Blurred cover art... Why?

[Luke 37085]

OK it's just the library image. The server auto-generates an image for the library. The image it generates is more geared to the needs of Emby apps and is not Dlna specific.

You might get a better experience by customizing the image for the library to something else. 

Another thing maybe we should do is just not use it at all for the virtual buckets. That means the virtual folders like Favorite Artists won't get an image at all, but maybe it's for the best.

[freemansteve 5]

Customizing images for the library?

Thanks for looking at this, I am grateful and was happy to give it a go, but I think it's time for me to give up on Emby - all three other DLNA servers I have tried seem to work better with my renderers...

 

 

[Luke 37085]

2 hours ago, freemansteve said:

Customizing images for the library?

Thanks for looking at this, I am grateful and was happy to give it a go, but I think it's time for me to give up on Emby - all three other DLNA servers I have tried seem to work better with my renderers...

 

 

Why do you think they work better?

[freemansteve 5]

All cover art images are sharp as presented on StreamMagic, which I realize is only cosmetic.

I only use a DLNA server for MP3 music on my PC,  to serve files to my Cambridge Audio Evo streamer, which, strangely, does not have direct network file access. This PC is what runs when my NAS is turned off. I never need any transcoding, or web connectivity, integration etc, so Serviio & UMS seem simpler to understand and control. Actially, UMS is almost trivial, but they both seem 'sparse', compared with Emby, and sparseness, I like. Emby seems fuller featured, and although I couldn't measure it appeared slow, maybe doing more things online? - but it really comes down to not wanting blurred images for reasons that seem obscure!

And the last server is built into my NAS, and it's simply on or off, with a folder setup list. No fancy up/downscaling or trancodes. That does my FLACs (in preference, but also MP3s to my Evo) and video files to my various TVs. It's old but very robust!

I should say I was trying out various servers to see if I could get artwork for the folder at 'band level' - for example a generic Beatles picture when searching 'folders' view, or 'artist' view. Also, pictures for folders that contain sub folders "Disk 1", "Disk 2" etc. I have found that artwork capabilities vary a lot between servers, and none have a proper GUI to let you setup what you see in the virtual folders - I don't like the graphics that basically mean 'undefined image'. A nice Serviio feature is letting me configure the set of virtual folders that I want to view in the client - so I can for example turn off say 'genre' or 'artist/album' views, or anything video oriented (maybe Emby does that too).

The thing is, as I see it, a DLNA server kind of presents views of data-based information, but yet none of the GUIs in any of the servers I've tried lets you set the database up properly... I'd like to define the virtual folder and all graphics that are used throughout, but maybe that cannot be done.

I'm probably an unusual user in how I like things to work! I'm also OCD about structuring folder names, file names and tags, but users are often sloppy so DLNA has to make order out of user chaos!

Thanks for your efforts though! I'll check back in a few versions time.

 

 

Edited July 13, 2023 by freemansteve

[Horhäuser 3]

Am 7.14.2023 um 12:20 Uhr sagte freemansteve:

All cover art images are sharp as presented on StreamMagic, which I realize is only cosmetic.

I only use a DLNA server for MP3 music on my PC,  to serve files to my Cambridge Audio Evo streamer, which, strangely, does not have direct network file access. This PC is what runs when my NAS is turned off. I never need any transcoding, or web connectivity, integration etc, so Serviio & UMS seem simpler to understand and control. Actially, UMS is almost trivial, but they both seem 'sparse', compared with Emby, and sparseness, I like. Emby seems fuller featured, and although I couldn't measure it appeared slow, maybe doing more things online? - but it really comes down to not wanting blurred images for reasons that seem obscure!

And the last server is built into my NAS, and it's simply on or off, with a folder setup list. No fancy up/downscaling or trancodes. That does my FLACs (in preference, but also MP3s to my Evo) and video files to my various TVs. It's old but very robust!

I should say I was trying out various servers to see if I could get artwork for the folder at 'band level' - for example a generic Beatles picture when searching 'folders' view, or 'artist' view. Also, pictures for folders that contain sub folders "Disk 1", "Disk 2" etc. I have found that artwork capabilities vary a lot between servers, and none have a proper GUI to let you setup what you see in the virtual folders - I don't like the graphics that basically mean 'undefined image'. A nice Serviio feature is letting me configure the set of virtual folders that I want to view in the client - so I can for example turn off say 'genre' or 'artist/album' views, or anything video oriented (maybe Emby does that too).

