I searched through the forum, but did not see this exact issue (maybe I missed it somewhere, if so, apologies), or I do not understand if the other answers relate to this issue.
Several MP3 files are showing either incorrect time (00:01) or nothing in the Length field. When I play them (Winamp), the time elapsed is displayed correctly as the song plays, but the Winamp info display shows the same (incorrect) length as the tag in MP3Tag.
In the files that show no time in the length field, I notice that the Frequency, Codec, VBR and Mode fields are also blank. In the files that show the incorrect time, the frequency field is populated (44100), and all other fields are populated as well. The file size is shown for all, and ranges from around 400 kB to around 30 MB.
I would like to run a command that will populate the Length field with the correct time. I tried the Action - Format Value "LENGTH" %_length% command, which returns a "Formatted Tags in 0 of n tags " message. I suspect I am missing something simple here, but my Newby mind hasn't grasped it yet.
If the "technical part" of the media file has correct data, then the Mp3tag variable "%_length%" should display the correct data.
It may happen that some mediatype does not support this.
It may happen that a mediafile's technical data is corrupt.
It may help to re-encode or transcode this mediafile.
In general, and in particular, you do not need to set any user defined tag-field for a player indicating the technical data of the file.
The Media type is MP3, so I must assume that the technical data in the files are corrupt, or that they were not ripped correctly. Unfortunately I do not have access to the original source files, so I cannot re-encode them from the source files.
Please forgive what is probably a stupid question, but is it possible to either manually edit the technical data, or to re-encode the (corrupt technical data ) MP3 files as new (no longer corrupt technical data) MP3 files? I suspect not, and will probably have to live with the incorrect time (a minor annoyance). If it is possible, could you please point me in the general direction?
There are freeware utilties around that do just such checks:
mp3val
mp3diags
foobar2000
mp3val and mp3diags have an scan mode so that you can decide whether you want to fix files with problems.
Both programs have their virtues and you probably have to use both to get rid of all faults.