ITunes 6.0.4 Lossless to MP3 Convert Bad ID3 Tag Bug (Intel Only?)

Hello all,
I usually rip my CDs to Apple Lossless, name it the way I want, include Album Artwork, then switch rip preference to MP3 (224kbps), highlight the lossless files and choose "Convert Selection to MP3" in the Advanced menu. I do this to save the time of having to rip things twice.
Up through 6.0.3 it created proper ID3 tags with the album artwork just fine, but upgrading to 6.0.4 (Intel - I haven't verified this with my G4 Powerbook running 6.0.4) I do my usual process, the information is in the iTunes window, matching the Lossless files, but as soon as I delete the items from iTunes (but not the files themselves) and drag the MP3 files back to iTunes, the tracks show up in iTunes without ANY of the ID3 info, but WITH the album artwork.
The name lists the filename in the Song Name field as if there weren't any ID3 info.
The reason this came up is I rip to one drive, but keep the MP3s on another drive.
Anyone else out there with this problem/can verify this problem?
Thanks!
John V
Intel iMac 20" Mac OS X (10.4.5) 2GB RAM 10.4.5

There have been a lot of recent posts about tags not being updated properly in iTunes, and I am starting to think that it's a bug.
In your case, you might want to consider using Max to rip and encode. You can configure the application to rip your CDs and encode to multiple formats at once, using any of the iTunes encoders plus about twenty others, including LAME MP3. The tag information will remain intact, and the output files can be directly added to your iTunes library if desired.
Also, you may want to try Max's file encoding function for Apple Lossless files you already have stored on your HDD. You can batch encode them to MP3, keeping the tags and album art.

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Converted the id3 tags of my entire library, now stuck with duplicates of everything. can i sort by id3 tag version or something to easily delete duplicates?

help!!!
i have about 6000 tracks that just became 12000

Hold down the SHIFT key and then select File > Display Exact Duplicates. This gives a list of all tracks where more than one track has essentially the same metadata, name, track no., artist, album, etc. Actually, if you know everything has been doubled then I guess you skip that step...
If the duplicates have been recently added into your library as a job lot then you can sort the list on the date added column, select a range of tracks with SHIFT-click and delete all the recent entries. Please check however that there really are two copies of each file before deciding whether to delete the files as well as the entries from the database - get it wrong and you could delete your entire library!
For more thoughts on this topic see this recent post.
tt2

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?

Can't change ID3 tags in iTunes 10?

Ever since the update to 9.2, iTunes seems to have lost the ability to convert ID3 tags.
Prior to 9.2 (and obviously, 10.x) I would be able to add mp3s to my library, select all of the newly added tracks, then Control click and change all of my ID3 tags to NONE to strip it of any extraneous info, wait for iTunes to rescan everything, and then I'd re-convert my ID3 tags to 2.3.
Since the update(s), it'll allow you to go through the motions, but the tracks don't actually rescan. I'll try to convert to NONE and nothing happens.
This is an important function for me because I use iTunes in conjunction with Serato for DJing and sometimes Serato has trouble reading a track if the ID3 tag is an older version.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Is this merely an oversight by Apple's iTunes team or is there a known reason why this function was removed?
p.s. -- I have always been under the impression that you cannot change an ID3 tag from say, 2.1 to 2.3, without first converting the ID3 tag to NONE first. If this is no longer the case, can someone please enlighten me?

A rare but maddening problem, probably limited to older MP3 files,
Mac/Windows MP3 files that do not play in iTunes but play in QuickTime
There is a problem with some mp3 files not playing in iTunes
because of the ID3 tag headers in the files. For Mac OS you
can fix these files by processing them with XLD (X Lossless Decoder),
a free download.
1. Select the Input MP3 files
2. Set the output format to MP3 Lame in the XLD preferences.
3. Unless you select a directory for output different from input,
the output file names will have a number added to the name.
The selected files are processed on my machine at about 30x or
about 2 minutes per hour of play time. I was unable to fix these
files using right click->Get Info in iTunes.
On my MacBook Pro , trying to run on of these problem MP3
files, locked up iTunes. Force Quit on iTunes was not enough
to get iTunes 10.1 to run again. I had to restart the machine.
I think this is the first time I have ever had to restart my
machine for a problem with an App. From my reading on the web,
I can see this problem has existed at least since iTunes 7.x
On Windows, you may be able to fix this problem using
MP3TagValidator.
No need to throw away those bad MP3 files!

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

Are anyone else's ID3 tags all jacked up after upgrading to iTunes 11?

