Chromecast Gallery Cycle Thru ongoing issue

Chromecast scrolls gallery photos shown on the Now Playing page very differently than when viewing on my iMac (core) or iPad (remote).

In my case, an artist gallery includes 1) the Valence (or edited) featured photo of the artist, 2) additional photos of the same artist (added as additional Primary Artists), as well as 3) photos of other band members (also added as additional primary artists).

On iMac (core) and iPad (remote):
In Now Playing, the primary Valence/edited artist photo is always shown first, before any other photos in the artist gallery.

All other photos edited as a primary artist will appear in the artist’s gallery and are presented in the order they are displayed at the top of the Album page, or listed on the Now Playing page.

When Using Chromecast:

  • The first photo shown will most likely NOT be the featured Valence/edited photo. It appears to be selected at random, although many times is either the photo before or after the Valence/edited feature photo.

  • All other photos in the gallery are randomly displayed—again different from the way the gallery cycles through when viewing Now Playing on the remote or core.

  • I was very surprised to see these same observations occur regardless of whether the “Cycle Through Gallery” is ON or OFF!

So what’s the big deal?

  • If an artist photo gallery includes individual band member photos, as well as the featured/edited Valence artist photo - example, a Muddy Waters album with a gallery that includes individual pix of the band members, Buddy Guy and Willie Dixon, someone other than Muddy is going to be indirectly credited for the song because their photo is the first shown.

  • This can also occur when a track lists an artist who is also performing on that song.

  • I think Roon created Valence to provide a “signature” photo for each artist - one that would accompany the bio on the artist page and identify the artist now playing by itself, or before all other gallery pix. Great idea! Chromecast is the only Now Playing alternative that doesn’t do that.

  • Toggling the “Cycle thru the Gallery” On and Off is supposed to result in some difference in how the gallery is presented, but I dont know what that is. When tested both on the iMac Core and Remote, I could find no difference between the Cycle Gallery feature regardless of whether it’s on or off. Both devices display the Valence/edited feature photo first, and the other gallery photos in the order they are listed. Except with Chromecast which does its own thing and is also not affected by the Gallery Cycle On/Off toggle.

Will Roon (or Community) please let me know if this is an operator-error problem, and advise how to remedy? Thank you.

Hope Roon/Community can help.

Unlike my iPad remote and iMac Core, Chromecast does NOT begin each track’s gallery scroll with the artist’s featured Valence/edited photo. Instead, it appears to RANDOMLY choose the first gallery photo to be displayed before continuing to also scroll the remaining gallery photos randomly.

This is particularly bothersome when the artist gallery contains photos of other band members who are displayed first, giving the false impression they are the primary artist.

I’ve asked for help with this several times, but was encouraged to ask again by the hosts of Roon’s recent Zoom Networking Seminar.

Looking forward to your help. Thanks

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Hey @Bruce_Orr,

Thanks for taking the time to write in! We’d be happy to explore this in more depth, would you please snap a few screenshots or provide specific artist examples where you’ve seen this happen?

We’ll be monitoring this thread for your reply :pray:

Thank you for the help. I return home Aug 5 and will send a number of examples. It occurs with almost every artist so will be easy to provide.

I’m thinking each example should provide:

Baseline - iMac Core and iPad Remote

  • Artist page showing the Valence/edited feature-artist photo
  • Artist page will also list all other primary artists comprising the gallery
  • Now Playing views showing the order gallery photos are displayed

Corresponding Chromecast-displayed Views

If I’m missing anything else, I’m happy to provide.

Thank you, Ben.

Bruce

1 Like

Ben – I REALLY appreciate your help. Thank you. Below is a summary of my setup, refresher on the issue, desired solution and finally, a few “cases” to illustrate the problem.

