[bloozemanAZ]

Today I discovered that the original FLAC albums I loaded onto the iDrive hard drive prior to getting my SSD for the console squared away have their cover art whacked out. It is worth noting that prior to taking delivery of my M850i I had read that the Gracenote integration covered the on-board "Music collection" but rather than taking the chance I embedded cover art into all of the album tracks.

The tracks on the on-board hard drive aka "Music collection" have worked flawlessly since early December but somehow between late August (last I can remember playing the source) and today that is now broken. Basically, if I select an album track and play it the displayed cover art is from a different album also stored on the on-board hard drive. Has anyone else experienced this?

I've been on the 11/2019.70 release since early July so no changes software wise. A side note is that either 11/2019.55 or the OTA upgrade to .70 has now introduced Gracenote to USB sources as well. I found this out by going through the artists list while trying various tracks on the SSD as Shawn Mendes showed up. My first thought was WTF? However, I do have Camila Cabello's Camila and Romance albums on the SSD with Sean credited in the latter's Senorita track and that is what showed up for him as an artist. Hence, Gracenote is now active on the USB aka SSD source as well but the cover art is working as expected.

[bloozemanAZ]

Update is apparently it was not a onetime fluke as on this morning's drive the cover art is still whacked out. The discovery yesterday was from my desire to listen to some Sade which is on the Music library vs my SSD. Attached is a screenshot in which playing Sade Promise shows the cover art from Van Halen's Fair Warning. The irony being is that one would think then playing Van Halen's Fair Warning would display the Sade Promise cover art. Nope as with some investigation that is displayed now when playing the Scorpion's Blackout album. In other words it is truly all whacked out!

[Ozzie8]

bloozemanAZ I've not loaded my music into the car library. I just run it off an USB. I've not experienced the issues you have outlined.

However when I do start my car sometimes the art work on the current track (that I was playing when I stopped the car) has disappeared and I get the no art work symbol. Or sometimes there is no music as well.

To overcome this I have linked one of the programmable buttons to my USB music location. So if I start the car and there is no art work or music, I press #1 (in my case) and it immediately rectifies the issue.

As a wild idea do you want to try this?

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by Ozzie8

bloozemanAZ I've not loaded my music into the car library. I just run it off an USB. I've not experienced the issues you have outlined.

However when I do start my car sometimes the art work on the current track (that I was playing when I stopped the car) has disappeared and I get the no art work symbol. Or sometimes there is no music as well.

To overcome this I have linked one of the programmable buttons to my USB music location. So if I start the car and there is no art work or music, I press #1 (in my case) and it immediately rectifies the issue.

As a wild idea do you want to try this?

The irony is I've realized that the last time I was playing from the Media library (with all cover art working) was my last update on the USB dropout thread. I just checked that posting and it was 8/21 and so technically the "no active media source" message was associated with the Media collection and not my USBC SSD. In other words that bug hits both vs just the USBC SSD.

As for the memory button presets, I had already followed your advice from the USB dropout thread and made #7 the Music collection and #8 my SSD. In hindsight that truly was the last material change I've made to the car's configuration but it should have zero bearing on the whacked out cover art on the Media collection. In fact as mentioned in the original posting on this thread all of my FLAC files either on the Media collection or SSD have embedded cover art. Hence, it is just flat out mind boggling as to why it is now scrambled on the Media collection yet everything is working fine on the SSD.

The plan for tomorrow is to export the Media collection back to a USB thumb drive so I can inspect the files. I doubt that the iDrive system could have materially changed the embedded cover art within the individual FLAC files but just want to verify that. I'll then wipe the Media collection and re-import them to see if that resolves the issue. If it does I'll likely let them live on the Media collection just to see if it happens again. Of course if it does I'll just use the SSD exclusively moving forward and log a case with BMW.

[Ozzie8]

Puzzling indeed.

Another wild idea. If you disconnect the SSD and only operate on the library does the problem occur? I'm thinking the system is somehow accessing both libraries simultaneously before it figures out the true source but not before it has created the cross-infection. Or as you access the library, the library still has some sort of source path back to the SSD which is corrupted.

Other than that its Ctrl Alt Del.

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by Ozzie8

Puzzling indeed.