I have a large library that I'm downright OCD in managing tag information. All are set at v2.4 and genres, album artist, groups, both track and cd #'s as well as album art have been MANUALLY scrubbed religiously upon import to ensure a manageable library. I've noticed in the past that iTunes does a fairly horrible job in actually changing the ID3 tag info of the AAC or MP3 file itself resulting in horrible tag info when using the files in another system (Chrysler's MyGig system, Microsoft's Sync system, etc.) but iTunes always listed the songs correctly, making my smart playlists, sort and playback very easy and clean. That is until I upgraded to iTunes 11. Apparently they've re-read all the file ID3 tag info as I now have MANY different genres listed and album artist info has disappeared as well as track listing info. Do I need to get an external tag editor and redo all the tag editing I had done previously to now clean this up or have they fixed iTunes to do a better job of actually editing the file info itself?

Get Info on the song within iTunes is how I know the comment field is empty.
I don't have Match or iCloud enabled.
All other tag info is there and left untouched, only the comment field is blank. Tried removing and re-adding the tracks multiple times, but that didn't help.
Reason this annoys me is that I add information to my comment field such as additional genre/style information, band origin or location, related artists, etc. Very helpful stuff for smart playlists.
I can try Stephen Spark's suggestion to convert my ID3 tag version, but I've never, ever had to do that before, so, if iTunes 11 is suddenly only reliably reads one correctly it seems to be a bug with iTunes.

[SOLVED] ID3 tags not registering on MP3 Player

I just got a new MP3 player, and some of the ID3 tags that I've set on my music don't register. I have some other songs that were set on a Windows computer; these show up perfectly find. Every tag editor I've ever used has this problem.
What is a way to convert the ID3 tags into a format that my mp3 player (a coby MP826-8G) will be able to understand?
EDIT: Duh, I was using id3v2 instead of id3v1. Apparently most hardware music players don't read id3v2 yet.
Last edited by ProfessorProcrastinator (2014-05-17 23:54:20)

indeed, the tracks do have both v1.x and v2.x tags. Obviously, iTunes only accepts v1.1 tags. v2.x tags or mp3, who have both tags attached, will not be displayed in iTunes.
I have deleted the v2.x from the problem mp3-files using the "mp3tag" - tool. After re-importing the files into iTunes,
everything was fine.
Thanks,
Frankya

ITunes 10 and ID3 tags

Hey folks,
I occasionally export my .aac files to .mp3 and convert their ID3 tags to version 2.4 (which is being used by the MP3-CD-player in my car). Or should I say, I used to do this? Where the heck is this functionality in iTunes 10?? Did anyone find it? If not, Apple, why did you drop it?? It's a useful feature!
Looking forward to your replies...

This is missing from the Advanced menu but if you select a track or group of tracks, you can find it in the contextual (right-click) menu.

ITunes won't read ID3 tags that Windows sees

I recently switched my library over from a Mac laptop to a PC desktop. I have about 70 GB of perfectly organized music accumulated over years and years.
In the process, after I loaded some songs into iTunes (using the Keep My iTunes Folder Organized and all that stuff), I noticed that about 10 GB of music were without titles, artists, or album info, and just displayed the name of the MP3 file (so like instead of displaying 15 Step by Radiohead from In Rainbows, Track 1 it displayed "01 15 Step" in the Title column only).
The problem is that when I navigate to these songs in Windows Explorer, not only do I see all of the correct ID3 information, I see the extras like Album Art have loaded perfectly as well. I can play these songs in Windows Media Player and the ID3 info is perfect.
Does anyone know why iTunes won't read these ID3 tags or how to get iTunes to read them?

I am also having the same problem with about 200 of my MP3s. The tag info shows up perfectly using QuickLook on Leopard, but in iTunes I can't see any of the info. I have tried converting the ID3 tag version, revesing the unicode....nothing.
Have you had any luck?

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.

ID3 tags and itunes refusing to add music to library

As my music collection is growing, I decided to organize it a bit more and fill in the different ID3 tags in windows.
I have emptied my itunes library before I did all this, and after changing the ID3 tags I added the different albums back to itunes.
However, for some reason itunes does not want to import several albums anymore, while they do play in windows media player. Furthermore, itunes refuses in many cases to make use of the new ID3 tags I made. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling itunes, itunes seems to remember my settings and the ID3 tags the different MP3s had before.
Anyone a clue what is happening here? Has it someting to do with the new version of itunes, or is it something else?
ciao, Gregorius

Hey, first of all, thanks for your help, but I'm still in problems.
I have noticed that itunes imports the music files before I alter the ID3 tags (from backup files). However, as soon as I try to add the same file to my itunes library after I have edited the ID3 file (via windows itself), itunes does not add the file to its library anymore. This is happening to a considerable amount of my music. When I try to play the same files in windows mediaplayer, they play without a problem, so I guess the problem is with itunes.
Somebody can please help me out, because I like to be in control of my music, and not itunes,
adios Gregorius

Problems with ID3 Tags in iTunes - Desperate need of assistance!

