Problems with Bluetooth Metadata

[bopapocalypse]

I recently added a Bluetooth receiver to one of my cars, in part to stream music from my phone.

My only real complaint so far (haven't driven that car more than a handful of times since installing the receiver) is that I don't like my options for track info display.

The 'bug' side of this is that I've got Prefs->General->Send Album With Artist checked, and am not seeing what I expect.

What I expect is, if I've got my receiver configured to display track name & artist, I see "Track" and "Artist - Album" or something like that on the receiver.
What I'm actually seeing is just "Track" and "Artist".

Are my expectations wrong, or is that what that setting is supposed to do?

Galaxy S3 (sprint) running 4.4.2
GMMP 1.6.5
Kenwood X598 Receiver (http://www.kenwood.com/usa/car/excelon/kdc-x598/spec.html)

The only other BT device I've got that would display this sort of info is my Windows 7 laptop from work. "Send Album With Artist" seems to have no effect on what gets displayed. But, unchecking Prefs->General->Broadcast Metadata doesn't have any effect either, the full track info is still displayed. Only if I check Prefs->General->Lockscreen Player->Disable Lockscreen Controls do I have any effect there - and that just (as the warning says) prevents the track info from being sent.

Any ideas?

To take this in more of a feature-request direction, I'd like to be able to define custom strings that get sent for the metadata, particularly with some logic built in.
My particular use case would be: (apologies for the psuedo-code)

If(album-artist == artist)
{
   track_string = track
   artist_string = album + " - " + artist
}
else
{
   track_string = track + " (" + artist + ")"
   artist_string = album + " - " + album-artist
}


I'm not sure how the "logic" portion of it could be designed from a UI-perspective, in order to be flexible to meet a variety of needs. The custom strings could be done using simple tokens like Winamp used to do, ie. "%t (%a)" for track, etc.

[GoneMAD]

Sept 26, 2014 12:05:55 GMT -5 bopapocalypse said:

I recently added a Bluetooth receiver to one of my cars, in part to stream music from my phone.

My only real complaint so far (haven't driven that car more than a handful of times since installing the receiver) is that I don't like my options for track info display.

The 'bug' side of this is that I've got Prefs->General->Send Album With Artist checked, and am not seeing what I expect.

What I expect is, if I've got my receiver configured to display track name & artist, I see "Track" and "Artist - Album" or something like that on the receiver.
What I'm actually seeing is just "Track" and "Artist".

Are my expectations wrong, or is that what that setting is supposed to do?

Galaxy S3 (sprint) running 4.4.2
GMMP 1.6.5
Kenwood X598 Receiver (http://www.kenwood.com/usa/car/excelon/kdc-x598/spec.html)

The only other BT device I've got that would display this sort of info is my Windows 7 laptop from work. "Send Album With Artist" seems to have no effect on what gets displayed. But, unchecking Prefs->General->Broadcast Metadata doesn't have any effect either, the full track info is still displayed. Only if I check Prefs->General->Lockscreen Player->Disable Lockscreen Controls do I have any effect there - and that just (as the warning says) prevents the track info from being sent.

Any ideas?

To take this in more of a feature-request direction, I'd like to be able to define custom strings that get sent for the metadata, particularly with some logic built in.
My particular use case would be: (apologies for the psuedo-code)


I'll post again when i can look at it closer
If(album-artist == artist)
{
   track_string = track
   artist_string = album + " - " + artist
}
else
{
   track_string = track + " (" + artist + ")"
   artist_string = album + " - " + album-artist
}


I'm not sure how the "logic" portion of it could be designed from a UI-perspective, in order to be flexible to meet a variety of needs. The custom strings could be done using simple tokens like Winamp used to do, ie. "%t (%a)" for track, etc.

samsung devices are awful with metadata over blueooth. The official metadata api is what the Lockscreen Controls uses, the "Broadcast Metadata" was a hack for older versions of android before that api was introduced. Samsung however decided to completely ignore the official api and would use the hack for many of its devices (and on many of them whether it updates on track change or not is not consistent)

That being said if your receiver gets any metadata I would expect that send album with artist to do what you describe. I will have to take a look at the code logic to see whats happening. My guess is i only implemented Artist-Album for one of the metadata over bluetooth methods (either the api or the hack) and not the other and your device happens to use the one that it wasnt implemented for.

[bopapocalypse]

Sept 26, 2014 12:17:42 GMT -5 GoneMAD said:

samsung devices are awful with metadata over blueooth. The official metadata api is what the Lockscreen Controls uses, the "Broadcast Metadata" was a hack for older versions of android before that api was introduced. Samsung however decided to completely ignore the official api and would use the hack for many of its devices (and on many of them whether it updates on track change or not is not consistent)

That being said if your receiver gets any metadata I would expect that send album with artist to do what you describe. I will have to take a look at the code logic to see whats happening. My guess is i only implemented Artist-Album for one of the metadata over bluetooth methods (either the api or the hack) and not the other and your device happens to use the one that it wasnt implemented for.

I appreciate you looking into it.

I assume the samsung-specific issues would primarily relate to their build of android? That would mean that rooting the device and running a non-samsung ROM might help, correct?

[GoneMAD]

yeah its samsungs software. A custom rom like cyanogenmod shouldnt have the metadata issues

[GoneMAD]

it does look like that group album with artist option is only applied to the hack version (broadcast metadata). I guess with the galaxy s3's kitkat update they finally fixed it to use the official api instead of the hack.. i'll make a note to enable that option for the metadata api as well