Convert ID3 Tags

I've got a problem with ID3 tags. As far as i've been using iPod there was no such problem, but now my iPod is broken and i'm using nokia e50 smartpohone instead. The phone doesn't support ID3v2.4 so I had to downgrade all my tags to v2.3
But in some cases (later i've found those "cases" were encoded with iTunes) no conversion is possible.
my question is: how to enable the "Convert ID3 Tags" for iTunes encoded files? or if it's impossible what should I do to convert tags without using iTunes
Windows XP Pro

If you're up to it, the following should work.
Download and install foobar2000 if you don't already use it. Add the unprotected AAC files to the main playlist window. Select them all, right-click, and choose Tagging > Rewrite File Tags.
Note: At this point, you may need to remove the same files from your iTunes library and add them back again if you will be transferring the files directly from iTunes to your phone. Otherwise, moving the files from their default location to your phone should work just fine.

Similar Messages

"Converting ID3 Tags" Option disappeared? iTunes 8.0.2

Hey everyone!
I'm right now struggling to get my iPod to work again, and I have so many problems, but I think converting ID3 tags would help.
But then the option of "Converting ID3 tags" seemed to have disappeared.
It's not in the Advanced tab, nor is it in the right-click menu.
I need help asap, since my iPod is already acting crazy by not being able to download all of my files in once sync.
Thanks a bunch guys!

It's still there. (iTunes 8.0.2)
In the right-click option menue.
Just select the song(s) in iTunes library view.

Question about "Convert ID3 Tags" command

I just used "Convert ID3 Tag" to convert all the songs in a library to ID3v2.4. When it was done, abotu half the album art had been killed. I have a backup, so nothing is lost, but I did not expect this to happen. My questions: (1) Is this expected behavior or a bug?, and (2) Any ideas why some album art survived and some did not?

Thank you! I actually managed to figure it out myself before you replied.
For anyone else out there who might be interested:
Change the import settings in iTunes > Preferences > General, to Apple Lossless Encoder. Then you can select the files/albums you want to convert, and click on the Advanced menu while holding down the Options/Alt-key, and click "Create Apple Lossless Version". I found that it doesn't actually convert the existing WAV-files, but creates an Apple Lossless copy of every single file, so I had to spend some time weeding out the WAV-files afterwards. This is a one-time effort, though, as every CD will be imported as Apple Lossless from now on.
Better still, solved my problem with the album artwork!

Convert ID3 Tags Grayed Out

Seems to be confined to CDs that I import using Gracenote and convert to Apple Lossless. Very frustrating as other software I use needs ID3 tags and this porcess just does not seem to preserve tham properly. I think "Convert ID3 tags" would fix this but it does not seem to be an option.
Can any other software do this conversion?
G4 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.4.6) Latest iTunes etc...

Yes, you can right-click on a file or files in your iTunes library or playlist or press Apple+i, and then go to the Info tab to edit the metadata.

Where's The Convert ID3 Tag option in iTunes 11?

What happened to the convert ID3 tag option in iTunes 11? It no longer appears when I right-click on a song.
Because iTunes still saves the ID3 tags in imported MP3's as v2.2, I have to convert the tags to v2.3 so that the MP3 information is recognized by my car radio.

Just to clarify for anyone else still having troubles.
Convert ID3 Tags... is still in iTunes 11, but it only shows up when you right-click on audio tracks while in Song or List View.
To recap:
You MUST be in List or Song View.
You can NOT be in Grid, Artist List, or Album View.
Also, please remember that ID3 Tags are only for MP3/MPEG audio files, and NOT MP4/AAC/Apple Lossless audio files.
Hope this helps.
Original Thread: Where's The Convert ID3 Tag option in iTunes 11?

Converting ID3 tags: v2 to v1 then back to v2?

I converted a lot of my ID3 tags to ver. 1 so they would display properly on my CD player in the car. Can these be set back to ver. 2 again with losing anything. Please don't tell me I have to reimport the CD's again.....

