Comprehensive USB Bug List

[BertL]

I do not believe it is or ever was going to outside source for album contents. Are the songs that are being stripped off ones with guest artists? Often these are tagged as "frank Sinatra featuring...." and those are always put in separate album unless you edit the album artist tag.

Art will not be recognized unless it is tagged to the track and yet to be nailed down format. We do know 300x300 jpg does work.

Re using tag editor, you need to know exactly what tags to edit, and track sequence needs to be 01, 02 vs 1, 2

Prior to 8.0, assuming it wasn't already cached, I know USB was going out to Gracenotes to find album art, but as @tomas suggests, that's probably all. ...and yes, there is NO ALBUM tagging of some sort... it's all done at the track level, carried along with the audio/video contents in the same file.

In the past, Tesla has used the TRACKARTIST Tag when IMHO ALBUMARTIST would have been a much better decision for trying to quickly access things in a vehicle. Individuals can do their own thing with what's put in any tag, but by convention, ALBUMARTIST should generally represent the primary artist or group for that album. The TRACKARTIST tag can then be used to specify multiple artists on that particular track. If you have a solo album, in theory both tags would be the same. On compilations and say Broadway, TRACKARTIST will be quite different across each track in the album and it's why in the past, a single album would sometimes show up as multiples in the Album view. The further problem becomes for any player, there is no real standard how artist names are separated when their are multiples (comma, semicolon, etc., etc). So while that sort of logic could be attempted like it is say in iTunes to some degree, for simplicity, I'd just be happy if Tesla always used ALBUMARTIST when there is reference to "artist" somewhere in the UI... Further:

• In non-Folder access methods, Tesla has not consistently maintained the combination of (TRACKNUMBER + DISCNUMBER + ALBUMARTIST + ALBUM title) as the sort order for all tracks within the interface. This would have fixed past and present issues with so many anomalies, and Tesla wouldn't even have to use the PARTOFCOMPILATION tag which has it's own set of additional problems and even more inconsistent usage (e.g. there is no formal definition as to what is and is not a true "compilation" even for those that do want to use this optional tag).
• For those that want to use Folder access to their USB media, great, but IMHO the best one can expect for is Tesla to then keep tracks sorted alphanumerically by filename within folder. If Tesla tries to get smart and use some tag data in conjunction with the everyone-is-different-file-structure, well, it's gonna be an inconsistent mess. It's not reasonable to expect Tesla or any other mfgr to read our minds as to what we expect any further than basic alphanumeric directory access in "Folder View".

Art detail, yup, is TBD.

In case it's helpful to others, while waiting for my MS to come back from the SvC, I have expanded my initial USB test cases to validate:

• Major encoding formats that are/are not supported (M4A lossy, M4A lossless, MP3, AIFF, FLA, FLAC, M4V, MWV unprotected, WAV)
• If Multi-disc sets are handled or not, and how that does or does not continue to cause additional problems with "sequential track playback by album"
• Determine what's going on with TRACKARTIST vs ALBUMARTIST, including where there are multiple artists in a track tag and how that is being represented in the UI
• Several investigative items related to tagging; Which (of what I consider the basic tags an automobile player needs) are and are not used; If any do or don't influence Folder access by filename or not
• Album Art -- simple test with jpg 300x300 on flac/m4A/wav/mp3 to sample if there are issues with art in different encoded formats; more comprehensive tests using m4a lossy with both jpg and png and Front Cover art 300 to1500 on a side in 100 increments; how multiple front covers and/or other art is or is not handled
• Search -- various observations

 

[ArtInCT]

EARTH without ART is just EH....

I digress....

 

[X Fan]

I do not believe it is or ever was going to outside source for album contents. Are the songs that are being stripped off ones with guest artists? Often these are tagged as "frank Sinatra featuring...." and those are always put in separate album unless you edit the album artist tag.

Art will not be recognized unless it is tagged to the track and yet to be nailed down format. We do know 300x300 jpg does work.

Re using tag editor, you need to know exactly what tags to edit, and track sequence needs to be 01, 02 vs 1, 2

No--c'mon if you know anything about Sinatra besides for Duets, Reprise Repertory Albums from 1963 and a few odd singles here and there he didn't have many post-Columbia "guests".

