"Radio Industry" ID3 Tagging on Soundbooth?

I'm hoping someone from Adobe can tell me if it's possible to include the ID3 tag info labeled "radio industry" in Cool Edit/Adobe Audition that's been around for years when saving files in Soundbooth CS4? As I'm sure you're aware, a huge number of radio professionals utilize the encoding on the "radio industry" tab to pass intro/queue information (as well as title/artist/times, etc) into one of several different on-air automation systems. (In particular for us, Simian).
If this important feature (to radio, at least) was not included in this release of the product, can it not be easily integrated into the metadata options in the near future? I must say, I'm surprised to see metadata formats for such a diverse and seemingly far-flung industries such as medical records (?), but not the very basic needs of the radio industry, which is so dependent on Adobe Audition. I would think that this one small feature would open up a huge potential sellable demographic of users for Soundbooth in the future who simply cannot use the product today. (And if I'm mistaken and that tagging is indeed available, please accept my apology and point me in the right direction!)
Thanks so much.

Only a few of the "Radio Industry" tags are applicable to existing ID3 tags. I think even when exporting to MP3 in Audition, only a subset of the RIFF/XMP/Radio tags are applied to ID3. Other file formats do offer better support for these tags. Are you exporting to MP3, MP2, or WAV?
I'll submit it as a feature request for Soundbooth, though. The primary metadata model in Soundbooth and the other Creative Suite applications is XMP which is pretty modular and allows for just about any chunk of metadata to be added. There are a few standard metadata specs out there and by default, a lot of the fields don't apply to all forms of media. Definitely watch for improvements to be made in this area in all Adobe applications as they're placing a pretty big stake on metadata and its potential for media.

Similar Messages

ID3 / ID4 Tags in Soundbooth CS4?

In a July 2007 post by "Durin", Quality Engineer - Adobe Audio Applications, as part of this thread about the absence of ID3 tags in Soundbooth,
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc457de/1
Durin wrote, "Now that we've begun development on Soundbooth CS4, incorporating metadata workflows is important."
Given his statement, I was expecting to find support of MP3 and MP4 tags in Soundbooth CS4. Unfortuntaly, it doesn't seem like it's there. If I edit an MP3 or MP4 file that has tags, all of the text data and album art is lost. I find it kind of amazing that Adobe wouldn't have indluded metadata support when editing files in Soundbooth CS4. Am I missing something or is it really not there?
BTW, I realize that Bridge includes a very minimal amount of meta data support (but no album art) and even then the few ID3/ID4 tags that Bridge does support are not retained if the file is edited in Soundbooth.
If I'm right about CS4 not supporting ID3 and ID4 tags, when will Adobe add full tagging support to its products? Surely Adobe can't have missed the launch of the iPod Touch?
I hope it's me and not Adobe who is the one missing something here. In this day and age, tagging and album art / chapter art support is essential.
I bought the CS4 Master Collection and you know the price of that! Now I have to use a $20 shareware application to replace the ID3/4 tags that Soundbooth CS4 destroys. It just doesn't seem right.
Comments?

In a July 2007 post by "Durin", Quality Engineer - Adobe Audio Applications, as part of this thread about the absence of ID3 tags in Soundbooth,
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc457de/1
Durin wrote, "Now that we've begun development on Soundbooth CS4, incorporating metadata workflows is important."
Given his statement, I was expecting to find support of MP3 and MP4 tags in Soundbooth CS4. Unfortuntaly, it doesn't seem like it's there. If I edit an MP3 or MP4 file that has tags, all of the text data and album art is lost. I find it kind of amazing that Adobe wouldn't have indluded metadata support when editing files in Soundbooth CS4. Am I missing something or is it really not there?
BTW, I realize that Bridge includes a very minimal amount of meta data support (but no album art) and even then the few ID3/ID4 tags that Bridge does support are not retained if the file is edited in Soundbooth.
If I'm right about CS4 not supporting ID3 and ID4 tags, when will Adobe add full tagging support to its products? Surely Adobe can't have missed the launch of the iPod Touch?
I hope it's me and not Adobe who is the one missing something here. In this day and age, tagging and album art / chapter art support is essential.
I bought the CS4 Master Collection and you know the price of that! Now I have to use a $20 shareware application to replace the ID3/4 tags that Soundbooth CS4 destroys. It just doesn't seem right.
Comments?

