ID3 tagged album art issue

[thedanielrecord]

New Cowon user here. Before my C2 was bricked, I used Mp3tag to add album art to all the ID3 tags in my songs but when I loaded everything into the C2, only 30 of the 120 albums displayed art in the matrix viewer. Weirder still is that a lot of the album covers that were not displayed in the matrix viewer would appear on the spinning record animation when songs were played. I know that Cowon's like to have a cover.jpg file in each folder but I looked through albums (I only have complete albums, no random songs) and none of them have cover.jpg files in them. Anyone else have this problem?

TL;DR - All mp3s have album art added to their ID3 tags. Album art not showing up in the matrix viewer. Cover.jpg files aren't in album folder.

Also, I've noticed a few people with C2 bricking issues, should I be looking into a different player?

[muel2002]

I was wondering if you made any headway with this or learnt anything? If so I'm almost at the end of my tether and would welcome any knowledge you can share

I got a C2 about a month ago and keep on thinking I've worked out what you have to do to make sure all the album art is OK.

I started off transferring using MSC and noticed not all the art was showing. I tried simplifying all the embbeded id3 art images by using as few compression algorithms as possible. Mixed results, sometimes some art would start working but not others.

Then I discovered some advice about transferring with MTP and including a 'cover.jpg' file in the folder. To begin with this seemed to guarantee that the art would work, but then I discovered that thing you mentioned, images not in matrix but show when you go into album/song is playing.

Then I tried transferring a problem album using JetAudio and the art worked fine in the matrix. Thought maybe JetAudio did something to the image when it transferred it so copied image from C2, deleted the album, then copied over album again with JetAudio image just using explorer/mtp, image shows up in matrix. Delete JetAudio transferred image then transfer non-JetAudio image via explorer/MTP, works fine.

Transfer an album that previously worked fine via explorer/MTP, doesn't work. I start to think that it is some weird thing that is happening with the database and that if I go into settings and select 'Database update' it might get it working. After I've done this I find that the two most recent albums I transferred plus three more albums have lost their art from the matrix (OK when you go into the album/play tracks).

I'm now almost convinced that it is something to do with how the database updates or works. I remember seeing a post before where someone mentioned that it doesn't actually update the database under some circumstances when it says it has?!

[muel2002]

I remembered that in the post where someone mentioned that sometimes when the C2 says it is 'updating database' it is not actually doing it, they also mentioned you had to hold down the two volume buttons to really get the database to update.

I just did this and now everything is fine!?!?!?

So there seems to be three levels/kinds of updating.

1.
You disconnect it from computer. I think it always displays 'updating database' but if you didn't change anything it flashes up really quickly, if you did you'll see it for longer with a progress bar.

2.
You select in settings 'update database'

3.
You hold down both of the volume buttons until it switches off. Maybe this is all that is happening, it is actually switiching off rather than just going into sleep mode. But if you leave it in sleep mode it will eventually turn off so when you hold down the power button to turn it on you have to wait for the progress bar to complete under the 'C2' logo. However, nothing changes after this happens. It does when you hold down the volume buttons.


The mysterious quest continues.

I wish I didn't like this player so much that it prevents me from sacrificing it because of these faults. Well even if could, I couldn't really justify spending more money on a new player for only this reason.

[jpgr]

you can update the mp3 files quicker if you start with them on your computer

mp3tag
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

mp3tag shows png and jpg/jpegs - the cowon doesnt like pngs and seems to be picky about some jpg/jegs as well.

some jpegs dont appear correctly on the cowon but if i update the album cover via the web search in mp3tag (so far) virtually all the covers have appeared on the cowon

useful columns that dont appear as a default in mp3tag: cover (indicates if the file contains any cover(s)) and vbr (indicates if the file is encoded with cbr or vbr)

even though it scans any external sd card each time it boots up, it doesnt seem to recognise all the changes that may have been made to tracks - settings, dbupdate rectifies most of this.

also make sure the album art is tagged as the front cover - right click the image in mp3tag and select front cover from set cover type

i had a lot of files that appeared ok in mp3tag but took an age to load and play on the cowon:-

mp3val
http://mp3val.sourceforge.net/

select the option to delete the backup files (file, preferences...) when fixing problems otherwise you will need to delete them afterwards.
fast scanning and fixing. clears up most problems except rebuilding missing vbr headers on mp3 files

mp3diags
http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/

slower scanning but can rebuild vbr headers

i use mp3val first, any problems it cant fix (ie vbr headers) get dealt with by mp3diags.

i then use mp3tag for the covers and tidying up - renaming, track numbers etc.
i then transfer the files to the cowon and see if any covers are missing.

[Philski]

Originally Posted by muel2002

I remembered that in the post where someone mentioned that sometimes when the C2 says it is 'updating database' it is not actually doing it, they also mentioned you had to hold down the two volume buttons to really get the database to update.

I just did this and now everything is fine!?!?!?

So there seems to be three levels/kinds of updating.

1.
You disconnect it from computer. I think it always displays 'updating database' but if you didn't change anything it flashes up really quickly, if you did you'll see it for longer with a progress bar.

2.
You select in settings 'update database'

3.
You hold down both of the volume buttons until it switches off. Maybe this is all that is happening, it is actually switiching off rather than just going into sleep mode. But if you leave it in sleep mode it will eventually turn off so when you hold down the power button to turn it on you have to wait for the progress bar to complete under the 'C2' logo. However, nothing changes after this happens. It does when you hold down the volume buttons.

I'm having a problem manually updating the database - it's not an option in 'Settings', or have I missed something? Each album folder has folder art in .jpg format, but none of them are showing at all - in fact, in my music folder, all I have is a series of boxes with question marks, and I have to go into each one even to see what album it is.

