I have a 2018 Ford Focus ST that I just updated to the latest SYNC 3.4-21256 and Gracenotes-CC.
The issue I am having is that even though I have the settings within Gracenotes to disable Gracenotes and prioritize album art from the media player, no album art is being displayed from art that is embedded into the audio file.
I have used ID3v2 tags with 500x500px or lower and the album art will not display the embedded art. It works fine on Android Auto, but not over bluetooth. My phone is a Pixel 4a 5G.
During the upgrade process of SYNC, I had to remove Gracenotes and then no album art at all would show up. After I put gracenotes back on and disabled it through the settings, it’s hit and miss. So I am not sure if it’s Gracenotes still doing it, or if it is using some embedded and some gracenotes.
This issue has happened on all Sync versions I have used. 3.3, 3.4, and the latest 3.4.
Anyone have any ideas?
SYNC Region: North America & Canada
Navigation Variant: No
Old SYNC Version: 3.4.20136
New SYNC Version: 3.4.21265
Do you have a error message, if so what is it?
No error messages.
Album art from the file is not used over BT audio. The Ford hardware does not support this. GN in Sync is primarily for the wired devices connected to the system.
Android Auto does not need the builtin GN in Sync, as it and CP both supply album art and other metadata in the digital audio stream. When you play audio files from your phone over BT, this is not the case, as the stream is not the same as AA or CP, and will not contain the metadata since the phone is not an audio streaming server.
I guess I don’t understand this. Wouldn’t the metadata be included within the file itself so if it is being played over Bluetooth, that info would also be transferred over Bluetooth?
Not necessarily. When you stream media from a media server, metadata is packaged and included in the transport stream (although not in the video or audio). This is packaged by the application serving the stream, like Pandora, etc. This is the format used by Pandora, XM, etc., and what is transferred from the phone to Sync via AA or CP. Sync does not directly support this method.
When you stream media from your phone without an application to package the stream contents and metadata, then the metadata included in the stream will be minimal and most likely just the title and artist if that. Sync does not support this.
When you use the phone as a storage device with media files, unless the browsing device (Sync) can decode the data itself from the file, the metadata will not be supported. If you turn off GN the metadata support will not include album art. This is how a DLNA server works. Sync supports this method.
All of the above is also dependent on the BT profile implemented by the phone and/or service.
So, depending on the method used, you will get the appropriate metadata support.
If you are using a BT connection to play audio file on Sync, you will not have complete metadata support. It is best to use AA or CP (wired or wireless) for this. (Don’t confuse BT with wireless AA or CP as it is not the same.)
So that’s why it would most likely work if playing the music from a USB drive because SYNC is directly interacting with the original file and meta data? Where as BT is using an app to process the file on the phone and then send the data over the BT connection without necessarily sending the metadata?