BertL
Active Member
In this case, it wasn't the next alpha one. Odd to be sure!Was it by chance the next song alphabetically? I have seen this before. Once it plays a song it decides the next one, no matter what, should be the next alpha song.
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Comprehensive USB Bug List
- Thread starter supratachophobia
- Start date
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
I can add FLAC support quite easily, sure.
I don't use FLAC myself - but does the car's media library sort them the same way as MP3s then?
thecloud
As rhythm raced inside, the ship came alive
Yes. I have a combination of FLAC and MP3 files and the car sorts them by artist and album tags in the same way. There's no visible distinction between these types in the media player, except for one thing: it's unable to remember its place in the middle of a FLAC file when you pause and return to the car later. It does, however, know how to keep its place in a MP3 file. That's one of many bugs previously discussed in this thread.
Be aware that FLAC files do not use ID3 tags as MP3 files do; they have their own native tag format, called a "Vorbis comment."
I've thought about writing my own FLAC tagger too but so far, the command-line 'metaflac' tool has been sufficient for adding cover art. The 'Tag' app (by Stephen Booth, who also wrote 'Max') works well for editing artist and album data on a Mac.
I've published my changes with FLAC support and the ability to reset track-numbers, album-art and remove APE tags all from the GUI: https://github.com/Jehoel/TeslaTags/releases/tag/release-2-flac-gui
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
I installed the v8.1 2018.21.9 (the "see cars in other lanes for AP2") update last night and I also replaced the USB stick for my music this morning. After inserting the stick the "USB" option at the top of the Music view appears - then disappears for a few minutes, then comes back again, weird.
After letting it reindex my files (these files have not been re-tagged with the TeslaTags program I wrote, I'm actually testing things) I noticed a lot of my music files were missing from the Artist, Album etc lists. I went into Folders view and some of the folders were showing an empty even though when I browse the USB stick on my PC or laptop the files are there. The files are identical to what I had before the 2018.21.9 update so I'm inclined to call this a regression in Tesla's USB device indexing.
Has anyone else had a similar experience lately?
UPDATE: I rearranged folders to trigger a re-scan and now all songs are indexed correctly. Weird.
After letting it reindex my files (these files have not been re-tagged with the TeslaTags program I wrote, I'm actually testing things) I noticed a lot of my music files were missing from the Artist, Album etc lists. I went into Folders view and some of the folders were showing an empty even though when I browse the USB stick on my PC or laptop the files are there. The files are identical to what I had before the 2018.21.9 update so I'm inclined to call this a regression in Tesla's USB device indexing.
Has anyone else had a similar experience lately?
UPDATE: I rearranged folders to trigger a re-scan and now all songs are indexed correctly. Weird.
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aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
You can also change the name of the top level folder to force it to reindex the files too.
I've just pushed a new release (release 3: Jehoel/TeslaTags ) that fixes a crash reported by a user on reddit, and adds the ability to override the Genre tag to display folder and artist names based on your preference. It also adds undo functionality for MP3 files.
I've fixed more bugs and added more features, here's release 4: github.com/Jehoel/TeslaTags/releases/tag/release-4
BertL
Active Member
FWIW I think it’s great you’re developing a new set of workarounds. Absolutely great! Your posts here are similar to how I initially found Tesla Tunes in its early days in another now old and almost forgotten thread, which helped me get started on this adventure trying to understand MP USB and making MP work a little better from my POV.
That being said, IMHO as time progresses with your new Windows-based tool, it may be worth considering creating a unique thread for folks that want to explore your tool and it’s new capabilities, and as a way for them to suggest features and discuss its development beyond this thread that has been focused since it’s inception primarily on identifying MP problems and their more generic workarounds. I’m personally good either way... simply throwing out a suggestion for consideration as interest increases in your development effort to prevent this thread one day perhaps straying too far off-topic and the Mods possibly intervening one day. TMC Mods don’t seem particularly rigid as other forums I’ve been a part of, and even helped moderate myself in the past, but I throw out the thought for consideration as time progresses... I’m good either way, as most of us reading and contributing to this thread want MP USB to be so much more than it is, so I appreciate what each of us do trying to make MP more than Tesla elects to make of it. It’s simply a thought for consideration as your tool becomes more mainstream and interest grows, so more people may find the good stuff you are producing. While I’m primarily a Mac kinda guy for the last several years, and avoid using my PC Windows laptop except for a single non-macOS application it runs, I’m always interested watching what you’re able to accomplish. Good luck!
