Music player / MP3 / MMCS questions

[endeavour]

2000 miles up today atlantic grey PHEV

Stereo sounds great big improvement on the last Outlander.
Have put 11gb of music on an SD card and had some confusion with it.

1. It doesn't play lossless m4a files but it reads the files and shows the artist etc.. Then just skips the file to the next track. Shogun MMCS seems to play those any ideas?
2. Album art. Super frustrating. Doesn't show for some tracks, shows for others. All showing art in itunes and windows media player. Tried 3 different album art fixers. Taken all the art off twice and re added it to no avail. All genuine CD to AAC then MP3 converts in itunes. Art shows in every other device in the house, xbox, iphone etc. WTF Mitsu?
3. Anyone know how to define a playlist? SD cards just have MP3 files.
4. Says it plays AAC file but not from iTunes. Not aware of anywhere else that produces AAC files. Amazon is MP3.

Thanks in advance.

 

[user 258]

2. Album art. Super frustrating. Doesn't show for some tracks, shows for others. All showing art in itunes and windows media player. Tried 3 different album art fixers. Taken all the art off twice and re added it to no avail. All genuine CD to AAC then MP3 converts in itunes. Art shows in every other device in the house, xbox, iphone etc. WTF Mitsu?

Hi,
It will only display album art from the SD card when the image is below a certain size. Not sure exactly what the maximum size is though...
Kind regards,
Mark

 

[Sharky]

This drove me mad also, but I now have found a solution that works for me.

I started afresh with a new SD card (it also worked on a USB stick). I downloaded Free Audio CD to MP3 Converter ( http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-Audio-CD-to-MP3-Converter.htm#.VGHOiYxFAy8 ) this rips CD's to MP3 with Album, Artist and Track titles/names. You can also select the quality of the MP3. Once copied I then opened up another free download Mp3tag ( http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ ) this will then tag all tracks with album art. It will also tag other file types also. I used 500 x 500 jpg and 200 x 200 jpg sized images with no problem, I assume that it sorts the image size out. Both bits of software are easy to use and I'm going to try burning to CD to see if that works also, I don't see why it wouldn't.

I have been very impressed with the music quality of the system. I have my IPod plugged in but this will not show album art!? does anybody know why? or is it just an Apple thing!!

 

[Digit]

Anyone still having trouble with MP3 album art on the MMCS v2?

Others have already pointed some of the limitations. The image must:
- be a jpeg file
- Of max size 320 vert x 240 horiz pixels - (stated in manual on page 130)
- added into each music file as the `Front Cover`MP3 TAG.
- be stored and played from an SD card (this does not work at all via the USB port AFAIK.)

I have now established (my apologies if this is already known) that the image:
- MUST ALSO BE OF FILE SIZE LESS THAN 32Kb


I used TagScanner to add the image file into each of the music files and reduce to 200 x 200 pixels at the same time. This can be done as a batch for each album. Some Front cover tags were still over 32kb, however, and did not show in the MMCS.
I then used an option in the software to `Recompress` the image file (top right corner), which reduced the filesizes down to around 10kb and rendered then displayable on the MMCS.

Hey Presto! All working!

I am posting this here in case it saves others a bit of time sorting things out.

 

[napton]

That's good info. I used the Tagscanner to tag my music.

I also found out that the tags need to be ID3v2 to display.

 

[Kim]

OK, here's what I tested and found out today:

- no covers shown when played from USB stick
- musicfolder with very long title names in it, doesn't show up on SD card (no prob with long names on USB stick though!)
- cover pics >32Kb cannot be displayed
- BUT the pixels of the pic doesn't matter. I put it up to 1200x1200pixels as cover pic, but kept the size at 30Kb and it worked..!

I used MP3tag like Sharky suggested......

 

[LarsErikOsterud]

2000 miles up today atlantic grey PHEV

2. Album art. Super frustrating. Doesn't show for some tracks, shows for others. All showing art in itunes and windows media player. Tried 3 different album art fixers. Taken all the art off twice and re added it to no avail. All genuine CD to AAC then MP3 converts in itunes. Art shows in every other device in the house,

3. Anyone know how to define a playlist? SD cards just have MP3 files.

Thanks in advance.

Experimentet a bit with cover art (on MP3 files).
The MMCS scales bad (lines look terrible).
Found that 340x340 looks best.
450x450 next best.

Playlists. Tried making a WPL playlist today with my favorites.
Took 5 minutes to "Prepare" playlist.
When I selected it only songs from the first folder is there.
What is the point if you can't have files from several fordlers?

 

[jaapv]

I have long given up on this sort of thing - I just switch on the radio.

 

[LarsErikOsterud]

I have long given up on this sort of thing - I just switch on the radio.

That too is a hassle in Norway. They are moving to DAB+.
And so far there are no DAB+ coverage inside tunnels.
And the MMCS can't fallback to FM automaticly :-(
So either one must switch manually, or not have radio in tunnels

 

[jaapv]

Fortunately our tunnels are short

 

[geoffshep69]

2000 miles up today atlantic grey PHEV


4. Says it plays AAC file but not from iTunes. Not aware of anywhere else that produces AAC files. Amazon is MP3.

Mine plays AAC files which I originally downloaded via iTunes, but it will only play the ones which are DRM free (and have the file extension .m4a). Any protected files from iTunes, from years ago before they relaxed their copy protection policy, have a .m4p extension and won't play.

As for the album art......that seems like way way way too much of a hassle for me just to be able to see a an album cover on the screen. As long as I can see the artist and track name I'm happy.

 

[gordonc]

Updating this old thread in case it helps anyone... I have a 2017 PHEV and I have all my MP3 album art working following these rules:

- Must be JPEG file, not PNG
- Must be set as Front Cover image in the mp3 tags
- Must be less than 250Kb in size. (Pixel dimensions don't seem to matter, file size does)