Wrong Cover displays in VLC player

Support
1

Hi there,
First of all GREAT THANKS for this excellent and must-have free software!

Here is my problem description:

  • I put several songs in a folder, and used MP3Tag to set a different front-cover for each song.
  • Now when I play these songs with VLC, some of them dispay a wrong cover!
  • But when I play them with WMPlayer, all covers display allright!

So my question is: how to correct the wrong displaying of some covers with VLC player please?
Thanks in advance for any help!

Versions:
Mp3Tag v2.48
VLC Player v1.1.9
WMP v.12
Windows 7(64 bits)

2

This should help: /t/11466/1

3

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the link: so I delete the VLC cache files, and then only one song cover were corrected(the first song I played actually).
But when I play all the other songs, they all display a wrong cover(they all display the same cover from the first played song above!)

So I don't feel like removing the VLC cache each time I play a song...I believe there should be a other solution, but still have no clue about it
Thanks for any help.

4

I think you don't have to, how many times do you change the cover art ?? Not too many, I think.

What if you delete (only once) ALL the Sub Directories under ..\Roaming\Vlc\art, oke you will lose the current (and old) cover art but VLC will replace it with the current covers each time you play a song.

[Just my 2 cents as I don't use VLC (except for Video files only)]

5

Hi there again,
I eventually found out why VLC display wrong cover for some of my mp3 file:

BECAUSE the Album field in Mp3Tag was EMPTY for those mp3 files!

So I resolve the problem by putting something in the Album field(put a space character for example). And now VLC displays all covers correctly!

I hope this solution could help anyone else here, and I would like to THANK again the mp3Tag team for this excellent freeware!

6

Good that you resolved your problem :slight_smile:

You could also do it another way, for example:
to make the Album Name the same as the Song Name

(Use the following Action)
Format Value
Field: ALBUM
Format String: %title%

7

hi Mike,
Your suggestion is even better, as it gives an unique Album name for mp3 that has no Album name!

EXPLANATION:
This issue is due to the fact that new versions of VLC Player "cache" covers in "%appdata%\roaming\vlc\art" inside of which VLC will create subfolder names based on "ArtistName\AlbumName\art.jpg". (if the Album tag field of Mp3 is empty, then VLC will create a subfolder named "_" under the ArtistName folder)
So VLC will use that cached cover for all mp3 that has the same Artist name and Album name, instead of using the cover embedded within each Mp3 themselves...that's why some of my mp3 displayed the same wrong cover with VLC!!!!!

So I guess the best way to solve this is to put something unique (such as song title, or filename, etc) inside the Album tag field, ESPECIALLY if you have several songs from a same Artist that you don't know in what different Albums names those songs respectively came from. That will prevent VLC Player to display a same wrong cover for all those songs!!!!

PS: alternatively I found another inexplicable(but working) solution: I open the mp3 file with "Mp3 Tag Tools v1.2.008" and just click on the "Write Tag" button...That's all, and it works fine because VLC will display correctly the Cover. BUT I look inside the mp3 header an I found a sort of "mistake" as the "mime" was changed to "image/peg" INSTEAD OF "image/jpeg". For that reason, I didn't use that solution, even if it's working fine! Maybe Mp3Tag team development could have a look closer to that solution, to fix this issue directly from within Mp3Tag??? I hope so!!!!!