Problems with music & album art on USB stick? Possible solve. |
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06-07-2017, 09:18 PM | #1 |
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Problems with music & album art on USB stick? Possible solve.
I finally got fed up with new music not showing up in iDrive after adding it to my USB stick, and the constantly-disappearing album art every time I turned off the car. The music on my USB drive is copied from my iTunes library. iTunes shows over 6500 songs; iDrive only shows 5300. Every time I added a new album to iTunes, I would add it the USB drive. But, as I found out from all of this trial & error, iDrive didn't always "see" newly added music.
I've seen a lot of posts about issues with music & album art in iDrive when using USB drives, so I know I am not alone in my frustration. And, my previous post about a fix didn't work in the long run. BUT - after lots of searching in Windows & BMW forums, this time, I think I've found the right fix! I can't tell you what step - if any - fixed these issues, but I can tell you after doing this, I can see my entire library & I no longer lose album art after turning off the car. (Where you have to reboot the head unit, change mode or just wait for songs to cycle for album art to come back.) Here is everything I did. I don't know which step or steps fixed it all. But since doing this, I can now see my entire music library in iDrive - all 6.543 songs - and I've not lost album art once after shutting off the car. I will be curious to know if anyone else experiencing the disappearing album art, or missing, newly added music resolves these issues with this fix. First, I reformatted my USB drive using a 3rd party application that would format to FAT32 (iDrive only reads FAT32). Windows 10 does not have an option to format FAT32. I think that step is optional. Just make sure your USB drive is FAT32 (not NTFS, or FATEX). If it's not, you'll need to reformat it to FAT32. After reformatting, I copied my iTunes library back to the USB stick. But, iDrive would only see either the first album or the last - even though my entire library was on the drive, and even after driving around or leaving the car on for a while. Several posts in Windows forums said to look for particular Windows system files (extension .txt or .dat) and delete them. And also look for a system folder, "System Volume Information". If you see that folder - delete it. BUT Windows will not allow you to delete it using Explorer. You have to do it from the CMD prompt. Do the following: 1) Type CMD in the Windows search box & run as administrator. 2) Change the directory to whatever Windows shows as your USB stick (mine is F 3) Type the following after your drive label (e.g.: F:\) exactly as shown, no space before the "rmdir": rmdir "system volume information" /s /q 4) Then eject the USB stick & remove it from your computer. Sure enough, I deleted that folder & voila - my entire library showed up in iDrive (aftter iDrive read the USB stick) & I've not lost album art after shutting off the car since. And many of my CDs are so old there is no album art - I had to save an image from google or amazon, and add artwork via iTunes. iDrive even retains the art on those CDs now! NOTE: every time you insert your USB stick into your computer, Windows will add that folder (you can edit the registry to prevent that) and you will have to delete it each time.
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06-10-2017, 08:37 AM | #3 | |
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didn't matter. i would still lose album art on music from the usb drive when exiting the car & restarting. plus, i had the missing 1000 or so songs. there was more going on here.
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06-10-2017, 11:15 AM | #4 | |
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Number of songs in directory can affect indexing. |
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06-13-2017, 10:47 AM | #5 | |
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Sometimes, the album art would appear when the very next song started; but not always. Sometimes, you can just change mode (FM, Sat, CD) and the art will reappear; other times that won't work, or you have to do it multiple times. Sometimes, you have to reboot the head unit to get it to reappear. I am going to guess it had something to do with the USB formatting, and/or the existence of that system volume information directory (but can't say for sure). What I can say for sure is, now that I have reformatted my USB drive and making sure I used FAT32, and deleted that SVI directory, my album art no longer disappears when I turn off/on the car. (I didn't do any resizing of art.)
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08-17-2017, 05:27 PM | #6 | |
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Any other suggestions on how to see the artwork??? By the way, I only have the 6" display screen, but I presume that should not prevent artwork from displaying and satelite radio artwork displays perfectly on this screen. |
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08-17-2017, 06:53 PM | #7 | |
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08-22-2017, 09:12 AM | #8 |
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Because I grab a lot of album art online, I've got some that's way larger than 500x500 and they display fine in iDrive.
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08-29-2017, 04:21 PM | #10 | |
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Next, I ripped my CDs using Windows Media Player (instead of iTunes). With the Media Player, ALL by albums had metadata associated with them (per a review via Stamp ID3), and also had 99% of the artwork as .jpg files. However, the artwork was not part of the metadata. Using Stamp ID3, I "stamped" the albums with the artwork .jpg file I selected from the album folder (also adjusted the genre titles to my preference), and SUCCESS! Now all my albums from my thumb drive appear and all have artwork. I cannot explain why iTunes gave inconsistent results, but Windows Media Player and Stamp ID3 worked well together to get all my albums displayed and all with nice artwork. |
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12-20-2018, 02:07 PM | #11 | |
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And wherever that information is kept perhaps we can find out why I-Drive doesn't display the contents of the connected device when we re-enter our vehicles. It's bad enough we have to "confirm" for the nthteenth time, we also have to manually select the iPod that's just started to play where it left off previously. LOL |
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tiwahu34.50 |
12-23-2018, 09:05 PM | #12 | |
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- 32 GB thumb drive - FAT32 formatting - 4,900 songs - MP3 files with embedded album art - Album art from 300 x 300 to 1500 x 1500 - No sub-folders and no non-MP3 files (no iTunes Library files) - MP3 files copied using Windows File Manager (not iTunes) It took about 15 minutes for I-Drive to recognize all MP3s so I couldn't see all the songs/artists immediately. After that initial read, everything was normal. All album art visible. Using thumb drives, I-Drive will still display songs alphabetically on the dashboard scroll display even when I-Drive is set to random play. So you never see the next actual song on the scroll display. When playing from an iPod you see the next "random" song. Probably because iPods create a "random" playlist when you select shuffle play. I hope this helps. |
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02-13-2023, 04:23 PM | #13 | |
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Resurrecting. So no subfolders whatsoever? You just dumped all 4900 songs on the root folder of the usb drive? |
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02-19-2024, 05:55 AM | #14 |
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Trying the System Volume Information delete trick I got accessed denied
F:\>rmdir "system volume information" /s /q Access is denied. So I did this in cygwin - a linux tool for windows chmod -R 777 "System Volume Information" And now the rmdir command worked. It was not enough to switch off the readonly flag in the properties of the drive in Windows Explorer |
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