mp3 tagging song info rename revert PROBLEM!!!

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Level 1

26 points

mp3 tagging song info rename revert PROBLEM!!!

Hi guys,

I can see that there are loads of people who have the same problem as me. That is... that itunes is a mp3 tagging nightmare. The problem is simple. after editing song information in itunes. sometime later, itunes will happily revert or change the info back to the original file name or only display a portion of it. Im sure you guys know what im talking bout. Someone suggested that u edit the ID3 tags with an external program. However, what i dont understand is that, my itunes last time had no problem whatsoever displaying the correctly edited song information. Suddenly, now it decides to randomly change whatever it feels like. Also, it is extremely troublesome to externally edit the song info. The whole point of itunes is to make it convenient and simple to use. What is the point of having itunes only to have to use another program to edit the info??? I have seen numerous other threads with the same problem as me. What frustrates me is that... why is Apple not doing anything bout it? and why arent they posting any solutions or answers as to why their fantastic software is behaving like a spoilt kid. Why are there no answers. It is NOT a small program. I have about 10000 songs and countless CDs. You cannot imagine what a headache it is to have spent months and months of carefully and meticulously editing the song info in itunes to perfection, only to start it up one day and find that 5000 songs are incorrectly named.
For Apple, this is just simply unacceptable.

Posted on Oct 26, 2005 6:22 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 27, 2005 1:54 PM in response to Derek Low

I totally agree!

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Answer 2

Otto42

Level 6

9,070 points

Oct 27, 2005 8:27 PM in response to Derek Low

The problem is simple. after editing song information in itunes. sometime later, itunes will happily revert or change the info back to the original file name or only display a portion of it. Im sure you guys know what im talking bout.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Fortunately, I also know that iTunes is not the source of your problem.

Open Windows Media Player. Go to Tools->Options. Click the Library tab. Turn off "Retrieve additional information from the internet". Also turn off "Rearrange music..." and "Rename music...".

The short answer here is that with these on, Windows Media Player feels that it has the right to change your tags and possibly move around any music in your system. It will do this in the background whenever WMP is running. The next time you play these changed songs in iTunes, the changes WMP made will get reread from the file and the display of that song in iTunes will change accordingly.

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Answer 3

Derek Low Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 27, 2005 11:08 PM in response to Derek Low

hey man, thanks for the reply. i will check out and test the WMP theory later today and let u know if this solves the problem. funny how WMP is screwing things up in the background. haha. IF this stops the tags from changing, then... u da man man! Thanks again. really appreciated.
=)

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Answer 4

Oct 28, 2005 12:07 AM in response to Otto42

Hornsnoggled! This answer just blew me away. Could it be that deviously simple? As I have designated iTunes my DEFAULT player/viewer I haven't really used WMP that much but you really can't remove it as there are still so many services (some of the video news services for example) that use it.

Anyways thanks for the info - I have changed and will see if it makes a difference. Cheers, crj

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Answer 5

Derek Low Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 28, 2005 8:35 AM in response to Derek Low

Hey guys, i got this from the WMP help file...

"Update my music files (WMA and MP3 files) by retrieving missing media information from the Internet
Specifies that the Player automatically obtain and update missing media information for music files that are added to or are in Media Library, if the information is available. By default, the music files in your My Music folder are added to Media Library.

The Player attempts to update any missing media information in your music files by sending data about the files to a database operated by WindowsMedia.com if this check box is selected and you perform any of the following actions:

Use Media Library for the first time after updating the Player

Add files to Media Library by searching your computer

Add files to monitored folders, such as My Music

For example, if you have music files that contain the artist name but not the album name, the Player adds the album name to the file after retrieving the information from the database.

The Player also adds album art to files and music folders in your My Music folder."

In light of this information, wouldnt it be fair to say that WMp will only rename the files if they are physically added by the user in WMP? If i am not using WMP to play my mp3s, then why would WMP still be tracking and altering the file names?

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Answer 6

Otto42

Level 6

9,070 points

Oct 28, 2005 9:48 AM in response to Derek Low

In light of this information, wouldnt it be fair to say that WMp will only rename the files if they are physically added by the user in WMP? If i am not using WMP to play my mp3s, then why would WMP still be tracking and altering the file names?

