Winamp stripping embedded album art? Not byte-for-byte copy?

bsg75 · 24th December 2010, 14:56

I went through a rather painful process of embedding album art into a bunch of albums using mp3tag. I had previously embedded art using iTunes but it somehow got stripped. I'll get back to that.

So I embedded the art into a bunch of mp3 files (id3v2). I connected my HTC Incredible to my computer via usb and it was discovered. I deleted all music off of my sdcard using winamp and double checked it manually to make sure all folders were deleted. I did a sync but the new music still did not show the album art. Weird. I deleted the track off me sdcard and manually drag/dropped it from my computer. Then it showed up. I deleted again and let winamp do the sync. It put the track back, but again without album art. So up to this point, manual d&d works fine, but the sync doesn't. I compared the md5 hashes of the track on my computer and the same one now synced to my sdcard and they are different. WTF? The file names are different, but that doesn't matter. The bytes in the file should be the same.

Then I looked at the files in a hex viewer. I did a seach for "jpeg" in the computer file and I found it. It then proceeded to show the hex of the picture bytes. I did the same search for "jpeg" in the "synced" file and lo and behold, it was not referenced. See attached screenshot. The PC file has an "image/jpeg" marker with bytes, and the synced file shows "image/(null)" with all empty bytes.

Sooooo, why would this happen? Some of my music does have album art post-sync, but most of the tracks are NOT showing it. Why would winamp not do a byte-for-byte copy? Is there a setting somewhere that I should flip?

Incidentally, I previously coded my own sync tool that worked fine copying from iTunes to blackberry and Android. So I know this can/should work without any issues.

Also, I suspect that I may have copied some tracks from my device back to my computer, replacing the tracks with good album art with ones with no album art. <sigh/>

See attached. I hope the resolution is good enough.

Batter Pudding · 26th December 2010, 14:07

When you have your HTC plugged in, check Winamp's preferences. Could it be converting the format of some of the tracks, and loosing the artwork during that conversion process? Changing quality levels or from M4A to MP3 etc?

kustodian · 27th December 2010, 01:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Batter Pudding

When you have your HTC plugged in, check Winamp's preferences. Could it be converting the format of some of the tracks, and loosing the artwork during that conversion process? Changing quality levels or from M4A to MP3 etc?

No matter what format you use, Winamp removes album art before sending it to the phone. I tested it before with mp3->mp3 and mp3->m4a. The most interesting thing is that if I use the format converter (which is used for transcoding tracks before sending them to the phone), it transfers the album art correctly

angelotseb · 15th January 2011, 01:29

@kustodian

Quote:

Originally Posted by kustodian

No matter what format you use, Winamp removes album art before sending it to the phone. I tested it before with mp3->mp3 and mp3->m4a. The most interesting thing is that if I use the format converter (which is used for transcoding tracks before sending them to the phone), it transfers the album art correctly

i guess you have to winamp pro version? and you must apply the "format converter" to each playlist that you want to sync?

thanks for your help!

angelotseb · 2nd February 2011, 14:44

use musicbee can save you a lot of headache!

cliver · 19th March 2011, 09:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by angelotseb

use musicbee can save you a lot of headache!

I have just tried this out and it look brilliant. Thanks for the tip angelotseb. I'd never come across it before.

http://getmusicbee.com/

Lightweight app, not process intensive, excellent UI and it seems to sync music to my mobile perfectly, including Album Art.
I thought WinAmp was great but it's inability to sync album art may be the tipping factor for me.
At first use I think I slightly prefer the UI on MusicBee as well.
Also the developer was available online within 30 mins or so to sort an issue out that I had with installation.
I'll use both for a while untill I decide for sure but it may be bye bye to WinAmp.

bsg75 · 26th December 2010, 21:54

You make a good point. It's mp3-to-mp3, but maybe there is some other setting I am not aware of. I'll look around. If I can't find one, I'll have to use doubleTwist for the time being. I prefer Winamp overall. Too bad.

bsg75 · 27th December 2010, 13:21

Tentative testing: turning off transcoding during sync fixed some of the issues. I also found some of the tracks had embedded album art, but it was png format, which may not be compatible. I'm doing some more testing with that (I already made an id3 reader tool, I'm going to add some album art functionality so it's easy to just see if album art is embedded or not).

I'm going to do a new sync and check some file hashes.

So, turn of transcoding for better results.

