Advice Required: Building a new Freeview PC-PVR (2 Viewers)

joecrow

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  • August 9, 2012
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    Do you know if the podcast that you downloaded has a programme description and a thumbnail as part of the metadata?
    Not sure about a program description but Win 10 shows a thumbnail in the preview pane when the file is selected with File Explorer. Not sure why MP2 is not displaying the thumbnail, I also checked with the file you downloaded but same there, no thumbnail. As far as I am aware everything else that should have a thumbnail does.
     

    CyberSimian

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    Not sure about a program description
    I did some rummaging :D . The following is a screenshot of the contents of the start of the Kuenssberg MP3 file displayed in "dump" format. Dump format displays 16 bytes per line, with the data displayed in hexadecimal on the left, and the corresponding character representation shown on the right. The editor that I use does this automatically, but do not try this with Notepad, as Notepad went into an infinite loop when I tried this on my WinXP system :( ):

    mp3_header.jpg

    It is possible to identify various of the tags in the character representation of the MP3 data (title, content type, year, copyright, and description). Looking at the built-in skin variables available in MP1, I noticed that there is a whole set of "#music.xxx" variables, one of which is "#music.comment" which I was not using in my customised skin. I modified the xml file and voila the description appears:

    podcast_description.jpg

    I must try some of the other "#music.xxx" variables to see if there is anything else of interest. I did test MP1's "DeafaultWideHD" skin, but that does not show the description. Something that @catavolt might want to consider, perhaps?

    I also tried several MP3 tag editors. The first two would not install on WinXP, but the third did ("ID3 Tag Editor"). However, it did not show the description, even though one of the tag variants it supports has a "Comment" field.

    So, in conclusion I think that BBC podcasts do have MP3 tags, including the description and the thumbnail, but it looks as though MP2 is not currently using them. :(

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    ge2301

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  • January 11, 2014
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    MP2 shows the thumbnail correctly after an import here.
    mp3 files do not have a description tag. If there is one it's not conforming with the ID3 standard and therefore not extracted.
    Also MP3Tag shows all the infos incl. icon, but not the description.
    Unbenannt.jpg
     

    ge2301

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    @ge2301 I am running MP 2.4 build 27 would that explain why I am not getting a thumbnail?
    I’m used the same version. Try to remove the audio share and add it again. If there is still no thumbnail we can look into the logs.

    Edit: I'm building the latest version always within VisualStudio, with #31 it's always showing the thumbnail.
    I added the #31 installer to the MP2.4 Release thread in case you want to try it (The input management was modified).
     
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    CyberSimian

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    mp3 files do not have a description tag. If there is one it's not conforming with the ID3 standard and therefore not extracted.
    Thank you for the link to the ID3 tag summary -- I have bookmarked it. (y) :)

    I suspect that the BBC chose the "comment" tag to hold the programme description on the basis that it was the most-appropriate tag of those available. But as it is not formally a "description" tag, what other content providers place in that tag is somewhat unpredictable. :(

    After writing my previous post, I looked at what was shown for some CDs that I had converted to FLAC files; they show this:
    fre:ac - free audio converter <https://www.freac.org/>​
    This information is not "wrong", but it is probably not information that most people would want to see when using their HTPC. On the other hand, users who often download and play BBC podcasts probably do want to see the programme description. Hmm, a difficult choice, I think. o_O

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    joecrow

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    I’m used the same version. Try to remove the audio share and add it again. If there is still no thumbnail we can look into the logs.
    Strange removed and added again but just the same, removing and re-adding my music (mostly mp3) folder and all the thumbnails come back.
    Posting the log here (deleted as much as possible before the remove and add), but let me know if you would prefer I post to the MP 2.4 thread?
     

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    ge2301

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    Strange removed and added again but just the same, removing and re-adding my music (mostly mp3) folder and all the thumbnails come back.
    Posting the log here (deleted as much as possible before the remove and add), but let me know if you would prefer I post to the MP 2.4 thread?
    The logs do not show anything unfortunately.
    Can you search for "949dc7f6-4105-4ec8-922d-fbda91c461e6" or "Covid" in the servers FanArt folder please. There should be a by the importer from mp3 file extracted thumbnail as in my screenshot below:
    1619951528980.png
    If not, we know, that the extraction failed and it's not another issue. Do you have MP3Tag? You could also drag and drop the file there once to see, if the file is really containing the thumbnail. Though risk is low, it could be also corrupted during download.
    1619951752418.png
     

    ge2301

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    I suspect that the BBC chose the "comment" tag to hold the programme description on the basis that it was the most-appropriate tag of those available. But as it is not formally a "description" tag, what other content providers place in that tag is somewhat unpredictable.
    Yes, they used the comment field. If this would be generally done, we could accordingly add it to the importer logic. But I also think, that only BBC does it that way.
    1619952727815.png

    Edit:
    Seems, that only wma uses COMMENT for descriptions according to the MP3Tag info.
    So BBC is a bit deviating, however there is no rule, tags can be set as preferred.
     
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    joecrow

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    If not, we know, that the extraction failed and it's not another issue. Do you have MP3Tag? You could also drag and drop the file there once to see, if the file is really containing the thumbnail. Though risk is low, it could be also corrupted during download.
    Not in the Fanart folder, installed MP3Tag and dropped the file, thumbnail looks good, see screeenshot.

    covid.jpg
     

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