Problem with some ID3v2.3 tags.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been having a strange problem with some tags. I load up the files in Jaikoz (that have been working correctly) and clear out UserDefined and Ignored data. Then I do a Remote Correct using MusicBrainz after verifying the information and then retrieve the album art remotely. Everything looks good and I save the files.

This problem seems to occur on full albums and randomly as some work fine.
Two I can recall off hand that were messed up are, Beck - Mellow Gold and Beastie Boys - Ill Communication. Anyways if you load them in Windows Media Player it doesn’t read the tags at all and can’t play the file, my Sansa e260 can play the file but artist and album show as Unknown, Media Monkey recognizes everything as does VLC media player.

I have found two ways to fix this, at first I used MusicBrainz Picard and select the option to erase existing tags and retagged it, then opened it in Jaikoz and did the same steps listed above saved again and it worked fine. Also opening it in Jaikoz and changing the option to save in ID3v2.4 allows WMP to play the file again, but my Sansa doesen’t seem to read album art from ID3v2.4 tracks (I think I then saved them back as 2.3 and it worked).

If there is anything I can do to help you look at this please let me know.

[paultaylor]

[quote=Anonymous]This problem seems to occur on full albums and randomly as some work fine.
Two I can recall off hand that were messed up are, Beck - Mellow Gold and Beastie Boys - Ill Communication. Anyways if you load them in Windows Media Player it doesn’t read the tags at all and can’t play the file, my Sansa e260 can play the file but artist and album show as Unknown, Media Monkey recognizes everything as does VLC media player.

If there is anything I can do to help you look at this please let me know.[/quote]
Well there are very few applications that support every single intricacy of the ID3 specification, and it may suprise you to know that some of the best known applications such as iTunes and Windows Media Player are some of the worst offenders, an incomplete list can be found at http://www.id3.org/Compliance_Issues

When Jaikoz write tags it tries to write them without using less known ID3 options , so that they will work on as many applications as possible with a bias towards iTunes because this is probably the most commonly used application.

Common problems are that some application only support v23 and not v24. If you have characters that require full Unicode support that can cause problems for some applications that only understand IS08859 or Unicode8, also some applications dont understand unsyncronization and some expect it, sometimes images cause a problem, try just removing the image. You could try unsetting the ‘Save Settings/iTunes Compatability/Do not unsynchronize tags’ option within Jaikoz this may get things working.

You can send me your problem files if they are still causing a problem and I can check or the most likely causes.

[Anonymous]

When I get home from work today I will send you one of the files. It must be some combination of things that are messing them up when I save the tag.
Because having Picard clear out the tags and then rewriting them in the same fashion with Jaikoz including album art in 2.3 fixes the problems that were caused by writing them in 2.3 with Jaikoz initially.

Maybe clearing old tags before writing new tags could be a future option:)

[pape]

I registered on the forum now, my last post was supposed to be logged in but I had the cookies blocked.

[paultaylor]

Hi, I have found the problem with the file you sent me.

Some fields that must existed in the original file have been encoded with a TextEncoding of UTF-8, the problems fields are Title, Artist and Album. UTF-8 is only supported for tags in ID3v24 although I think some applications also use it with ID3v23. Jaikoz NEVER uses UTF-8 , when new fields are created they are encoded as either IS08859 which is supported by all tag versions or if there are special characters in the field that cannot be represented in IS08859 they are written as UTF16 (two byte per character) which is also supported in all tag versions.

So I tested the file in Windows Media Player 10 it actually fails reading the first field which is the title field and gives up, the value Windows Media Player shows as the title is not actually the title as read from the tag but the filename with the (.mp3) bit removed.

If instead I delete the three fields from the tag and save it, then WMP10 reads it ok and shows the image,or if I convert it to ID3v24 in Jaikoz then windows media player reads it ok, and shows the image.

I don’t know if this will solve the problem with your mp3player because I havent got one to test but it might do, if it is just the album art that is missing have you tried disabling the ‘Do not Unsynchronize Tags’ option in Save Settings yet.

So in summary the problem is caused by another application incorrectly (and unnecessarily) using the wrong encoding for ID3V23 but there is more Jaikoz could do to fix this. At the moment when saving a file Jaikoz will check all fields can be encoded in using the text encoding specified for that field, and if not it will change the text encoding to UT16. But what it DOESNT DO is check if existing fields require to use a UTF text encoding nor if they are using an allowable one for ID3v23/ID3v22

You can download a temporary fix from

http://www.jthink.net/jaikoz/jsp/beta/jaudiotagger.jar

this will reset the text encoding of all fields when writing to ISO8859, check the data and then change to UTF16 if necessary. This will fix your problem but is not perfect it means any fields encoded as UTF8 will no longer be ,even in a V24Tag, and you will not be able to preserve any existing UTF16 encoding unless the data requires it, so I will be working on a better solution for the next proper release.
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