[X] Description disappears after editing m4a podcast

#1

OK, this is a little long, please bear with me:

After editing an m4a podcast in any way with mp3tag, even though "ITUNESPODCASTDESC" shows up as still there in mp3tag's editing windows, it disappears in iTunes and on my iPod. Here's the step by step:

  1. Find a podcast that downloads m4a files. Confirm the presence of podcast description text by clicking on the "i" in the row for a single podcast, or choose "Show Description" in the context menu.

  2. Go to mp3tag and use it to edit any of the tags for that m4a file except ITUNESPODCASTDESC. I found the problem when I was editing ITUNESPODCASTURL. Confirm that the text in ITUNESPODCASTDESC is still there.

  3. Go back to iTunes and click on the "i" or choose "Show Description" again. The text that used to be there is now gone. Now when you sync with your iPod the description is gone as well. To make this bug show up, you may have to "refresh" the item by deleting the item in iTunes (but keep the file) and re-add it via "Add File to Library..." or "Add Folder to Library..." through the File menu.

This situation came up because a podcast that I frequently download changes its ITUNESPODCASTURL frequently, so I am trying to edit that field for all the old items for that podcast accordingly so they all show up as one group under iTunes. However I experimented and this bug occurs if you edit any of the tags, not just ITUNESPODCASTURL.

Thanks for the help in advance.

#2

I've tried to reproduce it, but everything works as expected. Can anybody else reproduce it?

#3

The tag ITUNESPODCASTDESC represents the column "Description" in iTunes, not the information that is shown in the I window.
There is no tag for this at m4a. You can remove your file from the library, put it back without any changes to it and the text is gone.

#4

Florian - In response to your inability to reproduce the bug:

  1. Try this podcast: http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/rss/....php?enhanced=Y
  2. Make sure after you change the ITUNESPODCASTURL in mp3tag, that you delete the podcast in iTunes and re-add it using "Add Folder to Library..." in effect refreshing the item. Thanks.

Dano - Actually, from playing around with the mp3 podcasts, from what I see, ITUNESPODCASTDESC in mp3tag does represent what shows up in the "i" window or from clicking "Show Description" from the context menu for an item. What determines what shows up in the "Description" column in iTunes is the "Subtitle" field in mp3tag.

However, for m4a file podcasts, in mp3tag, only the ITUNESPODCASTDESC column shows up as populated, the Subtitle field is blank. Despite this, the original m4a files in iTunes have text in both the I window and Description column. Not quite sure how this works.

Dano - One more thing - When I delete an item from the m4a podcast (but keep the file), then re-add the file, I still get all the original text back including in the I window. Not sure why you aren't.

#5

It's also possible that this information is queried from the podcast URL. I can't find anything what Mp3tag is doing wrong.