ID3 Tags Failed to Import?

Hi everyone.  I recently formatted my MacBook Pro and installed a fresh copy of Mavericks (10.9.5) and iTunes (11.4).  I had backed up my iTunes folder onto an external hard drive before formatting and after re-installing I moved the iTunes folder from the external HDD onto my desktop.  Instead of having iTunes look for that folder I decided to "re-create" a new iTunes library.  I had Finder search for my MP3s in that iTunes folder, then I dragged and dropped those files (9,581) onto the blank iTunes screen and it started to copy and analyze the files.  Great... I've done this method a few times before.
Today was different, however.  Now approximately 7,000 of the mp3s did not copy over all of the ID3 information.  The only thing that carried over was the "Name" field.  On top of that some have only the "Name" field but that has been overwritten to include a song number I am presuming in front of it.  So now instead of it showing "Name" it shows "01 Name" or "3-04 Name".  I can't remember the artists, year, comments, etc for 7K songs. 
Anyone know what happened and how to get the library fixed?
Thanks,
Keith

UPDATE:  I've also tried this on iTunes 12.0.1 and same thing. 
UPDATE #2:  I picked a random song out of my old iTunes library (the folder on my Desktop) and did CMD+I to Get Info.  In there I can see the song's information like artist, length, comments, etc.  I went into iTunes and created another new library, and tried dragging just this one song in.  The song copies over but again only the name and artwork.  I'm at a loss as I now have approximately 7K songs that cannot import in properly.  Can anyone help!?!?

Similar Messages

  • ITunes doesn't read ID3 tags properly on import

    hi all,
    today I've added ID3 tags to all my mp3 files, so that they will look better in iTunes and my iPod. I have added information for "title", "artist", "album" and "track #" in ID3v1 and ID3v2.3.
    Now, when I import these files to iTunes, the ID3 information is read only partly or not at all. This means, some tracks show all information, some only show title and artist, some do not show anything at all.
    I edited all the ID3 tags with the same software, which makes it even more mysterious. The software was implemented by myself in C#. To edit the ID3 tags, I used the library UltraID3Lib. I don't think that something is wrong with my software because the ID3 tags are displayed properly in Winamp without any problems.
    I have also already tried the option in iTunes to convert the ID3 tags, but this also only yields strange results: If I select "none" as ID3 version, iTunes obviously imports the information from the ID3v1 tags, but it deletes the ID3v2 tag at the same time, so that titles and albums are cut down to 30 characters. If I choose other options, nothing changes.
    Does anybody have an idea how to solve this problem? Or can someone maybe explain this "convert ID3 tag" option? It doesn't really make sense to me...
    Many thanks in advance!
    gehho.

    As far as I know (and it may not be very far), iTunes does use standard ID3 tags for most things. The XML file stores info on ratings, playlists, playcounts and other iTunes specific information for use by other applicaitons. iTunes itself doesn't use the XML file but rather the iTunes Library.itl file.
    It's possilble to do multiple file tag editing in iTunes for things like artist, album, year, etc. I would say, go with whatever works for you. It just seemed as if what you were doing wasn't working. Perhaps the other suggestion will solve you're problem.
    Best of luck.

  • ITunes 11 Changing ID3 Tags

    Ok, I've been using iTunes for years and like many I've found the new version, 11, to be frustrating.
    The main thing is ID3 Tags.
    These have always been customiseable. For someone OCD like me, being able to edit and customise ID3 tags is very important in keeping my iTunes "tidy". I don't want one album saying "Florence + The Machine" and another saying "Florence & The Machine". I want them both the same.
    But what I really want, more than anything else, is 100% control over what the ID3 tags say. On all the old versions of iTunes, I had this. Now, I don't.
    I've just listened to two albums by Dead Prez. They're stylised thus: 'dead prez'. So, it is that version which I've always had on my iTunes. However, after listening to one of the albums, iTunes decided to change the name back to 'Dead Prez'. This was nothing to do with me. Why has it changed?
    Worse, I've just listened to a song by David Gray, and I've now found it stored under U - for Unknown. It's not 'Unknown', because I've known for all the years that I've owned that file that the song was by David Gray. I haven't had to edit the information for years.
    Is this a bug?
    Is this a new feature of iTunes? Can I turn it off? If not, can Apple/ someone provide me with an explanation as to WHY this has changed?
    Cheers,
    Guy