Hello all...
Desperately need some help. I just spent a very (very) long time going through my entire music collection making sure all album art is present and all tags are corrected to my preferences. Now I want to back up the entire drive (F: drive, I keep my music on a separate drive) to a new hard drive (H: drive). However, in the process I've noticed that not all the changes that I made to the tags have actually saved to the tags themselves, even though they continue to display correctly in iTunes. If I load them into another application or reload them into iTunes from the new drive, not all the tag changes I made in iTunes are showing up. It seems iTunes is perhaps storing this tag info in some kind of internal database? To be specific I am not talking about meta-data like ratings and number of times played. I'm talking about artist, genre, etc.
So my question is this: is there some way to force iTunes to save the data that is currently displayed in iTunes to the ID3 tags?
I've also been disappointed to find out that when adding album artwork, iTunes does not actually save the artwork to the ID3 tags as I assumed. Any way I can force iTunes to do that?
Lastly, if neither of the above are possible, is there an easy way to backup the iTunes database so that all my tags and artwork are present once I remove the current drive and re-load my collection into iTunes from the new drive? Will the change of path prevent me from being able to backup the database?

Hi Ed, thanks for responding so quickly. Yes, they are mp3 files, and yes, I had assumed what you told me, that changes made in iTunes would be made to the mp3 files. I also thought it could have something to do with read only, so I made sure that the files were not read only. But yes, strangely enough, even though the tags show up properly in iTunes, they do not show up properly in other players, and don't show up properly in iTunes if I remove the album, copy the album to the second drive, and load it back into iTunes (only for a portion of the files, but with the size of my collection this would still be time consuming to fix). I don't understand it either, but from research I have done online, it may have something to do with an iTunes glitch relating to the ID3 tag version.
Regardless of how it is supposed to work or what the explanation is, the situation now stands that my tags display perfectly in iTunes but are not all saved to the files perfectly. So I am hoping there is some way I can force iTunes to save the current state of tag info to the files!
About the 2 drives, it's simple. Right now my collection is on F:, and loaded into iTunes, but I want to get rid of that drive as it is IDE and too small, and store my collection on H: instead. I'm just really worried that after moving my collection and reloading into iTunes I will need to re-tag and re-load album artwork all over again. Any tips?

ITunes not reading ID3 tags correctly

I have an album of mp3s, all correctly ID3 tagged (WinAMP and Windows Media Player read them fine), and when I try to add it into my iTunes library, it only add it as the filename. It does not read the artist, album, or track name from the tag.
It is strange that it is able to read some of the id3 tags but not all.
iTunes 6.0.4 Windows XP Pro

Something else on your system is probably changing the tag outside of itunes. For instance, WMP is set to get album info from the internet.
iTunes isn't constantly scanning your library for any little tag change (a good thing, otherwise it would use 100% CPU all the time). When you go to play it or get Info, it DOES read the tag info.
Then again, I might not understand your itunes preferences settings. I have mine set for itunes not to organize my files and not add them to the itunes library.

Itunes does not read id3 tags and its a problem

Ok I have 60 gig of music and all of it is labeled correctly in id3 tags. But when i add them all to itunes some of the songs are blank with no information at all but if i go into "show in explorer" the information in the id3 tags instantly pops up. I'v searched google and found nothing so i hope someone can tell me a fix or another program to use that will organise my music like itunes does and also can put music on my ipod. So please help me with the problem.
Thanks

It doesn't work. I'v already tried that. I'v even tried converting the id3 tags and then removing them from the libray and adding them again. Still nothing. It might help if someone could tell me where itunes gets it information for its tags when you add music to its libray seeing as it doesn't use id3 tags for the information like any smart program does.

Converting from Apple Lossless to MP3: loss of quality?

Hi,
I have made the "mistake" of importing dozens and dozens of CD's using the Apple Lossless encoder. Nothing bad about the encoder, on the contrary. But my iPod is now full.
Is there a way I can convert all these tracks to MP3? Will there be a loss of quality from the re-conversion beside the one inherent to MP3? (since we are not starting from the original CD) And will I have to re-create my playlists?
Mmmhhh... doesn't sound too good, right?
Xavier.

Go to Preferences in iTunes. Then go to advanced and importing. In importing change the import using to MP3 encoder.
Quit out of this menu. On the top tool bar you have Advanced and under here you have convert option. If you select the songs that you want to convert and use this convert option they will go to MP3s

ITunes 6.0.4 Lossless to MP3 Convert Bad ID3 Tag Bug (Intel Only?)

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