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Comprehensive USB Bug List
- Thread starter supratachophobia
- Start date
What do you feel are the top 5 biggest unresolved issues with the current build of the USB Media Player?
I'll start with mine
1) Inability to resume music from when I get back in the car (related to #2)
2) Media player starts scanning/indexing media partition when I get in the car when nothing has changed. Media player unable to play music while scanning media partition with lasts several minutes.
3) No M3U playlist support.
4) Unable to change media source with steering wheel controls.
5) If you wee listen to a different music source, when you switch to USB Media, it should continue playing music where it left off. This is somewhat related to #2 but after the media player needlessly scans and indexes the music, I need to then navigate my music library and select again whatever I was listening to.
Some of these issues are related, especially # 2 above and if they could resolve these issues, I feel that would address just about all my major issues with the media player.
Honestly, as a software developer, none of these issues seem particularly difficult to solve. #2 which creates so many problems for me can be solved so easily!
I'll start with mine
1) Inability to resume music from when I get back in the car (related to #2)
2) Media player starts scanning/indexing media partition when I get in the car when nothing has changed. Media player unable to play music while scanning media partition with lasts several minutes.
3) No M3U playlist support.
4) Unable to change media source with steering wheel controls.
5) If you wee listen to a different music source, when you switch to USB Media, it should continue playing music where it left off. This is somewhat related to #2 but after the media player needlessly scans and indexes the music, I need to then navigate my music library and select again whatever I was listening to.
Some of these issues are related, especially # 2 above and if they could resolve these issues, I feel that would address just about all my major issues with the media player.
Honestly, as a software developer, none of these issues seem particularly difficult to solve. #2 which creates so many problems for me can be solved so easily!
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BertL
Active Member
After nearly 4 years of USB problems on my MS and lots of discussion, observations and recommendations here, I have plenty of "wants" or "desired features", but I'd be pleased with some BASICS first:
1) Tesla firmware must establish firm limits with prompts to the user and logical resolution if exceeded -- to avoid the numerous issues that otherwise may ensue across the interface. I realize this varies based on CIDs and features, but it needs to be done and enforced to avoid THE USER encountering a failure they could not control themselves.
2) Formal user documentation of what is supported: USB devices, formats, encoding types (including max bitrates or other options), max number of tracks, max depth of directory structure, which ID3 tags are used and any limitations on each e.g. length, album art type/size), etc. Other mfgrs have done this for years, so there is little excuse.
3) Resolve long-standing unexpected media player crashes (failures from lack of #1 above; Unexpected rescans, freezes/hangs, CID reboots, etc.)
4) Consistent resume of a track upon exit/enter, pause, or change of music source -- for ALL supported encoding types
Then for my real MP USB Wish List (Others may see these as "basics" -- I do too for many, but won't debate the point):
5) Consistent use of only TrackNumber and DiscNumber to ensure correct sequence playback within an album and multi-disc album set in all views except Folder View (where Direcctory/Filename should be the sort sequence in the interface)
6) Use of AlbumArtist in lieu of TrackArtist throughout the interface (using TrackArtist when AlbumArtist is blank), or better yet logical parsing of multiple artists within the TrackArtist tag like more advanced non-Tesla MPs do so all views work in a more logical way (e.g. Album & Artist View has always been a FAIL with compilation albums where TrackArtist varies across the same physical album.)
7) Better "randomness" of the shuffle feature (improve the "seed" even more than was done a few releases ago, or perhaps occasionally resetting the seed without needing a CID reboot, replacing the USB device, or changing file structure naming.)
8) Provide an option to limit music searches to only USB
9) Implement Automatic Volume Leveling (AVL) or Automatic Sound Leveling (ASL) as most other mfgrs with premium sound systems do
My Net?
I just want MP USB to always work as a basic boom box does with no unexpected failures. The user should not encounter freezes, hangs and reboots that take away from a positive Tesla Owner Experience.
