for FLAC cover art.

I don't know why dBpoweramp uses the "Other" type. I also don't know if other player programs can read such images without problems.

[jkemers]

Hi,

I got finaly MC13 to play ALAC files (I had issue with 64 Vista DirectShow codec).

The interesting thing is that from some of ALAC files MC13 reads cover art fine, but from another files it doesn't read at all!

I was using mp3tag to check the cover art type, as you sudgetsted. In the original ALAC files it is correct - "Front Cover". Also MediaMonkey reads the cover art from all files correct. Just MC13 doesn't.

Can you please check the issue of MC13 not reading it correctly?
Shall I send you the file sample?

BR, Janis