Thank you for the kind words
Worry not, I already did make a new thread about this program right here: TeslaTags (MP3/FLAC Retagger for Windows)
First off, thanks for the Tag Tool. I am a new M3 owner (as in this week) and have a large music library that is carefully tagged. I added about 20k songs (MP3) to a 256gb USB stick (SanDisk Cruzer Glide 3 if that helps) and was disappointed to see the clear tagging deficiencies. I'll try TeslaTags as it looks like that should solve these issues.
I also am having an issue where the car is indexing the drive every time I re-start the car. This takes 10+ minutes and is clearly not acceptable. It sounds like i'm not the only one with this issue but I would sincerely appreciate any insight/guidance as to how to best address it?
Thanks!
I also am having an issue where the car is indexing the drive every time I re-start the car. This takes 10+ minutes and is clearly not acceptable. It sounds like i'm not the only one with this issue but I would sincerely appreciate any insight/guidance as to how to best address it?
Thanks!
The player appears to be sensitive to the brand and size of the USB drive. The format of the files could affect things too. Some people have had issues with FLAC files, while others have gotten them to work. I've used SanDisk with no problems, but they have always been USB 2 drives and all are 16 GB or smaller. I tried putting stuff on a large drive and it scanned over and over again on a trip. I bought a smaller drive at a Rite Aid and transferred all the files I could to the smaller drive and had no more issues.
BertL
Active Member
Congrats on your M3. Unsure exactly to what degree M3 USB Player is the same or different than my MS (we do know M3 is running at least some amount of new underlying code, and I suspect M3 has more physical memory or at least uses it differently than a MS/MX does) but in case it's helpful:
Net on your point #1: Our Tesla have a fixed amount of memory that it has to fit all programming, working areas, and user-specific data like phone contacts, AP info, nav tiles & history, AND pointers to music tracks on your USB device. Tesla programming on MS/MX (sadly) has no fixed limits on any of those user-controllable things and there is no paging/swapping area like you may know from mainframes, PC, Macs, etc, so as our Tesla runs out of memory, things sometimes slowdown, sometimes crash, and other times just act strangely. When you decrease memory on some of those things, it opens up more for others. With USB music, you'll get at least what most of us call a "rescan" as MP attempts to reindex your music after it crashes. Keeping my phone contacts to a few hundred (at least one user has more than 2K phone contacts) and my nav history to less than a dozen, I have tried over 20K tracks on a USB device in my MS. Initial scanning took exponentially more time the more tracks I put on my USB stick, and IIRC was taking over 2 hours somewhere over the 15K mark... which was completely unacceptable to me, especially with unexpected reboots and rescans that also caused. With my also carefully curated metadata, I tried reducing the number of tracks by a thousand at a time and have personally found if I keep the number of tracks to around 7K on my USB SSD, that works best for me... Initial scan time is just over 10 minutes and I don't have as may unexpected reboots. There is at least one user here that has/had over 15K tracks running with MP USB, but it's been a long time since that has been confirmed as something possible with current MS firmware levels. I suggest you dramatically reduce the number of tracks and give it another go.
On your point #2, as @wdolson suggests, there are a number of things that can cause reboots and rescans:
- Memory constraints as I describe above is where I'd suggest you start. Make sure you are not trying to keep thousands of contacts from your phone on your Tesla, delete old Nav History, then reduce the number of tracks on your USB device to 7K or thereabouts. IMHO, doing this solves most USB problems for most owners, most of the time.
- File format does also seem to make a difference in stability ... for me, MP3 VBS has great quality and is the most solid the past few months. Besides testing I've done on a myriad of combinations, I used FLAC for the first 18 months+ of ownership, but made the switch to MP3 VBS and found even better stability -- lots more on that experimentation upthread. I convert music from my master library to a Tesla-unique USB version to reduce memory consumption and try to work around many other MP shortcomings manipulating tagging -- detail on that process is upthread a couple pages or so.
- Errant metadata tagging has been known to cause problems, and use of the latest ID3 spec was proven to fail in our MS in recent months.
- Ensure you are not using a cheap USB cable ... swap what you're using with a quality one that costs a few bucks vs a few cents. That has fixed some unexplainable failures not only in our Tesla but former Lexus, MBZ and BMW I've owned or been associated with.
- Your physical USB device could be a problem, but from my testing of more than a dozen different devices and mfgrs of varying size, it's not as likely an issue for your symptoms as the other things above. A listing of devices I tried and the results are upthread a couple years somewhere... IIRC, only one or two of my tested devices seemed to have physical failures in my MS -- one a cheapo no-name USB stick, another a name brand where I had failures on more than one of the same model, so physical failures can happen, I just doubt it's the more likely problem you're encountering. Oddly, I never had problems with the same devices that failed in my Tesla in my $30 boom box in the garage, and my Mac almost never found any failures on them either -- again, it seems Tesla's error recovery is just flat out lacking.