Edit: Here are some md5s of music on my PC and the versions syced to my sdcard. I spot checked a few and none of the md5 hashes matched up. Maybe this only works for the Pro version??? #Annoying

ThatManShade · 27th December 2010, 20:57

It would be useful if it did not strip the art. I store most of my music as FLAC on my PC but convert to MP3 on my phone. I always lose the album art and have to tag it with an app on my phone.... not to bad for a track here and there but if I am adding a bunch of songs to my phone it can get annoying.

bsg75 · 29th December 2010, 12:45

Well, I had a thought on a workaround. I exported my Winamp playlist as an iTunes xml, but it doesn't include the playlists. It just dumps the tracks. If it included the playlists, then I could have use my sync tool to do normal byte-for-byte synchronization.

I tried using doubleTwist, but that is as bad as I remember. Minimal features (no smart playlists) and it's terribly slow. I also doesn't seem to read metadata automatically.

I'm going to see if I can see how winamp playlists are stored and see if I can use my sync tool in conjunction with winamp.

bsg75 · 29th December 2010, 12:47

Well, I had a thought on a workaround. I exported my Winamp library as an iTunes xml, but it doesn't include the playlists. It just dumps the tracks. If it included the playlists, then I could have use my sync tool to do normal byte-for-byte synchronization.

I tried using doubleTwist, but that is as bad as I remember. Minimal features (no smart playlists) and it's terribly slow. I also doesn't seem to read metadata automatically.

I'm going to see if I can see how winamp playlists are stored and see if I can use my sync tool in conjunction with winamp.

bsg75 · 29th December 2010, 23:53

I don't know if this is a bug or what, so I don't know if Winamp plans on fixing this. In the meantime, I made a work-around. It's not ready for prime time. It will work similarly to this tool I already made, I just adjusted it for Winamp and Android. I have it working at home, but there is a lot of hard-coded stuff I need to clean up.

http://www.mikedepaul.com/mdsync

Is anyone interested in this? It requires USB and it requires using Winamp and installing mdSync, too. It's free and open source, coded by me.

Oh, the benefit here is that it does a byte-for-byte copy, so embedded album art is preserved.

c00ller · 8th January 2011, 08:31

I tried syncing my Android for the first time and immediately noticed this issue. This is simply unacceptable.

c00ller · 8th January 2011, 08:43

BSG75, I just went to your site and tried the BlackBerry version. It works great, but an Android version that just copies to \sdcard\Music would be perfect.

load97 · 8th January 2011, 18:51

Ttt.

bsg75 · 10th January 2011, 01:11

Thanks, c00ller! I have a simplified version I am going to put out there. It's working here (I'm syncing my winamp playlists to my Incredible as I type this). It's a re-write and fairly ugly, but mostly functional. I'll post here when it's ready for (beta) use.
The new version will do Winamp -> Android only for now.

load97 · 10th January 2011, 05:00

Sounds great. Hope you can get it a little more stable for the rest of us to try.

bsg75 · 14th January 2011, 02:23

**BETA**BETA**BETA**BETA**BETA**

Ok. Sorry for the delay. I put up a very rough beta on my site. It's the first link on the page.

http://mikedepaul.com/Articles.aspx?artID=101

Requirements:
*Windows 32bit machine
*.NET framework
*Winamp

http://www.microsoft.com/net/download.aspx

This is a super-early beta. I would not post it except that I understand how annoying this problem is for everyone. The basics work, but you could easily find bugs. It's not near done. How to use:

1 Download and install
2 Plug in your Android phone in USB mode and wait for it to be recognized
3 Launch mdSync 0.5.0.0 beta
4 It will find all of the drives on your computer as well as Winamp playlists
5 It will default to the first drive it finds (C)
6a Select your Android SD card drive from the dropdown
6b You can also select the internal memory if you like, but not all Android media players read the internal memory
7 Drag-and-drop a Winamp playlist from the left to the grid area on the right
8 Click sync
9 Wait for it to complete (or click Stop) then shut down mdSync and eject your phone
10 Music with album art!
11 ...
12 Profits!

MrSinatra · 14th January 2011, 06:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsg75

2 Plug in your Android phone in USB mode and wait for it to be recognized

do u have to do something on the phone, or just make the physical connection? i'm having problems with this...

bsg75 · 14th January 2011, 10:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrSinatra

do u have to do something on the phone, or just make the physical connection? i'm having problems with this...

Have you ever Keen able to connect.via USB? I have an incredible. When you plug it.in, you should get a notification bar message asking you how to connect (disk mode, debugging, charge only). Choose disc mode.

c00ller · 14th January 2011, 06:29

bsg75, your efforts are greatly appreciated. I think you should start a new thread with that as the OP. You'll get more attention and more feedback. Even after trying the BlackBerry version, I can tell that your program is much more consistent and straightforward to sync with than Winamp's sync.