If the version 1.x tags shortened any of the data fields stored in the original files, then that information will still be gone when you convert your tags back to version 2.x (2.3 recommended).
Unfortunately, iTunes isn't a player that encodes MP3s with both version 1.x and 2.x tags (at the same time), so it's best in a situation like this to make copies of the MP3 files you want to edit, and revert back to your original files after burning MP3 CDs, etc.
In the worst case, you shouldn't need to reimport your CDs; you may just have to add some missing information back into your tags once they're converted back to version 2.x.

Converting ID3 tags on iTunes/Folder problems

I just go my nano and am setting up the music files I've been collecting over the years, some of which don't have ID3 tags.
It seems when I load my libray it automatically converts the files, but it drops them into their own folder (artist, album name etc).
I would rather keep all my music files in the one root directory for easier access. Can anyone tell how I can do that through iTunes?
I've gone to the Preferences --> Advanced page and set up my iTunes folder and checked the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" box.
But when I add the files on the library, it sets up these folders I don't want.
Thanks

] I would rather keep all my music files in the one root directory
Disable "Keep iTunes Music folder Organized" & "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to Library" in iTunes Preferences, Advanced tab. Future files added to the library will stay right where they came from. The setting for "Music folder location" will only apply to new imports from CD and music purchases through the store. Setting this value to an existing folder of music will not tell iTunes to "discover" the music that already lives there.
iTunes relies exclusively on ID3 tags. If your files don't include tags, then you need to get a 3rd party tag utility like "Tag & Renamer" or "ID3-TagIt" and get those V2.3 tags loaded into all your files. Those utilities can even generate the tags based on the folder names containing the files.

ID3 tags won't convert!

I just learned that you can convert ID3 tags to Unicode right in iTunes. I used to use Unicode Rewriter, but now I can't convert them in either - it just stays the same! I don't know what's different in my computer now, but I did a complete system restore from my recovery partition since then! Please help! Thanks in advance.

version 7.5
and yes, I did verify/repair permissions with the utility disc.
Should I not have?

My iTunes library and metadata/ID3 tags issue

Since 2010, iTunes is the only media player I use to play music. My library consists of music purchased from the iTunes Store, CD rips and stuff many artists these days release as freebies on the internet to promote a new album. Also, M4A and MP3 are the only formats I use so far.
Since iTunes, I really got into editing my library's metadata tags by hand, in order to create a custom archive which serves my preferences best. I should mention that besides iTunes being the only software I use to play my music library, it's also the only software I use to edit their metadata. Also, before iTunes – when my library was on different media players – I never bothered with editing them.
A few days ago, I found how a lot of people in forums complain about the way iTunes edits and stores metadata. So, I experimented and moved a few of my songs to other media players after editing their tags within iTunes. And indeed the tags and/or artwork were often displayed messed up and/or incorrect, some times partially and some times completely.
Some people were referring to the version of the ID3 tags being the issue, while others suggested using the "convert ID3 tags" feature. I myself am a little bit confused. "Converting the ID3 tags" wasn't available for my M4A files and once I performed it for my MP3's I didn't know which setting I should apply or what version to choose. I chose one version randomly but I'm not sure what happened.
My goal is to make my music library able to play and display my custom metadata on the majority of the popular media players. I hope that firstly this is possible and that secondly it won't be a solution which requires me going through every single song individually.
I really hope that all those years work on my library wasn't for nothing.
I'm using a MacBook running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and my iTunes version is 10.7
While my music library is more important that my iTunes version, I do like iTunes 10 more than 11.
I apologize for any grammar mistakes, since English is not my first language. Thank you all for your time and any suggestion is welcome.

