FLAC Album Art not correctly displayed in Video DJ Software

Mac
1

Hi. I’m a Video DJ and relatively new user of MP3Tag. I mostly use Serato DJ Pro and Inklen’s Mix Emergency to play both audio and video files. Mix Emergency has a clever setting that will load and display an audio files’ album art if no associated video file is detected, which is great because it avoids having a black screen when switching between audio and video files. I then animate the album art in a variety of ways to produce a visual.

This works great for mp3 files (including those tagged with MP3Tag), but I’ve noticed it only works on FLAC files if they’ve been tagged by a different tag editor. A large proportion of my FLAC libary has embeddd album art and was tagged many years ago on a PC using Tag&Rename. All these files show up in both Serato DJ and Mix Emergency and display perfectly.

However, if I tag a new file, or if I replace the artwork in a previously working FLAC file, it no longer works. Serato DJ doesn’t display the album art in the library and Mix Emergency shows a black screen. However, the tag editors themselves (including MP3Tag) read and display the artwork just fine.

This issue isn’t just with MP3Tag. I’ve tried numerous tag editors for MacOS and none have worked, until yesterday, when a clever colleague took on the challenge and discovered Kidlib to be able to embed / encode the files in a compatible way.

My friend is a big fan of MP3tag but after several attempts he was unable to resolve this with MP3Tag which is what eventually lead him to Kidlib. I’m hoping he’ll be able to chime in on this thread and help provide more technical context as he understands the issue far better than I.

Before getting to this point, I’ve raised this with other video DJs who’ve confirmed the behaviour so I do hope this can be resolved, not just for myself but for others in a similar position. I can provide comparative audio files if necessary.

Many thanks.

2

Here are two reference files. One’s been tagged with MP3Tag and the other with Tag&Rename. They’re only available for another two days but can upload again if required.

3

Thank you for the detailed description and the example files. I just sent a PM with the download link to a current beta version.

Can you please re-save the file with this version and check, if the cover is displayed in Mix Emergency?

4

Fantastic! After several tests I can confirm it’s worked perfectly every time. :smiley:

A different colleague, who’s also a long-term MP3Tag user, recommended I post the problem here as he was very confident you’d be responsive and boy, was he correct! We deal with a lot of software developers but sadly, very few are as dedicated to their tools and their users.

I remember you from the hydrogenaudio forums back in the day and your reputation is well-deserved and long-lived. Thank you very much.

5

Excellent! Thanks for testing the beta and confirming the change.

Just FYI for everyone reading: FLAC pictures can include extra informational fields for the height, width, and color depth of the embedded picture. These fields are somewhat redundant and not widely used by applications.

Setting those properties has been omitted in the Mac version so far, but I'll add this officially in the next release.

Also, thanks for your kind words — HA, those were the days! :smiley:

6

These informational properties (height, width, and color depth) are now written for FLAC pictures in Mp3tag for Mac v1.10.