MrSinatra · 14th January 2011, 10:34

when i first got it, it worked. now it doesn't.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=325809

bsg75 · 14th January 2011, 11:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrSinatra

when i first got it, it worked. now it doesn't.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=325809

I'm not sure. I would check out the Android Central forums, if you have not already. That sounds like your computer no longer recognizes the phone as a usb drive. You may need to redownload some drivers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by c00ller

bsg75, your efforts are greatly appreciated. I think you should start a new thread with that as the OP. You'll get more attention and more feedback. Even after trying the BlackBerry version, I can tell that your program is much more consistent and straightforward to sync with than Winamp's sync.

Good idea, c00ler.

Please consider this thread closed and post further comments here: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....07#post2736107

MrSinatra · 14th January 2011, 17:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsg75

I'm not sure. I would check out the Android Central forums, if you have not already. That sounds like your computer no longer recognizes the phone as a usb drive. You may need to redownload some drivers.

already tried the 4.8 ones, no joy.

it just stopped. its crazy, b/c its brand new. i know it worked b/c it used to make the droid sound when connected, and i could see it in winamp. now, it just charges, and gives a msg about the charger on disconnect.

i think this is a droid OS issue that is only slowing coming to the fore on the net. i saw some similar threads on the forum you linked, (thx), and i've seen similar on google searches. imo, this will likely become a bigger problem once folks having it realize its the fault of the device.

Batter Pudding · 14th January 2011, 20:09

@MrSinatra: When phone attached, check device manager and see what it is calling your phone. You could also try deleting it from there and get Windows to Plug n Pray again.

Also try different USB ports as this often triggers a fresh connect of a device.

frozst · 10th February 2011, 14:13

Same problem here, I'm not using the converter tool, just "copy" but Winamp deletes cover art when syncing.

Drag and drop works great.

load97 · 15th March 2011, 02:42

With the new version release, does anyone know if it is fixed by chance?

c00ller · 15th March 2011, 04:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by load97

With the new version release, does anyone know if it is fixed by chance?

I think this problem is caused by the Winamp software on PC, not Winamp on our phones, since that is the software that is actually transferring the files to the phone.

cliver · 18th March 2011, 16:17

I think this must be winamp on the PC as I have an HTC HD2 (winmo 6.5) so not running winamp on it. I use the built in player as it's pretty good for my needs.
But it's showing a very similar issue.
I used to copy and paste all my music into my mobile which worked fine because album art and any .jpg's wen't with it.
However this was very long winded as I have an assortment of .flac, .wma and .mp3 in my library (>1200 Albums) so anything other than mp3 needed conversion before copying across. This meant keeping multiple copies in different formats and took a lot of managing in terms of updating tags etc.
So I tried winamp sync thinking that I could get it to just copy across selected playlists and convert my .flac files on the fly. Perfect, only one copy on PC to worry about and I can chop and change my playlist to suit my need/mood. Or so I thought.
It seems to be fine if the original files are mp3's, i.e. no transcoding needed. But where the files are .flac I, just as you describe here get no album art.
I have worked around it by editing the tags on the phone directly with Mp3Tag and embedding the art again.
This works but it is a real pain.
Is there anything in the pipeline to fix this? It's ridiculous that it deletes any data in the file let alone album art.

load97 · 8th June 2011, 23:28

New info? Winamp talking about a fix yet?

gelcube · 4th August 2011, 03:06

This is a REALLY annoying issue. The issue seems to be (for me) with the Android Winamp portable plugin. If I mount the phone as a USB drive with Winamp for the PC closed, navigate to the mounted drive, and rename the folder "Android" to something else (I usually use "Android.bak"), then start Winamp for PC, Winamp detects the phone as a standard USB device, not an Android device, and copies all my music album art intact. I then just rename the folder back to "Android" before dismounting the phone.

Why is the android plugin messing with my music?

Flite · 27th August 2011, 21:17

Too bad this doesn't work. Just discovered the Android sync function and in combination with a media query it would have been just perfect. Hope they'll fix it!

