SongKong Jaikoz

SongKong and Jaikoz Music Tagger Community Forum

Sometime tags set with Jaikoz are not visible in iTunes

#1

Hi,
Subject says it all, pretty much. Sometimes when I write tags for some tracks, the tags will not show up upon import into iTunes. It seems to be an all-or-nothing affair, on a per track basis. I.E., either no tags for a track show up, or they all do. I’ve tried forcing v23, and v24 tags. I’ve tried checking and unchecking the “Do not unsynchronize ID3 tags”. “Force Save” doesn’t help (I don’t really know what that does anyway… does that rewrite all tags for any changed file? Save all files, whether they’ve changed or not? Both? Something else?) Going back and re-writing the tags with another tagger (Tag & Rename) seems to help them show up in iTunes, but if I wave Jaikoz over them again, they’re lost again.

Has anyone seen this kind of behavior? Has anyone figured out how to prevent it?

This is on a Mac…

Thanks,
Jason

#2

[quote=jsibre]Hi,
Subject says it all, pretty much. Sometimes when I write tags for some tracks, the tags will not show up upon import into iTunes. It seems to be an all-or-nothing affair, on a per track basis. I.E., either no tags for a track show up, or they all do. I’ve tried forcing v23, and v24 tags. I’ve tried checking and unchecking the “Do not unsynchronize ID3 tags”.
[/quote]
There are some bugs in iTunes sometimes causing it to misread things, if it has a problem with one field it doesnt read anymore , so the question is which field is causing a problem. You could try and work it out for a track by eleiminating one by one, Cover Art and PRIV fields can cause problems. But Jaikoz doesnt add PRIV fields and if you check “Do not unsynchronize ID3 tags” there should be no problem for cover art. It would be best if you could email me a file for me to examine.

Save all files , whether they’ve changed or not

I need you to send me a file

#3

Ive been sent some files and its pretty much what I said above.
Open the files in Jaikoz
Switch to the ID3 Edit tab
Scroll to the right handside
You can see that the ‘Complicated’ track has an MCDI field and ‘Shall We Dance’ track has 9 PRIV fields, iTunes doesnt like these fields
Right click on Jaikoz and select Delete , you dont need these fields
Save Changes
You should now see all the the inforormation that Jaikoz added from within iTunes.

But note the PRIV and MCDI were not added by Jaikoz, so I don’t follow how you add the information in tag and Rename and it would be seen, then saving changes in Jaikoz would break the info added in Tag and Rename, perhaps you could double check this.

#4

I’m at work now, but I’ll try that as soon as I get home. Thanks!

The particular files I sent were quickly found this morning when I read your response, and I’m not sure that they would illustrate the exact symptom I described - I just found some that looked blank in iTunes and forwarded them. But I do know for sure that I’ve seen that behavior. I’ll see if I can’t find another one that duplicates that behavior, and forward it to you when I do.

I have to say, that is weird. It would seem that if the PRIV and MCDI fields are what’s confusing iTunes then waving the Tag&Rename over those files would NOT fix it, unless it did so by deleting those fields, and then, as you say, if Jaikoz doesn’t write them, why did those files break again after Jaikoz was waved over them again…? Of course this assumes that those other files were broken for the same reason as the one I sent you.

An idea for a future release might be to add another checkbox in the iTunes section to not write (and even delete pre-existing) tags that are known to cause iTunes issues. I can see how that might be somewhat dicey, since the intent of ID3 is that data that isn’t recognized by a program should just be ignored… Not wiped out.

Anyway, as I go through my collection (I’m doing a significant rearrangement of my collection as you may have guessed), I’ll try to find another file that has the problem I originally described, and send it to you. There is, of course, the possibility that I was just delusional and tired at 4 o’clock in the morning :slight_smile: But I don’t think so. All and all this is shaping up to be a big (and sometimes frustrating!) job - but Jaikoz has already become my preferred tool (over Tag&Rename) not only because of the MusicBrainz integration (which is sometimes of questionable value, if I’m honest) but also because of the ‘spreadsheet’ metaphor. If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said I don’t like the idea of that metaphor, but having used if for a few weeks now, I have to say it’s very efficient.

Either way, it’s helpful to know which fields are the likely offenders, so that I can just wipe them out in a wholesale fashion. I’m not intentionally using them, and certainly won’t miss them.

Thanks,
Jason

#5

Hi,
I haven’t found one of those records yet (that re-breaks after being fixed), but I have found that ‘fixing’ the track by using Tag&Rename does NOT wipe out the PRIV fields… (or even change them) But it does make iTunes happy. I’m not sure about the MCDI field… I can’t find it. Is MCDI an abbreviation for something more verbose? Is it a muffler bearing? :wink: Oh… or is it something that shows up in that unsupported column, ala the PRIV fields, when present? [color=blue]{Edit: Nevermind, I see that it is one of those!}[/color]

On the other hand… I HAVE confirmed that deleting those PRIV columns that I’ve found on offensive records cures the problem… But that leads me to a new problem: I’ve noticed that I can’t “easily” delete the PRIV entries. They seem to come in batches of 7 or 9 (so far) and I have to open up the dialog and delete them one by one, rather than selecting a bunch of tracks and nuking them all at once. Is there an easier way? [color=blue]{Edit: Nevermind, I see that that is what you can do with cmd-delete or on the popup menu…}[/color]

{Edit: So finally, using tag&rename on the file fixes it even though T&R didn’t mess with the PRIV (and the file in question didn’t have MCDI), but deleting the PRIV columns in Jaikoz eliminates the problem. I’ll get back to you when/if I find a file that can be unfixed by Jaikoz after being fixed by t&r}
Thanks!

