Minim not passing through embedded artwork?

[simoncn]

Thanks for uploading this file.

The artwork for Please Please Me has the normal format for a JPEG image (format JPEG/JFIF, MIME type image/jpeg). The artwork for All My Loving has a different format (format JPEG/EXIF, MIME type image/). It was causing problems because image/ is not a correct MIME type.

The next update to MinimServer will check for embedded artwork images in this format and handle them correctly.

[windbag]

Thanks again.
EAC tries to download images automatically, but are often quite big ie as big as the mp3 file.
Often, it fails to find an image - I have lots of obscure CDs.
In that instance, I look at several other sources.
Often it is Discogs, where the images are sourced by whoever input to their database.
Sometimes they are very obviously 'LP' artwork, and I may look in Google images, which can come from wherever.
On other occasions, I find I have an image in my CD cataloguing database, Catraxx v9.56, which, again has been retrieved from the internet 'as if by magic'.
For info, it too finds all these image types acceptable to display.

In every instance, I have no idea about the the source of these images.
The retrieved artwork is often a significant size compared to the compressed file, so I've looked to reduce them to a "standard" smaller size, so they don't take up pointless storage over ripping thousands of CDs.

Using FastStone Image Viewer v7.5 I find I can compress files, by a combination of reducing the pixel count and/or the jpeg compression amount; 'quality' down to a level 60, then reduce pixel count so the result is ~30kB.

Could it be this compression stage that makes many 'not a correct MIME type' ?

I thought it might help to have the actual images I used at the EAC stage ie after retrieval & compression if needed.
So, I've copied over 3xBeatles .jpg covers that -I think- I used & put them together in a folder:

1. White.jpg is another artwork that shows OK right now - and is a rare example where the EAC downloaded image was already small enough to use directly. I defo used used this one as I don't have a ' -sm' version stored my main music library

2. With The - sm.jpg has been compressed - problem at the moment

3. PPMe - sm.jpg has been compressed - works OK
- it is possible I didn't use this one as EAC may have directly found another small image that I used without modification.

[simoncn]

Thanks for uploading these files and providing more information about how the images were created and embedded.

The files "White.jpg" and "With The -sm.jpg" are JPEG/EXIF. The file "PPMe -sm.jpg" is JPEG/JFIF. This is consistent with what I have seen (JPEG/JFIF works and JPEG/EXIF doesn't work) except for "White.jpg"

Did you embed "White.jpg" in an audio file that shows the correct image? If so, did you embed it in a different way than how you embedded "With The -sm.jpg"?

[windbag]

(07-08-2024 14:14)simoncn Wrote:  The files "White.jpg" and "With The -sm.jpg" are JPEG/EXIF. The file "PPMe -sm.jpg" is JPEG/JFIF. This is consistent with what I have seen (JPEG/JFIF works and JPEG/EXIF doesn't work) except for "White.jpg"

Thanks for taking the time to look at the specs of the image files. I definitely processed the PPMe - sm image to be small, but I may have used the EAC direct download as an acceptably small substitute. But the With The -sm I certainly processed and used it for the embedding in EAC.

(07-08-2024 14:14)simoncn Wrote:  Did you embed "White.jpg" in an audio file that shows the correct image? If so, did you embed it in a different way than how you embedded "With The -sm.jpg"?

I did - the whole album. The artwork shows correctly in both the Bubble folder view and in playlists when tracks from it are included.
I do remember that it was one of the few times that EAC pulled an acceptably small artwork from wherever it downloads. I put this down to the fact that the image is nearly all white. Apart from that, the emebedding was done via EAC in my 'normal' way as previously described.

Hope that helps.

[simoncn]

Thanks for this information. I am trying to reproduce what you are doing when you use EAC to embed an image in a .mp3 file. I have installed EAC and I don't see any option to open a file and embed an image. Does the file need to be ripped from a CD or can it be an existing file on my computer?

[windbag]

(08-08-2024 13:17)simoncn Wrote:  Thanks for this information. I am trying to reproduce what you are doing when you use EAC to embed an image in a .mp3 file. I have installed EAC and I don't see any option to open a file and embed an image. Does the file need to be ripped from a CD or can it be an existing file on my computer?

