b1074: Many problems are back and worse

[gordol]

MMA 2.0.0.1074, Samsung Galaxy s22U fully updated as of April 17 2023

With this beta version, almost every issue I've had with MMA ever is back and worse than before. Some highlights (lowlights?):

• Out of the last two thousand or so played tracks, I've had to replace the album art on over 20 albums because MMA took it upon itself to replace my high res high quality embedded artwork with low res low quality
• Home screen MMA "Now Playing" widget and notification shade item frequently fail to update when the track changes - this does not seem to affect connected devices like Android Auto and WearOS watch
• When switching to MMA from any other player, wired or bluetooth connected devices don't show the album art until a track starts playing from the beginning (Android Auto and WearOS watch)
• Last-Played timestamp randomly does not update causing MMW Smart Playlists to not update properly

All of these has hit me in the past 18 hours alone, some multiple times and one of them dozens of times.

[rusty]

Hi Gordol,

Thanks for the feedback!

1. Re. missing album art, I don't think we've made any changes in 1074 (though we have in 1075).
- Is artwork lookup enabled in MMA?
- Could it be that the hi-res artwork was looked up but not saved and that artwork lookup is filling in the blanks?

2. Re. widget/notification updates. We'd made changes on 1074 to fix this (#19632), but apparently it's gotten worse Can you share a log ID with me if it occurs again (I've been unable to replicate thus far)?

3. Tested with Android Auto and am unable to replicate. Any hints?

4. I just tested this out and couldn't replicate, but I was playing the tracks directly via the speaker. Were you playing over bluetooth / dlna / google cast / android auto ?
(EDIT: I also tested this via bluetooth playback and couldn't replicate. I suspect that 2, 3, 4 are all somehow related and are specific to certain environments/settings).

Thanks!

-Rusty

[gordol]

1. Re. missing album art, I don't think we've made any changes in 1074 (though we have in 1075).
- Is artwork lookup enabled in MMA?

No it is not, and never has been. Yet MMA1 has often ignored this and replaced my artwork anyway. And now it's back.

- Could it be that the hi-res artwork was looked up but not saved and that artwork lookup is filling in the blanks?

No. I fix the artwork via MMW, save it, sync it, confirm it.

2. Re. widget/notification updates. We'd made changes on 1074 to fix this (#19632), but apparently it's gotten worse Can you share a log ID with me if it occurs again (I've been unable to replicate thus far)?

Not sure I'd be able to get a good log, as sometimes merely switching to MMA from the home screen clears the issue, sometimes I have to pause/resume playback.

3. Tested with Android Auto and am unable to replicate. Any hints?

It shows the same symptom on my Galaxy 4 (WearOS) watch. Didn't know that at first because I don't normally have the media player actually showing, just the title text in a "complication" on the face.

4. I just tested this out and couldn't replicate, but I was playing the tracks directly via the speaker. Were you playing over bluetooth / dlna / google cast / android auto ?

It's random. Several times it's "I thought this just played recently and should be off the playlist", however in this instance I knew for sure because it was a newly added track, in my "not heard" playlist and I manually did a "play next" and hours later synced and it was not removed from the "not heard" list.

(EDIT: I also tested this via bluetooth playback and couldn't replicate. I suspect that 2, 3, 4 are all somehow related and are specific to certain environments/settings).

Samsung Galaxy S22Ultra, Snapdragon CPU, fully updated with Android 13 / OneUI 5.1, firmware version ending in CWCC. Bluetooth speakers include two different Sony SRS-XB10s and two different Wonderboom 2s. Android Auto is a '17 Kia Sportage with factory UVO system, fully updated to the last update, I think this past November.

[rusty]

1. Re. missing album art: MMA won't look up artwork if it's not enabled. But maybe if the file is inaccessible due to a permissions issue, it uses the thumbnail? There were a number of permission-related fixes in 1076--hopefully that'll make a difference.

2. Notifications/Widget showing wrong track: hopefully a log will be possible at some point

3. There are AVRCP fixes that might make a difference in build 1076. Let's see...

4. Re. playcounts occasionally not being updated: it's probably the same issue as someone else reported that tracks occasionally don't scrobble. Hopefully someone can capture a log of this (we'll continue trying).

[gordol]

1. Re. missing album art: MMA won't look up artwork if it's not enabled. But maybe if the file is inaccessible due to a permissions issue, it uses the thumbnail? There were a number of permission-related fixes in 1076--hopefully that'll make a difference.

When this happens the art is changed. I have to replace it back via MMW. I don't understand how it's a permissions issue. On the desktop, the art is stored in the tag, and of course MMW has full read/write access to its database and library folders. On the phone, MMA has full read/write access to its database and library locations.

I know it's MMA doing this, and that MMA is scanning for art because it says so. Check my support ticket history, I've asked about that at least once in the past. Despite being set to NOT scan for "missing artwork", MMA will randomly show a notification that can last anywhere from a few seconds to an hour that it's scanning for artwork. And when this happens, some number of album art is mangled as described. The longer that notification is on, the more album art gets trashed. And there is no way for me to know what until I see it.

