Album Art file - Hero CDMA Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Does anyone know the specific directory and name of the file used for storing album art? It gets a little tedious having to re-run Album Art Grabber after flashing CM6 every couple days, so I would like to start just backing up one and copying it back over after a flash.

The album art is cached in /sdcard/.Android/Data/com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs. But the files in there are not very useful when flashing because they are just named with the unix time of the time the cover was created from the media scanner. They will be deleted again by the media scanner when it re-scans after flashing. Alternatively, you can store the file AlbumArt.jpg in each albums folder and it will persist across flashes.
Try Cover Art Downloader from the market or appbrain. It has the option to save the AlbumArt.jpg files in the proper location so they can be picked up again after flashing.

stewby said:
The album art is cached in /sdcard/.Android/Data/com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs. But the files in there are not very useful when flashing because they are just named with the unix time of the time the cover was created from the media scanner. They will be deleted again by the media scanner when it re-scans after flashing. Alternatively, you can store the file AlbumArt.jpg in each albums folder and it will persist across flashes.
Try Cover Art Downloader from the market or appbrain. It has the option to save the AlbumArt.jpg files in the proper location so they can be picked up again after flashing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I gave up on the cover files in the music folders because they were really cluttering up the Gallery app. Regardless, thanks for your help, and I suppose I shouldn't really complain when it only takes about 5 minutes to restore all the art.

Related

How do i load albums with cover to the TF3D player?