I've just written an answer, but it is rather long !
It has reminded me that it took ages to get EAC to automate music file extraction just as I wanted it, with the minimum of intervention from me each time.

If you have a CD drive, it expects an audio CD in that to start, with the aim of generating a folder artist/album title with your extracted music files - either wav, flac or mp3 or any combination you set.
It then looks it up on a database - CUEtools or MusicBrainz - I have no idea about these databases.
It usually finds the CD and populates the CD title, Artist, Year fields etc at the top, and the tracks in the main table. It also tries to find artwork for the square on the right.
There are often many such, of differing sizes, but rarely one I think is small enough.
In that instance I may save it somewhere, edit it down, then right-click+Remove cover image to make it blank, then drag my reduced file into that square instead - where it reports the new file size. I aim for 30 kB.

I then almost exclusively then use the "CMP" button on the far left, which is the 'Compress' option.
The WAV button gives .wav files (which are intermediates anyway), the other two are if you are trying to dupe the CD.
The wav extraction is determined by the setup under the tab 'EAC/EAC options', which gives a new window with six tabs.
These have a whole load of options on how to name the extracted files, special characters to change, which directory for the files.
wav files are always generated for passing to compression programs.

What CMP does it set under 'EAC/Compression options'.
I make a FLAC and mp3 for each track, deleting the wav after.
Under External Compression, I have set up the options from lengthy study of the forums some while ago, when two compression options became possible
The first one, for FLAC files, is by setting external program as 'User Defined Encoder" and telling it to use file extension of '.flac'

for me the program path is set as:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
I either downloaded it at the time or it was part of the EAC install.

The additional command-line options are set as:
-6 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" -T "BAND=%albuminterpret%" -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%--tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" %hascover%--picture="%coverfile%"%hascover% %source% -o %dest%

That line was deduced from a post on the internet forums many moons ago.

I also tick the flag to delete the .wav file after compression.

My second compression is for mp3 files under Additional External compression, by setting external program as 'User Defined Encoder" and telling it to use file extension of '.mp3'

with program path set as:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\LAME\Lame_v3.99.3\lame.exe

which I do remember I had to download.

Again, with additional command-line options set as:

-V2 --ta "%artist%" --tt "%title%" --tg "%genre%" --tl "%albumtitle%" --ty "%year%" --tn "%tracknr%/%numtracks%" %source% %dest%

also deduced from a post on the internet forums many moons ago.

There are a heap of other settings that I think were defaults, but cannot swear to that. In particular, I'm looking at the ID3 tag tab, which has all but one ticked. I wouldn't have had any sense of whether that is wise or stupid, I'm afraid.

The upshot of all that is that it generates a FLAC folder containing all the flac files, mp3 files for each track in the base folder - all of which have the displayed artwork embedded in them. It also writes a log file showing if the wav extraction was OK and an artwork file titled Artist - Album title.jpg. Finally deleting the wav files after.

Does that get you far enough for your tests ?

[simoncn]

Thanks for these detailed instructions. Doing this testing has reminded me why I switched from EAC to dBpoweramp at least 10 years ago.

Ripping test tracks with the two JPEG/EXIF files produced .mp3 files with the unusual tagging that was causing problems for MinimServer. Ripping with the JPEG/JFIF file produced an .mp3 file with standard tagging. Embedding these images into .mp3 files is done by LAME, so the unusual tagging is a LAME issue.

When you ripped files with the White album image (JPEG/EXIF), you weren't using a local disk file for the artwork image but you were using artwork downloaded by EAC. It appears that for some reason this produces standard tagging when passed to LAME. I don't think it would be productive to dig deeper into why this happens as it doesn't make any difference to the change I need to make to MinimServer to support the unusual tagging produced by LAME for some files.

Thanks for your help with tracking down the combination of factors that causes this problem. The fix will be in the next MinimServer update.

[windbag]

Understood & Thanks
EAC was OK once I'd got it to do both compressions automatically after the rip.
Except for this new-to-me problem ;-)

[windbag]

(12-08-2024 16:53)simoncn Wrote:  The fix will be in the next MinimServer update.

Can you give a guide as to anticipated timescale ?

[simoncn]

The update is taking longer than I anticipated because of other issues that I need to resolve. In the interim I will provide a test build with the artwork change. I have sent you a PM with the details.