I have resisted using ANY digital media manager for 8 years now--I don't trust them. My collection is simply too valuable to accept the risk of a media manager to write to my files and potentially corrupt them. Yes, I have a raid server backing up my near-terabyte collection; but I may not find out if, say 1/3 was wiped out until after my backup occurs.

BUT-- my collection is now too unwieldy to peruse/manage without a media database manager/player.

SO-- I can't find much info about whether Itunes can screw up my collection; does it write to all catalogued music, what data is contained in the write-over, etc. Can I turn writing to my files OFF? Is there a media manager that won't write to my files, but still allows me to tag favorites to a separate database, etc?

Am I being too paranoid, and should I allow Itunes to catalog to my entire collection? I have read several reports of Itunes wiping out nearly all of an MP3 collection-- is this simply too rare?

FYI I have spent thousands of hours grooming my ID3 tags with Tag&Rename and don't want to lose this massive effort.

Are there media managers that will not write to the MP3 file (but supports rating etc.)? Can you disable this reliably?

Suggestions??
Thanks!
Starmanj

I have tried it once and it worked, but i find it a resource hog and deleted it.

However i have read one omplaint of someone who's whole mp3 collection was renamed to some internal itune format, like aaerr444.mp3.
After he deleted itunes there was no way to get the original file names back. he lost everything, however i dont know how he did it or how you can prevent it, should be a setting somewhere.

I am using iTunes (and MP3Gain)for over 3 years and had no problems. But had problems with Windows Media Player before.

This link may be of interest: iTunes Frame Length Issues

For what its worth, when I tried managing my ID3v2.4 collection in iTunes, album art and sometimes entire tags started going corrupt, especially after edits. Worse yet, because of the app's database I didn't realize the problem immediately. The album art issue happened with maybe 10/1000 tracks, the full tag corruption perhaps half as frequently.

I have no experience with ID3v2.3 in the program but have never heard any horror stories. iTunes probably doesn't like unsynchronization though.

Simply stick to ID3v2.3 and have nearly zero interoperability problems with any media player/library. ID3v2.3 is the de facto standard; ID3v2.4 isn't.

Yes, you are a bit too paranoid. iTunes doesn't write to MP3 files unless you make a metadata change. Ratings, if you do so choose to use them, are stored in the internal iTunes database and not in media files at all.

I've done full interoperability tests with MP3 libraries over 50K tracks and fed it to iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player 11, Windows Media Center, MediaMonkey, J. River Media Center, foobar2000 (set to ID3v2.3!), etc. and have experienced no issues or grief even while updating files. Just don't turn on stupid features, like allowing the application to rename or move files, etc. Also, if you ever try to use WMP 11... turn off "Retreive additional information from the Internet: Only add missing information" if you don't want it to try to fill in missing metadata. (I think it's likely on by default.)

iTunes should be fine with your files if the music folder is outside its iTunes folder or My Music and make sure that Soundcheck is switched off since iTunes would add its vaules on every id3 tag in your libarary, but if you don't or very rarely edit your tags why not have them set to Read Only which can be done in secs.

Great feedback! Thanks to all.

I am constantly grooming my MP3's and adding new files, so making them read-only, while the best solution, won't work for me.

I have 3 Ipods and manually synchronize my music to them.

Can someone explain what happens if I use full synchronization for my Ipods-- if I change my MP3 files (by editing them or moving folders), does it wipe the music off my Ipod? I'd like to rate my music on my Ipod and transfer that information to the Itunes database.

PS-- Tag&rename can rate MP3's and store it in the ID3 tag, but it does not show up in WMP or any other music player that I'm aware. Very frustrating-- there are NO standards for storing and viewing song rating info.

Starmanj

I don't know of any major media player out there that corrupts the files under its care. As a matter of fact, just about all of them can do what you're asking for as long as you check the right options, and not just iTunes: WMP, Winamp, MediaMonkey, etc ...

Just like the majority, with iTunes and ID3v2 2.3 I have never had problems. Occassionally though I would run into an uneditable track. I am not sure if iTunes corrupted it or some other program. I have a MP3 file which I don't know what's going / how to investigate the issue any further which seems to have ID3v2 2.4 and is uneditable in iTunes. I can't add Artwork to it, the moment I finish adding the artwork and press OK, it disappears. So far only MP3tag can read it properly and edit it. Once edited and saved by MP3tag, iTunes would be able to read it. If anybody is interested in trying this MP3, please say so in the thread and I would PM you a link to the file.

I've never once had any issue.

The primary thing iTunes is going to do when you add files to your library is add data about them to its own ITL and XML files, or, if you choose, copy files to some other location. Both of these actions should come as no risk to damaging any files except in the case where a copied file may become corrupted, but that should be extremely rare (I've never encountered any file corruption as the result of copying files from one hard disk to another or to a different location on the same disk). Unless you specify some other non-default action, iTunes won't write to any files upon the initial building of its library.

Now, editing the tags within iTunes poses about as much risk to header corruption as editing tags in any other application (in theory), and there's always some degree of 'risk' involved in modifying existing data. If ID3v2.4 is a known issue in iTunes, do what everyone else suggests and don't use it, though, like I've said, I've had zero issues with 2.4.

AFAIK, turning off Sound Check (in Preferences/Playback) does not stop iTunes from scanning the files and writing the data to the tags. It only prevents the Sound Check volume leveling from being applied during playback.

Robert

The soundcheck info is stored in a comment tag with the description "Comment ITUNNORM". Adding this info won't destroy the comments that you've already added, the itunnorm info is simply added to the beginning of the field. In fb2k, you'll see all the comments, but they are in a single comment field separated by a ";". But if you edit tags in MP3tag, you can create a column to show the field "COMMENT ITUNNNORM" and the soundcheck value is displayed here and in a separate regular "comment" column only your other comment info is shown (and can be edited, etc.).

I use ITUNES so that I can sync my mp3 files with my IPOD and have never had a problem with this. In fact, I use mp3tag to convert the replaygain values (album values) into soundcheck values that ITUNES will recognize. This way, when I import the files into ITUNES, ITUNES does not even bother scanning for soundcheck values as it thinks they are already there. And when I turn on soundcheck in my IPOD it uses ALBUM level adjustments, which I prefer. Itunes will scan for "gapless" playback the first time a song is added, but this does not add anything to the mp3 file tag. Itunes stores this info in its own library database. If you have lame headers it will use that info for gapless, otherwise itunes has some sort of guessing mechanism for gapless (which works remarkably well I must say).

I also create "ITUNESCOMPILATION" field in mp3tag or dbpoweramp when ripping (mapping from the regular compilations tag). This way, ITUNES will also automatically recognize which of your albums are compilation albums without any additional tagging needed once in the itunes library.

p.s. I do use ID3v2.3 tags, and I've edited tags within dbpoweramp, fb2k (2.3 tag compatibility mode), and mp3tag without creating any problems in the interaction with itunes/ipod.

I use MP3TAG also, but I'm a pretty basic user. I'm intrigued by your method. Can you describe in more detail, maybe with screenshots, what you do to transfer fb2k's replaygain values to tags itunes can recognize?

I used to use mp3tag to convert album gain to itunesnorm, but I really could stand the garbage that gets displayed on foobar and windows explorer on some music player that does not support custom comment tags and i also use Soundcheck for shuffle so i decided to set my files as read-only since i rarely edit them after adding artwork and replay gained them and just get itunes to calc the gain vaule and add to its database instead of adding it onto my tags.

I allow iTunes to organize files for me; so I can't speak to what it does if you choose to manage them yourself but then change your organization. But as for the questions about full synching:

Editing -- if you edit the tags in files that have already been written to an iPod (perhaps, for example, because you've noticed a mispelling in a tag) what happens next time you sync the device is that iTunes re-writes the file to it. (And I guess it would have to if it were not to let the files on the computer and on the iPod contain different data.)

Wiping files -- if you delete a file from the iTunes library, next time you sync, iTunes will delete it from the device, too.

Same thing in both cases: if you opt for full synchronization, any change you make to the main music library is reflected on the device at next sync.

On tag formats -- I don't currently encode to MP3, but at one time I had plenty of files encoded with LAME in iTunes. Those had both ID3 v2.4 and ID3 v1.1 tags in them. I had virtually no problems with tags displaying incorrectly. A handful of files did (perhaps because of the tagger I was using at the time) but were fine after I converted the tags to ID3 v2.3. But most gave me no problem, so I wouldn't hurry to convert any tags until you've tried the files.

I woudn't call myself much more than a novice at mp3tag, but I've picked up a lot from the forums, etc. and the things I note below I've done myself on a collection of over 50,000 mp3 files. Some of this I picked up from others' postings and I appreciate their help in getting me this far. I am very picky about having correct tags, etc. I use mp3tag for both flac, mp3, and m4a files and I play files within fb2k and itunes for syncing with ipod. Obviously, anything you try, you should experiment with on a few files to make sure you have everything working properly. Here goes:

First, make sure you download the latest version of mp3tag (ver 2.40). Some of the options noted below weren't added until about development build 2.39c or d. But with 2.40 you'll have the latest version.