Hi ,
i Deleted the sample albums that came with the Diamond and i dont know how , and to where i should place my albums (and how i load to them cover)
thanks for your's help.
Hey
Well, I've discovered a very easy method. I use Media Monkey 3.0 to download the coverart of an album. You simply load in the mp3's, select one and rightclick on it and select search tag on web and voila, the programm automatically attaches the albumart to the mp3 so it will show up in the TF3D music player. Very very easy.
Regards
TheWizzard
I too have the same problem. I tried to use Media Monkey but for some reason the album art doesn't attach itself to the tracks.
I successfully transferred the tracks to my phone but when i go into the tf3d music screen the album aart isn't there. Tried various methods but to no avail.
What am i doing wrong???????????
The easiest way is to just put a folder.jpg image in the folder with the album.
I tried that too. I renamed the album art which i placed in the same folder as the album tracks but even that didn't show the cover on tf3d. I can view the album art when i go into the track listing, but it doesn't show up when i'm playing the tracks.
Thanks for your reply btw
i'd recommend attaching a folder.jpg instead of putting the artwork within the tags, as apparently the new versions of TF3D do not like embedded artwork and will cause the music player to crash
So do i just place the artwork in the same folder as the tracks and then rename it to folder.jpg? I have tried this way but i just can't seem to get it to show on the tf3d screen....
no, that method does not work.
use windows media player, it's easy.
When you embed a jpg or png file as artwork in the MP3-tag the HTC player will extract it and create a hidden file in the same folder. The name is ~hTC_Album Name.jpg
The easiest way to have your cover shown in the TF3D player is to create such a file yourself (it doesn't have to be hidden). I have my favorite 120 tracks in the same folder and every single one is shown with the right cover.
But: the album name in the tag has to match the file name exactly and it has to be a valid file name according to the windows rules, i.e. the following characters are forbidden: \/:*?"<>|
Hi Obsidian,
I have tried that, but it doesn't seem to work for me
Can I just check how you do it?
Lets say you have two mp3s, one with an album tag of XXX and one with album tag of YYY.
You then have 2 jpgs with the album art in your Music folder, one called ~hTC_XXX.jpg, and one called ~hTC_YYY.jpg?
That is how I am doing it, yet they are not appearing in the Library or TF3D. If I have the mp3s in seperate folders, then I can make an folder.jpg for each one, which it then translates into hTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg, that works fine, but I would love to be able to use your method.
graculusthegreenbird said:
Lets say you have two mp3s, one with an album tag of XXX and one with album tag of YYY.
You then have 2 jpgs with the album art in your Music folder, one called ~hTC_XXX.jpg, and one called ~hTC_YYY.jpg?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's right. I checked again and discovered that the jpg file generated by TF3D has a size of 256x256 the same as hTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg also generated by TF3D. The ~hTC... files are hidden but that shouldn't be a problem. You could try taking one mp3 of album XXX and one of album YYY in the same folder and copying the corresponding hTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg renaming it to ~hTC_XXX.jpg.
Besides that I have no idea.
Edit: Try this attached set of mp3 with artwork. The "song" is by me so no copyright issues here.
Heres what I did.. downloaded the picture of the album (google)...
make sure the file extension is jpg and not png .. rename the file to Folder.jpg and place it in the album folder.. connect your phone using it as a disc drive delete all existing pictures in the music folder .. copy paste.. then disconnect ur phone wait 10 seconds and voila!
ps Ive tried all other methods mediamonkey etc
This one worked best for me
http://discuss.pocketnow.com/showthread.php?threadid=23550
step by step
Thanks shaka-ban. Just followed the instructions from your post. All my albums now have the album art displayed. Was doing my head in.
Just one thing, which i hope you may be able to answer, how do i get all the albums covers to display on the screen so i get 3d flipping?
Hope you can help, or if anyone else knows that would be so so good.
Thanks in advance
just import album files with mp3tag program into mp3 files and they will appear in your touchflo3d after you you copy them to your device.
Thanks for your reply. I've got the album art on the screen when i select an album to play, and the album art stays there for all the tracks, but i've only got the album art for the album thats currently playing. I wanted to be able to see all the covers in my collection and be able to choose an album to play from there, by flipping through them.
Obsidian72 said:
That's right. I checked again and discovered that the jpg file generated by TF3D has a size of 256x256 the same as hTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg also generated by TF3D. The ~hTC... files are hidden but that shouldn't be a problem. You could try taking one mp3 of album XXX and one of album YYY in the same folder and copying the corresponding hTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg renaming it to ~hTC_XXX.jpg.
Besides that I have no idea.
Edit: Try this attached set of mp3 with artwork. The "song" is by me so no copyright issues here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, Obsidian. Actually, I was doing it right all along, but what I was missing was that I didnt soft reset in between adding the new jpg files. Once I did that (or otherwise restarted Touchflow 3d), then as I hit the Music tab, I could see a little "working" cursor rotating in the top left as it updated the database internally. After that, it displayed the new albums fine.
So now I have the choice of directories with a "folder.jpg", or an range of album specific jpgs in a single directory.
Thanks for the help, my music tab looks superb now.
Stevie18 said:
Thanks for your reply. I've got the album art on the screen when i select an album to play, and the album art stays there for all the tracks, but i've only got the album art for the album thats currently playing. I wanted to be able to see all the covers in my collection and be able to choose an album to play from there, by flipping through them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can hit the Library button, then scroll to the album tab and flip through them that way, but it is a little slow to update, and doesnt use the same 3d flow look as the main music display, more of a 2d list.
Good music management.....
Starts with good managing of your albums and music on your PC...
I use iTunes (Mediamonkey just as good);
Each .mp3 has an Info tag that you can assign a picture to, typically I keep 1 Album to a folder, then change all the music files within to the same folder to the same Album name and then assign my own Album cover (search on web...Amazon is good for a 200x200 size jpg).....in Itunes right click for info, and change as you like....drag and drop you Album cover and you music will be set forever.
Album covers, genres, titles, artists, whatever can be assigned and the data will carry to all the Music players (itunes, media monkey, coreplayer, etc)
Bit of effort at first, but once done your music is set the way you want it forever!!
can someone tell me how to delete the temporary files of the htc player?
i deletet the default mp3s and now im stuck. the player wont show my musik and wont delete the sample musik out of the playlist.

What keeps Android apps from looking into specific folders ? ((music/pics/vids))

