[Auslander]

Hi all,
I am having trouble trying to get my album covers to show up on the Sync screen. I would like to use the cover browser like in the posted video. I am using a USB which I copied my music files over from my Itunes music folders. I thought Grace Note would find the cover artwork however all I get is a constant indexing showing in on the screen. All the text is fine... its just the covers missing and so I just get the musical note for the cover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHtIT4oRkhg

Anyone able to let me know what I am doing wrong? Is Grace Note a slow process on Sync... I am such a newb at this stuff...

thanks
J

 

[copernicium112]

Hi all,
I am having trouble trying to get my album covers to show up on the Sync screen. I would like to use the cover browser like in the posted video. I am using a USB which I copied my music files over from my Itunes music folders. I thought Grace Note would find the cover artwork however all I get is a constant indexing showing in on the screen. All the text is fine... its just the covers missing and so I just get the musical note for the cover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHtIT4oRkhg

Anyone able to let me know what I am doing wrong? Is Grace Note a slow process on Sync... I am such a newb at this stuff...

thanks
J

Ah, welcome to the nightmare. Read through my Sync/MFT/iPod thread and estoyoloco's MFT six minutes thread to get more info, see some of the problems encountered. Might answer some of your question (or raise more questions). Go through those first and if you have more specific questions, some of us can probably offer input (Greytlady is the only one that I know of that has played around with Gracenote so I can't offer anything personally).

 

[Auslander]

thanks I'll try that too...

J

 

[JPopNC]

I turned Gracenote off and see all my album covers. Have actually been curious as to what Gracenote is supposed to do. When I turn it on, it shows a generic cover, like "Classic Rock" or something instead of the real cover. Once it was turned off, they all displayed.

 

[Auslander]

I turned Gracenote off and see all my album covers. Have actually been curious as to what Gracenote is supposed to do. When I turn it on, it shows a generic cover, like "Classic Rock" or something instead of the real cover. Once it was turned off, they all displayed.

Can you let me know how you copied your music over? Did you do a direct copy off Itunes or go into the Itunes folder and copied each album folder.

Right now my USB (which is a new 16 gig) has the Pink Floyd Discography on it.. 30ish albums each in their own folders on the USB stick.

Ie.
Root/Pink Floyd The Wall/xxxxx01.mp3
Root/Pink Floyd The Wall/xxxxx02.mp3
etc...
Root/Pink Floyd Meddle/xxxxxx01.mp3
Root/Pink Floyd Meddle/xxxxxx02.mp3
etc.


J

 

[copernicium112]

Can you let me know how you copied your music over? Did you do a direct copy off Itunes or go into the Itunes folder and copied each album folder.

Right now my USB (which is a new 16 gig) has the Pink Floyd Discography on it.. 30ish albums each in their own folders on the USB stick.

Ie.
Root/Pink Floyd The Wall/xxxxx01.mp3
Root/Pink Floyd The Wall/xxxxx02.mp3
etc...
Root/Pink Floyd Meddle/xxxxxx01.mp3
Root/Pink Floyd Meddle/xxxxxx02.mp3
etc.


J

I have done it directly from my iPod and copied some directly out of my iTunes music folder to a USB drive. On the USB drive, I kept the structure Artist folder/Album folder/Song files. Once it indexes, I am seeing the album cover art fine. Keep in mind that indexing can take some time. Also, be sure your USB drive is FAT formatted. Try that, see if you can get it to index, and then see if you can get it to build media commands (which is where a lot of us are running into trouble).

 

[Auslander]

Cool thanks... I will try this over lunch here... I know I see it indexing in the bottom corner but it seems to be indexing a long time (25 mins last night) and I had to turn off the car for the night. I left the USB in the car thinking (and kind of knowing it doesn't) the sync may carry on with the car off. It was wishful thinking LOL!

I'll give an update after lunch to see if this works. I mean I am happy that I can get the music to play and see the directories to pick albums... the Eye Candy cover flow would be sweeter for me though... Am such a perfectionist..... sigh

J

 

[JPopNC]

copernicium seemed to give a great reply, but just to answer your question as to how I did mine, I simply have my iPod connected into the USB1 port. Actually it stays there almost permanantly and I only remove it if/when I've downloaded new songs or need to sync up to the computer.

 

[copernicium112]

Also, don't know if you read any of the other threads but there is a program called "syncmyitunes" as a free download off the syncmyride website. Scans your files and looks for troublesome metadata and cleans it up. When I first ran it on my iTunes library it found over 200 errors and fixed them (I have about 6200 songs in there). When I run it now, my library comes up clean. Highly recommend doing this before you get too far and maybe discover some of your indexing problems are created by bad tags.

 

[copernicium112]

copernicium seemed to give a great reply, but just to answer your question as to how I did mine, I simply have my iPod connected into the USB1 port. Actually it stays there almost permanantly and I only remove it if/when I've downloaded new songs or need to sync up to the computer.

Did you get building media commands to finish?

 

[blackraven456]

Hi all,
I am having trouble trying to get my album covers to show up on the Sync screen.
J

Use a program like tag scanner and embed the artwork into the file.