#6

What might be happening with tag & rename is that it is reordering the fields so that the PRIV fields are at the end, then when iTunes reads the file it read all the important info before hitting upon the PRIV fields. ( could you send me a file)

Im going to take another look at https://jaudiotagger.dev.java.net/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=100 and see if I can get this implemented for the next release of Jaikoz.

#7

Hi, I just noticed this post - I’ll try to come up with a ‘fixed by tag&rename’ file for you. Since I started using that jar file you sent, I haven’t seen any problems, so I’ll have to dig a bit to find one that’s mucked up. I guess those extra tags came from windows media player (which is weird, since I don’t use it anymore, except in my VMWare machine, and only rarely).

On the topic of iTunes oddities, I’m noticing that quite frequently, Genre’s show up in iTunes as a number, even though I have the checkbox for iTunes friendly genres checked. I’ve just been fixing them in iTunes as I find them. I’ll send an example of one that’s doing that.

Thanks!

Jason

#8

[quote=jsibre]On the topic of iTunes oddities, I’m noticing that quite frequently, Genre’s show up in iTunes as a number, even though I have the checkbox for iTunes friendly genres checked. I’ve just been fixing them in iTunes as I find them. I’ll send an example of one that’s doing that.
[/quote]
Ive replicated your Genre issue, the problem is with ID3v24tags, iTunes is failing to read numbers unless they are in brackets - but the bracket format is only valid for ID3v23Tags. The ‘Write iTunes Frendly genres’ ensures that ids over 125 are always written as text, but it doesnt write numbers less than 125 as text because these worked.

Not sure if this problem has been introduced into iTunes because Im sure it used to work, maybe I will have to always write text (for ID3v24).

#9

Confirming that Tag and Rename does move the PRIV fields to the end. My fix for Jaikoz works the same way.

#10

I’ve more or less finished with my HUGE effort of reorganizing, and the fix you applied to the PRIV (and other) fields worked perfectly.

The Genre issue still is a bit of a pain, but I see the dilemma, and just work around it by re-doing that piece in iTunes. It doesn’t take too much work.

I also noticed something else - I don’t have much trouble-shooting data for you at this time, but I noticed that a lot of tracks showed up in iTunes as being part of a complilation, even though Jaikoz didn’t see them that way. Weird. Again, not too difficult to fix in iTunes, but somewhat puzzling.

Thanks,
Jason

#11

This is changed in Jaikoz 2.6, the ‘Write iTunes Frendly genres’ now writes all ids as text for ID2v24.

Thanks I’l take a look, when you reopen them in jaikoz are they marked as being part of a compilation.

#12

[quote=paultaylor]
This is changed in Jaikoz 2.6, the ‘Write iTunes Frendly genres’ now writes all ids as text for ID2v24. [/quote]
Hm… I had that option checked, and still had the issue… Perhaps it’s down to me not doing a Force Save, instead of a normal save… (The genres may not have been changed in Jaikoz, simply the old values.) If I see this again, I’ll try various options like that.

No, that’s part of what makes it so odd… They show up in the “Complilations” entry under the Artists browser, they have “Part of Compilation” checked, but Jaikoz doesn’t see it that way. It’s like iTunes is using its own made-up tag for storing that… Or Jaikoz is… I’ll send you an example that iTunes thinks is part of a compilation (and I agree) but Jaikoz doesn’t have the appropriate check box checked (Is Compilation).

Thanks,
Jason

#13

[quote=jsibre]No, that’s part of what makes it so odd… They show up in the “Complilations” entry under the Artists browser, they have “Part of Compilation” checked, but Jaikoz doesn’t see it that way. It’s like iTunes is using its own made-up tag for storing that… Or Jaikoz is… I’ll send you an example that iTunes thinks is part of a compilation (and I agree) but Jaikoz doesn’t have the appropriate check box checked (Is Compilation).
[/quote]
Hi, you’ve just sent me a 1kb file, but Im guessing that iTunes has marked the song as a compilation because it is one an album where all the artists are different, I think iTune smarks these as compilations automatically.

I dont know the exact details but iTunes stored lots of other things internally outside of the file itself such as downloaded artwork, playcounts and ratings.

#14

That makes sense… I’ve sent the file again (this time for real), in case you want to look at it.

#15

I think iTunes decides it is a compilation because the artist is different to the album artist field, but nothing is written to the file itself to indicate this decision. So when you look at the file in Jaikoz it still isnt marked as a compilation, if you marked it as a compilation in Jaikoz
then it would be saved tot he file and marked as a compilation in both Jaikoz and iTunes regardless of the values in Artist and Album Artist fields. Jaikoz is working correctly in that it always works purely on what is held in the file itself, and only makes changes that you specify. iTunes does a number of automatic things, and stores a numbers of items in its own interanl database which can make things confusing.