Alright, I've been trying to tag pictures on to my MP3s, and for a while I was able to do so without difficulties. Recently however, anytime I attempt to tag an image on a file, it seems to be writing it to the music layer itself.
I first noticed this after attempting to tag album art on ten songs from the same album. After tagging them, I saved the files to my music player. In an attempt to listen to these new songs however, my music player could not read them. I reconnected the device and pulled up the files in my audio editor, and discovered a loud, high-pitched tone at the very beginning. I removed the tone and tried to listen to it again. My music player played the song just fine, with the exception of missing album art. Noting the missing art, I retagged the images using Mp3tag. Attempting to play it now, I discovered that my music player could no longer play the files. Pulling them up in the music editor confirmed that the tone had indeed returned. Having a hunch as to the cause of the problem, I pulled up Mp3tag and removed the artwork. Now checking it in the editor, the tone was gone. I had hopes that this was only an isolated incident, so I proceeded to attempt to tag other music files with other images, and discovered the same problem.
Now believing this to be a software problem, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Mp3tag, but to no success. Any attempt to solve this problem on my own have turned up unsuccessful. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
As you said, there is no problem with your music player (hardware or software player?) to play the music from a clean mp3 file.
After you have filled other content into the mp3 file like an ID3v1 tag and/or ID3v2.3/2.4 tag and additionally one or more cover image binary content, then you have detected misbehaviour of the player.
Your studies are smart and you have detected a 'glitch beep', that points to something, what the player cannot work with.
By the way ... does your audio editor not know how to treat properly a tagged mp3 file?
The audio editor should display and work only with the music data, but not with the embedded text or graphic data, besides, the editor provides user dialogues specially made for the embedded data.
At first you have to make sure to get all technical info about the player.
What are the technical limits of this player?
Which ID3 tagging level does the player support?
What size of embedded images (pixel x pixel resp. byte) does the player allow, if any?
The audio editor I use is Audacity, which loads the music file into memory, then allows editing and exported back to mp3. To my understanding, the most tag data it can manipulate, are text (tags like Title, Artist, Album, Genre, Year, ect.). However, I do not believe the editor is the problem due to the fact that before tagging, the music player played the files fine, after tagging them, it could not. I merely used the editor to discover the presence of the 'glitch beep' in the first place. This is why I believe the problem to be Mp3tag.
As for the music player itself, I'm simply using the embedded music player in a Samsung Brightside feature phone. While not that powerful of a player itself, it dose allow for a little customization. The player, I've found, is capable of displaying embedded album art at surprising resolutions (being capable of displaying artwork up to 2000x2000), and the only limitation I've found with regards to album art, is the size of the embedded image (Larger image = longer loading time). The embedded player however, cannot play past the 'glitch beep', and crashes with any attempt to. This is problematic due to the fact that the tone is at the very beginning. Thus the song is unplayable.
As for tag specifications, I have used ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags in the past with success, as they can play on the phone just fine. Recently, however, using the same tags, I've been having problems.
As for the image I attempted to tag before this all happened (JPEG, 800x800, 417KB). The image specifications are all standard with successful image tagging in the past. I do not believe the image is the problem however, because other images with different specifications have been having the same problem.
Sorry, could not find such tagging capablities in Audacity 2.0.2.
Edit. Got it ... the tagging dialog is integrated in the export mp3 process.
Why does it write the tag-field YEAR twice as a multi-value tag-field?
What did change on the phone/player?
Please help ...
Since you have Audacity at hand, please provide an example mp3 file of about five seconds length, can be any noise, without any extra embedded data.
Additionally provide a copy of the first file with added Tag ID3v1
Additionally provide a copy of the second file with added Tag ID3v2.3
Additionally provide a copy of the third file with added jpg image of 100x100 resolution.
Use current Mp3tag v2.54 for all tagging processes.