Bluetooth display says Camera?

[Sally_C]

Sometime recenly - I think this started with the update, but I'm not positive - my bluetooth display stopped displaying correct title/artist info when streaming from my Galaxy S4. It doesn't matter if I'm using a podcast app or a music app, it show this:

If I hit pause, it shows the pause screen, but then goes back to this when playing. I've tried removing my phone and repairing, but it hasn't fixed it. If I'm streaming Pandora and on the Pandora tab, the song and artist info displays correctly.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[danieljw]

Interesting, your phone is trying to play back some photos!

1) What are you actually listening to when the phone/car display this track information? Streaming music or local music files in phone storage?

2) First, I would make my camera folder a nomedia folder. Plug your phone into the computer. Go to DCIM/Camera and right-click and create a new folder. Name this folder '.NOMEDIA'. You can also do this directly without connecting to a computer if you have a file manager app installed (such as ES File Explorer).

3) Second, I would wipe data from whatever player app you are using that is incorrectly displaying the track info, as well as the Media Storage app. Go to Settings, then Apps, then slide over to ALL apps. Scroll until you find Media Storage. Tap it. Force stop the app (and confirm when it says it could misbehave), and then tap Clear data. Go back to ALL apps list, find the offending player app, and do the same thing. Then you must reboot your phone (power off/on), but before doing this, go into your bluetooth settings and unpair your car. This leads me to my next suggestion.

4) Third, I would re-pair my phone with the car. You've deleted the car from the phone. Now, also delete the phone from the car. When the phone reboots, it will take some time for your music/whtaever to appear again in the app because we cleared the Media Storage. When it does, then go ahead and re-pair with your vehicle.

If these steps don't work, then I recommend a factory reset of your phone.

 

[Sally_C]

Thanks, danieljw, for your reply! I can't believe I didn't even think of my camera folder and that it might be trying to play something in there!

Sure enough, there was a file in the camera folder with the name of the "title" on my screen. It was a movie. I have no idea why that suddenly caused a problem but when I deleted it my screen is no longer pointing to that directory. But it still is funky as it says unknown title, etc.

I don't want to have a .nomedia file in my camera folder as my gallery programs won't display those pictures then, and it's probably not needed now that I'm not showing that as the folder. I did go into my application manager and stopped media storage and the beyondpod app. I also cleared the data on media storage but am leery of doing that on beyondpod because it says I will lose all my accounts and data and I have a number of podcasts set up. I'm not sure if a beyondpod backup would restore all of that. I did remove my phone from the car and then re-paired it.

So now I no longer have it showing the camera directory. It seems to know there's an artist but it's just unknown. This is true whether it's BeyondPod, Google Music or other apps and also true whether I'm streaming or playing from something downloaded. Pandora works fine as long as I'm using the Pandora tab but if I switch to the Bluetooth tab, it's unknown again.

I think there was something strange with this last TomTom update - at least for me. My system keeps asking me to accept the legal consent screen, even though I've gone into Settings and told it to not ask me. Prior to the update it would display the screen for a few seconds and then disappear. I've tried pulling out the SD card & re-inserting it as well as going into the menu and resetting the whole system. I think this bluetooth display problem also started around then.

Maybe I'll just have to wait for the next update and hope it's fixed.

Thanks for your reply. It really helped me in getting rid of the camera screen - maybe the rest will come in time.

 

[danieljw]

Is ALL of the track data shown as unknown, or only the artist field?

The TomTom screen is a known change in the last update; others have discussed it in the 'NAV safety lock with voice commands to be fixed?' thread on this board.

 

[Sally_C]

I was not specific enough in my last post - sorry. None of the data displays. What it says is: No Song Name, No Artist Name, No Album Name.

I'll check out that thread. Thank you.

 

[danieljw]

I own a few different Android phones on Verizon and I had the same issue in the CX-5 with metadata not displaying correctly (or at all). Like you, I tried numerous apps but nothing ever really resolved it, not even a factory reset. I am no expert in Android development but it seems like, over time, the use of multiple audio apps screws around with the bluetooth in the /system/ partition and breaks the track metadata function. There are some apps, PowerAmp for example, which have a few different options for metadata and making bluetooth higher priority. Worth a try, maybe?

I'm afraid that the way I was able to make all track info display properly and consistently was by rooting, unlocking device bootloaders, and reflashing the system images to wipe and repair the /system/ partition on my devices. Now everything works perfectly and bluetooth even resumes properly when I get in my car. Unfortunately, Samsung has the Galaxy S4 pretty locked down, which has stunted user development. Might be possible if you have the Google Play edition of the phone. Regardless, if you really want to fix it, there are probably system images out there somewhere. Check XDA Developer forum.

Alternatively, there is supposedly an Android 4.4 update coming soon for the S4. That could help, too.

 

[Sally_C]

Finally got a solution! The problem was related to my phone - a Samsung Galaxy S4.

I wrote to the BP forum and got this answer, which I'll repost in case anyone else has this issue.

[Android] 4.3 introduced a non-hack way to publish metadata, which BeyondPod now uses if your device is running 4.3. However, it seems that Samsung (in their infinite wisdom) chose not to implement it, so you have to reinstate the hack method.

The setting is in the Advanced Settings:
Menu | More... | Settings | Menu (again) | Advanced Settings | Publish Current Episode