[Solved] Certain FLAC files don't show album art

[EVILpenguin]

I've been trying to get it to work for 10+ hours... To no success. Please help me out T_T

Problem: Certain FLAC files don't show album art in VLC, even though they contain album art in ID3 tag.

Details

Windows 7 64bit Home
VLC V1.1.11
MP3TAG V2.49

1. I had 7 FLAC songs which did not initially have an album art. 3/7 songs were from album "A" and 4/7 songs were from album "B".
2. I added an identical album art to all 7 FLAC songs using MP3TAG software (from "extended tags"). I decided to use the same album art, as both albums were OST from the same anime.
3. Now only FLAC files from album "A" has an album art. I can only see the VLC cone icon whenever I play any songs from album "B". Nothing changed when I deleted all the album art from MP3TAG and added them back again. Foobar2000 media player does not have this problem and shows the correct album art for all 7 songs.
4. I have tried deleting the cache file AppData/roaming/vlc/art/artistalbum, reinstalling VLC/MP3TAG, and other combinations but nothing seems to work.

One thing that caught my attention was that all 4 songs in album "B" did not have any Album Artist information, and that their Artist information were all in Japanese (Katakana or Kanji/Chinese characters). I have added Album Artist information, changed the Artist and Album Artist information to English, but nothing seems to work.

Will someone help me out please?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Yes, I can. please share the files.

[EVILpenguin]

Album A: http://www.mediafire.com/?ftjwtlaa2o34xsa

Album B: http://www.mediafire.com/?85v3r96v7ov4v6v

7 FLAC takes up around 200mb... I've also uploaded a single FLAC file from album B if that's all you need:

http://www.mediafire.com/?cacbqtdoys2t34n

the password is "jean".

Thank you.

[Lotesdelere]

VLC stores the album art on the local HDD into a folder which is using the name of the album.

The songs from Album A are using a proper name for the album name: "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann BEST SOUND", therefore VLC can create the corresponding folder.

However the songs from Album B are using a bad album name for two reasons:

Code: Select all

Offset 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 00000060 54 65 6E 67 65 6E 20 54 6F 70 70 61 20 47 75 72 Tengen Toppa Gur 00000070 72 65 6E 20 4C 61 67 61 6E 6E 20 42 45 53 54 20 ren Lagann BEST 00000080 53 4F 55 4E 44 0A 20 28 64 69 73 63 20 31 3A 20 SOUND. (disc 1: 00000090 54 68 65 6D 65 20 53 6F 6E 67 20 26 20 43 68 61 Theme Song & Cha 000000A0 72 61 63 74 65 72 20 53 6F 6E 67 20 64 69 73 63 racter Song disc 000000B0 29 )

There is a line feed 0x0A right after the word "SOUND" and a colon ":" right after "disc 1".
These two characters are not allowed for a file name on Windows, therefore VLC can not create the corresponding folder. Change the album name to something that can be used on Windows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

[EVILpenguin]

VLC stores the album art on the local HDD into a folder which is using the name of the album.

The songs from Album A are using a proper name for the album name: "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann BEST SOUND", therefore VLC can create the corresponding folder.

However the songs from Album B are using a bad album name for two reasons:

Code: Select all

Offset 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 00000060 54 65 6E 67 65 6E 20 54 6F 70 70 61 20 47 75 72 Tengen Toppa Gur 00000070 72 65 6E 20 4C 61 67 61 6E 6E 20 42 45 53 54 20 ren Lagann BEST 00000080 53 4F 55 4E 44 0A 20 28 64 69 73 63 20 31 3A 20 SOUND. (disc 1: 00000090 54 68 65 6D 65 20 53 6F 6E 67 20 26 20 43 68 61 Theme Song & Cha 000000A0 72 61 63 74 65 72 20 53 6F 6E 67 20 64 69 73 63 racter Song disc 000000B0 29 )

There is a line feed 0x0A right after the word "SOUND" and a colon ":" right after "disc 1".
These two characters are not allowed for a file name on Windows, therefore VLC can not create the corresponding folder. Change the album name to something that can be used on Windows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

You sir are AWESOME! :D

Problem solved.

Thank you for helping me out :)

[EVILpenguin]

I'm not a programmer so I may not know what I'm talking about, but is there a reason why VLC has to cache album art, rather than just load them straight from ID3 tag every time? I noticed the same thing with Windows Media Player, they seem to save the hidden cache within the same folder as the song.

Whenever I change the album art, VLC will still display the old cached album art so I have to delete the cache folder every now and then.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Yes, it should just work and not write the file on disk. To me, there is a bug here.

[VLC_help]

Shall I trac this?

[Lotesdelere]

Shall I trac this?

Yes, I think you should.
And there is at least one other issue with covers:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=79717&start=20#p306636

[VLC_help]

http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5309
ticket opened. One sample file would be nice.