As I write this reply, glanced at my phone and MMW has popped a notification "Scanning folders to the library". WHY??? There have been no changes it should care about since the last sync finished. I have MMA set to only look in the "Music" folder for items to care about and MMA is the only thing I use that does anything there. So any changes would be made by MMA itself.

3. There are AVRCP fixes that might make a difference in build 1076. Let's see...

Any chance these might enable my car's headunit in bluetooth mode to show album art?

4. Re. playcounts occasionally not being updated: it's probably the same issue as someone else reported that tracks occasionally don't scrobble. Hopefully someone can capture a log of this (we'll continue trying).

Sounds likely.

[rusty]

1. My hypothesis about a permissions issue was that perhaps some images in MMA are linked and that MMA lost access to the images when it was uninstalled/reinstalled (see: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view ... 690#c71516 for details).

If that's not the case, could it be that either:
a) You have another music app on your device that looks up artwork and saves it to the track's directory? BTW, I realize that MMA is scanning the directory and adding the art, I'm just wondering if some other app is adding the art which causes MM to add it during the scan.
b) In MMW, some of your tracks have multiple images associated with them, causing MMA to sync both tagged and linked artwork and sometimes switching from one to the other?

3.... Any chance these might enable my car's headunit in bluetooth mode to show album art?

It's possible though hard to predict since we have a limited number of such devices to test with.

Thanks again for all your valuable feedback!

-Rusty

[gordol]

1. My hypothesis about a permissions issue was that perhaps some images in MMA are linked and that MMA lost access to the images when it was uninstalled/reinstalled (see: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view ... 690#c71516 for details).

I did not reinstall the program.

a) You have another music app on your device that looks up artwork and saves it to the track's directory? BTW, I realize that MMA is scanning the directory and adding the art, I'm just wondering if some other app is adding the art which causes MM to add it during the scan.

No. Not unless Samsung Music is doing something it's not supposed to. I have that installed to play "I want to play this now without screwing up my playlist" situations. It appears to have no settings for this.

b) In MMW, some of your tracks have multiple images associated with them, causing MMA to sync both tagged and linked artwork and sometimes switching from one to the other?

No. The only artwork set is one single "Cover" item. The only time there have been multiple artwork is when MMA completely screwed up and mangled the art for something like 5 thousand tracks / several hundred albums at once (which took me months to clean up) by adding one or more copies of one specific album art to all of those effected items (again, check my ticket history).

[gordol]

Issue with the on-device widgets (home screen, Edge Bar, Notifications) is even more frequently not updating the display info, art and track info in text, unless the track is paused/restarted. Bluetooth and Android Auto displays properly show the correct info.

I am still having to re-do album art on dozens of albums per week. At this point, it would not surprise me if MMA borked over 500 albums.

I have not, to my knowledge, ran into the last-played timestamp not updating over the last couple weeks.

I have not recently had a chance to test to see what happens when switching to MMA from something else.

Now on MMA b1080 and my Galaxy s22U on Android 13 just got the May update patch a couple days ago.

[rusty]

Notifications: it's being treated as top priority at https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=20010 (in fact that issue is what's holding up the next beta).

Album Art: We're having a tough time with this as we've never seen it and don't know how to replicate it. The user at viewtopic.php?t=104187 solved this by deleting the library on Android and resyncing--but I really hope it doesn't come to that since you're the only one who seems to regularly replicate this.

-Rusty

[gordol]

Album Art: We're having a tough time with this as we've never seen it and don't know how to replicate it. The user at viewtopic.php?t=104187 solved this by deleting the library on Android and resyncing--but I really hope it doesn't come to that since you're the only one who seems to regularly replicate this.

-Rusty

"Regularly" is putting it mildly. Then there's this one: viewtopic.php?t=103633.

[rusty]

Hi,

The notifications issue (notifications out of sync on certain devices/oses) has been fixed in build 1084 (currently available as a beta).

Can you confirm whether it works for you?

Thanks!

-Rusty

[gordol]

Hi,

The notifications issue (notifications out of sync on certain devices/oses) has been fixed in build 1084 (currently available as a beta).

Can you confirm whether it works for you?

I caught it failing to update the Lock Screen track display widget at least once today after the update to b1084. At this time, I do not know about the home screen widget, notification shade or Edge Panel widgets.

[rusty]

Would you say that the incorrect playing metadata issue occurs infrequently now? On build 1080, another user had indicated that it was occurring on almost every track change.

-Rusty

[gordol]

For me, it has never occurred on every track change, but it would get more frequent as time went on. And for at least four days a week, I can be playing MediaMonkey on the phone for upwards of 10 hours per day.

So far with b1084 I've caught it once. I also use the phone slightly differently when I'm not at work, so I haven't seen the track info at all much the past two days just due to what I'm doing. It will take me until Sunday to really check.

[gordol]

[*]When switching to MMA from any other player, wired or bluetooth connected devices don't show the album art until a track starts playing from the beginning (Android Auto and WearOS watch)

This is still happening, too, and actually worse. Not only did AA not show the art from MMA when I switched to it from another app, but the on-device widgets also failed to show the artwork. AA still needs to (re)start a track from the beginning to see it, the on-device widgets just need a pause/play toggle.