itsjamesd wrote:
Hello turingtest2 and thank you for your reply.
In response to "a possible cause of problems is multiple embedded tags", what exactly does that mean and how can I avoid doing it in the future?
Anything ripped with iTunes should get a single tag. If multiple tags in some of your older mp3 rips are the cause of the problems when you try to access the files elsewhere then you should apply the suggested remedy selectively, not to the whole library indiscriminately. Once fixed you shouldn't have the problem again unless you use different ripping software. If so check the options to ensure you generate a single ID3v2.3 tag. Downloads from elsewhere are pot luck.
If I use Convert ID3 Tags>None before converting to v2.3 as you suggested, how many times is "several times" and why do I have to do it more than once? Also, what are your thoughts on 'v2.3 vs. v2.4'?
Several is at least two, but more could be needed if a file has both v1 and v2 tags in multiple languages. If there are two tags, the first conversion to none should remove the first one, and the second conversion the second. Experiment, And stick to v2.3.
In response to "the process removes any embedded art but otherwise preserves the data that iTunes knows". All fields excluding cover art remain the same? Does that mean that I will have to start from scratch and apply new cover art individually for each album? That would be too time consuming given the fact that I embed custom art.
Yes, everything but artwork is held in the iTunes database and is restored with the final Convert ID3 Tags... v2.3. Use Doug's scripts SaveAlbumArtJpeg before you start and RestoreArtworkFromAlbumFolder afterwards to save and the restore your existing artwork.
Also, what happens with my M4A files' metadata? ID3 tags are only used for MP3's, right?
Yes, m4a/aac files have a different tag mechanism. Multiple ID3 tags is just one possible issue that you might have. You said:
So, I experimented and moved a few of my songs to other media players after editing their tags within iTunes. And indeed the tags and/or artwork were often displayed messed up and/or incorrect, some times partially and some times completely.
It might be worth going into some more detail about exactly what differences you noticed. iTunes can automatically associate (instead of embedding) artwork when it can match the album in the store which could be why some tracks didn't get artwork.
tt2