If you haven't used "actions" you'll need to understand the basics of this. As far as I can tell, to get into the actions menu you have to have a file loaded and selected within mp3tag. So just open a file in mp3tag and highlight it. Next click on the menu "convert" then "actions". Once here, on the upper right hand side of the box there is a button with a star. This is the "new" action option. Click on this. Give the action a name (like "convert replaygain to soundcheck"). Then hit OK. Now you are inside an action box, which is blank. Click on the upper right hand button with star (new) again. You'll get a dropdown menu. Select "format value" then hit OK. In the "field" box enter "COMMENT ITUNNORM" (without the quotation marks but with the space between comment and itunnorm). In the format string box enter the following (just copy and paste from here):



Hit OK. This function will convert the Itunes soundcheck value (i.e., the contents of COMMENT ITUNNORM) to the existing replaygain album value. Note that you must have already created replaygain album and track values for the file before all this. It doesn't matter that the file may not yet have any soundcheck value within the "comment itunnorm" field. This format string will put the value there and create the field. I've made this a little more complicated than need be by doing an if statement. this will make more sense in a moment. Bottom line, if the file is an MP3 file, this function will create soundcheck values from the album gain number. Note that if for some reason you want track gain, simply change the word "ALBUM" in the function to "TRACK".

When you return to the box from here, click on the button to the right that is just below the button with the star. This is the edit button (looks like paper with pencil). You'll now be able to enter another part of this same action. In the "field" box enter "ITUNNORM" (no quotes). Note you do NOT enter COMMENT first in this case. In the format string box enter the following:



Hit OK. This function is doing the same thing for any AAC file you might have. I have a handful of AAC/m4a files and did not want to have to separate them first before applying these actions. Using both these commands in the same action simply does one thing if it is an mp3 and another if an AAC. The only real difference is that the name of the fields are different across AAC and MP3 files.

You might also want to go ahead and create the ITUNESCOMPILATION tag at this time. I actually include it within the same action (just hit edit and add another format value as above). You can also create this as a separate action.

You'll again select "format value" and enter "ITUNESCOMPILATION" without the quotes. Then in your format string you'll enter the following:



This puts a "1" in the itunescompilation field if there is a "1" in the compilations field. My compilations field is created when I rip CDs using dbpoweramp. I assume EAC and other good rippers will do the same for you with compilation disks.

A few other thoughts/points:

1. Once you've created actions, you simply select all the files you want to apply the action to, then select the menu item "convert" then "action" then within the action box, check the box beside the action you want to apply. Note that you can select more than one action at this time and it will apply multiple actions.

2. I've run these actions on one computer and could only do a few hundred files at a time without it bombing with an error (the error did not corrupt any file, just stopped doing the action). But I think this was a memory limitation of that computer. I've run the action on another newer computer on as many as 12,000 files as a time and it worked perfectly.

3. If you already have soundcheck values created with ITUNES, you can still run this same action and it will create replacement values. If this is the case, to make itunes read the new values for its own library, you should select all songs within ITUNES, then right click and select "get info". Then select OK EDIT: (note, do not actually do ANYTHING within any of the fields....just hit OK; the fields should all be blank since there is no commonality to the artist, title, etc. fields with 1,000s of files selected). END EDIT. This will cause itunes to read all the files. This can take quite a while if you have lots of files.

4. To create columns in mp3tag to show these values, simply right click on the column titles, then click on "customize columns". Then select "new" then give it a name (e.g., ITUNNORM MP3), and the value will be "%comment itunnorm%" (without quotes and with space between comment and itunnorm). Create another new column called "ITUNNORM AAC" for your AAC files and use the value %itunnorm%. For the itunes compilation field, create a new column called ITUNES COMPILATION and the value is %ITUNESCOMPILATION%. A column for album replaygain would be: %REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN%. If you create a column with just %comment% this will show your comments OTHER THAN the soundcheck value. This makes editing these a lot easier. Unfortunately, although you can see these differences in mp3tag and ITUNES, fb2k does not allow you to separately see the ITUNNORM comment field.

p.s. I'm just a happy user of mp3tag and not otherwise connected to anyone there, but for those of you that find it extremely helpful in managing your music collection, I'd remind you that a few dollars of support thrown toward the developer will make sure we have this wonderful tool (updated) for the future. I appreciate the fact that I can use a program for free to make sure it does what I want, but I always remember to support the developer if I choose to make the tool a part of my regular procedures. Just good karma I think....

EDIT: clarification on having itunes reread tags.

Wow. Thanks for the detailed response. I've got some work cut out for me. Have a good week!

jb

If you're worried about file corruption just set your MP3 files to read only.