friedmike

i have a 2014 is250. i play all my music on usb drive using usb input under the arm rest. unlike several other posters, i've never had any issue playing any format, shuffling, navigating folders. all works well on that front.

the issue is the terrible gracenote. i have album cover art embedded int he individual mp3 and acc files. they show in any browser and they show in my hyundai genesis without issue. i've turned the gracenote feature off for ever possible setting (usb off, ipod off - even though i'm not using ipod).

except for two songs, every single one is showing the terrible web clip art from gracenote, even though it is off. has anyone found any solution to this? i've called my lexus technology specialist at dealer and it was pretty useless. without the vehicle being in front of them, it was not an eventful discussion.

i've even looked at all of my ID3 tags manually to make sure the image was embedded properly in the file (which i knew it was because it shows fine on hyundai). has anyone tried removing the genre settings in the ID3 tag that gracenote sometimes leverages?

dojoman

iTrader: (5)

Change your artwork pictures to 40x40 ppi. Gracenote artwork will override if your pics are too large even if you have it turned off. Audio system cannot display high resolution pictures. It works for me.

cFoo

Do you know what the resolution is for the screen? You need that + the screen physical size to calculate the ppi. 40 ppi is not the same as 40 x 40 pixel. If that's what you're thinking.

GraceNote is bain of this car's existence!

dojoman

iTrader: (5)

Sorry, I meant 40x40 pixel. Not sure about screen resolution but 40x40 worked for me. If you look at how small the album artwork showing on the screen it's not that big.

friedmike

thanks for the advice. will tyr today. do you know if the embedded images need to be in a specific format (jpg, gif, png)? or if they need to be under a certain file size or resolution? 40x40 is super small

dojoman

iTrader: (5)

I think jpg should be fine. I use iTunes for my music so whatever the default format worked for me. You can actually experiment with the resolution. Try 60x60 to see if it will show up in the car.

cFoo

Thanks for the info. This is very useful!

I did a few tests last night. It's fairly random. But you are correct, 40x40 is 100%. I also tried 50x50, and 60x60 pixel. 50x50 works 100% of the time. I can't quite narrow down whether the limitation is in the overall file size, meta tag header size, or some random thing. But some images that are over 1200 pixels do randomly show up as well. The best bet is to stick with 50x50 pixel using JPEG or PNG. The resolution isn't that great on the screen so an image at 50x50 will be fine. The display area is also very small.

Finally! something to get rid of that annoying disGraceNote.

sdotk

Whats so bad about having coverart? I don't mind it at all..

dojoman

iTrader: (5)

Gracenote normally doesn't show the right coverart for the album, it only shows the band members images.

dseag2

I noticed that when I had an IS as a loaner. There were some settings I had to change, but I don't remember which ones. That never happens with my GS. It is always the actual album cover. Weird.

BTW, I use an iPod Nano. It works great and the artwork downloads much quicker than my old iPod.

cFoo

And if your music filename are encoded in other languages other than English it will pull random images that it thinks is correct. It's hilarious...for awhile.

friedmike

thought i'd post an update on the gracenote issue. i used ID3 to manually edit all the mp3 tags. i removed all embedded images and added new ones. i've added all 100x100 pixel images and they all work. however, because the image window is larger than 100x100, they all get fairly blurry and pixelated when resized in the nav display.

however - they do work. so now, for any new music that isn't part of the gracenote database as of yet, i can view covert art instead of the terrible images of band members.

however #2 - this process is painful. stripping out the tags and re-adding them for 30 songs, including resizing all images took a good 45 minutes. doing this every time you add or change mp3s is not practical. i'm looking to see if there is a setting in itunes or in some other media player to automatically export cover art in a certain size. i'm also going to try and add images at 120x120 or perhaps larger to remedy the blurriness issue. more to come.

chrisge

.
It's really strange.

I use a USB flash memory key with all my MP3s.

I have switched OFF this really disGraceNote !!!

I'm not sure about the 100x100 pixels resolution you mentionned.

I've taged some of my MP3s with the freeware "MP3Tag" with 200x200px jpg.

Some of them are displayed correctly but another have the symbol of a light grey USB key in place of the cover....

dojoman

iTrader: (5)

You need to use pixels smaller than 40x40. If not, Gracenote database will show whether it's turn off or not. Gracenote always shows if the album pixels are too large.

friedmike

Same cover art issue whether using USB or iPod or iPhone. I have now spoken to three deifferent Lexus technology specialists but all have no idea and no solution. Getting firmware update this morning at dealer with fingers crossed. Otherwise, I have to manually edit every MP3 file to adjust pixels of album cover art. Way too time consuming. And if you listen to anything in the last three years from a music perspective, gracenote doesn't have the info in its database unless you get a navi update and that will still not be current. So...either turn it off and get nothing or get bad clip art of music genres and some archaic band photos. Just another really bad design of the new Lexus nav interface. I thought the terrible joystick/mouse was bad enough.