Die Sache ist die, so wie ich es sehe, ein DLNA-Server eine Art Ansichten von datenbasierten Informationen präsentiert, aber dennoch kann man mit keiner der GUIs in einem der Server, die ich ausprobiert habe, die Datenbank richtig einrichten ... Ich würde gerne den virtuellen Ordner und alle Grafiken definieren, die durchgehend verwendet werden, aber vielleicht ist das nicht möglich.

Ich bin wahrscheinlich ein ungewöhnlicher Benutzer, wenn es darum geht, wie die Dinge funktionieren! Ich bin auch OCD, wenn es darum geht, Ordnernamen, Dateinamen und Tags zu strukturieren, aber die Benutzer sind oft schlampig, so dass DLNA Ordnung in das Benutzerchaos bringen muss!

Vielen Dank für Ihre Bemühungen! Ich werde in ein paar Versionen wieder vorbeischauen.

 

 

Hallo,

ich besitze den Azur 851N von CA. Mein Streamer kommt auch nicht mit Emby zurecht. Bin dann nach Plex gewechselt. Funktioniert prima.

[Luke 37085]

10 hours ago, Horhäuser said:

Hallo,

ich besitze den Azur 851N von CA. Mein Streamer kommt auch nicht mit Emby zurecht. Bin dann nach Plex gewechselt. Funktioniert prima.

HI, don't you want a personal media server and not one that puts your information into the cloud?

[Horhäuser 3]

Vor 1 Stunde sagte Lukas:

Hallo, wollen Sie nicht einen persönlichen Medienserver und nicht einen, der Ihre Informationen in die Cloud speichert?

Doch, aber Emby funktioniert ja nicht richtig.

[Luke 37085]

Regarding the blurred cover art, we are looking into this and will have this resolved in the upcoming 4.8 server release. Thanks.

[Horhäuser 3]

Was ist mit mein Problem welches schon ewig besteht?

[Luke 37085]

11 hours ago, Horhäuser said:

Was ist mit mein Problem welches schon ewig besteht?

Hi, we'll help you in your topic. Thanks.

[freemansteve 5]

On 26/12/2023 at 05:21, Luke said:

Regarding the blurred cover art, we are looking into this and will have this resolved in the upcoming 4.8 server release. Thanks.

Hi Luke, I'm back to report that I've been doing a bit of checking on Emby since last year....

- I still get blurred artwork in my app* in Emby 4.8.3.0, running in my new Terramaster F4-424 NAS.

- I have also cross-checked with Jellyfin Server 10.8.13 running on my Win 10 PC, and it's the same blurred icons. Might be some old common code there!

- I have attempted to make a "profile" for my media player* with the files in C:\ProgramData\Jellyfin\Server\config\dlna\system, because for me, it's easier playing with config files in windows than the Terramaster Linux. Talking the "Default.xml" and making a new file "Cambridge Evo.xml" with some guesses about what the fields in XML mean. I also assume it's similar in Emby. I have had no luck making a custom profile. I can also run Emby again on my Win 10 PC, but I'm sure it will be the same as the version on my NAS.

- Meanwhile, running Universal Media Server on my PC and Twonky in a separate RAID box both produce clear artwork within my app.

* The “app” runs on Android 14 and is called StreamMagic by Cambridge Audio. It only acts as a controller to my media player device, a Cambridge Audio Evo 75. This device is for audio playback only. The blurred album cover art shown in my previous attachments is still the same.

- On the new NAS, running Emby, the folders are arranged Music->Bands->Albums->Tracks. In fact I wish I could just see "Folders" and not all the stuff like Favourites, Songs etc - I know this has been a separate (and excellent) feature request, still not implements, but it's my point today!

- Each "Album" folder has large image, always named "Folder.jpg", 1400x1400 pixels. There are no windows media files, or hidden files in the music folder.

- Each track has embedded artwork at 220x220 pixels.  The tags are 100% perfect, AFAIK, using MP3Tag.

- At the "Bands" folder level I get blurred artwork that has been pulled in from the web, I assume, as
I've turned off everything I can find for external art, and there's no way those images exist in the music files I have put on the NAS.