Good luck.
Boatguy
Active Member
@BertL is spot on. I had numerous problems with my USB music until I finally bit the bullet and chopped down my library to about 7,000 tracks. The constant re-loads have stopped and I now have reliable music. It's just an undocumented shortcoming of the MS of that era. It's not clear if the M3 or later MS models solved that problem or not. I'll be curious to see if the M3 has the same issues.
George Jetson
Member
My central display and dashboard display both went postal the other day while driving. First all internet connectivity went out, so no audio, no nav, nothing. Then the turn signals weirded out at which point I pulled off the road and rebooted everything. I made an appointment at the SC for some other issues I was having, but I included a description about the display thing.
I got a call from Tesla in Cali who then looked at my vehicle log; they determined that the USB drive had caused the issue. I've been having issues playing larger hi-res FLAC files lately, so it seems that some of the memory capacity for the audio buffer has been reallocated for other software improvements during recent upgrades. How the USB drive could sabotage the rest of the system is still a head-scratcher to me.
I got a call from Tesla in Cali who then looked at my vehicle log; they determined that the USB drive had caused the issue. I've been having issues playing larger hi-res FLAC files lately, so it seems that some of the memory capacity for the audio buffer has been reallocated for other software improvements during recent upgrades. How the USB drive could sabotage the rest of the system is still a head-scratcher to me.
George Jetson
Member
I have a lot of Various Artists albums like "Concert for George" that are an absolute PITA to retag for the Tesla format. I tried Tesla Tunes, but it is designed for converting iTunes playlists, which I don't use. I need a program that retags existing MP3 and FLAC files from folders in a library. If you ever write a Mac version of the tagger, that would be a godsend.
X Fan
Active Member
BertL
Active Member
It's all about Tesla's poor error recovery routines.
USB devices are one of the only physical things that can be attached into a Tesla which then goes beyond Tesla's control from a testing perspective with the thousands or millions of possibilities in the world, since an individual USB device itself can fail or not follow specifications Tesla is expecting. Tesla's firmware routines therefore have to be robust to handle the unexpected, otherwise, things can go wonky in the rest of their programming. The same thing can happen in a PC or even Mac ... it's just that as the years have gone on with say Windows and macOS, Microsoft and Apple have millions and millions of users and have kept improving their device handling and error recovery so the whole thing doesn't crash as often as it did in the early years when they started out... I can remember rebooting my early original IBM PC with first generation PC DOS, OS2 and Windows, sometimes multiple times a day -- but that fortunately improved with time. Tesla just does not seem to care as much improving some of this not-very-sexy stuff under the covers related to USB and MP that can cause so much frustration for some of it's owners ... so we're left with doing what we can to try avoiding issues or circumvent it when we can figure out the pattern and what seems to cause the problem in the first place.
What OS are you using: Linux, Windows, or macOS?
What are you trying to really do by "retagging" your tracks: Identify/Fix tags in your master library that don't meet some criteria or one of the many standards? Add meta data from a web source, e.g. add better track titles, album art, etc? Maybe, just clip or edit certain metadata fields? Just extract tracks from iTunes for use in your Tesla? ...or something else?
Are your albums primarily organized in your master library by folder, and you simply want to use the Tesla MP folder view to play your albums, or do you want to try and use the more robust Album/Artist/etc views within MP as well?
Hard to pin down a suggestion further, but a couple of things to look at: Perfectunes may help if you use Windows -- it appears to be extremely robust to help make your master library tagging better and more consistent in a fairly automated way. If you are a Windows or macOS kinda guy, I use dBpoweramp to automate a bunch of things related to the conversion of my master library iTunes tracks to a Tesla-specific version (see upthread for detail if you want to recreate or start with what I'm doing). OTOH, if you use macOS and want something more manual to just tweak metadata on selective files, Metadatics from the Mac App Store does a solid job for me and is my go-to app to fix tagging, and I moved to Export for iTunes (from the Mac App Store) from Tesla Tunes months ago as it's support is superior -- it will also do conversion to MP3 or AAC if that's what you want to do, but it does not do any metatag manipulation. Many combinations. Provide a little more explanation what you want to do with your tracks and I'll try to offer better assistance if I can (my Windows knowledge is pretty aged as I don't use it for any of my music library, but I may be able to help more if you're using macOS as it's my OS of choice the past few years.)
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