I would then be satisfied (not thrilled) if Tesla's MP USB provided similar functionality to what other auto mfgrs have done for years. As has been said many times, none of this is rocket science; could be accomplished with relatively low cost by a couple dedicated programmers sitting behind a desk; Would benefit 100% of the fleet today and tomorrow; ...but will only be done if it's given a priority by Tesla Executive Management (and their lack of not doing so will be the primary reason I don't purchase another Tesla one day. It is also the caveat I always give when someone asks how I like my car -- my response is "love the tech", "love the Supercharger network", "love not having been to a gas station in years", "service is finally improving", "but hate how Tesla spends time building new dumb Easter Eggs and does not fix basic software bugs for functions I use every day.").
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FYI your #1 issue is fixed in the 2019 software releases. At least it is in Model 3. I will be able to test in my Model S in a couple of weeks, presuming I have software update.
@BertL ive been surprised the response to my numerous posts describing fixed resume on this thread has been.... crickets! I wonder if this is because this is mainly subscribed by S/X drivers and either 2019 software not yet distributed to those cars or works differently on those cars.
After years of this thread criticizing Tesla’s media player (constructively), i’d like to see at least a bit of acknowledgement when the #1 USB bug is fixed.
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BertL
Active Member
I suspect part of the crickets issue is as you suggest — this thread is in the Model S forum. I e.g. don’t even look in the MX or M3 forums most of the time. (I suggested to TMC forum mods years ago that some threads like this may be better served for the broad community in a new cross-model forum like others I used to frequent and even mod myself — but that was not their preferred thing to do at the time.). Also, some of the changes you’re seeing may in fact be specific to the later firmware releases that not all of us yet have.
For me, I’ve not tested your observation — mainly because I had already taken the time to convert my tracks to MP3 (with all my other tweaks for other problems), and it would take me a couple days of processing time to create another USB stick that would be FLAC just to give it a try. I sorta lost my desire to do extensive testing on what has become a slowing set of releases to (my older) MS, and since MP3 works 100% of the time with resume for me, I’ve just not gone there yet. Perhaps one day if I suspect or see reports of any other more significant improvements from my POV.
In the meantime, HAPPY RESUME with your FLAC files!
SucreTease
Teslarian
I really wish Tesla would fix the following two problems:
1. The music player in the Tesla automatically starts the music player on my iPhone whenever I enter the vehicle, no matter which music source is selected in the Tesla (e.g. TuneIn).
2. Music source randomly swaps (or starts) music sources, sometimes selecting a different one than I had playing when I stopped the car, or sometimes starting a randomly selected one during a drive when I didn't have one playing.
1. The music player in the Tesla automatically starts the music player on my iPhone whenever I enter the vehicle, no matter which music source is selected in the Tesla (e.g. TuneIn).
2. Music source randomly swaps (or starts) music sources, sometimes selecting a different one than I had playing when I stopped the car, or sometimes starting a randomly selected one during a drive when I didn't have one playing.
f-stop
Active Member
re: your #1 USB resume - in my case one of the later v8 updates fixed this for me on USB (I'm presently on v9 2018.50.6). For a while now USB songs resume in the correct spot when I return to the car. OTOH, Slacker streaming always restarts from the beginning of the song, even if I leave the car and close/then open the door 1 second later (has nothing to do with the car going to sleep as others elsewhere observed)
re: your #2 random rescans. For me this problem seemed to likewise go away in one of the later v8 releases. It used to happen all the time in my MS, but then seemed to stop after one of the updates. In fairness I should add there's a recent period of a a few weekswhere I unplugged my USB to solely try to track down Slacker odd behavior, and after I plugged my USB back in this week I had a random re-scan just yesterday. So instead of saying the problem was fixed in an update as I originally thought, I'll change my observation to say that at least the frequency of occurence seems lower.
re: these two, I've never observed your #1, but #2 switching to random wrong audio source when getting in the car - used to happen to me all the time but stopped after one of the v8 updates last year, I forget exactly which version.
as for other bugs I wished were fixed, I'll add:
1) the quick alpha-index that appears on the right side of the screen e.g. when scrolling through a long list of USB songs is often off by 1 or more letter. e.g as I drag my finger down the letters A...B...C.... by the time I get to D it is showing songs all starting with C. By the time I drag down to K it is showing only songs starting with I. Somewhere farther down the list things go in the other direction and by the time I drag to the Z near the bottom the letters seem to line up correctly again. This makes it harder to find a song you're looking for, often requiring manual scroll through many extra pages just to get the the start of the letter you're looking for. It's been like this for a long time, ever since they brought back this feature (after they inexplicably deleted the feature in the first place).