These are off actual Capitol & Reprise record albums.....and yes, I know how to use tag editor. I (actually) manually tagged Days of Wine and Roses and Sinatra '65 album as a test and both still are messed up showing up in the wrong order. I brought in the 'art" via the program and then meticulously went track by track to ensure all items matched up year, artist, track x of x, disc x of x, etc.

 

[aesculus]

• In non-Folder access methods, Tesla has not consistently maintained the combination of (TRACKNUMBER + DISCNUMBER + ALBUMARTIST + ALBUM title) as the sort order for all tracks within the interface. This would have fixed past and present issues with so many anomalies, and Tesla wouldn't even have to use the PARTOFCOMPILATION tag which has it's own set of additional problems and even more inconsistent usage (e.g. there is no formal definition as to what is and is not a true "compilation" even for those that do want to use this optional tag).

• For those that want to use Folder access to their USB media, great, but IMHO the best one can expect for is Tesla to then keep tracks sorted alphanumerically by filename within folder. If Tesla tries to get smart and use some tag data in conjunction with the everyone-is-different-file-structure, well, it's gonna be an inconsistent mess. It's not reasonable to expect Tesla or any other mfgr to read our minds as to what we expect any further than basic alphanumeric directory access in "Folder View".

I am going to send this to Tesla as my biggest complaint of 7.1 in the hopes they get the message for 8.x

 

[cynix]

None of my embedded album art is showing. I wonder if it's because TeslaTunes doesn't copy them correctly when converting from ALAC to FLAC?

 

[BertL]

None of my embedded album art is showing. I wonder if it's because TeslaTunes doesn't copy them correctly when converting from ALAC to FLAC?

I've not had any problem with TeslaTunes messing with my art or tags that I have not directed it to do, but I also don't use or have ever tested ALAC. Have you used a tagging tool to look at both files to see what the difference is, and can you tell us what art format is in both places, e.g. jpg, png or something else, it's dimensions, and if it is tagged as "Front Cover" art opposed to one of the 14 other variations (some tagging tools don't display that detail).

FWIW, last week as I was investigating new tagging and conversion tools to build a set of new test cases, I did find some tools (sorry, don't remember what) that did not migrate all tags properly with some format combinations, and some that ignored only album art on the conversion. ...so, TeslaTunes may be doing something wrong, but IDK. Time for Sherlock Holmes.

 

[cynix]

Have you used a tagging tool to look at both files to see what the difference is, and can you tell us what art format is in both places, e.g. jpg, png or something else, it's dimensions, and if it is tagged as "Front Cover" art opposed to one of the 14 other variations (some tagging tools don't display that detail).

I'll have a look later. The images are mostly jpg with some png. I'm pretty sure I didn't specifically tag them as "Front Cover" though (there's no such option in iTunes).

 

[X Fan]

Here is one example of an image problem: playing a song from one album (that does NOT have art) and shows art from another album (that's not on my phone).

 

[tomas]

Here is one example of an image problem: playing a song from one album (that does NOT have art) and shows art from another album (that's not on my phone).View attachment 198529

Wait. This is on your phone? This thread about USB. Let's keep these issues separate please.

 

[CuriousG]

Wait. This is on your phone? This thread about USB. Let's keep these issues separate please.

He doesn't seem to make any sense. First he talks about PDF files embedded artwork which we assume he was talking about USB now he's talking about Bluetooth which I believe requires AVRCP support to have album art and only in certain versions without some sort of hacking involved.

 

[X Fan]

Curious G-Sorry if I don't meet your definition of "sense"....you must be very intelligent....a discourse without attack should be the goal of this forum, don't you think?

Tomas--I'll take snapshots of USB problems a later to demonstrate. Same issues, there are pictures of Sinatra Albums that I never heard of showcasing in song list......

 

[BertL]

I'll have a look later. The images are mostly jpg with some png. I'm pretty sure I didn't specifically tag them as "Front Cover" though (there's no such option in iTunes).