There's been ongoing discussions for a long time about the best way to "hide" certain media to keep them from showing up in media players.
Every 3rd party App Ive dled for Music/Movies/Pictures has had the same issue of scanning all the media in the SD card.
Is this some inherent mandate in Android ? Or lazy dev programming ?
I have podcast apps that only pick up podcasts. NYC subway map app that only picks up its MAP images...
Yes open up any media player and I see all of these included with my media.
Obviously the function is in there
add a file called .nomedia and Android will not index that directory
The no media trick does not solve the problem.
Android apps are scanning the entire SD for media instead of letting you pick a default directory.
I want to know if this is an android OS problem or an app development problem.
xManMythLegend said:
The no media trick does not solve the problem.
Android apps are scanning the entire SD for media instead of letting you pick a default directory.
I want to know if this is an android OS problem or an app development problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well i wouldn't call it a problem.. it's just the way the mediascanner works... it scans each directory on the sdcard for media files.
and both the gallery and music app relies on the system mediascanner to fetch pics/videos/music: it's called intended design
There is no way to set a default location for those apps.
3rd party apps can be developed for scanning predefined dirs at the developer's liking.
so for the stock apps the only option is the .nomedia file trick.
note that if u put the .nomedia into a directory, all the sub directories are going to be skipped too.
just rename the folder with a "." in front of the folder name, this makes it a hidden folder and the gallery and what not wont search it.
rastacre said:
well i wouldn't call it a problem.. it's just the way the mediascanner works... it scans each directory on the sdcard for media files.
and both the gallery and music app relies on the system mediascanner to fetch pics/videos/music: it's called intended design
There is no way to set a default location for those apps.
3rd party apps can be developed for scanning predefined dirs at the developer's liking.
so for the stock apps the only option is the .nomedia file trick.
note that if u put the .nomedia into a directory, all the sub directories are going to be skipped too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
THANK YOU !!
I somewhat figured this out when I saw this option in Doggcatcher.
This answers my question.
making a folder invisible doesn't help me.
I have ringtones in one folder and when I playback music, I don't want to hear ringtones.
hmmm is there anyway you can adb push the ringtones to the ringtone folder on the system? So you wouldn't need to have it in your sd card?
download MixZing music player. It will let you select which folder on the memory card to scan for music. Select music folder and your done. No more ringtones playback
This .nomedia trick dosnt work 100 percent. I placed it in my music folder and yes it makes the album covers disappear in the gallery but it also makes the music disappear from the music player. I can no longer scroll through artists, songs, etc from within the music player...
I am not running a rooted phone just the stock firmware with the latest Android update.
Hooligan
*Hooligan* said:
This .nomedia trick dosnt work 100 percent. I placed it in my music folder and yes it makes the album covers disappear in the gallery but it also makes the music disappear from the music player. I can no longer scroll through artists, songs, etc from within the music player...
I am not running a rooted phone just the stock firmware with the latest Android update.
Hooligan
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
^bump^
I have the same issue - I don't want to see album covers in the gallery, but I do want the music to show up in my music app - any ideas?
Thanks
.nomedia works 100% and does exactly what it says - NO MEDIA. That includes NO VIDEO, NO AUDIO, NO PHOTOS, NO WHATEVER. All system apps looking for media ignore the folder and all its subfolders.
If the album art is in a subfolder inside the album folder - put .nomedia inside that subfolder. If it's outside with the .MP3s - then .nomedia won't help you.
If you're having issues with album art, you could always embed the album art into the mp3/m4a with an app like dbpoweramp.
One more possible solution:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=4c95682562b36eca&hl=en
xManMythLegend said:
The no media trick does not solve the problem.
Android apps are scanning the entire SD for media instead of letting you pick a default directory.
I want to know if this is an android OS problem or an app development problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
rastacre said:
well i wouldn't call it a problem.. it's just the way the mediascanner works... it scans each directory on the sdcard for media files.
and both the gallery and music app relies on the system mediascanner to fetch pics/videos/music: it's called intended design
There is no way to set a default location for those apps.
3rd party apps can be developed for scanning predefined dirs at the developer's liking.
so for the stock apps the only option is the .nomedia file trick.
note that if u put the .nomedia into a directory, all the sub directories are going to be skipped too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
xManMythLegend said:
THANK YOU !!
I somewhat figured this out when I saw this option in Doggcatcher.
This answers my question.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
.... what? You argued with the first post, next post said the same thing, then you're thanking them??
r4zv4n said:
^bump^
I have the same issue - I don't want to see album covers in the gallery, but I do want the music to show up in my music app - any ideas?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, name the files right. AlbumArt.jpg
BTW, after putting the .nomedia, you will need to REBOOT the device for it to take effect and system media scanner will rescan after first start up.
I'm having trouble believing this is "by design" and adding .nomedia to EVERY FOLDER other than my music folder makes absolutely no damn sense... the other way around would make much more sense instead! ".media"
This issue has also been breaking my balls... I don't want my damn ringtones in my media library...
Kraion said:
I'm having trouble believing this is "by design" and adding .nomedia to EVERY FOLDER other than my music folder makes absolutely no damn sense... the other way around would make much more sense instead! ".media"
This issue has also been breaking my balls... I don't want my damn ringtones in my media library...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your ringtones should go into the following folder
/sdcard/media/audio/ringtones
And your notifications should go into the following folder
/sdcard/media/audio/notifications
Those folders are not scanned into your music library. There is no need for .nomedia files on those two folders, otherwise they will not show up in your notifications/ringtones list.
NOTE: /sdcard means your sdcard.... so on the root of your sdcard you should put a folder named media, then inside media folder you should put another folder called audio, and then the ringtones or notifications folder inside audio folder..... This should solve your issue.
zeus_chingon said:
Your ringtones should go into the following folder
/sdcard/media/audio/ringtones
And your notifications should go into the following folder
/sdcard/media/audio/notifications
Those folders are not scanned into your music library. There is no need for .nomedia files on those two folders, otherwise they will not show up in your notifications/ringtones list.
NOTE: /sdcard means your sdcard.... so on the root of your sdcard you should put a folder named media, then inside media folder you should put another folder called audio, and then the ringtones or notifications folder inside audio folder..... This should solve your issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This works....Did this over a year ago when i first bought my N1...

