Syntrillium Backup Forums :: View topic - Corrupt Inaccurate MP3 Tags, correct, taggers

directjj · Posted - Sat Jun 07, 2003 12:28 pm

Please copy email with response:

directjj
@
bellsouth . net

Thanks.

Some of the MP3 files I download have fewer MP3 tags than others and some of these can't be edited.

1) Is this an older MP3 tag standard, and can Cool Edit or some other application (recommendations) convert the tag to the newer more complete standard?

2) When I try to edit, some but not all, of these skimpyer MP3 tags, I sometimes get a Windows Write to Disk error and can't add things like Track Number. If I open the file in Cool Edit and save under a different name, there is a very slight change in the file size, new MP3 tag information is sometimes revealed (bit rate), and I can now edit the MP3 tags.

Was the tag corrupt?

3) Even after doing the above, I have some files where the play DURATION of the song is erroneously reported in the MP3 tag and this does not seem to be an editable field.

Is there an application that can edit the DURATION tag, or automatically adjust it to actual DURATION?

William Rose · Location: USA

There is no duration field in mp3 tags.

Further, there are two tag standards. ID31 & ID32. ID32 has a lot more room for information than ID31. They are both very editable. Some seem to be write protected but all you have to do.....

It's all in the tag-editor. Some are better than others.

p.s. The duration problem you're having is probably a result of the bit-rate being something other than 128 kbs. Many apps, including CEP incorrectly report this info.

res1223 · Posted - Sun Jun 08, 2003 1:25 pm

I believe the original ID3v1 format didn't support track numbers. This was remedied with Id3v1.1. Also, ID3v1.x tags only allow up to 30 characters in a field, so any field longer than that will be automatically truncated. The character limit was taken care of with ID3v2.x.

Yes, tags and file headers can become corrupt and cause problems. Some say this is more likely to happen when using ID3v2.x tags because they are stored at the beginning of the file (rather than the end of the file, like v1.x tags) and when you add or make changes to v2.x tags the entire MP3 file has to be rewritten. Personally, I have never had a problem using v2.x tags.

Most likely the problem with the duration being reported incorrectly is because the files were encoded using VBR (variable bitrate) rather than CBR (constant bitrate) and the VBR header is either corrupt or missing. Also, there is still some older software/players that don't read VBR headers, so they will also misreport file durations. You can try running the files through VbrFix to repair the headers:

http://www.willwap.co.uk/Programs/vbrfix.html

If you're looking for a good MP3 tagger, this thread going on over at Hydrogen Audio Forums has a lot of good links. I prefer Tag&Rename. It's shareware, but there are some good freeware taggers also.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=4540&hl=&s=474495514251b549fc57394ebf79f3c0

http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm