I have been very dissapointed to see just how little of the id3v2 spec s implimented in windows media player and real player. in particular I would like to explore the encryption capabilities of the ide3v2 spec but cannot find a tag editor that supports it and dont even know if media player or realplayer will recognize the tags anyway. Anyone gots any ideas on this?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Ric Richardson

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to encrypt your tag data?

I can't make head or tail of it either, and he's posted it twice. Ric, do you mean you're going to use the id3 data to indicate that the mp3 stream itself is encrypted? What exactly are you trying to do?

Does that mean you want to "hide" downloaded mp3 files behind the encryption (for whatever reason...)?

Sorry not to explain it... let me clarify... in the id3v2 spec there is provision for an encryption tagthat is set with an identifier and link to a decryption module/ codec and also a link to an unencrypted portion of music.
See id3v2 spec item:
id3.org item 4.19 for what I am talking about... its one of the standard frame descriptions.
Thanks
Ric

PS: I am not talking about encrypting the tag.... but about using the tag called "audio encryption" to distribute an encypted music or voice file.

ID3v2.4 isn't widely supported *anyway*. Much less using the AENC tag for DRM type of stuff in an MP3. I know of no player than will support this, and darn few that will support ID3v2.4 at all.

It's not widely used enough to be considered a standard in any real sense of the term. But if you feel like implementing a player or plugin for an existing player that makes use of this tag, then you could probably do so without too much difficulty. But I highly doubt anybody has done it because there's better ways to do DRM than to stick it in MP3.

Sounds like good advice except that it is really important for my purposes that the file be encrypted and use the mp3 file suffex... what idea do you propose?

PS I do not want to go to mp4 or avi packaged formats.
Regards,
Ric

If I'm not mistaken this type of encryption is useless as no player supports them. The tag will most likely be ignored.

I don't think there is any way you can avoid copying.

Perhaps (god forbid) you can use the copy protection system used with WMA?

Since the encryption of mp3 files seems not to be implemented seriously yet, I'd go with common encryption like PGP or GnuPG for distribution.
If you want to archieve the files encrypted on your HD I'd try a virtual encrypted HD like included in the Steganos security suite (Steganos safe or portable safe) or you could try the Ashampoo Privacy Protector or DriveCrypt or several further programs ... google....
The advantage is, that you can listen to your music at your PC as usual if you open the encryped HD.