Another wild idea. If you disconnect the SSD and only operate on the library does the problem occur? I'm thinking the system is somehow accessing both libraries simultaneously before it figures out the true source but not before it has created the cross-infection. Or as you access the library, the library still has some sort of source path back to the SSD which is corrupted.

Other than that its Ctrl Alt Del.

Good idea and will give it a shot. It may be a long shot as the cover art corruption is only displaying the FLAC files sourced on the Media collection vs pulling anything in from the SSD.

Speaking of the SSD I'm about ready to wipe it out as well and pull a new set of FLAC files from my QNAP NAS that owns my entire collection and streams to my home audio. As per the ongoing SSD thread, it takes less than 20 minutes to load up the 1TB Crucial drive and this go around it will be pure Jazz to enjoy on the B&W audio and help me further dial-in the EQ settings.

Agree on the Ctrl-Alt-Del but didn't expect that on iDrive vs the go-to MS answer (limeypride)

[limeypride]

Originally Posted by bloozemanAZ

Good idea and will give it a shot. It may be a long shot as the cover art corruption is only displaying the FLAC files sourced on the Media collection vs pulling anything in from the SSD.

Speaking of the SSD I'm about ready to wipe it out as well and pull a new set of FLAC files from my QNAP NAS that owns my entire collection and streams to my home audio. As per the ongoing SSD thread, it takes less than 20 minutes to load up the 1TB Crucial drive and this go around it will be pure Jazz to enjoy on the B&W audio and help me further dial-in the EQ settings.

Agree on the Ctrl-Alt-Del but didn't expect that on iDrive vs the go-to MS answer (limeypride)

[bloozemanAZ]

So today's experiments got a little interesting outside of the first one to unplug the SSD and see if that had any effect on the Music collection scrambled cover art. That one took 10 seconds or less to no avail whatsoever as expected. Step 2 was to export the albums from the Music collection onto a USB3 thumb drive plugged into the port in front of the wireless charging tray. To my surprise the 8 albums (roughly 10GB) took over 20 minutes for that process. It was like watching paint dry and I kept thinking it didn't take this long whatsoever for the original import.

Well surprise surprise as the export actually does some sort of conversion process into a BMW proprietary format they apparently created for moving Music collections between vehicles. The result ends up in a folder structure with the root including a BMWBackup.ver file and a sub folder labeled Music. Within the sub folder it included my original structure, i.e., artist and sub folder of the albums for each. However, within the album folders I discovered all of the tracks had a br48 file type which my Windows laptop obviously did not recognize. Hence, no way to inspect the cover art, etc.

Some quick Google searching confirmed that the file type was specific to BMW iDrive and more so br48 is the extension for FLAC sources. I figured some fellow Geeks likely have encountered this and overcome the issue and sure enough Cristian Sava from Germany has an MIT licensed converter posted to GitHub (https://github.com/sivu22/BMC). Using his converter it took less than 2 minutes to revert the files back to FLAC (the result was byte for byte) which tells me its just some sort of "wrapper" BMW does vs any true file conversion.

On inspecting the FLAC files post conversion as expected the original embedded cover art is all intact. There also are some updates in the M850i online manual regarding Gracenote but following the instructions on checking the album information the option was not actionable for any FLAC source. My guess is it likely only supports MP3s and adds further to the mystery of the cover art debacle. So the moral of the story is the iDrive system did indeed lose its mind and whacked out the actual display of the cover art.

The final step was to wipe out the Music collection via iDrive and once again import the albums (which took about 5 minutes). Once that was completed everything is back to normal now including the cover art for the Scorpions Blackout MFSL SACD sourced FLAC files which Gracenote would never know about.

[Ozzie8]

Well done Sherlock.

[bloozemanAZ]

I forgot to mention that when I was investigating the Gracenote "display album information" aspect on the albums on the Media collection prior to wiping them out there was one album, i.e., Van Halen's MCMLXXXIV (aka 1984) in which the cover art played correctly. The irony being is that is the album I had been listening to on 8/21 in which returning to the car after the remote start I ended up with the "no active media source" bug and posted on the USB dropout thread not connecting the fact it was actually the Music collection vs SSD. Thus, the operating theory now is my OTA upgrade from 11/2019.55 to 11/2019.70 in July may have been the cause of the issue as on the road trip to San Diego in June I played Sade's Promise with the wife in the car and the cover art was intact.