iTunes 10 intermittantly writing corrupted ID3 tags to MP3s, etc

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iTunes 10 intermittantly writing corrupted ID3 tags to MP3s, etc

I'm using iTunes 10 64-bit on Windows 7.

I have my CD collection ripped to ALAC for archival (properly tagged, album art embedded). I then use iTunes to generate 190kbps MP3s for the iPod from the MP4 source files.

I'm noting that if I setup iTunes to do a batch convert, it is writing malformed ID3 tags to some of the resulting MP3s. iTunes won't display the tag data and MP3Tag reports bad id3 tags. If I then go back and re-convert that album, it seems to be OK. So I don't know if the amount of albums is problematic for iTunes or what. I didn't seem to have this issue in previous versions.

Also, when you convert ID3 tags in iTunes (say from 2.2 to 2.3), iTunes loses the embedded album art. VERY frustrating.

Windows 7, iTunes 10 for Windows 64-bit

Posted on Sep 19, 2010 11:21 AM

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Answer 1

ed2345

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Sep 19, 2010 12:09 PM in response to st964p62

st964p62 wrote:
I'm using iTunes 10 64-bit on Windows 7.

I then use iTunes to generate 190kbps MP3s for the iPod from the MP4 source files.

There is no need to do that batch convert. Instead, use the option to create AAC/128 to sync to the iPod. This option, which was new in iTunes 9.1, causes iTunes to create the smaller files on-the-fly as you sync the iPod, without changing the library copies (ALAC in your case).

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Answer 2

st964p62 Author

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Sep 19, 2010 1:02 PM in response to ed2345

I appreciate the suggestion (I was unaware of this feature and it does sound useful), however I use the MP3s I create on the iPod, on my laptop, in Windows Media Center, etc. So it's not just for the iPod. I don't want to use proprietary AAC files anyway. If iTunes supported FLAC I'd probably be using that instead of ALAC.

So, the issue still stands that iTunes 10 has an issue writing out ID3 tags when batch converting a lot of files, and it doesn't seem to save embedded album art when you convert ID3 tags in MP3s.

I'm not really looking for a work-around, I just want Apple to be aware of the issue and hopefully address it in a future release.

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Answer 3

ed2345

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62,492 points

Sep 19, 2010 1:59 PM in response to st964p62

If you will be doing a lot of batch conversions, you may wish to consider an industrial-strength conversion tool, such as dBpoweramp.

If you wish to give feedback to Apple, you can use the iTunes Feedback page.

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Answer 4

st964p62 Author

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Sep 19, 2010 2:01 PM in response to st964p62

Or Apple could fix a broken feature of their software that worked perfectly in previous versions but now has intermittent issues.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

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