Hide Album Art from Gallery

I hate to see all the images that I have as Album Art for my music showing up in my Gallery.. is there anyway to hide only Album Art images?
I try .noMedia file but that hide my Music too..
any suggestions would be appreciated..
Thanks
I'd like to know this too...
Try embedding the album art inside the audio files.
http://lifehacker.com/397258/find-and-embed-album-art-in-your-mp3-collection
thats how I have my album art but it still shows up.. when you upload song to G1 SdCard, it extract the album and create different images..
How about "rm -f *.jpg *.png *.gif" within the directory containing audio?
having the same problem, any solutions yet?
Create a seperate folder and move all our album art into it then .nomedia it, simple.
Hi
the solution is to rename the file to albumart.jpg
the music player will see the album art and the gallery will ignore it
Or you could just embed, which would avoid the hassle of keeping external album art images
Bringing back an old dead topic to live!!!
I've changes all my albumb arts to .albumart.jpg . so the gallaery did not show them back in Gingerbread.
but after upgrading to ICS all these hidden files are viewable again in the library. even .nomedia does not work.
p.s. I've used Windows mediaplayer to collect album arts and they are all small ,hidden, machine named JPGs.
Same problem with Motorola Atrix 2 ICS release. Gallery wants to load all album art. Needs to be fixed.

Excluding pictures/images from gallery

Hi all,
I was going through my gallery this evening, and im finding it really annoying that ALL my album art is in there
Anybody any ideas if its possible to hide/remove images from the gallery? Or will I simply have to remove my album art(not that I really care about it!)?
create an empty file call .nomedia in ur album art folder and run the media scanner/dis-mount-remount ur sd/restart the phone. All folder with the .nomedia file will be ignored (image, music & video).
I am having the issue with album art showing up in the gallery but am hesitant to use .nomedia.
Will my music still be found if the album art is in the same folder as the music?
Will the album art be found for the music apps if there is .nomedia in the folder?
It seems we should be able to just specify where the gallery should look for pictures instead of scanning the entire SD.
The music app still functions fine. I have all of my album art embedded in my mp3s but when I had them as separate files they still showed up in the music app even though I had the .nomedia file.
You can easily delete that file and reboot if you want to go back.

Reformated phone - no Album art.

