Using BubbleUPnP as a music server on Android device

[Stephen Rooney]

I recently added a memory card to my Lenovo tablet so I could store my music collection on it and use BubbleUPnP as the indexer and player. The indexing is somewhat incomplete and none of the album artwork is showing. So a few questions.,

- is BubbleUPnP DLNA intended to be a UPnP server/indexer on an Android device?

- if so, is there any way to get the album artwork embedded in mp3 files showing?

- is there any way to force a re-scan of the music library?

Regards,

Steve

[Bubblesoft]

Hi,

On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 7:10:04 PM UTC+1 stephen...@gmail.com wrote:

- is BubbleUPnP DLNA intended to be a UPnP server/indexer on an Android device?

Yes, but it relies on the Android media scanner for that, which indexes all the files and

store the info in a database that the app accesses (that's the content of the "Music" root folder).

 

- if so, is there any way to get the album artwork embedded in mp3 files showing?

Normally, the Android media scanner should pick them up but a rescan (or device reboot) might help.

 

- is there any way to force a re-scan of the music library?

Yes on older Android versions. What is your Android version ?

[Stephen Rooney]

Hi and thanks for the reply.

This is on a LenovoP11 Pro 2nd gen tablet running Android 13. The music library, all mp3 files with embededed arwork limited to 800x800 resolution, is on the SD card I recently added to the tablet for the purpose of storing the music libnrary of approx 15000 files. VLC media player looks like it has indexed the library and shows all the artwork but even after a device reboot there is no artwork visible in bubble nor does it look to have indexed the library properly.

Regards,

Steve Rooney

[Bubblesoft]

VLC does its own indexing and does not rely on the Android media scanner.

[Stephen Rooney]

Hi,

Thanks for the explanation about VLC but I'd much rather be using Bubble UPnP as I find the interface much more to my taste. Is there any way I can get the Android media scanner to re-scan my library and hopefully fully index it? You mentioned it is possible on older Android versions and I'm happy to resort to adb if that is necessary for Android 13 that my tablet runs on.

Regards,

Steve

[Bubblesoft]

Triggering a full media rescan was easy prior to Android 11.

But now it requires adb:

adb shell pm clear com.google.android.providers.media.module

then reboot and wait a while for the rescan to finish.

[Stephen Rooney]

D:\platform-tools>adb connect 192.168.1.147:46299
connected to 192.168.1.147:46299

D:\platform-tools>adb shell pm clear com.google.android.providers.media.module

Success

D:\platform-tools>

Alas that has made no difference because after re-starting the tablet the library viewed through Bubble UPnP is no different. However it seems that this is more of an Android issue than with Bubble so I think I need to look in that direction. The only thing I'd say is that the pm clear command returned Success instantly, it just seemed too quick to have done anything. Whether that's expected or not I don't know.

[Bubblesoft]

According to my testing looking at logcat output for the com.google.android.providers.media.module process, the 'pm clear' command seems to trigger a media rescan (which can take a while after the "Success" message).

It would be interesting that you send me (bubblesof...@gmail.com) a mp3 with embedded album art so I can check it.

Also, can you confirm that you access these tracks missing album art browsing the root "Music" folder in the Library tab ?

[Stephen Rooney]

Email sent privately

Regards,

Stephen Rooney