- At the "Albums" folder level, I see blurred images of the artwork, but the artwork I see when opening an album is perfect for every track.

- When I play one or more files on my media streamer, the artwork is "good quality". The media player has a 6" LCD colour panel, and to the left there is a 480x480 pixel area to show the cover art of the current track.

- I have reason to believe that the blurred artwork seen on the android app is 48x48 pixels and possibly scaled up by the app to fit the phone display nicely, so I assume the 48x48 art file is being generated Emby and served to the control app on my phone, but not to the actual media player - I think the media player might pull out the embedded art from each MP3 for display on its front panel, but scaling it from embedded 220x220 art to 480x480 still looks good.

- I know if I change the size of the embedded artwork in each MP3 file, it make no difference to what I see on the StreamMagic control app - it's resolutely blurred.  This is what lead me to think it may be related to Emby using "Default.xml" for my Evo media player or the StreamMagic app, but I couldn't enough out about the file structure to make a difference.

- A secondary problem, possibly related to the use of the default.xml config file, is that the Android app shows all the video folders (TV and Movies) that are in their own folders on the NAS - this means a lot of clutter. The media player is audio only, so I only want to see folders that contain audio files. This seems to remain the same no matter how I try to set up "libraries" on the Emby server (same on Jellyfin).

Thanks if you have read and followed what I'm saying!  I am aware it's no use me just saying "it's broken" or "the functionality is not so good" without a reasonable explanation.

If there are tests, logs or suggestions you have, to help pin this odd behaviour down, I'd be grateful.....

 

 

[Luke 37085]

So this is still with Dlna? Can you please show an example and attach the emby server log? Thanks.

[freemansteve 5]

yes, this is DLNA.
My media streamer unit can only access local network files using DLNA (same with all my TVs)
See attached for blurry pictures and logs. Let me know if there are other logs I can send you.
I have set up the Win version (portable) on my PC to do this, and set DLNA "on" and pointed Emby to local files (B52's) to serve to my media player - StreamMagic app is acting as controller to my player, a Cambridge Audio Evo 75. The screenshot of their app shows the blurry images. These are "folder level" (albums) images. The images for individual tracks are fine.  The app works fine in terms of clean cover art images with all other DLNA servers (except Jellyfin, of course).

Thanks

PS identical issue when I used Emby on Terramaster NAS.

 

embyserver.txt hardware_detection-63848030893.txt

Edited April 6 by freemansteve

[freemansteve 5]

You can see that the cover art for tracks within a folder are not blurred, here:

Edited April 6 by freemansteve

[Luke 37085]

As a test, can you install Bubble Upnp? How does that app compare when browsing Emby Server content?

[freemansteve 5]

Hi Luke, thanks for taking and interest - I've loaded BUpnP onto the same android phone that I normally use StreamMagic on.

With the minimum necessary change to BUpnP' set up to get music to play on the right device (Evo), I have pointed it at a library on my PC, similar to the test I described previously, except the PC library that is under Emby management now only has one folder, one MP3 file with embedded art at 220x220, and as before, one Folder.jpg file (1400x1400). I was trying to keep my test a minimal as possible.

Hopefully, the labels on the pics I attach are reasonably self explanatory.

A feature of the Evo is the display panel, which only shows the current playing file (at 480x480) and no matter what I try to do, BUpnP doesn't seem to to allow the art to display on the device's panel. As an aside, I know that embedded art is not being used in any of my tests, it's only the 'Folder.jpg', because I also added a second file into the test folder that had no embedded artwork, and at the file level, StreamMagic and BUpNP both showed correct artwork, and the Evo showed correct artwork for both both files only when playing from StreamMagic (no artwork on the Evo panel from BUpNP).

I suspect the fault is with StreamMagic and the way it somehow selects the artwork to show at folder level, so I have raised a support case with Cambridge Audio. They are usually pretty good, but may need some expert help or at least clues from you to fix this. Given that the Evo unit is probably the top all-in-one HiFi streamer the moment, it would be a shame if users were put off Emby by blurred folder-level artwork, for something that may be trivial (if only we could nail it) - this certainly put me off Emby last year, but my interest is now renewed as I'm about to buy new, bigger NAS unit (Synology) that claims easy Emby integration.

 

Edited April 9 by freemansteve

[Luke 37085]

OK please let us know what they say. Thanks.