Itunes, ID3 tags, & hard drive corruption

My wife is having a strange problem with her iMac, and it’s got me a bit mystified. I’m hoping someone here can shed some light on what might be going on. I apologize in advance for the long post.
The problem is that when she plays some songs in iTunes, and entirely different (wrong) song plays instead. Most songs play fine, but some just play entirely different songs (or sections of a song or podcast). All of the tracks are MP3 (either 192 kbps or 256 kbps) and almost all of them were encoded using Windows Media Player on an XP machine. Initially, I copied the music over from an NTFS drive to a newly formatted (Mac OS/HFS+) drive on the Mac, then I ran iTunes and created the library. At that point, everything seemed fine. All the meta data (song title, album title, artist, album artist, genre, album art) showed up in iTunes, and everything played correctly.
Now we’re getting this weird behavior where we play some songs and get the wrong music. At first I thought the iTunes library files (ITL and/or XML) had been corrupted, but it seems on closer inspection that the entire hard drive has been corrupted. When I look at the files on Mac hard drive via the Finder, all seems ok – the directory structure is intact, the file names and sizes are all correct, and a Get Info on any MP3 file shows that the ID3 data is all there and seems accurate. This is true even for the songs that play wrong, but if I play one of those songs using the little mini player in the Get Info dialog, the wrong song plays (the same wrong song as in iTunes). So now I’m getting the behavior straight off the drive, with iTunes closed and the iTunes library completely out of the equation.
Some other interesting clues/evidence:
* This has happened before. When her first hard drive got corrupted (in the same way), I was mystified but chalked it up as a bad hard drive and got her a new one. Then we started over with a clean HFS+ formatted drive and clean music files and built a new iTunes library. And now the same thing has happened again. So I don’t think it’s just a bad hard drive.
* It seems to be progressive. That is, everything was fine in the beginning, but over time more and more files get messed up. We know this because we have a backup that’s about a month old on which we can locate files that are fine (on the backup) but that are messed up on her connected day-to-day drive. So it seems like some activity on the drive is causing problems that are growing over time.
* There is some weird meta data (ID3) behavior. I copied a few hundred MP3 files from the Mac drive back to the PC (over our home network) and looked at them in the Windows Explorer. The first thing I saw was that the same (wrong) music played for the bad tracks as had on the Mac. And I also saw that a lot of ID3 tags were not showing on the Windows side. Lots of tracks have no ID3 data (album, artist, genre, etc. is missing) when I look at them on the PC. There are many albums where tags show up correctly for some of the tracks but not for others. In fact, the number of files where the ID3 tags aren’t visible on the PC far exceeds the number of songs that play incorrectly on the Mac. When I look back on the Mac at the songs that have no ID3 data on the PC and do a Get Info, I see the ID3 data.
* Often, though I can’t say always for sure, the wrong music that plays on the Mac is stuff that has been recently added. Either podcasts or music that my wife has added since the initial library was established.
My best guess (though still full of holes):
Something is confusing the Mac OS into writing on top of occupied space on the hard drive or into mapping files incorrectly in the drive’s allocation table, and chaos results. The Mac doesn’t think anything is wrong, and it shows everything as being clean in the Finder. So I started thinking about the kind of reads & writes my wife is doing on that drive. She rips new CDs to add to the library, she downloads new Podcasts and deletes old ones, and she changes ID3 tags.
I’m focusing on the changing ID3 tag activity. My wife doesn’t like the way I tag genre. I like big broad categories, an she likes smaller, more specific categories. So she has gone through the initial library of 42K+ songs and changed the genre on thousands of songs. She’s change some from Pop to Power Pop or from Pop to Indie Pop or from Rock to Indie Rock, etc. Both WMP (where the tags were created) and iTunes support ID3v2.3, and so these two programs ought to be able to change tags in a totally interchangeable and safe way. But what if iTunes writes its new genre tags in a way that’s slightly different from WMP? Could iTunes be writing to memory/disk locations that are outside the boundaries of the file and thus creating some kind of buffer overrun?
It really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it does tie back to the evidence that this has something to do with meta data, gets worse over time, happened on more than one disk, and seems to be a file allocation table issue.
Even if I get to the bottom of this, I think my wife’s HD is toast for sure. Here’s what I think I will do: I’ll reformat the drive, re-copy the music over from the PC, and build a new iTunes library. Then, first thing, I’ll open iTunes, select all the songs in the new library, and run “Convert ID3 Tags” to ID3v2.4. If that works and everything behaves correctly, I’ll try to change some genre tags and test the results. The problem is that the library is so large that problems can go undetected for a long time, so maybe I should do this first with a small subset of the music as a trial run.
The thing I want to avoid is having to do this (ever) again, so I’d feel more comfortable if I understood the bug/problem before just following this guess (which feels like a roll of the dice). If anyone has seem similar behavior or has heard of any IDS incompatibilities between WMP 11 and iTunes 7, I’d love to hear about it. Any help is appreciated.
Jim

Wow, that was a long and detailed post. I haven't the energy to reply in equal fervor, but I will just say that lately these boards have been peppered with posts from people whose MP3s are being eaten alive by iTunes. What I don't get is why you suspect the hard drive is at fault. Unless the rest of the system is caving in, I don't think there's any reason to suspect a failing drive. Check the S.M.A.R.T. status in Disk Utility if you haven't already, and perform whatever maintenance you believe is in order.
For the most reliable ID3 tag editing, I'd certainly recommend using foobar2000 on a Windows PC (or a Mac with Windows installed) or MP3Tag. I would definitely, at least for the time being, not put your huge music collection at risk by doing any further editing of the tags in iTunes.

MP3 song information not retained after iTunes 7.0 - ID3 tags at fault?

