Hello, if I right click on a music file on my computer, select Properties, Details tab and scroll down to the Origin section I can see a Media created date and time. This is when the music file was ripped to my computer from a CD.
I am using Mp3tag to add a cover/album art to various albums of music. Upon saving the cover to the album in Mp3tag, then going back into the music file on my computer to view the Media created date and time, this data has now been removed.
I am not sure how I can preserve this original Media created data when saving a cover in Mp3tag.
What kind of files are these?
Actually, I cannot reproduce that the dates disappear.
The Windows Explorer properties dialogue shows updated dates after adding a cover, so, different ones but it still shows dates.
Could you supply screenshots?
Has it actually been removed, as in blank? Or do you mean changed to the current date?
This happens to .wma and .flac files (.mp3 files do not have this property listed).
If I right click on the music file and select Properties, the 3 different dates shown here Created (when the file was put on my computer), Modified (when the file was edited, in this case through Mp3tag) and Accessed (when the file was opened) change depending on what I do and that is fine. However, I would like the Media created date to remain as that is when I ripped the CD and has remained whether I transfer it to another computer, etc.
I have attached screenshots. Yes, the Media created data is now blank.
For flac files, I cannot save a date for "Media created" in the "Origin" section.
I can enter a date in the Windows explorer properties dialogue but as soon as I reopen the properties dialogue, the data is gone.
And at least the tag data does not show anything like it, not even in a hex editor.
I checked mp3 files and they do not even have a label for "Media created".
I checked with an mp4 video file which has "Media created" data, added a picture with MP3tag and checked in the Windows Explorer again and the date was still there.
I do not have an m4a files for testing, though.
This is a long shot and untested by me but easy to try:
In Explorer, Medea Created is shown as a video file property. The audio file equivalent (apparently) is simply "Date Created". So you might try mapping MEDIACREATED to DATECREATED in Mp3tag by using Options>Tags>Mapping. That will create a custom tag called "DATECREATED". With luck it will hold its value in Mp3tag after adding covers.
See this help page for mapping in Mp3tag
Thank you for your suggestion. The different options available to me within Mp3tag are all still new to me. In Options - Tags - Mapping, would the Tag be VorbisComment for a .wma file? Also, is the Source going to be Media created and then the Target will be Date Created? Does the case of the letters or if there are spaces matter? I click OK but I'm not seeing anything change in Mp3tag.
For tag names the convention is upper case with no spaces, Mixed case is used for certain tag type names like VorbisComment. WMA files use simply WMA as the type name.
In my first post I left an unwanted space in the suggested custom field name (now corrected above, sorry about that!). Use DATECREATED. Date Created is fine as a label on a column heading or on the tag panel but not for mapping.
You can use the Mp3tag Extended Tags dialog (Alt+T) to see the real names and values of tags in your files, but tags without values are never shown.
You can verify your Media Created tag syntax by selecting a file in Mp3tag that contains a value for it and then opening the Extended Tag dialog. Use that syntax for your mapping.
Please redo the custom field name as mentioned above and try again. But you won't see anything in the Extended Tag dialog unless the mapped tag contains data.
I doubt that a mapping will save this field.
See this thread about special XML data stored by WIndows for mp4 files:
The Media created field is also part of it.
Currently, there is no way to access that data in MP3tag.
I would like to point out that apparently Windows does not support that in flac files and that MP3tag preserves it in MP4 files.
As I do not have an wma file, it would be a good service by others to test whether this file format is a special case.
I take your point. And yet, @hawkeyersc does report seeing that tag in Explorer. And my impression is that Mp3tag does not always remove unsupported tags when saving edits to supported ones. It would be useful to know just how it decides which to keep and which to remove.
Also, please take a look at this old reply from Dano on mapping unsupported WMA tags
I tried to point out, that apparently not even the Explorer can save the Media created date in flac files.
On the other hand: MP3tag does not remove the date created data from MP4 files.
So it seems to be an issue with WMA files (which I cannot test as I have not got one).
Thanks for the additional explanation. When I select the music file and then press ALT + T, this is the box I see (see first picture). I don't see anything mentioning media created or data created. I then went to Options - Tags - Mapping as suggested previously and entered what was suggested (see second picture, Target is DATECREATED, I just couldn't adjust the size of the window to see the full text) and went back into ALT + T and things remained unchanged.
I think I see what you mean now, that when you rip a CD in .flac, even though the Windows Explorer properties window shows the field for Media created, a date never generates after the rip, is that accurate? I haven't tested ripping a CD in .flac and checking directly after to see if there actually is a date there or not before I bring it into Mp3tag to add the album art. I only know that for .wma files I had ripped previously there was a date there and once I made any edits (in my case, adding album art), it will only clear out the data from the Media created field.
I hope that you reloaded the WMA file into Mp3tag before checking Extended Tags. I think that mapping occurs at the time when the files are first loaded. But otherwise, it looks like you have done everything you could. Sorry that I do not have any further suggestions.
Yes. There is no source for that date other than what the ripper reported, and of course the "Date created" file spec of the newly ripped files in Explorer:
