SongKong Jaikoz

SongKong and Jaikoz Music Tagger Community Forum

Edit hidden m4a metadata

#1

Hi,

I have a question regarding hidden .mp4 metadata / tags. For example, recently I purchased an album on iTunes Store (‘Scorpions Acoustica’), but because the default cover was so bad I found a better one and replaced it.

However, while iTunes (v. 12) displays the new cover correctly, my iPhone (iOS 7) doesn’t. For some reason it still displays the old ugly one.

I’ve tried almost EVERYTHING in iTunes and nothing seems to help (including resetting). I came to the conclusion the default cover must be embedded in the file somehow. I’m no expert, but I think it’s called ‘atom’ or ‘frame’.

A similar problem relates to album/track names. E.g. if I change an album name from ‘Live At Wembley Stadium’ to ‘Live at Wembley Stadium’, while iTunes sees it but iOS doesn’t.

Question: Can I get rid of this problem somehow with your software? Can it edit hidden metadata?

Thanks in advance

#2

Yes, just load the file, delete the values in The Artwork Column and Save

#3

I see, thanks!

Is there a way to keep old metadata and instead make iOS read the modified one?

I know default metadata contains things like copyright and explicit-content stuff. Might be worth keeping, just in case.

Merry x-mas!

#4

I’m only suggesting emptying the artwork column this won’t affect other fields such as explicit tag, Jaikoz will not delete these fields

#5

Okay, I’ll give it a try!

Thanks!

#6

But say I want to remove the ‘explicit’ tag, how do I do it?

#7

You are asking me a completely different question now, you cannot currently delete the explicit tag using Jaikoz.

#8

I’m sorry, I’m confused.

What I don’t understand is: are there two artworks embedded in an .m4a file? And iTunes and iOS are for some reason reading different metadata in a same file?

#9

This is how same the album looks on iTunes and iOS:

The one to the left is my custom artwork, the right is the default iTunes Store. For some reason iOS still displays the default one.

#10

Okay, after some research apparently it’s possible to add multiple artworks

e.g. by using AtomicParsley one could do:

Hence get two pieces of artwork embedded.

It seems, perhaps due a bug, (I’m not entirely sure) iOS and iTunes are reading from two different cover art tags (‘covr’). It doesn’t explain the spelling issue though.

https://code.google.com/p/mp4v2/wiki/iTunesMetadata#Content_Rating_(rtng)

#11

Well did you try what I said and delete the artwork metadata from Jaikoz ?

(Im confused because this has nothing whatsoever to do with the explicit tag)

#12

It didn’t help. I’ve looked it up and people say it has to do with Apple ID and iTunes. If one signs out, sync, then sign in again it will work. But it only partially worked for me.

Apple’s way of handling metadata is ridiculous. Not only does it fetch artwork from the internet, but apparently it stores cache on the iPhone as well.

#13

Okay… just posting a last time in case someone wants to know.

So basically you bought an album on iTunes. If you are like me, who wants things to be organized, you change the artwork, names, genres and so on. After that you sync the changes to your iDevice. Now you notice NOTHING changed… why is that you wonder? Here’s what’s happening:

When you sync an album to the iOS music app, it verifies metadata with the iTunes store.

First, it checks if the cover of the album is available on iTunes. It does so by reading the “plID” tag in the metadata. If your .m4a file contains the line:

iOS will automatically look up the playlist ID ‘423295060’ in the iTunes Store and fetch artwork. In my case it fetches from this site (you can actually see it in the URL bar):

If an artwork is found, it will automatically download it and store in the iOS cache. Otherwise, it uses the embedded artwork.

Second, it does the same thing with other parameters such as Artist artwork.

https://itunes.apple.com/se/artist/scorpions/id602212?l=en (iTunes artist page)

and so on…

In other words, first they fetch metadata and artwork from online, AND if it doesn’t work only THEN do they read it offline (locally).

If you don’t want iOS to fetch art and song names, simply delete these fields!