    In iTunes go to Edit > Preferences > Store and turn off
    Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases
    Share details about your library with Apple
    On any iOS device go to Settings > Music and turn off
    Show All Music
    Close and reopen iTunes and/or reset the device and you should see your version of the metadata for each track rather than the original store data.
    tt2

  • ID3 Tags disappears when MP3 is copied

    Can anyone help me with this? This problem only recently started after I upgraded. I'm using iTunes 7.0.2 Mac and when I import a regular CD it finds the ID3 tag info and imports fine. However, when i copy the MP3 files to another computer (my computer at work) the song plays fine but all the tag info is gone. This never happened before. Isn't the tag info saved in the MP3 file? What should I do to fix this?

    I found a solution. Personally I think there's a bug with iTunes 7.0.2 (at least on my machine) whereby iTunes adds tag information to the library when ripping a CD but doesnt save it to the newly created mp3 file. So when you copy the mp3 file it shows up on another computer with no tag info.
    I tried different things but what worked was to go to the computer that ripped the CD and that showed the tag info and select the Advanced pull-down menu and "Convert ID3 tags". I chose version 2.3. I did that to all the mp3s and iTunes saved the tag info to the file because after doing that I can now see the tag info when the mp3 file is copied to another machine.
    I selected all the mp3s in my library and did the same thing just in case.
    Perhaps the next upgrade will fix this bug.
    MacBook Pro 15" intel Mac OS X (10.4.8)

  • ID3 tag information not showing up on imported files

    I've only had my iPod for a couple of days and I'm working right now on importing all my computer's mp3 files into iTunes, using "add folder to library." Most of the time it's going fine, but for some files the ID3 information will not show up for no apparent reason when it is definitely there (it shows up fine in Winamp etc)--sometimes it will even be only a few songs in a folder with the others working! I have no idea what to do, and when I search the forums all I can find is other people having the same problem but no answers. Someone help please?
    Dell Inspiron 1501   Windows XP  

    In iTunes, select all the songs.
    Go to menu Advanced -> Convert ID3 tags.
    Select ID3 tag version: V2.2.

  • Preserve ID3 tags in MP3/AIF files when importing to FCS

    I've got 7000 music files in a carefully groomed iTunes library, each track donated by a local musician for use in our local television productions. I need to move them out of this lame iTunes storage system and into Final Cut Server for use throughout our facility.
    When I import files, the ID3 tags are not preserved. I don't want to hand enter 7000 artist/album/track names all over again. That's madness.
    Working with AIFF files mostly, a few MP3s. Final Cut Server 1.5.2.
    Anyone got any tips?

    There is a solution that involves pruning Spotlight records of the said audio files. The only catch is that it requires Spotlight indexing to be on, which may not be desirable in an Xsan environment. Another approach is to use AtomicParsley (http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/) to retrieve the tags. Either way, you will need to generate XML files that Final Cut Server can read. I would recommend using Ruby and Jim Weirich's excellent Builder gem (http://github.com/jimweirich/builder).
    So, make a subscription for new audio assets, run a script that retrieves metadata from the original file and then write a setMd XML file to a Final Cut Server watch folder. There are a few things you will need to solve, such as retrieving the path of the original media. If coding is not your thing, you might consider Transmogrifier (http://transmogrifier.sourceforge.net/), which I've never tried, but does seem to solve many of these issues.
    Good luck.

  • Imported MP3s: ID3 tag character encoding recognition issues

    My ID3 tags are encoded in Windows Code Page 932, but iTunes have misinterpreted them as MacRoman encoded. How can I correct this? Fortunately, I also have the pre-import original files aside from the copies managed by iTunes, but I believe iTunes is already smart by not modifying the binary upon import.

    Hopefully, but I'm not too sure. If  one launches Notepad.exe in the Japanese edition of Windows 7, then chooses to save new text in "ANSI" encoding, it still saves the text file in Windows Code Page 932 (which is not ANSI per proper definition of ANSI).
    These ID3 tags were from MP3s that were sleeping in my external harddrive for years, which I finally decided to import into my local drive, now that I have terabytes of storage.

