[Pageygeeza]

I really have no idea how this has happened, I've just encoded over 400 CD's over the last month. Today I was backing up all my iTunes music to an external HDD and noticed the id3 tags have been stripped from the mp3's. I thought it might have been a glitch and it was to do with how it copied, but I looked in my main iTunes folder and the same has happened there too! I know iTunes stores song data in an .xml file, but is there any way of restoring the id3 tags? I've lost heart to do all my CD's over again.

 

[krmathis]

How if you mark the files, ctrl-click and select "Convert ID3 Tags..."? I wonder if that rewrites the tags to the files, from the xml that is.

 

[Pageygeeza]

Quote:

How if you mark the files, ctrl-click and select "Convert ID3 Tags..."? I wonder if that rewrites the tags to the files, from the xml that is.

Just tried that and no luck.

The thing that is really confusing me is that it has only affected the mp3's encoded with EAC. Everything else is fine, even stuff encoded years ago. iTunes is holding the correct information for the files there, but the tags have just vanished.

I might just have to bite the bullet and re-do everything.

 

[Pageygeeza]

Update:

After a bit of testing, I've come to the conclusion it IS iTunes fault.

Basically adding my own artwork in iTunes has stripped them of their tags. Weirdly enough, the artwork sticks, but just pushes everything else out.

As another test I added the same artwork to another album but in Media Monkey, it added fine, iTunes picked it up and the artwork was correctly added to the album without removing all other id3 data.

I'm currently using ver 9.0.3.15. Could somebody just reconfirm this problem for me please, at least I can verify if this is a one off thing or it is iTunes doing the nasty on my music.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Try opening the various MP3 files with MP3Tag. MP3Tag can tell you what types of tags and what versions of ID3 tags are in the files.

See what version(s) of ID3 tags are in the EAC ripped files, the files iTunes has stripped, and the other MP3 files you have. I don't know how iTunes behaves, but it may be writing to only a certain version of ID3 tag and may only read a certain version of ID3. It's worth looking at to investigate.

 

[Pageygeeza]

I'd never even thought of that, thanks.

I'll look into it after I get these few albums done, I'll report back later with my findings.

 

[Pageygeeza]

Ooooh, weird!

Mp3tag is able to correctly read the id3 tags even though they are damaged.

iTunes is reporting that they ARE v2.4. And Windows just won't read them at all. Strange.