2) a minor one now that I've re-encoded my entire music collection as MP3 (as per BertL's suggestion), but through testing I've found that AAC(lossy)/M4A music tracks are guaranteed to randomly cause the dreaded Loading Errors. Normally the tracks will play just fine, so it's not that tracks encoded this way won't play. But put enough of them on your USB and sooner or later you'll encounter random loading errors. 100% repeatable in multiple MS using a variety of different USB devices/sizes and music collections of just a few dozen tracks to >6000 tracks. Used to be a major headache for me as much of my music collection was copied over from iTunes containing a lot of AAC/M4A tracks. Now with everything converted to MP3, no more loading errors.
3) not a bug but an obvious omission in functionality - the USB player has no ability to shuffle ALL songs of an artist. You can select an album of an artist and shuffle within that, but if an artist has multiple albums you can't shuffle all songs of all albums, like you can easily do in any other MP3 player in existence for the past 15 years. To get around this limitation, I reorganized my USB to a flat hierarchy, with one folder for each artist at the root level, and all that artist's songs in its folder. No separate folder for each album. Then play by Folder in the USB UI and shuffle from there.
and finally, just everything @BertL said a few posts above
we shouldn't have to spend all this time and effort, testing, re-encoding, re-adjusting file/folder hierarchies, editing tags, trimming library size, reformatting USB devices and reinstalling music collections, rebooting the MCU, or guessing what the Tesla USB MP supports or doesn't etc etc, just to listen to music.
BertL
Active Member
Issue with M4A I suspect is that MP USB simply looks at the file extension, then assumes how the track is encoded, and their code cannot necessarily handle the underlying detail like other modern MPs do. IIRC, by convention, M4A file extensions can be Lossy (AAC) or Apple Lossless (ALAC) -- so that seems to be throwing off Tesla's code not being able to deal with both variants. Granted, it is weird using a single file extension for both things, and it throws many of us off at first trying to figure out why some M4A work, while others don't, but it is what it is and other major MPs deal with it just fine. It's part of the reason why I have believed for a long time that Tesla put generic architects/programmers/testing personnel on the original MP, when they would have so much better served both more audiophile-like owners such as us, as well as the owners that just want to do a quick-and-dirty copy of something onto a USB stick upon occasion -- if some part of the Tesla MP team were audiophiles that cared about how their personally curated music is maintained and listened to, as well as listen to other media sources upon occassion. Tesla's design and test cases would have been far more robust, MP would be more usable, and we would not have had (and have) all the issues we do to this day.
E.g. I spent weeks back in the day ripping something like 1600 CD's as M4A Apple Lossless (became open source years ago, hence why I went with that format) which formed the basis for my master music library. The rest are today a mish-mash of tracks from iTunes purchases and other sources including M4A Lossy. I have not tested in the last couple of code drops, but for me, any of my M4A Apple Lossless tracks used to get the infamous Loading Error in MP USB, whereas M4A Lossy worked just fine. It took me awhile to figure that out, but it's when I first started converting everything to FLAC for use in my MS which was a huge step forward but still problematic, until I stumbled upon the MP3 VBS trick that improved my situation even more.
Issue with M4A I suspect is that MP USB simply looks at the file extension, then assumes how the track is encoded, and their code cannot necessarily handle the underlying detail like other modern MPs do. IIRC, by convention, M4A file extensions can be Lossy (AAC) or Apple Lossless (ALAC) -- so that seems to be throwing off Tesla's code not being able to deal with both variants. Granted, it is weird using a single file extension for both things, and it throws many of us off at first trying to figure out why some M4A work, while others don't, but it is what it is and other major MPs deal with it just fine. It's part of the reason why I have believed for a long time that Tesla put generic architects/programmers/testing personnel on the original MP, when they would have so much better served both more audiophile-like owners such as us, as well as the owners that just want to do a quick-and-dirty copy of something onto a USB stick upon occasion -- if some part of the Tesla MP team were audiophiles that cared about how their personally curated music is maintained and listened to, as well as listen to other media sources upon occassion. Tesla's design and test cases would have been far more robust, MP would be more usable, and we would not have had (and have) all the issues we do to this day.
