I'm very frustrated at this point.
I bought a 60GB iPod today.

In foobar2000, my media library looks fine - all proper tags, etc. When I load my library in iTunes, almost half of my music's tags (artist, album, track), have a "[]" in front of each. So, I try using Anapod Explorer (my friend gave me a copy), and now that I'm transferring them to iPod with that, I notice that a HUGE portion of songs are labeled "<unknown> - <unknown> - filename.mp3".

How can I fix this easily??

Let me guess, you're using mp3's? Foobar 0.9 likes to use id3 1.1 as the preferrential tag, but will stick any overflow into a 2.4 tag. This royally screws up any players that use the first tag they see, namely ALL players but Foobar. The only thing you can do is use something like The Godfather, via the tagging portion, to move all 1.1 tags to the 2.4 side. That's worked for me on my iPod, Sandisk e260 and something else I can't remember at the moment.

For that to be true, foobar would have to be writing a blank ID3v2 tag as well as a valid ID3v1 tag. I really don't think this is the case.

I just tried it now, and foobar wrote an ID3v1 tag, but I didn't see anything that looked like an ID3v2 tag at the top of the file (though I suppose it would be hard to spot a blank tag).

Are you sure thats how it works or are you just guessing?

He is just guessing. I have been able to transfer tracks using ID3v1.1 AND APEv2 tags.

I think that iPod's do not support ID3v2.4 that foobar does.

Select all your tracks on foobar. Right-click-->Tagging-->MP3 Tag types-->Either select only ID3v1.1 with or without APEv2. It's the only way your tracks will work on all three players: foobar, iTunes and iPod.

iTunes reads ID3v2.4 (the ipod itself cannot read tags). However, as the first poster discovered, there is a bug in iTunes right now that causes it to add the square to the end of tracks tagged with ID3v2.4.

No, not guessing. I've tried transferring to my 5th gen 60GB via iTunes and Anapod Explorer. Freshly converted files from Foobar, with both tag types, are not read properly by either program. Tags come up missing.

Also a bug with mp3's going on my Sandisk Sansa e260. Freshly converted files, via Foo .9, copied via Explorer (drag and drop) are not read by the player on a database refresh.

In both of the above cases, I can use The Godfather to move any 1.1 tags to 2.4, thus removing the 1.1 and all problems dissapear.

I'd like the ability to tell Foobar that *I* want 2.4 tags only. It shouldn't be making that assumption for me. I know what my software reads. I know what my hardware reads. I can make the decision on my own.

The Godfather writes v2.3 tags not v2.4 and that's why the tags are then read by soft-/hardware

foobar2000 can do it.

Follow the steps I mentioned above.

You can select 2.4.

Problem is 2.4 is not widely supported. So you will have problems.

Or you can stick to foobar 0.8.3

Have you tried the player MediaMonkey?
It's a great programm with full ipod-support (also album arts). You could also use it for synching only.

http://www.mediamonkey.com

Big_Berny

Sadly, you're correct. After I wrote my first post, I went back and messed around with TGF. It reads the 2.4 tags, but if any updating is done they'll be written as 2.3. Oh well...

Just avoid ID3v2.4 -- a proposed standard that should never have been.

Hmm, I have the same problem as the thread starter. But I can't seem to follow the above solution. I'm right-clicking my tracks in foobar, select Tagging, but can't find MP3 Tag types.

I'm using foobar2000 v0.9.1.


EDIT: Nevermind, I'm stupid. Was looking at my .flac files, lol.

Easy solution. If you have an iPod you are likely using iTunes. There really is no reason not to. It is seamless with the iPod. Select all your songs in your iTunes libray and select the convert ID3 tags option. Convert all tags to ID3V2.3. Simple. Done. Your iPod will have no problems now.

Yes Foobar (for whatever reason) writes ID3V2.4. Many players do not support this standard. I wish I could over-ride Foobar to write V2.3. <sigh>. Foobar still rocks though.

One reason, and a big one for me, is album art. I don't want to jack around with tagging or applying album art in iTunes. Anapod makes transferring super easy and it's album art function is awesome. Say you have one folder with one album. In that directory you have the album art and it's named "AlbumArt.jpg". Anapod has a place where you fill in the naming convention you've chosen and it'll link the two when transferred to the iPod.

Unless you've open the files up with a hex editor and checked, you are in fact guessing. Have you looked at them and confirmed that it will write an ID3v1 tag and a blank ID3v2 tag? Because I have, and I'm not seeing it.



Wild guess: your player doesn't read id3v2.4, and you're writing id3v2.3 with the god father.



I don't think you do know what your hardware reads, judging from the above. Anyway, can you actually come up with a single example of a player that will read ID3v2.4 but not ID3v1? If not, then you don't really have a point.

Regardless, if you must force ID3v2 for whatever reason, add a tag not supported by ID3v1, like albumartist and leave it blank. Or just select all your files, choose mp3 tag type and select ID3v2.

I'm updating to 2.3 with iTunes - it seems to be working fine, thanks!!

On a somewhat related issue, I have all my album art stored as "art.jpg" in my album directories. Is there an easy way to get this to the appropriate album on the iPod?

I'm pretty sure The Godfather can do this for MP3 files. (Well, it can for Folder.jpg -- which is commonly used in Microsoft-land.) You can also use one of the Album Art utilities to specifically download/insert art. Too bad iTunes can't use these files directly (optionally)....

If you don't want to insert the artwork into all your MP3 files and still get Album Art, you'll need to use another media application with your iPod... (J River Media Center, for example)

Try mp3tag? Here is the link http://www.mp3tag.de/en/
There is an option that allows you to attach album art from a jpg relatively easily.

Also, you can have mp3tag write a v2.3 tag so that itunes sees the tags correctly. Also, mp3tag can tell you what version of tag is on the file.

BTW, has anybody tried using the newest itunes version 6. I had heard that it read the v2.4 tags correctly. I'm still using itunes 4.7.

try iTunes LT

http://www.richardlawley.com/software/ituneslt/

automatically adds album artwork to your library using the JPEG in each folder

might need to rename them all to folder.jpg though....not sure

I ran into the same "all my tracks are unknonw" problem when I recently transcoded my files with foobar (v0.9.3.1) and used Anapod to load them into my iPod. I noticed that Windows doesn't understand the tags either when you look at them via "properties". According to Red Chari Software, Anapod supports V2.4 tags. Are we sure that there's not sometime wrong with Foobar's implementation of v2.4 tags that's causing this?

Larry

Implementation of ID3 is often "open to interpretation"... You might just want to pass a file you are having issues with to Red Chari. (Or give them "full repro steps.")

Anyway, simple reason the Windows shell doesn't understand the tags: It does not support ID3v2.4... only ID3v2.3, which is basically the de facto standard. This is true even for the next version of Windows and any Microsoft media products. (This is somewhat regretable... it should at least read it. Ack!)

No, iTunes 6.0.5.20 still has the same problem. Strangely, Quick Time reads the tags without any issues, it's just iTunes.