24th December 2010, 14:56	#1
bsg75 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 41	Winamp stripping embedded album art? Not byte-for-byte copy? I went through a rather painful process of embedding album art into a bunch of albums using mp3tag. I had previously embedded art using iTunes but it somehow got stripped. I'll get back to that. So I embedded the art into a bunch of mp3 files (id3v2). I connected my HTC Incredible to my computer via usb and it was discovered. I deleted all music off of my sdcard using winamp and double checked it manually to make sure all folders were deleted. I did a sync but the new music still did not show the album art. Weird. I deleted the track off me sdcard and manually drag/dropped it from my computer. Then it showed up. I deleted again and let winamp do the sync. It put the track back, but again without album art. So up to this point, manual d&d works fine, but the sync doesn't. I compared the md5 hashes of the track on my computer and the same one now synced to my sdcard and they are different. WTF? The file names are different, but that doesn't matter. The bytes in the file should be the same. Then I looked at the files in a hex viewer. I did a seach for "jpeg" in the computer file and I found it. It then proceeded to show the hex of the picture bytes. I did the same search for "jpeg" in the "synced" file and lo and behold, it was not referenced. See attached screenshot. The PC file has an "image/jpeg" marker with bytes, and the synced file shows "image/(null)" with all empty bytes. Sooooo, why would this happen? Some of my music does have album art post-sync, but most of the tracks are NOT showing it. Why would winamp not do a byte-for-byte copy? Is there a setting somewhere that I should flip? Incidentally, I previously coded my own sync tool that worked fine copying from iTunes to blackberry and Android. So I know this can/should work without any issues. Also, I suspect that I may have copied some tracks from my device back to my computer, replacing the tracks with good album art with ones with no album art. <sigh/> See attached. I hope the resolution is good enough. Attached Thumbnails Last edited by bsg75; 24th December 2010 at 16:42.

2nd February 2011, 14:44	#5
angelotseb Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 6	Musicbee use musicbee can save you a lot of headache!

14th January 2011, 10:34	#22
MrSinatra Forum King Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: WKPS, State College Posts: 5,791	when i first got it, it worked. now it doesn't. http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=325809 PENN STATE Radio or http://www.LION-Radio.org/ -- BUG #1 = Winamp skips short tracks Wish #1 = Multiple Column Sorting Wish #2 = Add TCMP/Compilation editing

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Switch to Linear Mode Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

26th December 2010, 14:07	#2
Batter Pudding Major Dude Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 1,665	When you have your HTC plugged in, check Winamp's preferences. Could it be converting the format of some of the tracks, and loosing the artwork during that conversion process? Changing quality levels or from M4A to MP3 etc?

26th December 2010, 21:54	#7
bsg75 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 41	You make a good point. It's mp3-to-mp3, but maybe there is some other setting I am not aware of. I'll look around. If I can't find one, I'll have to use doubleTwist for the time being. I prefer Winamp overall. Too bad.

27th December 2010, 20:57	#9
ThatManShade Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 4	It would be useful if it did not strip the art. I store most of my music as FLAC on my PC but convert to MP3 on my phone. I always lose the album art and have to tag it with an app on my phone.... not to bad for a track here and there but if I am adding a bunch of songs to my phone it can get annoying.

29th December 2010, 12:45	#10
bsg75 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 41	Well, I had a thought on a workaround. I exported my Winamp playlist as an iTunes xml, but it doesn't include the playlists. It just dumps the tracks. If it included the playlists, then I could have use my sync tool to do normal byte-for-byte synchronization. I tried using doubleTwist, but that is as bad as I remember. Minimal features (no smart playlists) and it's terribly slow. I also doesn't seem to read metadata automatically. I'm going to see if I can see how winamp playlists are stored and see if I can use my sync tool in conjunction with winamp.

29th December 2010, 12:47	#11
bsg75 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 41	Well, I had a thought on a workaround. I exported my Winamp library as an iTunes xml, but it doesn't include the playlists. It just dumps the tracks. If it included the playlists, then I could have use my sync tool to do normal byte-for-byte synchronization. I tried using doubleTwist, but that is as bad as I remember. Minimal features (no smart playlists) and it's terribly slow. I also doesn't seem to read metadata automatically. I'm going to see if I can see how winamp playlists are stored and see if I can use my sync tool in conjunction with winamp.

29th December 2010, 23:53	#12
bsg75 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 41	I don't know if this is a bug or what, so I don't know if Winamp plans on fixing this. In the meantime, I made a work-around. It's not ready for prime time. It will work similarly to this tool I already made, I just adjusted it for Winamp and Android. I have it working at home, but there is a lot of hard-coded stuff I need to clean up. http://www.mikedepaul.com/mdsync Is anyone interested in this? It requires USB and it requires using Winamp and installing mdSync, too. It's free and open source, coded by me. Oh, the benefit here is that it does a byte-for-byte copy, so embedded album art is preserved.

8th January 2011, 08:31	#13
c00ller Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Posts: 36	I tried syncing my Android for the first time and immediately noticed this issue. This is simply unacceptable.