@cynix: Found the bug:

1. I built a new ALAC (Apple Lossless M4A) file with only a jpg 300x300 Front Cover Image
2. Converted the ALAC to FLAC using Pro Audio Converter (available via macOS App Store). Tags and image are retained.
3. Converted the ALAC to FLAC using SWITCH (available via their page). Tags and image are retained.
4. Used TeslaTunes with no options, which will automatically convert the ALAC to FLAC. Tags are retained, image is lost.

Appears TeslaTunes has a bug as you suspected loosing Album Art with ALAC to FLAC conversion. (It works fine for me with M4A Lossy.)

Workaround: Since Media Player unfortunately does not support ALAC even though it's open source, and assuming you want to use TeslaTunes to resolve some of the other Media Player bugs with Track/Album Artist, Multi-Disc, etc., like I do, what I suggest to you as a Mac owner is:

1. First convert your ALAC files to FLAC using another conversion tool. The two I reference above work, so YMMV with others.
2. Run TeslaTunes against those FLAC files to modify tagging and filenames for the Tesla Media Player workarounds
3. Use that set of files in Media Player

I ran the test and confirmed if TeslaTunes takes a source FLAC, both tags and image are retained in the modified FLAC file. Since my MS is still awaiting service, the only thing I did not verify is if the physical FLAC files will play, but I see no reason they shouldn't.
​

Good luck.

...oh, FWIW, I know I'm going to have to modify my process I created to deal with Media Player 7.1 deficiencies. While I've not finalized my 8.0 version of that, based on this new TeslaTunes bug, I'm leaning towards an unfortunately more complex 4-step process

1. Build a series of iTunes Playlists representing the tracks I want in my Tesla
2. Extract those iTunes files to an intermediate location
3. Run those tracks through SWITCH to both convert everything to FLAC as well as RMS Normalize the track sound level (yes, I know there won't be improvement in audio quality going lossy to lossless, but less playing with the volume button as each track starts to play will be a plus)
4. Run those tracks through TeslaTunes to deal with tag and filename changes to workaround continued Media Player deficiencies

I'll finalize that hopefully later next week. We'll see. ​

 

[cynix]

Interesting. I don't actually need the tag rewriting features of TeslaTunes, since I play in shuffle mode all the time anyway. It just seemed like a super simple one-click tool to convert my files to a format that the media player supports. My library is 95% ALAC and 5% AAC, not sure if other conversion tools can keep the AAC files intact while converting ALAC to FLAC.

 

[BertL]

...not sure if other conversion tools can keep the AAC files intact while converting ALAC to FLAC.

The two conversion tools I cited are examples of ways you could make FLAC "copies" of your original ALACs onto a USB stick, and play them on your MS with all your iTunes tagging and album art in place. If all you do is use Media Player Folder access against one large list of tracks, thats an easy solution. (Then, if you have problems with some art not displaying, it's because of some other TBD anomaly in Media Player itself.)

Personally, even though I also play on random/shuffle a majority of the time, I need TeslaTunes to manipulate filenames and TRACKARTIST to workaround Media Player deficiencies handling compilations and Artist names that cause weird things to happen also when accessing by album. Since I don't have playlists in my Tesla, I do at times also want to listen to just a single artist, or sometimes an album in track order, so TeslaTunes gives me a way to also work around Tesla not handling track & disc numbers. Now that I've found SWITCH, during encoding conversion it provides a way to workaround Tesla Media Player not having an on-the-fly "Sound Check" ability as you may be using via iTunes Preferences (where a player reads track tags to adjust relative playback level) -- no more fiddling with my MS volume control nearly every time a new USB track begins to play! Yippee.​

Enjoy.

 

[supratachophobia]

@cynix: Found the bug:

1. I built a new ALAC (Apple Lossless M4A) file with only a jpg 300x300 Front Cover Image
2. Converted the ALAC to FLAC using Pro Audio Converter (available via macOS App Store). Tags and image are retained.
3. Converted the ALAC to FLAC using SWITCH (available via their page). Tags and image are retained.
4. Used TeslaTunes with no options, which will automatically convert the ALAC to FLAC. Tags are retained, image is lost.

