-Brading Software Message Board
+--Forum: Mp3/Tag Studio Support and Bug Reports
+---Topic: tags disappear started by gansje
Posted by: Guest on Dec. 27 2013,23:13
recently I discovered I'm loosing mp3-tags including file property's. My mp3's (50000+) are placed on a windows 2003 server. I am working on Win7 pro. sometimes a single file in the map has lost his tag incl. file property (bit-rate) and sometimes all files in a map had lost the tags.
I used mp3/tag studio for many years.
Now I'm using mp3/tag studio 3.5 (beta 22). When I find a file that has lost all info I have to convert it to wav and back to mp3 to correct the problem.
I don't think the problem is mp3/tag studio but can anybody help me find the problem?
Posted by: LemonSqueezy on Dec. 30 2013,04:04
First of all, don't "transcode" files - you will lose quality.
An mp3 is lossy (its been compressed and lost detail). A wav is lossless (it has full detail). When you transcode from lossy, its like photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. You end up with an inferior product. That is, regardless of encoding back to wav - you cannot ever get back the lost detail - so you might as well transcode from mp3 to mp3 - same difference)
As for the rest, (at a guess) I would say it's the Windows 2003 server (either the OS or the old failing hdd).
50,000 mp3s at 320bitrate is less than a TB. Go buy an external - get two, use one to serve files, listen to, play with - use the other to file sync (eg using FreeFileSynch portable) - where you mirror your daily music drive to the backup drive.
You don;t ever want to be caught with your pants down and lose years of hard work collecting and building and nuturing your music library.
You can also use mp3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) and scan your entire music dir and sort by tag to find any that are damaged (sorry - remove this bit if its against the rules to mention another product - i ported it myself (portable) and use it to detect and remove APE and embedded pictures - otherwise its all mp3ts
)Now, as for the mp3s getting truncated - I assume you mean not just the tag, but the headers are missing (so eg missing vbr seeks, bitrates etc?). Are the files playable at all? do they play or show the correct playlengths?
Long story short - get 2 x 1TB externals and sleep easy is my advice. Troubleshooting 10 yr old hardware and OS is way too much work.
Posted by: Guest on Dec. 30 2013,10:24
@ LemonSqueezy
Server is 1year old True server (HP) with 2TB hdd, it only runs server2003 because I have nothing else legal.
Every night at 2 a.m, the server is automatically backed-up to a nas with 2X2Tb (mirror), also 1 year old.
I don't think my hardware is the problem, OS could be.
For the other info you gave, I have some things to look for.
Posted by: LemonSqueezy on Dec. 30 2013,12:25
EDIT:
Ok .. lighbulb moment perhaps: WMP and Windows Explorer (you're on a 2003 OS with a few updates) can't read ID3v2.4 tags AFAIK. If you see a file with no tags - copy it back to your windows 7 pc and check the properties (either in windows explorer, or mp3ts, or in your player, or in foobar or itunes or anything modern). This could be the answer and they're not damaged at all. (still, doesn't explain the missing bitrate info unless the tag info causes a halt to reading properties which seems unlikely). There could also be other propietary "scraps" or even APE. I know Winamp would read left over APE over any id3 tags at one stage - drove me nuts as to why it wouldn't display something properly.
Like I said - that mp3tag linked to earlier - you can install it, run it, point it at your entire 50k music dir, and then sort by tag and you will see what is actually in your files. This way you can detect zero tags (indicates a problem) or if everything has a tag you will see the sorting differentiates between different id3 versions and multiple tags. So you can easily spot all those with just 2.4 or just APE etc. You'll see.
The only other thing I can think of is to do with unicode (you should be using UTF-16 ) - but if you can see most tags, just not a handful, then i doubt that's it.
/end edit
Ahh .. I just assumed a 7 or 8 yr old second hand server - my bad.
I could be off track (and you didn't answer my questions about the validity/integrity of the "truncated" mp3s), but (and I know this is win server 2003, which I'm not all that familiar with) I hate external programs trying to mess and edit my id3 tags etc in my mp3s - like auto adding v1 tags if I manually add lyrics, or appending ratings and play counts (my portable winamp llama's arse database can track all that). I just want clean do once, v2.3+ tags (artist, album, trackno, genre, year, title and BMP - nothing else), and nothing embedded. No garbage, no left over proprietary scraps. and NO other programs editing it without my knowledge. And from experience over the years trying new players and libraries/databases, a lot do attempt to interfere (either auto adding lyrics or looking up gracenote etc, changing my stylizations or proper case or accents etc, undoing all my super consistence (thru mp3ts) work and painstaking internet research. And Windows media player, from the little I know about, has/had a reputation for doing this sort of thing - I'm not saying that's the actual case (but read this - < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Services > ) - and it probably depends if you even use it on the server.
But - I would check scheduled tasks, look at mp3 file associations (just stick on a portable foobar and associate mp3s with that), look at any windows media services, windows media preferences.
I assume you use Windows 2003 server in order to share/stream to multiple computers/devices? There are easier ways. And of course you may use it for more than just your music - only you know what's best
You could fix all mp3s with missing tags and then stick an audit on the music dir. You could also check the last modified date stamp of files.
Or you could slap on some flavor of Linux : )
Posted by: Guest on Dec. 31 2013,01:26
@ LemonSqueezy.
thanks for the reply.
The windows server is a my network/ ftp /http /mailserver left over from my job as a Network Administrator. It's my hobby to let it run. It is also a test environment for my job.
My mp3's are simply stored on it. In this case I can use them through out all my workstations (in my study, on my laptop or my desktop.
the damaged mp3's (missing info) will play normal and when they're copied to my win7 machine or the laptop, they also miss the file info. On the server I had already disabled media player + that kind of services. (I hate it when programs change anything on my music collection without me knowing it)
tonight I installed mp3tag to get info about id3 tag info.
What version ID3 is used by mp3ts?
Posted by: Magnus Brading on Jan. 23 2014,14:51
Mp3/Tag Studio read anything up to ID3v2.4, and writes ID3v2.3 itself.
Posted by: Guest on Jan. 25 2014,13:48
Problem is solved. there was a index tool that wrote info in the file. index tool removed from the server.
thanx for the help.
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