As an aside, I continue to be astounded how little people know about how MP3's work. They've only been around for like 15 years now? lol

 

[Faygo Focus]

As an aside, I continue to be astounded how little people know about how MP3's work. They've only been around for like 15 years now? lol

Why should they have to know how Mp3s work? They should just be able to plug in their iPod and tell it to play a certain artist. Just like they should be able to jump in the car and drive to their corporate job without knowing how an internal combustion engine works. But if their mechanic wants or needs to "lol" about it I guess that says what it says. [whip]

 

[Auslander]

Yep, turning off Grace Note Album Art worked like a charm... thanks all for that. I am going to run Syncmyride tonight on the Itunes library I have at home. The only unknowns I have now, is I haven't figured how to get the Cover Carousel to show and the music tracks aren't in order on the albums, thinking either Syncmyride will fix that or I will just rename them all 01, 02, 03... etc. Maybe some suggestions can be offers.

Sorry on being such a newb here.

J

 

[copernicium112]

Use a program like tag scanner and embed the artwork into the file.

As an aside, I continue to be astounded how little people know about how MP3's work. They've only been around for like 15 years now? lol

I'm a molecular biologist by trade. I continue to be astounded by how little people know about the process of ripping a gene out of the DNA of an organism, placing into bacterial DNA, placing the DNA back into the bacterial cell, and making the resulting bacteria express whatever that gene coded for. The technology has only been around for like 25 years.

C'mon. Seriously. Everyone has their area of expertise (and for some it is apparently condescension).

 

[completely_focused]

Technology is inherently complex and if you are going to use it then it behooves you to learn as much as possible. That's also why a lot of the reviewers of this car didn't care too much for the MFT part and preferred the lower SE trim level.

I'm not happy that I have to go through all my mp3's and clean up all the tags to ensure the sync system is going to index and build media commands properly but it sure is nice once it's working right. I love using the voice commands for anything related to music.

I'm not astounded at all that people don't know about mp3 tagging or computer tech stuff in general either. I'm always getting approached by friends and acquaintances that want me to fix their laptop or computer system. They just use the computer but know nothing about fixing them or preventing viruses other than using an anti-virus program which of course is not enough.

They already have the syncmyitunes program to cleanup most of the problems you will encounter with the tags on mp3's but just to be sure it doesn't hurt to manually go through them to verify everything is correctly filled out. I know it did not fix the missing track #'s that I had but that may not be important, IDK.

 

[JPopNC]

Did you get building media commands to finish?

Yes...that finished after a day or two, but I sincerely believe it really helped to just leave it attached. When I add songs it rebuilds for a short period of time, but nothing like it did initially.

 

[Auslander]

Found this off another site. Guess it helps me out on the 3D Cover Carousel...

"So I finally have the Art displaying as a carousel. unfortunately out of 500 plus Album covers only 5 display the actual cover and the balance show the MFT default pic's.

A few additional observation;

1. the option is only available with the gracenote art enabled.

2. it will only display when stopped or parked, if rolling the screen brings up the " some features are unavailable for your safety......".

Not sure why this would be a safety issue when the phone book is available for browsing.

How to

Once the Gracenote is enabled , return back to the main media screen that is playing on the left hand bottom side press the browse option, from there press albums, next look at the upper right and there will be an option for album art press this. again make sure you are stopped or in park.

I took pic's on my evo showing the path taken, I tried attaching them to this message ...no luck. I can text or email them to anybody that needs a visual.

Very frustrating to say the least.

I Still do not understand why it just doesn't show the art as simply as most cheap players, what is with the Gracenote deal, heck my phone displays the art and it's a phone

Ford help.....please"

 

[JPopNC]

The key thing to remember here is that FF is here to help, even those who are technically challenged and actually even more so for them. The goal for all of us should be to get the most out of our vehicles.

completely_focused brought something to mind though....I did completely clean up all my tags in iTunes so that everything was present when it Sync'ed up. Did that way before I even thought about getting the car though...did it because I'm OCD. Guess that paid off for once!

 

[PratoN]

I did completely clean up all my tags in iTunes so that everything was present when it Sync'ed up. Did that way before I even thought about getting the car though...did it because I'm OCD.

I might also have a mild form of OCD... but I have so many songs! I can't keep up with all of the missing tags!

I'm not having trouble indexing, but I do have to wait in about 30 seconds of dead silence after requesting a song before it plays. What do you think will clear that up the best?

1. Nothing
2. SYNC My iTunes
3. Proper tags
4. Switching to HDD instead of iPod

 

[copernicium112]

Yes...that finished after a day or two, but I sincerely believe it really helped to just leave it attached. When I add songs it rebuilds for a short period of time, but nothing like it did initially.

The key thing to remember here is that FF is here to help, even those who are technically challenged and actually even more so for them. The goal for all of us should be to get the most out of our vehicles.

completely_focused brought something to mind though....I did completely clean up all my tags in iTunes so that everything was present when it Sync'ed up. Did that way before I even thought about getting the car though...did it because I'm OCD. Guess that paid off for once!

I too cleaned mine up before I even had the car. OCD as well. I do leave it attached and didn't realize that the "Building...." stage would continue from where it left off on startup. Of course, the reason I didn't realize this is the guy I talked to when calling the Sync helpline said it would not. Then again, he didn't seem to know a whole heck of a lot. He was just reading stuff off of computer screens. That was very apparent in our conversation. I'll give it a couple of days. Approximately how much driving time did you accrue during that couple day period?