Minim not passing through embedded artwork?

[windbag]

Setup for info:
I’m using Minim(free) after recommendation by Bubblesoft uPnP developer, to pull QNAP NAS music files to an older (S1) 9-unit Sonos system. Basically working with some issues.

Music is limited to mp3 files, artwork embedded in the file, generated by extracting from CD using EAC v1-6, but replacing the default artwork with one that has been squeezed down to around 30kB, so the inclusion in every track is not too heavy on the overall size. All music organised as:
Band or Artist/sound files/_studio/albums by recording date
____________________/live/concerts by play date
___________/playlists
Band Alumni/first member/sound files/ etc

All playlists are relative, so that chunks of Band (+Band Alumni folder pair if relevant) can be moved in the overall file structure if needed.

Big emphasis on playlists, as playing albums can be done by just navigating to the base folder & playing.
Minim kindly got my playlists to be recognised, but am having a problem with artwork not appearing in the playlist view in Bubble. This is important, as it can be the quickest identifier of which version of a track is appearing in a particular playlist.

.. .. Have liaised with Bubble developer; from me:
Testing out the playlists... of the 13 tracks in the list, only two showed the correct artwork.
I went and checked the files - all my mp3 tracks have artwork (~30kB size) embedded in them, and all 13 did, created in the same way.
{I checked the artwork in each using Mp3Tag}
.. .. Got this response:
It is a problem of the media server indexing the artwork and exposing it to the app (as a http image URL). It might be a MinimServer issue, not recognizing some of the artwork for some reason.
You can try to trigger a rescan (can be done in MinimWatch). If the problem persists, it is best to ask for help in the MinimServer forum.

I have done the suggested re-scan - made no difference

So, here I am asking for suggestions why track-embedded artwork done via the same route might only be intermittently "exposing it to the app (as a http image URL)"

[windbag]

For clarity, my base music folder that I'm getting Minim to index is a copy of my main music area, but one that only contains the mp3 and m3u files.
(I use this to copy to my phone).

It has no jpg files at all.

[simoncn]

For these files, do you see artwork images when viewing/playing the files directly rather than from a .m3u playlist?

When you rescan your MinimServer library, do you see any messages about these files in the MinimServer log?

[windbag]

(31-07-2024 21:32)simoncn Wrote:  For these files, do you see artwork images when viewing/playing the files directly rather than from a .m3u playlist?

Just checked. Selected one particular file that was showing no artwork in my playlist Harrisongs.m3u - (Beatles/10_Yellow submarine\5_It's All Too Much.mp3)
and no, it doesn't show on Bubble "Now Playing", nor the album view under "Library", nor the "playlist" that it makes for the "play album" status.

Re-checking mp3tag, and yes, the artwork is embedded in the track.
It reports the TAG version as ID3v2.4 (IDv1 ID3v2.4) - if that helps.

Same is true for all the Yellow Sub tracks that are being invoked, either by album play or by Playlist

(31-07-2024 21:32)simoncn Wrote:  When you rescan your MinimServer library, do you see any messages about these files in the MinimServer log?

It looked like it had overwritten the beginning of the error log, with first entries beginning with M. Not seeing a way to increase the size, I changed the base file to just the Beatles. It made no difference.
The error log is now small (for Playlists I haven't yet set up properly - Mono remasters) - so all are "No matching file" errors.
When doing the whole music library, the only other error was "unknown folder for ..."

It seems to randomly pick artwork in some instances.
When I list the "Beatles" folder, it shows artwork for:
01_Please Please Me
03_A Hard Day's Night
04_Beatles For Sale
11_White Album
20_Past Masters
But not any of the others !

As I said, there are no jpg files in the library at all, all artwork is embedded within the track tags by EAC 1-6 at rip time.

[simoncn]

To identify what is causing the problem, I would need to see one of the files that doesn't show embedded artwork. Please upload one file only to my FTP server. I will send you a PM with the server details.

[windbag]

(02-08-2024 18:27)simoncn Wrote:  To identify what is causing the problem, I would need to see one of the files that doesn't show embedded artwork. Please upload one file only to my FTP server. I will send you a PM with the server details.

Thanks for that. I've copied "ll My Loving" from With The Beatles to your ftp server.
For info, as I drag & dropped the file from the source to my desktop, it showed the correct artwork.
When I double-clicked on it, the Windows Media Player also showed the correct artwork.

[simoncn]

Thanks for sending the file. The embedded artwork is tagged in an unusual way and MinimServer isn't allowing for this. I will add support for this in the next MinimServer update.

[windbag]

(04-08-2024 21:58)simoncn Wrote:  Thanks for sending the file. The embedded artwork is tagged in an unusual way and MinimServer isn't allowing for this. I will add support for this in the next MinimServer update.

Thanks for the response, and great to hear that a solution is on the cards.
Re "unusual" :
I'm using Exact Audio Copy (1.6) to generate the compressed files with embedded artwork - which further invokes Lame_v3.99.3 to do the actual compression with the passed through .wav & .jpg
When in doubt, I check the artwork in the mp3 files using Mp3Tag v3.26.
My impression has been that these are widely used apps for those tasks.
Windows also seems to recognise the artwork in this instance.
Puzzling that 5 of the 14 main Beatles albums artwork do get recognised when they were all done the same way.
Would copying over a track that does already work help in any way ?

[simoncn]

Please do copy over one of the other files that is working with MinimServer. This could help explain what I am seeing with the failing file. Many thanks.

[windbag]

(05-08-2024 14:52)simoncn Wrote:  Please do copy over one of the other files that is working with MinimServer. This could help explain what I am seeing with the failing file. Many thanks.

OK, I've copied over Please Please Me from that album, which is showing the correct artwork as is. Hope it helps, Rgds