I thought I would throw this out to the community to see if anyone else as encountered this problem and possibly found a solution.
I am using the latest version of the Naim app to control an NDS. Music is stored on an Innuos Zen Mk II server. On a few downloaded albums the Naim app shows the UPnP icon or similar simple graphic instead of the album art. There does not seem to be any pattern in the albums for which this happens. Often an album where the album art displays and one where it does not are similar, e.g., downloaded from the same label. The art is present on the Innuos Zen server as a .jpg file and is displayed when viewing the music library through the Innuos app.
A query to Naim support returned the suggestion that one could edit the metadata in the app. However, I don’t see any capability to do this. Clicking the three dots in the upper right of an album screen, as suggested in another thread, offers a choice to play the album, move it to the front or rear of a queue, or add it to a playlist; there is no option to edit metadata. I’m wondering if the Naim app can only edit metadata if the UPnP server is a Naim Core?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can give some insight.
Not only is the Naim app unable to edit albums unless they are on a Core, but even then it can’t edit downloads, only CD rips, and it can only do that when they are viewed through the Core, not when the app is seeing then via a streamer.
Something has gone very badly wrong if Naim support are telling you otherwise. They have a long history of providing excellent support, so perhaps there were some crossed wires here?
Given that you know the artwork is present, there are a few reasons why it may not be visible. Such as…
The artwork is in a folder with a name that the Naim streamer doesn’t recognise.
The image is in a higher resolution that the NDS/Naim app can handle.
The image just hasn’t loaded properly, in which case clearing the UPnP cache in the Naim app settings might help.
The first thing I would do is look at the album in a metadata editor. I’m not too familiar with the Innuos metadata editing features, but you can always try a different one such as Metadatics or MP3tag.
Just to add to this, my understanding is that the artwork must be .jpg format and must be named folder.jpg, but are you able to advise what are the NAIM limitations on file size/resolution of the artwork ?
I have found cover.jpg also works, but Naim certainly say folder.jpg in their support material.
I don’t know the Naim size limit of the cover art image. I have never found it to be a problem, but if a very large image doesn’t show up, then making it smaller is an obvious thing to do.
Anything bigger than 800x800 I resize down to that and it looks fine to me in the Naim app even on a 10" tablet. Even 500x500 is acceptable to my eyes at least. I also embed the artwork in the files so I don’t have any folder.jpg files. That may be a lot of duplication but the embedded files don’t take up that much space and anyway, storage is cheap these days.
I use Asset UPnP server and I find that in order for the Naim app to display cover art, the image needs to be embedded within each music file. I use Mp3tag.exe (free download) to open the folder with the relevant music files. As you highlight the files you can see that the cover art image is missing from the bottom left corner of the Mp3tag windows. I can Shift or Control click to select a block of files and use the Add Cover option (right click on the image area) and browse for the image file. I tend to size my cover art files to 500 x 500 pixels and they show perfectly fine in the Naim app on iPhone and iPad. I also sometimes replace images that have downloaded in the music files if they are poor quality or sometimes incorrect for the particular CD.
That’s not the case for all artwork, for example Naim rippers put the artwork in a separate folder when saved as WAV. Still, something the OP might want to investigate.
Thanks for all the feedback. As I hoped, there are some nuggets to work on.
To some of the points made:
I can edit metadata on my PC using the Innuos app. If the Innuos app does not find album art when the download is imported, I can search for it using the bar code (if available) or use a jpg from the local drive or network. For all the albums where art is not displayed on the Naim app, it is displayed in the Innuos app.
I have noted that the filename for one piece of art that does not display on the Naim app is “album_art.jpg”. I’ve made a copy with the name “folder.jpg”, but this doesn’t change anything on the Naim app.
In another thread, someone mentioned clearing the Naim app image cache in dealing with a similar problem. I started to do this, but stopped at the message warning that this would delete all image data from the device. I assume that this would simply force the app to reload art from the web or the server - but you know what they say about “assume”. Anyone have experience with this?
There’s nothing to lose by clearing the image cache, it will be repopulated with artwork from the server. However, I have never found it to solve issues like this, so I’m not hopeful.
I’ve occasionally found that clearing the UPnP cache in the Naim app settings helps, so you could try that too.
The change you have made to the folder name may not have been recognised by the Naim app yet. You may need to get the Innuos server to rescan the music folder, then restart the streamer and app, then see if the changes are visible.
I’ve started a traverse through my collection looking for the relevant albums. So far, 5 out of 5 where the art does not show in the Naim app have a filename other than folder.jpg.
I’ll complete this exercise, rebuild the music index on the Innuos, clear the image and UPnP caches, maybe through in a little moondance for good luck and report back the result when I am through
I’ve managed to get all of the recalcitrant albums to show their album art in the Naim. The process is described below. This should work for an Innuos music server with the Naim app; not sure how it would work with other servers or network attached storage.
As noted earlier in the thread, the album art needs to be in the appropriate folder on the server with the filename “folder.jpg”. All of the albums where the artwork would display in the Innuos app but not in the Naim app had a filename other than this.
However, simply changing the filename, even if the Innuos library is rescanned and the image cache and UPnP cache of the Naim app are cleared, does not by itself solve the problem. I also had to use the Innuos app to change something in the metadata - a single character change in the title seems to work - and then save the change. Voilà! The album art is now displayed in the Naim app.
This is where it gets a little weird. If I reversed the change just made, the Naim app would go back to showing only an icon in the album list, but would show the art work when the album is opened and show the art work beside each track.
One other observation that is perhaps not surprising - when importing a downloaded album into the Innuos for the first time, be sure that the art work filename is changed to folder.jpg. It will then be displayed properly in the Naim app from the get go.
and report back the result when I am through