Can anyone help? My album art in showing up in my 'pictures' folder, which I find really irritating too!

[muel2002]

Philski,

Album art is pretty crazy on the C2! I've just turned on my C2 to have a look at the 'settings' menu for you and for some reason whilst it was booting up it said it was doing something to the album art even though I've done absolutely nothing to the player?! Oh, actually, I did change the language on the player briefly before, but I have no idea what this has to do with album art?!

If you go to 'settings' then 'system', then ''database update' should be the bottom left hand option in the third menu along. But if I were you I'd stay clear of this option as I have no idea what it actually does specifically in full and it has caused me problems in the past. If you have seen the film (or read) 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' or 'Galaxy Quest', I would treat the option in the same way as the protagonists would treat the main special button or device that they each have in their spaceship. The option is there for a positive important functional reason, but you never really know what chaotic thing it is going to do.

Not so long ago I was having trouble with my track lengths showing up in a program I was using (QTScrobbler). It stopped showing track lengths whereas before it had. I worked out that track lengths stopped showing up after I had used the 'database update' option described above. Which in turn meant I had to delete all the music and put in on the player again to get the track lengths to show up again.

As for your album art showing up, I have no problems with it now myself, so I'll just describe exactly how I get music and working album art onto my player.

Before I start I need to say this is for '.mp3' files. I tried to use '.flac' files on my player and they caused no end of trouble with the album art. So if you're using anything other than '.mp3' files, expect no end of chaos and I'm afraid I won't be joining you on that crusade.

1. Make sure you have the latest firmware, it was v1.17 the last time I looked, your player will tell you its version when it boots up.

2. I edit my music in Mp3Tag adding cover art to it in this program also by using it's function to download art from Amazon, however I don't rely on embedded album art to get it to show up on the player.

3. In Mp3Tag I extract the album art embedded in the files into the folder the files are stored in. You do this by right clicking on the album art display in Mp3Tag and selecting 'extract cover...'. It will automatically name the file either 'folder.jpg' or 'cover.jpg'. The C2 needs the art to be named 'cover.jpg', you can set Mp3Tag to automatically name extracted covers as 'cover.jpg' somewhere in the options, but sometimes it just decides to name the art 'folder.pjg' anyway?! Don't ask me why.

4. I then resize the extracted image in FastStone Image Viewer to 250 by 250 pixels as this is what Cowon advise you to do for the player to perform at it's best. However, before I wasn't doing this and the album art didn't seem to be affected, I'm just a bit OCD, which is probably also the reason for why I am writing all this stuff in an Audiophile forum! When saving the image in FastStone I go to the options button in the bottom right corner of the 'save as' window and make sure the image is saved with the least 'complicated' settings, or where the least amount of work is needed by a device to decompress the image. For example I would deselect 'optimise Huffman' and 'progressive', I don't think colour sub sampling would matter and I don't go near the 'photometric' settings.

5. That's it for working with the image, I then shorten the file names to the format '01 - song.mp3' but this isn't going to have an affect on album art.

6. Now you transfer the album folder to the player by putting it in the 'music' folder in the player, but before you do this, make sure you transfer with the player in 'MTP' mode. You should see the option to change to and from this above the 'database update' option.

7. Another thing to note is that my directory structure is one folder deep. Just to make that absolutely clear it is like this > 'C2:\Music\Artist - Album\file.mp3' not 'C2:\Music\Artist\Album\file.mp3'

8. So the (almost) end product is you have a music folder one level deep with audio files and an image file to accompany them called literally 'cover.jpg'.

9. Disconnect the player and boot up.

10. Take a look at the album art in what I beleive the people are calling the 'matrix'. That's where all the art for all you albums are displayed and you can scroll horizontally to see the ones that cannot be fitted on the screen.

11. If it all looks good, make sure you actually play a track and see that the art also plays on the spinny background record imitation thing.

12. If there are problems with either of what was described in 10 or 11 do this: hold the '+' and '-' volume buttons until the player turns off then turn the player on again. Hopefully any album art that was displayed properly before should now be displayed. If you still have problems then I shall have to hang my gloves up and retire from the messy business of getting pictures to show up on the screens of square metal music playing devices.


Good luck

[Philski]

Thanks, buddy, that's a really comprehensive reply - I appreciate the time you took!

I have followed every step except for two, and that is to convert the picture files to FastStone Image Viewer and resize them to 250 x 250. Also, all my music files are in FLAC format, one of the overriding reasons that I use Cowon players, tbh! So I will try converting the picture formats first, needless to say the other steps have so far yielded no positive results at all. The main thing I did was to 'shallow out' the files to one file deep, but no joy. Also, three albums, although they show as separate when the C2 is connected to my PC, they get bundled into and 'Unknown' folder when viewed unconnected, which is doing my head in a bit...!

[muel2002]

I should have asked you before hand what file formats you were using! Though I suppose all that stuff I wrote will be useful for other people, especially as I got all that info from experimentation and piecing together info found it other posts.

Yep those FLAC files are a pain. I got as far to figure out how to deal with mp3s but it was extra chaotic for the FLACs and like yourself it was doing my head in so I just gave up. It almost seems like partial false advertising saying the player can play FLACs if the players capability of organising them is so messed up.

If you figure it out, it would be good if you could drop a post. I was putting FLACs on my player until I figured how annoying they were.

[Philski]

Yeah, will do - to be quite honest, I start to lose the will to live with tetchy technology. I should have learned my lesson with the D2 I bought while ago, I never managed to get to grips with it and here I am again with its successor...

Well, my trusty old X5 will hopefully be back from the menders soon with a newly fixed headphone jack, line-out cable and remote working again, so it looks like I'll be back to old-school Cowon before too long!