E.g. I spent weeks back in the day ripping something like 1600 CD's as M4A Apple Lossless (became open source years ago, hence why I went with that format) which formed the basis for my master music library. The rest are today a mish-mash of tracks from iTunes purchases and other sources including M4A Lossy. I have not tested in the last couple of code drops, but for me, any of my M4A Apple Lossless tracks used to get the infamous Loading Error in MP USB, whereas M4A Lossy worked just fine. It took me awhile to figure that out, but it's when I first started converting everything to FLAC for use in my MS which was a huge step forward but still problematic, until I stumbled upon the MP3 VBS trick that improved my situation even more.
I have not had any music playback issues but it might be because I used Media Monkey to clean up all the music in the Media Drive. Basically I set it up so that all files in the media drive are either lossless FLAC or highest resolution MP3s. I basically mapped all the lossless formats I have to FLAC and all the lossy music I have to MP3. With this I have been able to play ALL my music.
The only two big issues with the media player are that it does not continue playing back USB audio where it left off and when you get back in the car after a while, it starts scanning the media folder so no music until it completes scanning the drive
Both these should be so easy to fix, but there is still no fix.If they can fix these two things and add playlist support, that would address most of the issues I have with the media player. It's probably a week worth of effort for a developer if you consider the fact that the media player already implements a pseudo playlist by playing a list of your favorite songs.
f-stop
Active Member
an old media player bug that I thought had been fixed long ago resurfaced again in my MS today. There are reports in this thread from at least 2016 or earlier about the wrong- or no- music source selected when you get back in the car. e.g. after playing USB, you park the car but when you get back in shortly later, either the wrong source (e.g. radio) is playing, or there's no source selected in the MP, playback controls are greyed out, grey square where the album art should be, no audio playing. You have to select an audio source before anything resumes.
I haven't had this problem for many many months. Was playing USB music today, it's been usually resuming correctly where it left off when getting back in the car lately. But today the "no source" problem happened again for first time in a while, after being parked for <1hr. Maybe not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but another little sign of the MP's stability/reliability or lack thereof. Presently on 2018.50.6
I haven't had this problem for many many months. Was playing USB music today, it's been usually resuming correctly where it left off when getting back in the car lately. But today the "no source" problem happened again for first time in a while, after being parked for <1hr. Maybe not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but another little sign of the MP's stability/reliability or lack thereof. Presently on 2018.50.6
BertL
Active Member
Yes, me too for the last few releases, but rarely these days during what I’d consider “normal use” like parking over night, but at least one time I can remember when I had stopped to run an errand and MP was stuck as you describe when I came back 10-20 mins later.
My more predictable failure like what you describe is for those few times when I have parked long enough that my MS goes into deep sleep as described here: Comprehensive USB Bug List. I have never proven to myself a second repeatable scenario to cause this situation (or maybe it’s just the same one I describe above) — I believe perhaps somehow related to when my MS has been parked long enough and connected to my HPWC, that it ends-up topping itself off after the initial designated charge. Anyway, as an X-programmer/QA kinda guy from way too many years ago, the bug just feels like Tesla’s sleep mgmt routines may be erroneously turning something off that MP needs, or some piece of working memory that MP USB is dependent upon is not being retained in NVRAM through the sleep cycle, so MP ends up in a whack-o state when the MS wakes back up.
I’m also on 2018.50.6.
f-stop
Active Member
I like this, as a general characterization of the MP, it probably describes the root issue here for many of its bugs.
Although as I mentioned, a lot of the issues I have occur even after exiting/re-entering the car within minutes, not going into deep sleep.
