Playback UPnP and iTunes Artwork - a few tips
Posted by: james n on 19 October 2011
Folks - Hopefully this may help anyone having artwork issues.
I've found Playback to be an excellent UPnP server and now the artwork is sorted out it's superb.
I've had a few problems with missing album art - it would appear in iTunes but not always make it to n-Stream.
Testing out a few other UPnP renderers ruled out n-Stream and after a lot of buggering about ...
To tidy up all the artwork i did the following :
- Select 'get artwork' in iTunes and then let it go through the collection.
- Manually add any artwork that isn't found by iTunes.
- Run image fetch from here http://hardingsw.com/ChorusDS/...sDS/Image_Fetch.html
- This not only creates a folder.jpg (not needed for Playback) of the artwork but also tells you which files do not have embedded artwork.
- I copied the log file report from here and then used it to find the each problem album in iTunes and then ran 'embed artwork' (from dougs scripts) on each album listed.
- Once done, run image fetch again to check whether you have them all.
- Now all your albums should have artwork - both stored by iTunes in its own cache and embedded within each track.
- To clear Playback's artwork cache I got the following info from Yazsoft.
Yes, there's a cache at: ~/Library/Application Support/Playback Server/QuickLook.
You can delete the folder to clear the cache. To force Playback to try again for missing artwork, turn Media Sharing off & on again.
- Delete the cache folder, start the UPnP service and clear the Image Cache in n-Stream.
Voila - perfect artwork 
James
Posted on: 19 October 2011 by Gordon McGlade
James
I installed Playback to check it out after having recommended to me for a dealer requirement. It works really well but the big issue is we cannot get it to connect to WAV files. I have contacted Yazsoft and they suggested to installed the latest version which was released yesterday which we already had done.
Still does´t play WAV and still no reply from Yazsoft.
Not good really from a small company looking to get into the MAC dreaming world.
Gordon
Posted on: 19 October 2011 by james n
Hi Gordon,
Try the playback forum. The developers post on there and seem to reply within a few hours.
James
Posted on: 19 October 2011 by Jack
James.......very useful info, the script is nice find,thanks.
Gordon......yeah had exactly he same problem with WAVs, works great for everything else!
Posted on: 19 October 2011 by Gordon McGlade
Originally Posted by james n:
Hi Gordon,
Try the playback forum. The developers post on there and seem to reply within a few hours.
James
I mailed their support line and got answer to try the latest version, when that did not work I informed them.
Surely they know this so why mess about with versions. The guy who answered is called Johnny.
Bottom line is is does not work for WAV and they should at least state that.
I will ask for money back.
Gordon
Posted on: 19 October 2011 by Manu
Why have you paid for that?
There is a free trial version, limited, but you immediately see that Wav does not work...
Posted on: 19 October 2011 by Gordon McGlade
Originally Posted by Manu:
Why have you paid for that?
There is a free trial version, limited, but you immediately see that Wav does not work...
Because the free one did not work!
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by Dov
Hi James
I am using Playback 1.89 (OSX Lion on a MacPro 2008) with a NaimUniti (v3.0.00) and n-Stream 2.2 on an iPad 2.0. Everything works as expected except that I cannot see any artwork with n-Stream. Of course, I did all the steps that you described in your post. Any ideas ?
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by Mrox
Originally Posted by james n:
...
Voila - perfect artwork 
James
Until I find my setup to use my FLAC I'm using Itunes so thanks a lot for taking time to share that info!!!
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by james n
Dov - that's a new one on me. Yazsoft has a very helpful forum which the developers regularly contribute to so worth asking there. Hope you get it sorted.
Mrox - glad it's worked for you.
Cheers
James
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by Dov
Thanks James. By the way are you using a NaimUniti or another streamer ?
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by james n
NDX
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by Dov
Thus it could be linked to the Uniti software. I shall see if the problem persists when my Uniti will be upgraded to 24/192 (soon I hope !)
Cheers
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by Iver van de Zand
Am I correct ImageFetch only runs on Apple computers ? Is there also a Windows version. If not, is there a similar product for Windows ?
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by pcstockton
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by pcstockton
Posted on: 18 November 2011 by Iver van de Zand
Tx mate !! I am going to try and let you know
Posted on: 29 November 2011 by Dov
James
I found the culprit: VirusBarrier. Once removed from my mac, everything works !
Cheers
Posted on: 29 November 2011 by james n
Excellent - glad you got it working ok.
James
Posted on: 22 December 2013 by nick2413
Quick question re Playback. I have it set up to use my itunes folder as the default, this is fine, although I only use itunes to collate and sort my music, I therefore have a lot of flac files in the root itunes music folder, which I manually add.
Now, the app doesn't appear to like flac as I presume its kind of integrating with itunes. When I set the custom folder function in playback, the folder shows up as 'empty' on both the superuniti and n-stream app.
Anyone else seen this?
Posted on: 22 December 2013 by nick2413
So I'm now able to select the custom folder in Playback, but for some reason a number of the folders (albums) which contain the flac files do not appear in n-stream... Weirdly though, some flac albums are visible and I'm able to play their content. Why would some not show up?