Setup

  • iMac core; Innuos Zenith Mk II SE bridge; iPad remote
  • Devices wired via ethernet

Issues

  • The way Chromecast displays the scrolling artist gallery is inconsistent with the same Now Playing view when listening on the iMac Core or iPad Remote. The iMac Core and iPad Remote both display the Artist Gallery scroll the same way. The signature artist photo is shown first, followed by other edited-in primary artist photos and in exactly the same order they are listed on the Album View page. Chromecast appears to cycle thru the gallery randomly. The signature photo almost never appears first. This is problematic in ways described in previous posts.
  • Additionally, the Now Playing button which activates the gallery art scroll has no affect on what appears on the screen - regardless of whether viewing Now Playing on the iMac Core, iPod Remote, or Chromecast. It is a non-functioning button.

Desired Solution?

  • The Gallery scroll function behaves exactly the same for Chromecast as it does on iMac Core and iPad Remote Now Playing views.
  • Artist photos are presented in this order: 1) Signature artist photo, 2) All other user-added Primary Artists for the album - displayed in the order they are added/listed in the Album view, 3) When applicable, “Also Performing” artist photos listed for an individual track, and 4) Any other photos corresponding to non-performing artists, e.g., Composer, etc., Roon is already including in the Artist gallery (as currently practiced, these can be unchecked from Credits to prevent them from appearing).

Cases
Below are a few cases showing how Chromecast departs from what is displayed on the iPad Remote or iMac Core. Because the problem requires showing how the Chromecast artist gallery scroll compares to the Core/Remote gallery scroll, there are quite a few artist photos involved. I used powerpoint with multiple photos per page to make things easier for both of us, but discovered I can only upload image formats (jpg, png). Below are images for each of the pages. Pls let me know you got all this.

Thank you, Ben

NOTE: PHOTOS OF CHROMECAST GALLERY SEQUENCES IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE INTENDED TO BE A REFERENCE FOR PHOTO IMAGES ONLY. AS IS, THEY ARE SIMPLY A RE-ORDERING OF WHAT IS SHOWN FROM THE NOW PLAYING VIEW ON THE IPAD OR IMAC. THE ACTUAL CHROMECAST VISUAL WOULD SHOW LESS COPY, BUT THAT’S NOT RELEVANT FOR THIS DISCUSSION.

Hi Bruce,

Just curious and wanted to ask a couple of questions for clarification. For example, I have Muddy Water’s “Folk Singer” but I only have Muddy Waters listed.

Are you adding in the others as additional Primary Artists?

Likewise for Karen Elson, I only get 1 available artist. Are you creating additional Karen Elson artists with their own different photo, and then adding them as additional primary artists to that album?

Roon only populates the Valence-provided photo they choose for the signature photo. And not unexpectedly, they don’t have photos for everyone. That’s why they created Valence: to mob-source artist photos from users. I had actually suggested that to them a long while ago, but was told there were intellectual property risks - but apparently got comfortable with it.

So yes, I have sourced, sized and added photos for quite a few additional primary artists, as you saw. I also have contributed a significant number of those to the Valence library as well.

For me, taking advantage of the opportunity roon provides to add artist photos was a game changer. It enhances the listening experience and provides a much richer connection to the artist, not just their music.

Bruce

Big Dan-

The photos also give u an opportunity to tell more of the artist story. You saw with Muddy Waters, I thought it interesting to feature his bandmates on the album - a young Buddy Guy snd Willie Dixon - as primary artists/photos. When I came across Muddy’s draft card I thought that made for a great add to the gallery. I would say IMHO. Roon-provided photos are generally focused on headshots of the artist or band - which may be good if ur only planning on having a single artist photo. But if you’re going to do more, I like seeing the artist/Band performing and don’t have to have all band members in the shot; or I can show Jimmy Carter giving Gregg Allman an award of sone kind, or show Gregg in a photo with his once wife, Cher. SNL identified (Satuday Night Live) promo pix of their featured artis are ways fun. On and on….

Hey @Bruce_Orr,

Thanks for taking the time to share such a detailed report of the issue you’re seeing. I’ve created a ticket and logged this issue for our dev team to dig into further.

