Album art size problems?

[Dean]

Hi,

Using PMS 1.10.1, on Windows Vista Ultimate 64 - connected to a PS3 running firmware 2.60.

I'm finding that audio tracks containing large album art images show thumbnails correctly in the list of tracks in XMB, but when actually playing the track (eg: over the Earth/Canyon visualisers) the PS3 album art image is shown. The same audio track streamed through other DLNA servers (eg: Twonky) shows the album art correctly in both places.

In my case, my album art is part of the AAC .m4a files I have as part of my iTunes library. Normally I have .m4a excluded from transcoding - so PMS streams AAC data to the PS3. Reverting this such that .m4a files get transcoded to PCM does not resolve this.

Here is data from DEBUG.LOG from a track that works without problems (displaying album art in both places correctly):

pool-60-thread-1] DEBUG 21:24:21.535 Media info of : D:\iPod Music\2 Bit Pie\2 Pie Island\01 Fly.m4a / mimeType: audio/mp4 / container: null / bitrate: 128 / size: 5908782 / codecV: null / duration: 00:06:01.00 / width: 0 / height: 0 / frameRate: null / thumb size : 12338
audio: id=0 / lang: null / codec: aac / sf:44100

..and here is data from a track that only shows the image as part of the list of tracks in the XMB - ie: the image does not show when the track is played.

[pool-68-thread-2] DEBUG 21:25:13.552 Media info of : D:\iPod Music\Death Cab For Cutie\Narrow Stairs\02 I Will Possess Your Heart.m4a / mimeType: audio/mp4 / container: null / bitrate: 128 / size: 8573976 / codecV: null / duration: 00:08:25.00 / width: 0 / height: 0 / frameRate: null / thumb size : 412203
audio: id=0 / lang: null / codec: aac / sf:44100

Note the much larger 'thumb size'. The first (working) track's album art is 270x270 in size, while the second track's is 525x525.

I suspect this is the same issue a TVersity user is reporting here: http://whathifi.com/forums/t/173250.aspx and here: http://forum.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11883

Is it possible for PMS to rescale the album art sent to the DLNA client if it exceeds the size/dimensions displayable by the XMB during playback?

Cheers,
Dean

[shagrath]

interesting... was wondering why some covers were displayed and why some others didn't

[Dean]

Hi Shagrath,

I've performed extensive testing this morning, and it appears that there appears to be a size restriction of exactly 100k (102400 bytes) related to the thumbnail display during playback.

Image dimensions don't seem to be a factor.. I've tried large compressible images, and as long as the size comes in less that 102400 bytes, it displays perfectly.

Hope this information is useful?

Thanks again for doing such a quality job on PMS. It really is a rather special piece of software.

Cheers,
Dean

[eQuation]

and it appears that there appears to be a size restriction of exactly 100k (102400 bytes) related to the thumbnail display during playback.

Image dimensions don't seem to be a factor.. I've tried large compressible images, and as long as the size comes in less that 102400 bytes, it displays perfectly.

Cheers,
Dean

@Dean

Way to go mate!! This is really a good finding! I have spend hours on this. I wanted to create "Playlist" folders. Filling them with mp3 files that have the right ID3 tags and Album Art. I could not understand why I had some files showing up perfectly and others, taged exactly the same as others, not showing the Album Art.

And then.... I read your post. Knocked myself once or twice that I did not check file sizes at all (while checking its dimensions....), checked what mp3's did stream the album art and INDEED, it is the size of the .jpg!! Now it is all working just fine!!

Thank you so much!!