It shouldn't be difficult for the MP to act reliably and predictably, but sadly it doesn't (after all, its functions really aren't that complex!). I guess that's what makes the whole situation maddening. Something's wrong under the hood and nobody's home at Tesla who cares to look into it.
SucreTease
Teslarian
I haven't tried this yet, but someone explained on Reddit that removing APE tags fixes many of the problems with Loading Errors on USB.
f205v
Member
I read about that APE tags problem on reddit, and just deleted them from my music collection.
To do it in Windows, I used MP3Tag, which is a fantastic program to manage your music collection.
Set it to cancel APE tags, let it run (took 4 seconds on 1.000 songs) and BINGO! After 10 songs of test I had NO loading errors at all!
To do it in Windows, I used MP3Tag, which is a fantastic program to manage your music collection.
Set it to cancel APE tags, let it run (took 4 seconds on 1.000 songs) and BINGO! After 10 songs of test I had NO loading errors at all!
f205v
Member
Ok, I gave it a more comprehensive test during my commute today, and after 40+ songs stil NO loading error at all! the APE tags removal really did the trick!
Sparrow
S105/ Roadster 189
My Model X just got version 2019.12.1 and whatever they did to this version has now messed up my ability to play usb music from my Folders in the proper order. I listen 100% of the time from Folders. I put those songs in a particular play order so that I can listen to them that way. Never randon, never by Artist or Genre or Song.
I spent hours and hours a couple of years ago appending 4 digit number (2 to designate an album and 2 a track) to the titles. This was after the first time they broke the media player. This patch worked flawlessly for the last couple of years, but with this new version 2019.12.1 it no longer reads the 4 numbers instead it seems to look only at the last 2 digits. So it is now playing all XX01s before playing all XX02s. The 2 digit album number seems to be totally ignored in that when the second tracks start playing the album numbers appear to be random. In other words the track numbers are respected, but the albums those tracks are from are in no discernable pattern.
Lucky for me there are a few smaller folders where I got lazy and only used 2 digit numbers. Those look to be working just fine. The larger folders, however, have more than 100 tracks in them so I am not sure whether they could be fixed nor do I want to spend the hours and hours fixing them again.
I spent hours and hours a couple of years ago appending 4 digit number (2 to designate an album and 2 a track) to the titles. This was after the first time they broke the media player. This patch worked flawlessly for the last couple of years, but with this new version 2019.12.1 it no longer reads the 4 numbers instead it seems to look only at the last 2 digits. So it is now playing all XX01s before playing all XX02s. The 2 digit album number seems to be totally ignored in that when the second tracks start playing the album numbers appear to be random. In other words the track numbers are respected, but the albums those tracks are from are in no discernable pattern.
Lucky for me there are a few smaller folders where I got lazy and only used 2 digit numbers. Those look to be working just fine. The larger folders, however, have more than 100 tracks in them so I am not sure whether they could be fixed nor do I want to spend the hours and hours fixing them again.
Is this good news in that someone is actually working on the media player code so we can hope for the media player to be fixed?!
Sparrow
S105/ Roadster 189
Trial and Error has seemed to have brought me to the conclusion that version 2019.12.1.1 has changed the criteria that the usb player is looking for while playing from the Folder tab. For the last couple of years the player was playing my music from the Folder tab in order based on the track "Title" or "Name", but with version 2019.12.1.1 it now seems to be looking at the "#". This seems to explain why my hardwork of appending 4 digit numbers to the titles no longer works. Now I am going to have to renumber all my tracks within the folders so that they play in order. I am hoping that it will accept and recognize 4 digit track numbers so that everything I did in the past matches.
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
dweeks
Member
I could use some help with that. I have about 75 GB of music on a 128 GB thumb drive.
Running MP3tag under VMWare Fusion/Windows 10 on my high end Macbook Pro, it took an hour to process 2000 out of 12000 songs. I'm not even sure if those 2000 were properly stripped of the APE tag.
Exactly how did you configure MP3tag to strip APEW?
By the way, it takes my late 2017 MS over 40 minutes to scan the thumb drive after I insert it. This seems WAY too long.
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