Appears TeslaTunes has a bug as you suspected loosing Album Art with ALAC to FLAC conversion. (It works fine for me with M4A Lossy.)

Workaround: Since Media Player unfortunately does not support ALAC even though it's open source, and assuming you want to use TeslaTunes to resolve some of the other Media Player bugs with Track/Album Artist, Multi-Disc, etc., like I do, what I suggest to you as a Mac owner is:

1. First convert your ALAC files to FLAC using another conversion tool. The two I reference above work, so YMMV with others.
2. Run TeslaTunes against those FLAC files to modify tagging and filenames for the Tesla Media Player workarounds
3. Use that set of files in Media Player

I ran the test and confirmed if TeslaTunes takes a source FLAC, both tags and image are retained in the modified FLAC file. Since my MS is still awaiting service, the only thing I did not verify is if the physical FLAC files will play, but I see no reason they shouldn't.
​

Good luck.

...oh, FWIW, I know I'm going to have to modify my process I created to deal with Media Player 7.1 deficiencies. While I've not finalized my 8.0 version of that, based on this new TeslaTunes bug, I'm leaning towards an unfortunately more complex 4-step process

1. Build a series of iTunes Playlists representing the tracks I want in my Tesla
2. Extract those iTunes files to an intermediate location
3. Run those tracks through SWITCH to both convert everything to FLAC as well as RMS Normalize the track sound level (yes, I know there won't be improvement in audio quality going lossy to lossless, but less playing with the volume button as each track starts to play will be a plus)
4. Run those tracks through TeslaTunes to deal with tag and filename changes to workaround continued Media Player deficiencies

I'll finalize that hopefully later next week. We'll see. ​

Holy craptastic. And I thought I had wasted a lot of time with v8. Great work going through all that troubleshooting. In your opinion, if Tesla addressed the bug list we've been working on in this thread and documented the tag requirements, would this prevent you, myself, and others, from having to do workarounds like this?

 

[BertL]

Holy craptastic. And I thought I had wasted a lot of time with v8. Great work going through all that troubleshooting. In your opinion, if Tesla addressed the bug list we've been working on in this thread and documented the tag requirements, would this prevent you, myself, and others, from having to do workarounds like this?

With just a quick think about it, even with your consolidated fix and enhancement list, Tesla would still be lacking a user-controlled Playback Normalization ability to keep relative playback levels consistent across tracks. Lexus e.g. calls that "Automatic Sound Leveling" and it has been an on/off option in their Media Player-equivalent for years even when there was only CD and no USB in their vehicles. MBZ COMAND (their Infotainment system) also has their own variant -- I just don't remember what it was called. iTunes provides something similar via Preferences/Playback/Sound Check, and iPod/iPhone/iPad have a Sound Check option in the music player ...and I bet the Droid owners have something similar.

 

[X Fan]

Curious G-Sorry if I don't meet your definition of "sense"....you must be very intelligent....a discourse without attack should be the goal of this forum, don't you think?

Tomas--I'll take snapshots of USB problems a later to demonstrate. Same issues, there are pictures of Sinatra Albums that I never heard of showcasing in song list......

Three images--patriot has 126 albums, tesla generates 189

Took 2 songs off an album (btw: all of my music were ripped off separate album cd's with artwork coming from rip) and placed them on an album called 'Great ballads' with artwork showing that. Don't have that album in my collection nor have that artwork in my files.

 

[X Fan]

View attachment 198585

Three images--patriot has 126 albums, tesla generates 189

Took 2 songs off an album (btw: all of my music were ripped off separate album cd's with artwork coming from rip) and placed them on an album called 'Great ballads' with artwork showing that. Don't have that album in my collection nor have that artwork in my files.

