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Album art, Ogg Vorbis #android #music

🕚︎ - 2012-02-23

It seems that getting album art to show up for Ogg Vorbis files is an ongoing struggle on every phone I get.

At least the source code for Android seems to be readily available.

So, first clue: in 2009 code was removed from src/com/android/music/MusicUtils.java that would read AlbumArt.jpg: "Remove code for getting and saving album art from the music app and use the media provider instead.".

Which probably means that I should go hunting in the media provider for more clues.

It looks like it does scour the filesystem for albumart.jpg - so why doesn't it work?!?

sigh

Update: Ok, it seems to work if the albumart.jpg file is there from the beginning. It doesn't seem to work to add it later, not even if I remove the entire directory and then copy it back.

I wonder how I can "flush the album art cache".

Update 2: Looks like adding albumart.jpg before transferring the files to the phone and having the image square (NxN pixels) works.

Update 3: If the phone has decided that the albumart isn't there, it seems a reboot is needed to change that decision (at least; clearing Music data might also be needed; moving the files off+back on is not necessary).

Update 4: The image doesn't have to be square - I just got three images that are higher than they are wide to show up, so I am down to Android being picky about the JPEG-format; opening the image in Gimp and saving it again seems to help (with a clear Music data (possibly) and a reboot (for sure) afterwards).

Also, did you notice that the stock ringtones, notification-, and alarm-sounds are all Ogg Vorbis files? Nice touch.

🕚︎ - 2012-02-23 - 2 comments

It does indeed help to clear Music data. Thanks for solving this highly annoying problem!

- Klaus Alexander Seistrup 🕘︎ - 2012-03-04

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It is one of those things that is just mind bogglingly boring to mess around with!

Now I just need the clock to add a count down feature, and the email client to allow proper non-TOFU quoting, and I'm pretty happy.

- Adam 🕧︎ - 2012-03-04

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