8th January 2011, 08:43	#14
c00ller Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Posts: 36	BSG75, I just went to your site and tried the BlackBerry version. It works great, but an Android version that just copies to \sdcard\Music would be perfect.

8th January 2011, 18:51	#15
load97 Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 19	Ttt.

10th January 2011, 01:11	#16
bsg75 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 41	Thanks, c00ller! I have a simplified version I am going to put out there. It's working here (I'm syncing my winamp playlists to my Incredible as I type this). It's a re-write and fairly ugly, but mostly functional. I'll post here when it's ready for (beta) use. The new version will do Winamp -> Android only for now.

10th January 2011, 05:00	#17
load97 Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 19	Sounds great. Hope you can get it a little more stable for the rest of us to try.

14th January 2011, 02:23	#18
bsg75 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 41	BETABETABETABETABETA Ok. Sorry for the delay. I put up a very rough beta on my site. It's the first link on the page. http://mikedepaul.com/Articles.aspx?artID=101 Requirements: Windows 32bit machine .NET framework Winamp http://www.microsoft.com/net/download.aspx This is a super-early* beta. I would not post it except that I understand how annoying this problem is for everyone. The basics work, but you could easily find bugs. It's not near done. How to use: 1 Download and install 2 Plug in your Android phone in USB mode and wait for it to be recognized 3 Launch mdSync 0.5.0.0 beta 4 It will find all of the drives on your computer as well as Winamp playlists 5 It will default to the first drive it finds (C) 6a Select your Android SD card drive from the dropdown 6b You can also select the internal memory if you like, but not all Android media players read the internal memory 7 Drag-and-drop a Winamp playlist from the left to the grid area on the right 8 Click sync 9 Wait for it to complete (or click Stop) then shut down mdSync and eject your phone 10 Music with album art! 11 ... 12 Profits!

14th January 2011, 06:29	#21
c00ller Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Posts: 36	bsg75, your efforts are greatly appreciated. I think you should start a new thread with that as the OP. You'll get more attention and more feedback. Even after trying the BlackBerry version, I can tell that your program is much more consistent and straightforward to sync with than Winamp's sync.

14th January 2011, 20:09	#25
Batter Pudding Major Dude Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 1,665	@MrSinatra: When phone attached, check device manager and see what it is calling your phone. You could also try deleting it from there and get Windows to Plug n Pray again. Also try different USB ports as this often triggers a fresh connect of a device.

10th February 2011, 14:13	#26
frozst Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 7	Same problem here, I'm not using the converter tool, just "copy" but Winamp deletes cover art when syncing. Drag and drop works great.

15th March 2011, 02:42	#27
load97 Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 19	With the new version release, does anyone know if it is fixed by chance?

18th March 2011, 16:17	#29
cliver Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 3	I think this must be winamp on the PC as I have an HTC HD2 (winmo 6.5) so not running winamp on it. I use the built in player as it's pretty good for my needs. But it's showing a very similar issue. I used to copy and paste all my music into my mobile which worked fine because album art and any .jpg's wen't with it. However this was very long winded as I have an assortment of .flac, .wma and .mp3 in my library (>1200 Albums) so anything other than mp3 needed conversion before copying across. This meant keeping multiple copies in different formats and took a lot of managing in terms of updating tags etc. So I tried winamp sync thinking that I could get it to just copy across selected playlists and convert my .flac files on the fly. Perfect, only one copy on PC to worry about and I can chop and change my playlist to suit my need/mood. Or so I thought. It seems to be fine if the original files are mp3's, i.e. no transcoding needed. But where the files are .flac I, just as you describe here get no album art. I have worked around it by editing the tags on the phone directly with Mp3Tag and embedding the art again. This works but it is a real pain. Is there anything in the pipeline to fix this? It's ridiculous that it deletes any data in the file let alone album art.

8th June 2011, 23:28	#30
load97 Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 19	New info? Winamp talking about a fix yet?

4th August 2011, 03:06	#31
gelcube Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 3	This is a REALLY annoying issue. The issue seems to be (for me) with the Android Winamp portable plugin. If I mount the phone as a USB drive with Winamp for the PC closed, navigate to the mounted drive, and rename the folder "Android" to something else (I usually use "Android.bak"), then start Winamp for PC, Winamp detects the phone as a standard USB device, not an Android device, and copies all my music album art intact. I then just rename the folder back to "Android" before dismounting the phone. Why is the android plugin messing with my music?

27th August 2011, 21:17	#32
Flite Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 1	Too bad this doesn't work. Just discovered the Android sync function and in combination with a media query it would have been just perfect. Hope they'll fix it!