CD Cover skins fall over on some jpegs

[wwwombat]

Whilst I like the look of the Old-Style "strip" jukeboxes my son prefers a more visual approach... i.e. the album cover approach. Having a wide-screen (16:10) we decided to utilise the cd6-1-ws.skn

However Wincab will fail when attempting to display pages with a supposedly "corrupt" jpeg on it (I manage to quickly see which picture isn't being displayed and then remove it so the default image is used instead). Logging did not appear to trap or identify the error.

Now, I can't see any difference between these ones in error and the ones that work... they display all right in Windows/ThumbsPlus/Internet Explorer and I can't see how they differ from the majority (I've resourced some new ones from cdnow but even one of theirs (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) caused a similar failure.

If I can I'll attach a folder.jpg here (it's the Outkast one) that caused Wincab to fall over in case someone (or Chris) wants to have a look at it.

[Chris]

WinCab definately doesn't like that one, although I can't see what makes it different from any other.  I'll throw some tools at it and see if I can figure it out.

--Chris

[wwwombat]

Yeh, got me stumped too. I'm not sure if it's gonna help but I have stored away a few other jpegs that also cause it to fail in the same fashion. If you want 'em let me know.

Until then I just flip through the pages, noting where it falls over, and replacing as necessary  (come to think of it, this is probably the reason my post of ages ago where I said no skins but default worked for me.... it wasn't all skins failing, just the ones that depicted album covers ... when I reverted to the standard "strip" skin or used a different test bed of music (with "correct" jpegs) then all was okay!)

[Chris]

Until then I just flip through the pages, noting where it falls over, and replacing as necessary  (come to think of it, this is probably the reason my post of ages ago where I said no skins but default worked for me.... it wasn't all skins failing, just the ones that depicted album covers ... when I reverted to the standard "strip" skin or used a different test bed of music (with "correct" jpegs) then all was okay!)

That would explain it.  I use a third-party jpeg loader... I'll look to see if I can find a different one.

[Space Fractal]

just a shoot:
- mightbe a bad header or such, caused it to crash by the jpgloader. it's is just like id3 tags, if they are bad tagged?

There exists jpg header fix software like below to checkout if it that, that is the problem:
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

[wwwombat]

Well... yes... I was thinking along those lines but have been unable to identify exactly what is "corrupt" about them, especially as all of my other applications, including the Internet Browser (whcih obviously displays the jpeg above), work.

Since Chris has now confirmed he uses a third-party JPEG loader, I suspect it has to do with the JFIF (which is what JPG really should be called) header and I can only assume that the failing ones do not have them (and the loader expects and when it doesn't find it, cacks itself).

Loading them into ThumbsPlus (which is what I use for mass displaying and alteration of images - other people probably use something like ACDSee or IrfanView) I basically just resave them and on the JPG option screen ensure that the Suppress JFIF Header box is NOT ticked and that seems to rebuild it successfully. These rebuilt "failing" covers will then happily display within Wincab.

The only problem is stepping through every jukebox page in the first place and identifying them quickly before the crash screen appears. I'm done now thankfully.

[Chris]

Loading them into ThumbsPlus (which is what I use for mass displaying and alteration of images - other people probably use something like ACDSee or IrfanView) I basically just resave them and on the JPG option screen ensure that the Suppress JFIF Header box is NOT ticked and that seems to rebuild it successfully. These rebuilt "failing" covers will then happily display within Wincab.

If you then take the JPEG that WinCab is happy with and re-save it with Suppress JFIF Header checked, does it fall over again?

[wwwombat]

Yep. Just saved one as this (Suppress JFIF Header box IS ticked) and it (Wincab) crashed when attempting to display that "page".

I'm happy now I know why it falls over and don't expect anything in Wincab to allow for it (unless you can find a third party jpeg loader than doesn't care about the non-existence JFIF header or can pass an error code back you can trap so you can choose to execute gracefully or, better yet, display meaningful text in place of the cover image detailing it is corrupt)

[Chris]

I don't know anything about JFIF headers; I'll have to do some research.

[Chris]

OK, this is "fixed" in the next version.  "Fixed" in this case means that WinCab still can't read the bad image but at least it displays the default album art in it's place rather than falling over, and if it's the default art itself that is bad it displays a black square.