I'm having some strange problems with track information in iTunes. I first noticed it when I tried to copy some mp3's from my Mac to my mobile phone: certain tracks did not retain the song information, like artist, album etc., while others did.
A similar problem has been discussed in this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3698498
However, my problem seems to be a little bit more specific.
If I look at the music in my library in iTunes, all the track information is there. However, for MP3's encoded after 16th October last year, the "Imported With" field, using Get Info, is shown as "Unknown". Before this date, it is shown as "iTunes v7.0". For all MP3's the ID3 version is v2.2.
I believe that I must have upgraded to iTunes 7.0.1 around this time, since I have a number of Apple Lossless audio files which have also been imported and don't show this problem.
The main problem is with the file ID3 tag information (I think). If I select one of the problem tracks, find the original file, open it up in Quicktime and "Get Info", no track/album/artist/composer information is displayed. This is NOT true for 1) MP3's encoded before 16th October 2006 and 2) Apple Lossless files encoded at any time.
In other words, the track information for songs encoded with iTunes 7.0.1 and later is either encoded in a way that no other application can read, OR is only being stored in the iTunes playlist, NOT the file itself. I can see all the track information for these problem files on my iPod, but NOT my mobile phone (where I have to manually copy them over), even if I drag and drop them directly from iTunes.
I have this problem with Quicktime, my mobile phone music player and RealPlayer, so I'm assuming it's "system wide". It even occurs if I copy a problem file out of my music folder and onto the the Desktop, then manually add the track to iTunes: all the song information has disappeared.
I have all my music stored on an external hard disk - 160GB Freecom ToughDrive formatted as HFS+. Previously it was stored on an external disk formatted as FAT32, but copying the files over to the new disk didn't change the problem.
I considered using the "convert ID3 tags" option to see if it would make a difference, but both the good and bad files are listed as using v2.2. I also don't understand enough about them to feel confident converting them to something different - perhaps to v2.3 or v2.4 - just to see if it makes a difference.
Any information on how to "recover" the missing information (for anything other than iTunes) would be greatly appreciated!
MacBook Pro 17" 2.16 GHz 2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.9) iTunes 7.1.1

Okay, some more information as I try and track down the source of the problem.
By using an id3 tag editing program - ID3 Editor - I was able to view the song information for each track, even though all the other music players I had tried would not show it. If I then chose to modify and update the ID3 information, this would somehow modify the tags in such a way that they become readable in all other programs.
I tried using the "Convert ID3" tags option in iTunes, just on a whim, but without any success. Saving the song information in ID3 Editor doesn't change the version of the ID3 tag - it's still listed as v2.2 in iTunes - but it DOES make it readable in other programs. I also tried the various text conversion options, again without any success.
This looks to me like a bug in iTunes. While its possible for me to get around it, in an extremely long winded way, I still can't understand why iTunes would be writing ID3 information that other Apple programs cannot read.
Any suggestions? Should I be posting this question in a different forum perhaps?

How do i get all the tags i see in the iTunes library to be the ID3 tags?

I have a huge collection of mp3 in iTunes (the latest version), and they are all perfectly organized, but when i open those mp3 files in any other player i see old tags or no tags, because the id3 tags on the mp3 files are not the same as the ones i see on itunes. I've tried the "convert id3 tags" tool but it does not seem to help. How do i get the id3 tags to be the same as iTunes tags?

+HEy any reason why you pick version 2.3,+
itunes didn't work well with 3rd-party plugins and v2.4, and former forum regular Otto told me to use v2.3
+what is the difference between the different id3 tag versions..+
read up on it using google

ID3 Tags wiped out....help !!

Having imported my music library and converted ID3 tags to version 2.4, when I view the files in Windows Explorer all the tag information has been deleted. This problem stays even when files are converted to AAC format (also, rather than AAC the files show as M4A in Windows)
Please can anybody advise me as to what I need to do? I don't have an iPod just yet (will be purchasing the 80Gb version if I can be sure this problem can be solved).
Thanks In Advance
Andrew

Please install the old utility.. 5.6
I am not at all sure 6.2 or the new firmware on the TC if you upgraded are not the cause of the problem..
If you upgraded the TC downgrade again.. simply hold the option key when you select firmware.. 7.6.3 is full of bugs.. for now it is not worth the pain.
There is nothing wrong with your setup that I can see.. so I really suggest the older utility.. and then you can track the log of the TC.. no longer available in v6 utility. It is a toy.
How to load 5.6 into ML.
1. Download 5.6 for Lion.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
Click to open the dmg but do not attempt to install the pkg.. it won't work anyway.
2. Download and install unpkg.
http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/
Run unpkg on the desktop.. it is very simple.. drag the AirPortUtility56.pkg file over to unpkg.. and it will create a new directory of the same name on the desktop.. drill down.. applications utilities .. there lo and behold is Airport utility 5.6 .. drag it to your main utilities directory or just run it from current location.
You cannot uninstall 6.1 (now 6.2) so don't try.. and you cannot or should not run them both at the same time.. so just ignore the toyland version.. the plastic hammer.. and start using 5.6.. a real tool.
For screen shots see this post.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4668746?tstart=0

