ID3v2.4 tags + iTunes & iPod

#1

Well, I've just noticed that after editing ID3v2.4 tags in iTunes the tags are ruined - nor foobar2000, nor Mp3tag can read them anymore (Mp3tag displays !BAD before the ID3v2 in my %_tag% column of the File View). However iTunes itself doesn't seem to bother - it displays everything in the same way as it did before editing tags.
(BTW I found an option to recover tags by converting them in iTunes to ID3v2.3 format, everything i had is recovered properly except ORIGYEAR (which is missing) and cover (which is fu***d up))

This does NOT match with ID3v2.3 tags. They work just fine and can be edited in both applications.

Should I move back to older tag format? How come iTunes doen't support ID3v2.4 properly?

#2

A lot of players don't work well with ID3v2.4 tags. My advice is to stick with ID3v2.3 tags for mp3 files. Once you use ITUNES to convert back to ID3v2.3 tags, I'd still pull files into mp3tag, and resave all the tags so that mp3tag has a chance to re-write the tags where neccessary. I've learned the hard way to not do ANY tag editing within itunes. All my tag editing is in mp3tag or dbpoweramp so that I always know exactly what I'm getting.

p.s. re art. I'm surprised that itunes didn't restore the art. but maybe the art is in itunes database rather than embedded in the files themselves.

edit: if you use foobar for any tagging, I'd suggest selecting the "compatability mode" option (this will write ID3v2.3 tags instead of ID3v2.4).

#3

Just noticed that I've forgotten about this topic.
Thanks for the reply.

I just can't imagine how it is possible that iTunes claims to support ID3v2.4 tags!(!!)

From what I've experienced editing ID3v2.3 tags does not cause any problems (so far).

It did, in fact, but badly. The original image was covered with grey field in ~70%.

#4

yeah, i've had this problem as well before, never found the solution for it. it made me finally ditch iTunes and stick to foobar, and it was the best move i ever did.

this has nothing to do with mp3tag, since the iTunes is the one that messes the tags

#5

It messes tags written by any software or only by Mp3tag?

#6

As far as I know V2.4 is still in discussion and not yet ratified as a standard. So every program can do what it wants.
As 2.3 is a vlid standard I'd stick to that until there is a common basis.

#7

It's the latest version of the ID3 specification, but as you said, not everyone is adopting it -- ID3v2.3 is still the most widely used version of ID3v2.

#8

This thread is a little old, but the I've been fighting with this problem recently and finding a lot of my tags getting corrupted.

There are three programs I use regularly: iTunes (on both Mac and Windows), mp3tag, and Picard.

  • Picard saves 2.4 tags with ISO-8859-1, UTF-8, or UTF-16 encoding depending on whether the tag includes unicode characters and its current encoding.
  • Mp3tag saves 2.4 tags in UTF-8 format only.
  • iTunes saves 2.4 tags in ISO-8859-1 encoding by default, or UTF-16 if the tag includes characters that require unicode.

The major bug in this workflow is that if you have a v2.4 UTF-8 tag that includes artwork, and you modify it in iTunes, it corrupts the artwork and makes the tag unreadable in Mp3tag (regardless of whether iTunes saves it in ISO-8859-1 or UTF-16). The image is ruined, but the tag can be made readable again in mp3tag by deleting the artwork in iTunes.

I understand this is totally iTunes' fault, and they should fix their software to be more compatible, but is there any way to enable UTF-16 encoding for v2.4 tags in Mp3tag? I have to use iTunes because I'm sharing the library between PC and Mac, and I have to use 2.4 because Picard has some flakey behavior when using advanced relationships with 2.3 tags, so I'm kind of stuck in this situation.