I can’t yet speak on a timeline for when they’ll be able to address it and come back with more information, but you will be the first to know when there is more information to share :raised_hands:

Thank you for your patience, Bruce!

Thanks, Ben. While I’m sure roon will solve the programming issue, being able to see the problem clearly should help you get there more quickly.

If I can be more help as things move along, don’t hesitate to holler

Bruce

1 Like

Hi Ben,

I wanted to touch base with re: Chromecast issue. Again, I very much appreciate your letting me know Roon is going to address this.

I wanted to add that Chromecasting does not sustain gallery scrolling over time as well as iPad Remote or iMac Core. The gallery scroll gets hung up after 5-7 hours of playing. The Core and IMac need to be rebooted to get things going again.

Anyway, any good news you can provide
me on the original issue will be welcome.

@Bruce_Orr I want to add my thanks and appreciation for your thorough documentation.

If you can and will, please consider updating this thread every six months with your progress and interactions.

Thanks for the kind words.

After being told Roon would look into my issue, I’ve been ghosted. It’s now been months, and even though I’ve sent follow-ups asking nicely about the status, I’ve gotten nothing. I understand it’s been busy with the ARC roll-out, etc, but still want help. IMO, I’ve exercised great patience, after raising the Chrome issue a year ago (?), and repeatedly re-asking for help before finally being recognized in August. I was asked for more info - which I presented in great detail to make Roon’s problem solving as easy as possible after waiting so long for help.

Again, thanks for noticing.

Hey @Bruce_Orr,

You have my sincerest apologies for the delayed response here, we’ve been dealing with a higher-than-usual volume following our release and we’re working as quickly as we can to get back to everyone.

At this time I do not yet have an update on the status of your issue. It is in the queue for our dev team to investigate further, they’ve had their hands full with the recent Arc and Roon 2.0 release. I will check in with them directly tomorrow to get an idea of where things stand.

Again, my apologies for the delay in next steps Bruce :pray:

Hey @Bruce_Orr,

After chatting with the team, a bit more clarification is needed.

An important note, it does matter if the track is in your library or is not in your library, even though the artist who performs on it is present in your library and you edited their photo. For non-library items, we will still display images from Valence, but may be different. Do you experience this with tracks that are properly added to your library?

Are you able to break this down a bit more? What do you expect in this situation, and can you provide an illustration?

With this, we do not allow more than one image to be added per artist. Are you able to clarify this further as well?

Thanks, Bruce!

I’m not sure I understand what you are asking, but I can tell you regardless of whether an artist played from my library or Tidal, I have changed the photos so that multiple images for evety artist are identical. In no instance I presented were any Valence images used.

Roon allows only a single image to be featured on both the artist’s page the avatar. This is the image provided via Valence. As mentioned, it is a rare instance when I use a Valence-selected image. I capitalize on Roon’s feature to substitute my own photos.

But as u can see from my examples, I have added multiple images of the same artist to most albums. I simply create a “new” artist but give it the name of an already existing artist. All Beatle albums share the same featured-image artist page and avatar. But the albums also have several other primary artists also titled “The Beatles”, each with different images of the band. And of course each of the band members are also listed as primary artists with their own image.

The problem I continue to experience occurs regardless of whether the music is in my local library or streamed.

Please let me know I’ve addressed your question, or there are others. Maybe we should consider talking by phone to make the process more productive.

Thanks, Benjamin. I look forward to hearing from you.

Bruce

Hi Ben,

I want to make sure I was clear. Issues with the Chromecast gallery scroll that I have documented in this thread apply equally to albums in my local library AND to Tidal albums added to my roon library. In the screen shots I have provided, the Muddy Waters example is in my local library. Others are Tidal downloads added to my Roon library.

Pls acknowledge receipt, and if you could pls advise when I should expect this to be addressed by your developers. I have been extremely patient.

Thank you

Bruce