Using Mp3tag to write tags in ID3v2!

Hi All,

I'm struggling with something that I THINK should be easy...

I'm using Mp3tag v2.46a (the latest, I believe), and am trying to write ID3v2 tags so that when I drag/drop into emplode, the long song name in the tag is used.

I've tried every permutation of setting, and it seems that emplode is insisting on importing short song names! I have tried to delete the ID3v1 tag with no positive result!

Can someone help me figure out what is going on? I thought that emplode used ID3v2 tags, if they existed!?

- Thanx!
- Jon

Can you provide a link to one of the song files which exhibits this behavior? We can analyze it at the binary level and find out what's wrong with it.

My guess is that there is more than one ID3V2 tag in the file, and that MP3Tag is writing additional tags to the file but not removing the old one. Another possibility is that there is some kind of additional text data appended to the file that isn't actually an ID3V2 tag or an ID3V1 tag.

Hey Tony!

Just emailed you one of the files!

I told mp3tag to DELETE the v1 tag, but save the v2 tag, but if you drag/drop the file into emplode, you get the short version!

Thanks in advance!

- Jon

This is indeed what's going on. The file appears to be laid out like this at a binary level:

- ID3V2 Tag, using double-byte character set.
- (I Think) a JPEG image of the album art embedded as part of the ID3V2 tag at the beginning of the file.
- A section of "00 00 00 00" bytes.
- Another ID3V2 Tag, using single-byte character set.
- (I Think) a second JPEG album cover image, this one with the text tag "Added by MuvUnder Cover".
- MP3 audio data for the the rest of the file.
- An ordinary ID3V1 tag appended to the end.

View the file in a binary editor and you can see all of the above, clear as day.

This file has been tagged by more than one tagging program, and the second program didn't recognize the first program's tag, and didn't handle it properly. So you've got two ID3V2 tags. Your tagger is writing one tag, and Emplode is reading another tag that the tagger is ignoring.

This could be because the first program wrote a poor tag with something nonstandard about the header, or something like that. Or it could be because the second program was written poorly and didn't interpret the first program's perfectly-valid tag correctly. I have no way of telling which of those things it was. But if it were me, I'd throw both of them out just to be sure.

See if MP3 Tag Studio handles it correctly and fixes up the tags so that you have only one in the file. If not, this program might be able to strip out all the tags from a group of files and let you start over from scratch.

Personally, I carefully standardize the filenames of all my MP3 files, so that they are named in a standard and unchanging way, with each field such as artist and track number being always in the same place, just in case I have to do something like that. Then, even if the files have no tags (or I am forced to erase their tags), I can do a filenames-to-tags pass with MP3 Tag Studio and then they're all retagged correctly.

Hm. According to the FAQ I wrote, you also might be running into the Unicode-isn't-supported-by-Emplode issue.

I think Emplode is hitting that first V2 tag, hitting its double-byte character set, bailing, and falling back to the V1 tag.

Thanks Tony!

Ok, I used Mp3TagStudio to delete the v1 tag, and now I'm trying to write the tag using only v2 with mp3tag. What setting do I choose for v2 writing? My choices are:

ID3v2.4 UTF-8
ID3v2.3 UTF-16
ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1

- Thanx
- Jon

Not the UTF-16-bit one. That's the one that Emplode can't read. I believe either of the other two will work, those are both 8-bit. Perhaps go with the oldest and most likely backwards compatible one.

Removing the V1 tag should not be necessary. Emplode will ignore the V1 tag as soon as it finds a correct V2 tag that's not 16-bit-character-set. Your file's problem was that it had TWO V2 tags, so hopefully Tag Studio will Do The Right Thing and replace them both with a single 8-bit tag. Not sure exactly how it'll handle it, I'd be interested to know.

Emplode 2.00 only understands ISO8859-1. Emplode 2.10 (for car-player v3 only) also understands UTF-8 and UTF-16.

But as car-player v2 itself only understands ISO8859-1, Emplode 2.00 doesn't limit you any worse than the Empeg does.

Peter

Hi Tony and Peter,

Ok, thanks for all the help.

I couldn't seem to clear out these files properly, so I just ended up fixing the tags once they were improperly copied over with the drag and drop. Sorta solved the issue. Gonna chalk it up to files that had screwed up tags. Surprised that those programs that Tony recommended didn't clean em up completely though!

- Thanx
- Jon

TidyMP3 didn't work?!

Nope!

You didn't fix the tags. You just fixed the Empeg's database. The tags are still wrong on those files, and they'll still be wrong if you copy them down off the player later on. Keep that in mind.

Yeah, I know! Sucks!

- Jon

Thanks! FAQ entry updated.

Did you try (with MP3TagStudio) the "Mass Clean Up Tags" option before you re-did the tags? That should remove ALL tag information, both v1 and v2, and leave you with a clean slate for applying the tags that you want.

tanstaafl.