ID3 tags that look fine in iTunes are ungood on the iPod touch

I've got 60,000-plus MP3 tracks, collected over a decade, that were encoded by a variety of apps on Macs and PCs. The tracks look OK in iTunes on a Mac, but on an iPod touch, many songs are missing artwork, and others display the lyrics in garbled "mojibake" characters.
If the garbling occurred in all the ID3 tags (Name, Artist, Album, etc.) of a track instead of just the lyrics tag, I'd simply reverse the unicode; but as it's not, the solution has to force the misbehaving ID3 tags/artwork to display correctly. I've tried selecting the problem songs and reassigning the ID3 tag, but iTunes can't or won't overwrite the bad tags.
What does work as a solution is toggling the ID3 tags off and on by selecting the bad tracks in iTunes, right-clicking and choosing "Convert ID3 Tags...", then assigning "None" as the ID3 tag version. Next step is to select "Convert ID3 Tags..." again, this time choosing v2.3 or v2.4 as the ID3 version. That does the trick every time, stripping away corruption in the ID3 tags and forcing the tracks to accept artwork. However, it also truncates tags longer than 30 characters, and deletes existing lyrics and artwork. That makes for a lot of cleanup editing.
Is there a way to make iTunes assign ID3 v2.3 to tracks so as to overwrite the corrupt tags without going through the steps I've outlined? If not, is there an app out there with the mojo to fix these corrupt files?

If the song is in iTunes, and it is in a playlist that you auto-sync your Touch to, then the only things that might cause this problem are:
1- Is this new song un-checked in iTunes? If your Touch is set to sync only checked items that would prevent it from syncing. If that's the case, just enable the checkmark next to the new song and re-sync.
2- Is this playlist a smart playlist that is forced to be limited in size? If so, there is a bug with the 3.1.x OS such that smart playlists that are limited in size will have different contents (and sorted differently) when you compare the playlist on iTunes vs. on the Touch. The solution in this case is to disable Live Updating in the smart playlist definition, then the two versions of the playlist will agree.
3- Is the new song tagged as "Skip when Shuffling"? If so, and if your Touch is in shuffle mode, then the song count in the playlist will not include songs that are designated to be skipped.
See if any of those three things are what is going on. If not, then perhaps you need to reset or restore your Touch, but I doubt that.

ID3 Tags won't write to file

I recently received a disc from a friend, the disc had 16 songs on it, with no ID3 Tag info. I went through and added the missing info manually using the "Get Info" option from the file in iTunes & hit OK, but when I was done, the files look complete in iTunes, but the original file copied to the hard drive was unchanged. When I used iTunes 10, it used to rewrite the ID tags for the file on my hard drive with the changed info via iTunes. I double checked to make sure that I "Let iTunes Organize" my files and folders. I've looked through threads, googled, etc, and I have NO clue what to do, or even if I did something. Help!
On a side note, where is the "Power Search" in the iTunes Store? That seems to be a never ending question floating around the threads as well.

i'd normally think about access permissions as iTunes will fail silently if it can't write out the updated tag however the fact that Winamp can manage it suggests another problem.
It may be that the files have multiple tags. It used to be common to add both a v1.x & v2.x tag and in theory multiple tags can be used to support different languages. iTunes likes a single tag and may silently fail when it tries to write the data back to the track, thus doing nothing without reporting an error. Next time you access the file the library will update to reflect the true values in the tag. For what it's worth I believe it's recommended to use ID3v2.3 tags with iTunes.
MP3Validator may be all you need, but if not try using the iTunes option *Convert ID3 Tags... > None* say 3 times in a row, then *Convert ID3 Tags... > v2.3* to see if that creates a situation in which your edits can hold.
tt2

Convert ID3 Tags

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