DevBuild: Edited M4A Fail in iTunes

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1

I don't know if this is a bug with the new M4A code in Mp3Tag or just some quirk of iTunes, but if I edit any field of a M4A file with Mp3Tag (v2.32s) and then try to add the file to iTunes, iTunes fails to see any header fields (even fields that previously existed/displayed in the file). I've tried this with iTunes 5.0 on both OS X 10.3 and XP, and iTunes 4.7 on Win 2000.

Note that all field M4A fields, edited or not, are recognized just fine by WinAmp 5, by dbPowerAmp Tag Editor, by Tag&Rename, etc. It seems to be only iTunes that can't see the tag info. Also note that the edited files play musically just fine on iTunes -- it's just that the tag info is not displayed.

My testing procedure is to take an original M4A file where all tag fields display just fine in iTunes. I make a copy of this file, and then add a comment using Mp3Tag(v2.32s) and save. I copy both files to an empty iTunes directory, delete the iTunes DB ('iTunes Library.xml', 'iTunes Library' files), start iTunes which show an empty library, select "Add Folder..." under "File" pointing to the directory contain the orginal and edit file. When loaded, the orginal file shows all tag fields; the edit file shows no tag fields. As I said, both files will play properly.

I'm going to email these sample files to:

I hope you can help me solve this problem quickly. These files are actually my girlfriend's music library. Her iTunes library was a mess (missing track ids, genres, bad titles, etc). I bragged that I could clean up her library using Mp3Tag (on my XP machine). When I rebuilt/re-added all her newly edited files (to create new XML library file) into her iTunes (OS X 10.4), this problem popped up with the M4A files (MP3 display flawlessly). I can't convince her to move to XP and WinAmp (which is what I use for my music library and have no problems with). Now she's so mad that I'm afraid I'm going to have to sleep alone on the couch until I can get this problem fixed for her. :frowning:

BTW, don't know if MPEG settings affect the M4A tag code, but I've got all checked for "Read", only ID3v1 and ID3v2 checked for "Write" (all others unchecked including new ISO-8859-1 option).

If you need any more info, please let me know.

 Thanks,
 John
2

Hello John,

I'm sorry, but it seems that iTunes is crap is not able to parse valid metadata correctly. This was already mentioned here.

To make the tags working with iTunes again, you can try to install the stable build of Mp3tag (currently 2.32a) and save the tags again. Maybe that will solve your problem.

Best regards,
~ Florian

3

The stable build will write the tags to the file, but mp3tag doesn't pick it up. When the file is imported into itunes, it shows correctly, but not in mp3tag.

The developer build wipes out all of the tags.

so either the tags appear empty in mp3tag or they are empty in itunes :frowning:

I love MP3Tag and have been using it for the last year to go through my music collection and fix stuff. Wish apple wouldn't make it's software so proprietary. :angry: damn closed format apple :angry:

4

I think I am seeing a similar problem. I recently upgraded from 2.30 (which had been working well for me) to 2.32 as I wanted the use of userdefined tags.

I now find that when I try to update tags in AAC files, sometimes the tag appears to be blank (in mp3tag) after saving. Once, I noticed that if I successfully updated the album tag, the artist tag went blank! So I changed the artist tag, and album went blank!

I'm not using itunes at all.

I have now reverted to 2.30 and all is working again, I can live without userdefined tags but I can't manage without being able to write (and see that I have written!) basic tags.

Hope you can fix this soon.

5

ceejay if you do not use itunes, try the latest DevBuild
Issues with Mp4 tagging have been reported some time ago and should be fixed in this version

6

The current release Mp3tag 2.33 should be iTunes compatible :slight_smile:

Best regards,
~ Florian