Windows 8.1 not recognizing MP3's embedded album art


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Anyone run into this issue before? My Windows 8.1 PC won't recognize album art embedded in an MP3 no matter what I do. I've tried my Windows 7 and Windows RT machines, however, and they see the album art perfectly fine -- in fact, I have my MP3s on an external hard drive, and when I click a file in Windows Explorer, the art shows up on every PC except the Windows 8.1 PC.

 

At first I thought it was Xbox Music clearing the album art, as it's been wont to do in the past, but I haven't even opened the external hard drive's files in Xbox Music.

 

Any ideas?

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The Xbox Music app is really funky the way it handles metadata. Try moving the folders with the files it doesn't recognize properly out of your music library folders, wait until they disappear from the app, then move them back. That will get it to refresh the data store sometimes.

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The Xbox Music app is really funky the way it handles metadata. Try moving the folders with the files it doesn't recognize properly out of your music library folders, wait until they disappear from the app, then move them back. That will get it to refresh the data store sometimes.

I agree, that was my first thought, so I tried moving the files and changing stuff around, but no luck. Even in Windows Explorer, when I click on the files they don't show the album art like they do on my non-Windows 8.1 computers, they just show the music file icon. Strangely, however, even my Surface shows the album art in Windows Explorer.

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You seem to indicate that this is a problem everywhere (WMP(?), Explorer).

The fact that it works in some cases seems to indicate that it's not a ID3v2.3 vs ID3v2.4 issue.

 

You do mention that these files are located on an external drive: is this a "removable" class drive?  IIRC there's some funkiness associated with album art on removable drives, and IIRC there are paths where players avoid showing album art there.  IIRC. =]

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You seem to indicate that this is a problem everywhere (WMP(?), Explorer).

The fact that it works in some cases seems to indicate that it's not a ID3v2.3 vs ID3v2.4 issue.

 

You do mention that these files are located on an external drive: is this a "removable" class drive?  IIRC there's some funkiness associated with album art on removable drives, and IIRC there are paths where players avoid showing album art there.  IIRC. =]

Yes, all correct. Even when I move the files over to the computer's hard drive, however, the album art doesn't show. I've even gone into iTunes to try and add the album art, but it doesn't appear on the file (and also doesn't appear in Xbox Music).

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Do they show up correctly on a second Windows 8.1 PC?

Is there a sample afflicted file to look at?  This is for all MP3 files on this machine, correct, as opposed to a subset?

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Do they show up correctly on a second Windows 8.1 PC?

Is there a sample afflicted file to look at?  This is for all MP3 files on this machine, correct, as opposed to a subset?

Yes, it's for all MP3 files.

 

After messing with it some more, it appears the embedded artwork isn't showing up, but it's all still there -- iTunes, foobar2000 and other desktop media players find the artwork fine after I rescanned my library, but for some reason it's still not displaying in Windows Explorer. What's odd, however, is that it displays fine on my Surface, which has Windows RT 8.1. And it appears Xbox Music isn't even bothering to check the files for the embedded artwork, it's simply downloading all the artwork from the Xbox Music (service) library, even though in the settings I turned off the option to find missing data.

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Xbox Music is under its own limitations, so I would assess success against Windows Media Player first.  iTunes and some other media players are slightly more likely to bend over backwards for odd or problematic files, while the Microsoft squad generally just politely ignores problematic files (such as are found with multiply ID3v2'd files).

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Xbox Music is under its own limitations, so I would assess success against Windows Media Player first.  iTunes and some other media players are slightly more likely to bend over backwards for odd or problematic files, while the Microsoft squad generally just politely ignores problematic files (such as are found with multiply ID3v2'd files).

Yes, all the album artwork appears in Windows Media Player as well. Not sure why it's not showing up in Windows Explorer (or Xbox Music, as it used to do).

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Hey,

Have you tried using mp3tag for album art, just open the song or file and re-save all the meata data.

Ps does anyone know a good program for video meta data including art, just mp4 and m4v thanks.

Pps sorry for hijacking this thread.

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Yes, all the album artwork appears in Windows Media Player as well. Not sure why it's not showing up in Windows Explorer (or Xbox Music, as it used to do).

What size is the album art?  Windows Media Player should be using 200x200.  Is the album art in the file only or has it also been extracted to the shell (as is evident if you find the system hidden Folder.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg files in that directory)?  If you drag and drop the art again onto the file in Windows Media Player that should forcibly a) reinsert the art into the file (which you may not want to do if the art is >200x200) and b) ensure that it gets 'properly' placed for shell usage based upon WMID and etc.

 

You could test this theory by creating a copy of a file+folder in question and trying against that copy.

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