I reformatted (factory wipe) my phone and also formatted my sd card (to remove apps2sd, only using froyo2sd now).
Before the wipe, I was using MixZing with no issues. All the albumart for my songs (embedded into ID3 tag in mp3) showed up with no issue.
After the wipe/formatting, i retransfered about 7gb of music to my sd card, and the album art is not showing. It's not showing in the stock player, in MixZing nor the new winamp player (which i didn't have previously).
I don't know for sure, but I think album art is the responsiblity of the media service in android, not each individual media player, so i'd like to force android scan for album art in mp3 files. Oddly, the poweramp (beta) player (which I also didn't have prior to the reformat) sees that album art just fine, but I believe that it has it's own code for reading artwork)
Is there anything I can do to get this artwork to show back up, i know for sure it's in the the iD3 tags, as I've copied files off of my N1 onto another computer and it shows up in winamp on that computer.
Thanks!
bump. please help!
Just use an mp3 tagger from the market to reload the album art...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
You're correct that Android's media scanner should process any new music files when you mount your SD card. It creates thumnbnail images on the SD card and indexes them for use by media applications via the Android API. I have a music app that uses this facility. From what I can see, FroYo puts the album artwork thumbs into a folder on the SD card called
Android/data/com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs
Note that each album thumb file is numbered and without a typical image file extension. If you want to look at a file as an image, you'll need to explicitly open it with an image viewer as a JPG file.
Make sure you don't have a file called .nomedia in the top-level directory where you store your music on your SD card. This tells the Android media scanner to ignore the directory and all directories contained within.
So, I'd suggest mounting the SD card on your computer via a USB cable, checking the above directory, unmounting the SD card, waiting 10-15 minutes for Android to index the music files, re-mounting the SD card, and checking the directory again, to see if there has been any change.
Good luck!
Thanks I'll try this out. I've gone into the phone and wiped the media storage (Applications -> Manage Applications -> "All" tab -> Media Storage -> clear Data) and that didn't rescan the atwork. I'll check for the .nomedia tag.
I looked on my SD card, and that directory wasn't there. I also tried to create it, and yet, there's still nothing there. oh well.
Sorry to hear it's still not working. One more thing you could try, to at least see what's going on, is installing the Android SDK on your computer and, with your phone attached via USB, issue the command "adb shell" from a DOS window--assuming you're using a Windows box. Then, at the $ prompt, enter "logcat". This will output log messages. After this, mount and then unmount the SD card. You'll see a lot of messages fly by, but amongst them should be information on the media scanner doing its thing. Or, possibly, you'll see some relevant error messages.
Good luck!
Thanks for all the suggestions.
I have created a logcat and excluded all the extra unneeded lines. I'm sure more can be removed. I did this by running "adb logcat | tee logcat.txt", then after a while, exiting, and then running "egrep -v" on terms from the log.
Code:
cat logcat.txt | egrep -v "dalvikvm|Tethering|WifiService|WifiMonitor|wpa_supplicant|WifiStateTracker|QC_CORE|NetworkStateTracker|Gmail|CalendarsList|ConnectivityService|CalendarsEvents|ActivityManager|GTalkService|CalendarLayoutFiller" > logcat2.txt
My Logcat File (stripped of unneeded info)
I can't seem to find any info on this error in Google. Most of the errors i got were this one:
Code:
E/MetadataRetrieverClient( 120): failed to extract an album art
E/MetadataRetrieverClient( 120): failed to extract an album art
E/MetadataRetrieverClient( 120): failed to extract an album art
I have tried a variety of things to fix the issue
1) Reformatting my SD card again (for the 3rd & 4th times)
2) Clearing the android "MediaStorage" data (Applications->Manage Applications->"All" Tab->"MediaStorage"->"clear data". Then reboot and after the reboot and open the stock media app and wait. Loaded songs again, but not album artwork
3) Looked for Android/data/com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs as suggested, and I see that this directory did not exist. I tried to create it manually, just in case, and nothing changed
4) Change media folder structure around (originally and currently at /sdcard/media/music/[Genre]/[Artist] - [Album] - [Track #] - [Song Title].mp3) I've tried /sdcard/Music, /sdcard/media/MP3
5) ensure no .nomedia files in any directory structure in the path
6) Completely uninstalled Winamp, MixZing & powerAmp from the phone
7) Cleared "MediaStorage" again, with all apps uninstalled
8) Tried reinstalling all the players above, PLUS DoubleTwist player. I have gotten some of the players to read 1 or 2 files successfully, however, i can't consistently reproduce how it got it to do that.
9) Poweramp seems not to rely on the MediaStorage utlity to read the album art, and instead reads it on it's own (so successfully gets it from the file). Would continue to use it, but it's beta and still constantly crashes, plus no lock screen widget
10) Gotten "Album Art Grabber Free" from Market, however, I have alot of non mainstream songs, so it can't find artwork for about 60% of my collection, so still not ideal.
11) Gotten "SDrescan" from the market as well.
12) MixZing will download album art, but downloads it from internet, and runs into same problem as "Album Art Grabber Free", plus, stores it in an app specific folder, not in the common folder, so artwork is only available in MixZing and not other players.
I had this working before, I can't believe formatting my phone and SD cards so that it was "stock" has given me a problem like this. ANyway, thanks for your help!
I've had problems with Mixzing...
Best way to deal with Mixzing is to hide your media from it (I place a . in front of the folder name, ie. Media becomes .Media).
Open Mixzing, and delete all the media (it can't find it, so don't worry, but it will delete the database).
Reboot.
Remove the . from the folder name.
Use mp3tagger to update album art.
Relaunch Mixzing, and rescan for media.
Hey presto! Fresh new database!
Has always worked for me...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
So i upgraded to the latest nightly for CyanogenMod (v227 -> v232). I also ran the fix permissions script. Either one of those two (i'm thinking the fix permissions) fixed the issues, and everything works fine now.

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