WMP has a "watch folders" feature that is setup to watch the "My Music" directory by default. Any music it finds in its watched folders will get added to the WMP Music Library, and it will consider them viable candidates for updating of tags and such.

The default directory for iTunes music is located as a subfolder of the My Music folder. So any music you put into iTunes and goes into here gets added to WMP's library eventually, as WMP works in the background whenever it's running (and it can be running for lots of things, including viewing a video in a web browser, etc).

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Answer 7

Derek Low Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 28, 2005 10:01 AM in response to Derek Low

I understand your point Otto. However, the problem i have is that... the actual folder where my mp3s are stored in is not my 'my music' folder. In fact it is on another drive. But i have unchecked all those options in WMP and now im jus waiting to see if itunes is changing the song info. I have also removed the 'my music' folder from the watch folders list. Ill wait and see how it goes. Thanks for your effort. It is much appreciated. Cheers =)

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Answer 8

Otto42

Level 6

9,070 points

Oct 28, 2005 11:10 AM in response to Derek Low

Well, like I said, WMP will consider anything that it has in it's library to be fair game to change, with those options turned on. So regardless of how they got into the WMP library, if they're in there, it'll change 'em. Might consider clearing the WMP library as well.

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Answer 9

Derek Low Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 28, 2005 1:39 PM in response to Derek Low

Hey guys,

I have just realised that itunes is only messing up the 'name' field for my mp3s. other fields such as album and artist are ok. only the names of the songs are reverting.

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Answer 10

Derek Low Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 30, 2005 4:24 PM in response to Derek Low

Ok here is my analysis after a few days of closely monitoring the activities of itunes: after turning off the option in WMP to edit my mp3s, i added some mp3s to itunes and edited their information. Then i checked everyday to see if the detials were changed. The conclusion i came to is that: itunes still randomly reverts the information of some songs to its filename format.

Since i have isolated the WMP option, i can only conlcude that it is not WMP that is affecting itunes but something else. Im not sure what at this point. Anyone with any info regarding this ultra annoying problem or has a solution shud come out and enlighten the rest of us. hehehe.

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Answer 11

Derek Low Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 30, 2005 4:32 PM in response to Derek Low

ok guys, the question is... why isnt itunes storing the changes made to the mp3 tag when u edit the information in itunes? that is the problem. When u edit the information in itunes such as title, artist, album, etc, etc. It should save this information to the mp3 tag. But for some reason it doesnt. and sometime later down the road, when u start up itunes, the information displayed for that mp3 track is what it was before u edited it. wonder why itunes does this.

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Answer 12

Otto42

Level 6

9,070 points

Oct 30, 2005 6:07 PM in response to Derek Low

why isnt itunes storing the changes made to the mp3 tag when u edit the information in itunes?

iTunes does change the ID3 tags.

One possible problem is that the ID3 tgas you have are corrupt in some way, and so iTunes isn't reading the ID3 tag you think it's reading. For MP3's, there's two places you can put a tag: At the beginning (ID3v2) or at the end (ID3v1). It could be reading the wrong tag, or if it's reverting to the filename, it could not be recognizing the tags in the file at all.

ID3 tags are subject to corruption because of poor tagging implementations, and iTunes is a bit picky about bad tags. Winamp is not as picky and is very good at totally messing up tags in many cases, for example.

The only real way I know to fix this is to remove the tags entirely and try again. Get a program called "TidyMP3" and use it on a couple of files. It will totally erase all tags, of any kind, from the MP3 file. Then use a known good tagger, like iTunes or Tag&Rename, to put correct tags in the file.

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Answer 13

Buegie

Level 6

13,331 points

Oct 30, 2005 7:33 PM in response to Otto42

Otto,

Do you have any good resources or preferred websites that explain and demystify the ID tags? All I know about them is that they exist. Other than doing a Google search and hunting through some chaff, where's the best place for an edu-em-cation for us slowpokes?

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Answer 14

Otto42

Level 6

9,070 points

Oct 31, 2005 12:21 AM in response to Buegie

http://www.id3.org

Note that despite the introduction page saying that ID3 tags can be used anywhere, in practice, ID3 tags are only used in MP3 files. Other formats use different tagging standards.

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