  • On import, lost many id3 tags

    Using an iPod and iTunes for the first time. Imported my music into iTunes (leaving the files where they are). Of the ~3600 songs, 744 have lost their id3 tags. iTunes knows the name, but not the artist, album, genre, track number.
    If I look directly at the file properties in Windows Explorer, or if I look at the files in Winamp, all that info exists.
    Please tell me I don't have to type that all in. Any easy way to fix?

    I have tried some programs for tag - repair/rename/etc, but none of them can read properly all info from mp3 file. Some of them find picture in file, but they have problem with loading it (pictures looks like bad modern art . Others find picture and ID3v1, but have problem with ID3v2...
    At last, I have tried something in iTunes: right-click on file with tag problem, „Convert ID3 tags...“, on dialog box check „ID3 tag version“ and after „OK“, everything is OK.

  • Missing songs / won't add or import files / corrupt id3 tags?

    Hey Folks,
    I can't seem to get some songs/files to add or import to itunes...
    My computer crashed while itunes was open. When I rebooted the itunes library was corrupted and all playlists and songs were missing.
    ... no problem...
    I'll just add the itunes folder right... Which is what I did.
    Problem is now a good 20% of the songs are missing. They are on the harddrive in the itunes music folder, but won't import or add to itunes.
    I suspect maybe it has something to do with corrupt ID3 tags?
    Anyone know the answer to this mystery?
    Thx

    I assume adding artwork is a tag-affecting change - but I can't
    add on this track - it just reverts to the black image.
    I take it the tags themselves are hidden. I see no direct
    editing options for them although I read than they can be
    set to different types - and there are utilities available to
    clean, fix, re-set, etc.
    Ok, now I see your edit - this isn't an mp3, it's .aiff.
    Message was edited by: Tom Meade1

  • ID3 tags won't save

    I've noticed that a few songs that I've imported have incorrect ID3 tags, so I go to "Get Info" to fix them. When I click OK, everything looks good, but as soon as I play the file it goes back to the original tag. I've tried changing the tag and sorting options and made everything the same, but nothing seems to work. Once I open the file in Winamp and edit the tag there, iTunes recognizes the new tag, but I am unable to directly edit AND save the tags through iTunes.
    For example:
    I try to change the tag from "Original artist name - original track title" to
    "Artist - Title"
    Clicking OK makes it look right, but as soon as I double click the song to play it, it goes right back to "Original artist name - original track title".
    This isn't the case with every file, though; some can be edited with no problems. I've made sure the non-working files have been converted to ID3v2.2. None of the files are stored in my iTunes Music folder, and none are DRM protected.

    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

  • Archiving cds and why do i need id3 tags

    here comes another one of those questions looking at which codec to use to store music.....i also have tag questions.....
    i'm about to (re-)rip my cd collection and looking at some info re codecs and id3 tags
    now.....i believe i understand the benefits of alac (lower file sizes, keeping id3 tags, lossless compression) v wav(no compression)
    however (and for some out there) if we just entertain the fact that wav may have some minute benefit for me depending on my questions and answers given.....and yes i know wav and alac will sound the same to the human ear - i accept that as a given of lossless compression ......
    points i'd like to outline:
    i am looking to rip my cds, firstly and mostly, for an archiving purpose!! purpose numero uno!!
    i could well want to re-create cds with these archived records in the future
    size of files is of no concern to me at all
    i'm using a mac nowadays
    i will convert most of these files, where needed, to use with a portable music player (i'm not bothered with having, say a wav file and then also converting and having an alac file, as crazy as that sounds)
    this is where i ask for info re the benefits of embedded tags that are found in alac:
    are these tags that important?
    where do they come into play in ripping and later converting music?
    are these uses just bells and whistles that have no benefit to my needs?
    if i rip cds to wav (or aiff), say, using itunes, will cd info and track listings be available on the downloading database (eg itunes) to name these wav files?
    if i then ensure these song files are kept under the album's folder, have i just done what tags do? surely not. that is all i have needed in the past.
    this is where i feel i may be really missing what id tags (can) do
    are tags more than just managing song files and where they belong and where they have come from?
    is it just a convenience of not personally managing your song files (as per previous paragraph)?
    (in the past i had ripped cds to mp3 codec. i think i used "cd rip" or something like that on my pc.
    my mp3 files were individually named and sorted and kept under album folders under artist name folders.
    apart form the very odd occasion all track and album info i needed was found on a database that was attached to the ripping software.
    i never had a problem managing/maintaining these files and folders.)
    i welcome some enlightenment on some of my questions above and other info that may be relevant
    and yes, i understand that music will sound the same as a wav file or alac file - but humour me re using wav and tell me why i need id3 tags
    i guess the crux of it is:
    why do i need id3 tags?
    does my managing of my song file in the album folder do what tags do?
    what problems/shortcomings/headaches may i encounter by not having those tags if i use wav as opposed to alac?
    what do i not know about these little buggers?
    what codec is best for my purpose of archiving and re creating of cds (for playing in cd players)
    thanks in advance for your input and any clarity that i may experience through this
    peter t
    excuse my long windedness (i have spent some time editing this entry)

