OK, I've had problems with MS media player properly interpreting FLAC tags for a while. Album Art, punctuation and special characters are the biggest problem.
* The software clearly doesn't use encoded album art, it searches the internet. (BTW, I've noticed 7.0 internet search is TONS better. Gets right art 90% of time, vs prior <50%).
* If there's punctuation or there are special characters (accents, umlaut, etc) in album title, artist, or track name, results appear unpredictable.
When I first started to see the punctuation/character pattern, I edited all of the offending tags, and it helped in some cases. Some.
When Tesla introduced shuffle, I was able to shuffle songs, and started to see a lot of songs with "unknown" artist/album playing. Back to the drawing board. Again, seems to be punctuation/characters.
So, I got Kid3 (decent Mac FLAC editor), and I noticed something: what is displayed in Tesla Media Player is extracted from file names, not FLAC tags. So, all of my tag editing was for naught???
I NOW BELIEVE THAT THE TESLA MEDIA PLAYER IGNORES ALL TAGS!!!!! When it generates its directory, it generates its own tags from the file names. Explains why it also fetches its own art. Voila!
So, now I plan to do some experiments (to check hypothesis) before I spend hours editing 50,000 tracks. I plan to revert my tags to what they ought to be. Then, I plan to neuter the file names to eliminate punctuation/special characters. I'm concerned that may adversely affect album art search (missing punctuation may mess up search results).
IF anyone who reads this has already paved this road, please fill me in so I save some time. Otherwise, I will post results as I experiment. I really want to figure out how to fix this... would like to have full access to all of my tracks in their proper artist/album context.
OK, YET MORE CONFUSING THAN I THOUGHT!!!!
It DOES use the FLAC tag info! AND, it processes FLAC tag info FINE, including special characters and punctuation. Problem is, if you have ANY punctuation in Artist or Album folder name (including apostrophe, period, comma, or special characters) it will not process all of the tracks correctly. And, if you have any special characters in Track file name, it will mess that up too.
SO, answer is to use CORRECT FLAC tags (including any punctuation or special characters)... but CLEANSE YOUR FOLDER AND FILE NAMES OF ANY PUNCTUATION OR SPECIAL CHARACTERS. You will see all of your tracks!
It STILL does not appear to use embedded album art (goes to internet), but neutering the file names does not appear to foul up search. Good luck!
* The software clearly doesn't use encoded album art, it searches the internet. (BTW, I've noticed 7.0 internet search is TONS better. Gets right art 90% of time, vs prior <50%).
* If there's punctuation or there are special characters (accents, umlaut, etc) in album title, artist, or track name, results appear unpredictable.
When I first started to see the punctuation/character pattern, I edited all of the offending tags, and it helped in some cases. Some.
When Tesla introduced shuffle, I was able to shuffle songs, and started to see a lot of songs with "unknown" artist/album playing. Back to the drawing board. Again, seems to be punctuation/characters.
So, I got Kid3 (decent Mac FLAC editor), and I noticed something: what is displayed in Tesla Media Player is extracted from file names, not FLAC tags. So, all of my tag editing was for naught???
I NOW BELIEVE THAT THE TESLA MEDIA PLAYER IGNORES ALL TAGS!!!!! When it generates its directory, it generates its own tags from the file names. Explains why it also fetches its own art. Voila!
So, now I plan to do some experiments (to check hypothesis) before I spend hours editing 50,000 tracks. I plan to revert my tags to what they ought to be. Then, I plan to neuter the file names to eliminate punctuation/special characters. I'm concerned that may adversely affect album art search (missing punctuation may mess up search results).
IF anyone who reads this has already paved this road, please fill me in so I save some time. Otherwise, I will post results as I experiment. I really want to figure out how to fix this... would like to have full access to all of my tracks in their proper artist/album context.
OK, YET MORE CONFUSING THAN I THOUGHT!!!!
It DOES use the FLAC tag info! AND, it processes FLAC tag info FINE, including special characters and punctuation. Problem is, if you have ANY punctuation in Artist or Album folder name (including apostrophe, period, comma, or special characters) it will not process all of the tracks correctly. And, if you have any special characters in Track file name, it will mess that up too.
SO, answer is to use CORRECT FLAC tags (including any punctuation or special characters)... but CLEANSE YOUR FOLDER AND FILE NAMES OF ANY PUNCTUATION OR SPECIAL CHARACTERS. You will see all of your tracks!
It STILL does not appear to use embedded album art (goes to internet), but neutering the file names does not appear to foul up search. Good luck!
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