 

[BertL]

@X Fan -- I'm having challenges following the multitude of USB/Media Player threads and keeping straight which discussions are in which, but as I tried to say upthread in one of them: Your symptom of Tesla Media Player seeming to have more Albums than what you physically have on your stick, is likely due to the long standing problem with Media Player not handling TRACKARTIST vs ALBUMARTIST correctly. The issue I've gone on to much about with Tesla not using TRACKNUMBER+DISCNUMBER+ALBUMARTIST+ALBUM (title) to determine unique albums, can compound the problem depending where you look in the interface. The not-quite-perfect workaround for your symptom is to manually or via a tool, switch the contents of ALBUMARTIST in each track into TRACKARTIST. Sorry, it's an almost impossible workaround for a larger library unless you've got a tool like TeslaTunes (macOS only) to do the automation.

As to why you have phantom tracks, albums, or art showing that are not on your present stick, this may be related to how Media Player 8.0 is trying to reuse cached information. I've not played with 8.0 enough to be more precise in my observations, but with 6.2-7.1, things like album art and even certain track data could seem to be out-of-date when you removed a USB device that had the data, then you change your USB device track contents and reinsert it. The issue was (IDK if it still is), trying to be efficient and speed things up, Tesla seemed to scan only the file structure in it's attempt to determine if this was the same USB device that it formerly had in place. During the "rescan", it never looked inside the track data for differences, hence it could easily be fooled, leaving a bunch of old data in the interface that was no longer current. It drove me nuts for several days and hours of work until I figured that out last Fall. The workaround with 7.1 was to either:

1. Change the highest-level root directory name of your USB device (not the name of the volume) each time you make changes to the contents on the device. That will fool Media Player to do a full scan, opening up the contents of each track instead of the faster "rescan" as I call it. If you put all your tracks in the root directory, you have no choice but to do #2 below.
2. Do a full reboot of the CID: 1) Remove your USB device; 2) Put foot on the brake; 3) Press and hold both control wheels until the Tesla T appears on the CID; 4) Let up on the brake; 5) Replace your USB device in the slot. Don't skip any of that detail, and it should clear your Media Player cache amongst other things...

 

[X Fan]

@X Fan -- I'm having challenges following the multitude of USB/Media Player threads and keeping straight which discussions are in which, but as I tried to say upthread in one of them: Your symptom of Tesla Media Player seeming to have more Albums than what you physically have on your stick, is likely due to the long standing problem with Media Player not handling TRACKARTIST vs ALBUMARTIST correctly. The issue I've gone on to much about with Tesla not using TRACKNUMBER+DISCNUMBER+ALBUMARTIST+ALBUM (title) to determine unique albums, can compound the problem depending where you look in the interface. The not-quite-perfect workaround for your symptom is to manually or via a tool, switch the contents of ALBUMARTIST in each track into TRACKARTIST. Sorry, it's an almost impossible workaround for a larger library unless you've got a tool like TeslaTunes (macOS only) to do the automation.

As to why you have phantom tracks, albums, or art showing that are not on your present stick, this may be related to how Media Player 8.0 is trying to reuse cached information. I've not played with 8.0 enough to be more precise in my observations, but with 6.2-7.1, things like album art and even certain track data could seem to be out-of-date when you removed a USB device that had the data, then you change your USB device track contents and reinsert it. The issue was (IDK if it still is), trying to be efficient and speed things up, Tesla seemed to scan only the file structure in it's attempt to determine if this was the same USB device that it formerly had in place. During the "rescan", it never looked inside the track data for differences, hence it could easily be fooled, leaving a bunch of old data in the interface that was no longer current. It drove me nuts for several days and hours of work until I figured that out last Fall. The workaround with 7.1 was to either:

1. Change the highest-level root directory name of your USB device (not the name of the volume) each time you make changes to the contents on the device. That will fool Media Player to do a full scan, opening up the contents of each track instead of the faster "rescan" as I call it. If you put all your tracks in the root directory, you have no choice but to do #2 below.
2. Do a full reboot of the CID: 1) Remove your USB device; 2) Put foot on the brake; 3) Press and hold both control wheels until the Tesla T appears on the CID; 4) Let up on the brake; 5) Replace your USB device in the slot. Don't skip any of that detail, and it should clear your Media Player cache amongst other things...

Great advice. I'll give it a shot and advise. I can live with tracks out of order by just selecting the right song (many go 1,10, 11, 2 ) but other stuff is not correctable.