    Crows2012 wrote:
    as mentioned earlier if i just have songs (wav) in album folders, when i import these albums into itunes, do you know if these will come up under AN album with their file names purely using my filename setup (but with no artwork)?
    Yes, iTunes will read the filename, such as "Track 1" or something else and display it. But nothing else. No Album or Artist.
    so the tracks will remain grouped as an album based on their initial folder and the albums and tracks as per file name?
    Crows2012 wrote:
    also, does aiff have limitations (apart from the full size of the file)?
    I'm not sure I understand what you mean. For all practical purposes AIFF and WAV are exactly the same thing. They're just file containers.
    i thought that i had read somewhere that aiff tags could run into some issues with its tags - ie may not always be transferred 100% accurately with certain players (or hardware maybe)
    Crows2012 wrote:
    and how do these codecs work re-creating an album for the purposes of playing in a cd player? - this is a crucial question for the purpose of my archiving/backup of CDs THEMSELVES
    That's actually going to depend on what burning software you use. Once you rip the tracks to whatever file container you choose (WAV/AIFF/ALAC) you'll never really exactly re-create the album. But for archiving purposes all three file containers will do what you want, which is to create a lossless archive. AIFF has the advantage of supporting embedded ID3, which ALAC has the additional advantage of the files also being about half the size of AIFF/WAV files.
    i was thinking that maybe wav was able to recreate an album (in effect duplicate one) if my cd was lost or damaged in the future. i was thinking this IF when ripping to wav everything is unchanged (unless there is other data on the original cd). and maybe only possible with wav. the purpose for this would be to play recreated cds on my cd player
    any idea on this one?
    (i havent looked too thoroughly on this angle but i'll keep googling on this one)
    much appreciate all info thus far
    peter t

  • 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

  • Question about id3 tags

    i had all of the fields of all my songs just how i liked them. i thought itunes had written everything i had edited into the id3 tags of all the songs. apparently, it didn't work.
    i am using another software called serato. i took the mp3's whose tags i edited in itunes and imported them into serato. i know this program is able to read all versions of tags, so i found a suggestion someone made to strip the id3 tags. this process called for selecting all the songs, converting the id3 tags to "none", then changing them back to a certain version (v2.3 or v2.4).
    after doing this, i take a look at my itunes library and about 80% of all my songs have their tags messed up. either the genre is back to what it was before i changed it a while ago, or (more annoyingly) the song titles are all truncated to a certain length.
    1. is there any way to undo this? or am i going to have to manually go back and re-edit all the fields?
    2. is there a better way of ensuring itunes is correctly changing the id3 tag fields? for example. if i edit the id3 tags on itunes on one profile on my mac, then take the same mp3 file and import it into itunes on another profile, the id3 tags seem to not have been changed at all.
    help anyone? this whole thing has got me really frustrated. thanks in advance.

    In Serato setup, check box Read iTunes Library. However this doesn't solve the problem, only creates yet another location for cleaning up....
    Having somewhat same issue: Converted all id3 from iTunes succesfully, but couldn't import files correct on other macbook in iTunes (same version)?!?!? Doesn't read id3...

  • 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?

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