Lengthy of necessity, and probably not an MP3 Tag "thing", but thought I'd throw it out here for any input anyone may be able to offer.
Some background: Kia factory stereo can only handle 8000 files via USB, so I split my music on to two USB drives with a manual switch as a workaround. The stereo downloads the files rather than playing them directly.
Now to the issue: We have everything on the stick showing up just fine on the stereo, plus a "No Album Info" album, if that makes sense. There are just a few files in it, they all exist in their appropriate albums with all of their info, and the "No Album Info" files don't exist on the USB stick in that form.
I'm thinking that the stereo is somehow "creating" the "No Album Info" files during the download process. The one common factor with the files concerned is that the "Tag" info for them is ID3v2.3. Anyone ever seen anything like this?
To enable a player to group files together, it is usually best to fill the following fields:
ALBUMARTIST, ALBUM, ARTIST, TITLE
and possibly TRACK, YEAR and add a picture.
Which do you have in your files?
You can try to compare one fully working file with one that shows "No Album Info".
Load both in Mp3tag and compare the details in View -> Extended Tag (Alt + T)
Maybe you forgot to fill one of the mentioned fields for those files?
Or they contain special characters that your KIA car stereo can't read/handle?
That's the problem: the "No Album Info" files don't exist on the USB stick.The few songs concerned exist in their proper places on the stick with all their info correct and show up correctly on the stereo. It's like the car stereo is "creating" the additional "No Album Info" files. Weird. I'll post a few pics later to illustrate. There isn't, so far as I'm aware, a method to clear the storage in the stereo
These pictures should ideally show the extended tags dialogue in MP3tag Alt-T from a file that shows the proper album data and one that does not.
Also, an answer would be nice to the list of filled tag fields:
I got a chance to take a more “in depth” look at this, and it’s not quite as I first thought.
One song which was a “No Album Info” apparently began displaying in its proper place: what I’m now left with are files on both USB drives which simply don’t do so. Here’s an example:
What do you see in the tagpanel if you mark all tracks of such an album in Mp3Tag?
If all tag-fields are the same of each file you will see the the content of the fields in the tagpanel, if they are not you will only see <keep>.
What do you see in Artist, Albumartist and Album?
If you see there may be a difference in these tagfields, that is not obvious. If you click on the down-arrow in the right corner of the tagpanel-field you can see more than 1 content, if the content is not the same for this tagfield.
I wasn’t well for a few days, but had a chance to look into this further on Wednesday. Applying the “hammer fixes” sorted out the issue with the “sample” file: I then applied them to all tracks with issues on that drive. I now have 63 “No Album Info” tracks on that drive, only three of which will actually play Not an insurmountable problem, but wondered if anyone knew a way to “undo”?
If the files do not play anymore then I assume that something really bad was/is wrong with the files.
To my experience, the files should get better after a treatment with MP3diags and not worse - unless they were really badly damaged before.
Is it only the car player that does not play them or don't they play at all?
Well, all has returned to normal! The “No Album Info” category has disappeared and its contents are in their proper places. I suspect the onboard drive just needed some time to properly re-index. I’ll run the same process on the other drive, but I expect the same outcome.
do your files are accessible again? Or has the "No Album info" disappeared because the files are now not recognized as playable files any more?
Or the other way round: do the files that formerly fell into the "No Album info" category now play and display the correct data?
The files that were in the “No Album Info” folder are now playing correctly and are in their correct places with all data correctly showing. What I think has happened is that that the car unit took a while to figure out that something had changed on the USB drive and I saw it in a state where it was in the process of not knowing quite what had changed. I’ll run the other drive through MP3 Diags in the next day or two, but I’m expecting a similar end result.