ID3 tags taking So long to write

I am hopign someone can help figure this one out. I'm using iTunes 11 on an iMac running Mt. Lion but had the same experience on Snow Leopard. I have a bunch of music files that are about 2-hours each in length - all DJ sets from a BBC Radio show. In order to keep them organized the way I want, I have added them to iTunes by creating new playlists based on years, each one with 50-70 tracks. I then select all of a playlist and edit a tag (Album and Album Artist specifically). I am putting the year into the Album Artist field so that I can then click "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and everything will be sorted by year on my drive. That may not be relevant but thought I would explain for some context. The strange thing is this: When I select 60 files and try to change the tags on anything prior to 2005, it takes forever to finish. I mean like 20 minutes or so. When I do the same thing on files dated more recently, the process is finished instantly. I thought maybe it has to do with the type/version of ID3 tag used on older files versus the newer ones but cannot seem to figure out which type iTunes 11 workes best with. Why would the same process take so long on certain files while being almost instant with others? I hope this makes sense.

Set the default startup disk.

ITunes ID3 tags handling for artwork

I have created MP3 versions of my band's artwork for inclusion in an online radio. I am running into some issues with ID3 tags.    The MP3s show the artwork and everything just fine on my Mac. However the artwork doesn't show up in the radio software (Centova) when the files are uploaded. Because of this, I've got a crash course in ID3 tags--at least the album artwork tags.
It turns out, in ID3 tags version 2, there are no less than 15 different ID3 tags reserved for artwork--meaning you can attach up to 15 separate pieces of artwork (in theory) to each MP3 file. Here are the tag reservations:
$00     Other
$01     32x32 pixels 'file icon' (PNG only)
$02     Other file icon
$03     Cover (front)
$04     Cover (back)
$05     Leaflet page
$06     Media (e.g. label side of CD)
$07     Lead artist/lead performer/soloist
$08     Artist/performer
$09     Conductor
$0A     Band/Orchestra
$0B     Composer
$0C     Lyricist/text writer
$0D     Recording Location
$0E     During recording
$0F     During performance
$10     Movie/video screen capture
$11     A bright coloured fish
$12     Illustration
$13     Band/artist logotype
$14     Publisher/Studio logotype
Yes, you read that right, there's a tag for "A bright colored fish". So here's the rub: I'm finding that iTunes defaults album artowrk to the first position (00), which has a certain logic to it. But, I'm finding that this radio software, and some other pro level software looks for cover art in the third tag (Cover Art) be default. This makes a number of problems. It means that I'm having to find a serious ID3 tag editor to change the iTunes artowork tag from "00-Other" to "03-Cover Art" in order for it to be properly displayed.
NOW THE QUESTION: Does iTunes have any sort of method to select which "type" of cover atwork tag you want to apply to the added artwork? Or am I at the mercy of iTunes' default designation and that's that?

Apple have this help, which I guess you will have seen:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1468
There is a very comprehensive discussion of the issue in this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8180252#8180252

Problem with track order (ID3 tags) when transfering from ZENcast Organizer = Vision:M 3

Hi there, I am using ZENcast Organizer V.2.00.4 and my Zen Vision:M's firmware version is V..6.0e
Okay, I have a time consuming problem with the way my podcasts are organized on my player. When i download my podcast from ZENcast Organizer everything is neatly organized. By that i mean that the tracks are positioned in the order in which they were released by the radioshow. Let me just give you a picture : [IMG]ttp://img530.imageshack.us/img530/4476/zencastbv4.jpg[/IMG]you can see that after the 27th comes the 28th and the 29th etc. That is also the way i would want the files to be played on my player, but unfortunately they are not.
Here is a pic of what the order looks like on my player after i have transfered some of the podcasts . Since there are no ID3 tags concerning track number, the player seems to sort the files alphabetically, which is a hassle for me as i have to search through my tracks each time I would like to listen to the following show.
The way that I have dealt with it until now is to download the tracks with ZENcast Organizer and then add the track number information with Media Monkey and then upload them to the player via Zencast Organizer. That is a lengthy and annoying process and since i have missed the show (due to my new work) for 4 month now, i have a lot of files that i must edit.
So I was just wondering if there is an easier method? I was thinking in the lines of a plugin for ZENcast Organizer that would add track number information? I wouldn't care if it numbers them 2 3 4 or 2 22 23 24 just as long as they come in the chronologically right order when i play them.

I did some testing and discovered that ZENcast Organizer indeed does know how to sort the files on my player so that they are played in the right order - under the transfer you just have to check the box which makes ZENcast Organizer convert the music (mp3) files into videofiles as shown in the picture: http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/439...ransferar5.jpg
This makes my player play them in the right order as shown here:
But i do not want player to be spending a huge amount of unnecessary power on showing a screen I am not going to be looking at.... my podcast is a radio show, there is nothing to LOOK at, literally.
Why on earth does ZENcast not change the filename when i choose to download the shows in their nati've mp3 form but only when I convert them to video?

Missing ID3 tags - Volume correction

Hi
Adobe Soundbooth CS5
I have a lot of mp3 files when ID3 tag contains different titles - Artist names - Album names.
If I use "Tasks" - "Volume Correction" to match all volume's.
After I have Saving all the MP3 files , the ID3 tags i missing both song titles - Artist names - Album names of all mp3 - why?

These are songs you imported from a CD?
When you insert the CD, does the info show up on the CD in iTunes?

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?

Creative Mediasource ID3 Tags - Edit more than one year at a ti

I use a 60gb Zen Xtra with Mediasource. I take pride in the ID3 tags of all my files especially those of my Jazz collection and my player is well organised. The only thing I have to ask is - is there any way of editing the year of, say, an entire album that was recorded in 959 for example all at the same time. It lets me do this for Artist, Album and Genre but not year. Is there any upgrade in software I can get or am I just missing something here?
Thanks in advance for your input,Matt

Shucks, I tried and you can't seem to do it. A curious oversight.
You can either use another copying program like which will let you do it, or simply get a mass tagger (but you will need to edit the tracks on the PC first, then copy). For some mass tagger recommendations look here in the Zen FAQ at Nomadness.net.

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

Bad bug with ID3 tags of different case for same artist

My itunes files and music library are on a different drive than my boot drive. It is an internal drive (always on) in my Mac Pro at /Volumes/Media1/iTunes with music library at /Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music. iTunes is setup to automatically keep it organized and copy files to the media folder when adding. It has been this way for years, never a problem.
Just recently, and I think this may have coincided (but I'm not sure) with a 10.6.5 Snow Leopard update, my music started disappearing! The entries were still in the library, but with the missing exclamation mark in itunes with it reporting that it couldn't find the files. But only certain artists. After searching my computer, I found the missing files it at the same path, but on my boot drive, at /Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music/<missing artist>!
Trying to add these files back to my library would work briefly, but then they would magically disappear out of /Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music and go back to /Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music/
I figured out the one thing the different artists that had this behavior had in common - some of the ID3 tags for the same artist, which are the basis for organization, were in different cases. I think there is a weird case sensitivity bug that is breaking things. When I add back only those songs for an artist with ID3 tags for the artist of the same case, the behaviour stops.
I'm posting less looking for an answer and more to raise visibility and hope this gets a fix.
Example entries from my iTunes Library.xml, notice how the 'k' in OutKast is a different case in the entries.
<key>Artist</key><string>OutKast</string>
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/OutKast/Speakerboxxx,%20Th e%20Love%20Below%20(Disc%202)/13%20Pink%20&%20Blue.mp3</string>
<key>Artist</key><string>Outkast</string>
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Outkast/Aquemini/12%20Spot tieOttieDopaliscious.mp3</string>

I'd like to note that I'm experiencing the exact same issue. I'd add to this but petegas4life has it spot on. I'm just replying in hopes this thread gets noticed so the engineers at apple can look into this and hopefully fix it in the next release.
Reproducing the problem is pretty simple too. Just take one song from an album and change the case of the artist name. You'll see the music move to the boot drive and all of the songs from that artist won't work in itunes anymore. And if you're relying on iTunes to edit the tags, fixing the files is a PAIN because they keep disappearing on you.

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

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?

"Radio Industry" ID3 Tagging on Soundbooth?

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