iTunes - MP3s will not accept artwork, ID3 tags

6801 Views 7 Replies 3 Participants Last post by interact, Sep 23, 2007

interact

Discussion Starter · Sep 23, 2007

I searched for "iTunes Artwork" and I don't believe anyone here has had this issue.

I add artwork to iTunes (currently 7.4.1) a couple of ways:
- select album, command-i and drag/paste image into square
- select song, drag/paste image into drop artwork here square
- iTunes "Get Album Artwork" feature
- CoverScout 2.3.5 (http://www.equinux.com/us/products/coverscout/index.html)

Probably every month or so, I then select all the songs in my library and Convert ID3 tags to version 2.4. This has worked really well - maybe 5 or 10 songs without artwork.

Something went incredibly wrong yesterday. Approx. 10% of my songs have lost their artwork and now will not accept it (using any of the above methods.) Plus, dropping them into a virgin iTunes (new user on computer,) I see that they don't have the ID3 info I applied and won't accept it. What's even stranger is that it's random - on the same Foo Fighters CD (bought from HMV and imported as 192kbps MP3,) 3 songs have artwork and the rest don't and won't accept it.

CoverScout analyzes the artwork on my iTunes and it's quite odd what it comes back with. Initially in CS, that Foo Fighters CD appears to have 3 songs with embedded artwork and the rest appear to be missing (which is correct.) Using CS to apply the artwork, the album appears to be fixed (all songs are marked green,) but looking at the individual songs, it shows that nothing has been fixed (CS is fooled/mislead.) The songs may appear to be green in the list (meaning CS is detecting embedded artwork), but CS's own preview of the attached artwork is empty.

It's like the MP3s will suddenly not accept artwork or ID3 tags.

I've done the following:
- I restarted my computer
- repaired permissions
- deleted the Album Artwork folder (from my iTunes folder)
- deleted my iTunes preferences.
- double checked my ownership permissions on the individual files (they are read/write)

The only solution so far has been to reconvert the affected songs into MP3s and apply artwork/ID3. I can't possibly do this - hunting around for 100s of random songs, losing my metadata - I need a life outside my computer.

Any advice?

Thanks.

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Orion

· #2 · Sep 23, 2007

Apple released iTunes 7.4.2 close on the heels of the .1 release. Assumedly this is to break the ringtone creation bypasses, but there were also unspecified issues that were supposedly fixed. Yours may be one of them.

You may wish to check the permission of one or two of the problematic files relative to one that works and make sure they are the same. Permission Repair won't touch your personal files, just the OS files and applications that have a receipt.

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interact

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 23, 2007

Orion said:
Apple released iTunes 7.4.2 close on the heels of the .1 release. Assumedly this is to break the ringtone creation bypasses, but there were also unspecified issues that were supposedly fixed. Yours may be one of them.

You may wish to check the permission of one or two of the problematic files relative to one that works and make sure they are the same. Permission Repair won't touch your personal files, just the OS files and applications that have a receipt.

I'll try updating to the higher iTunes. Thanks.

Yup, I double checked my ownership permissions on the individual files and they're the same as "good files" (read/write.)

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· #4 · Sep 23, 2007

The 7.4.2 update fixed this issue for me, I had the same problem.

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rgray

· #5 · Sep 23, 2007

interact said:
Probably every month or so, I then select all the songs in my library and Convert ID3 tags to version 2.4. This has worked really well - maybe 5 or 10 songs without artwork.

Maybe a dumb question but what is the reason that you convert tags to v 2.4?

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interact

Discussion Starter · #6 · Sep 23, 2007

mguertin said:
The 7.4.2 update fixed this issue for me, I had the same problem.

Crap. 7.4.2 did not fix it.

Foo Fighters artwork will not stick.

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interact

Discussion Starter · #7 · Sep 23, 2007

rgray said:
Maybe a dumb question but what is the reason that you convert tags to v 2.4?

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25293

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interact

Discussion Starter · #8 · Sep 23, 2007

I think I've narrowed down the issue.

I have an old backup that has the Foo Fighters CD from 2 months ago. When I bring it to a "virgin iTunes" using a new user on the computer, I see:

- Artwork is embedded on MP3
- All the ID3 info is there (artist, album, etc.)

This means that something I did Saturday corrupted the embedded info. I started testing a few things:

- Asking iTunes to fetch artwork from the iTunes store - didn't break anything.
- Converted the ID3 tag to 2.4 - BINGO! Can't apply artwork

I've played around and I've noted that artwork embedded by iTunes will disappear when converting ID3 tags to 2.4 (and the MP3 can't accept art or ID3 info.) BUT, artwork embedded by CoverScout will not disappear when converting ID3 tags to 2.4 (and it still likes accepting ID3 info.)

I'm trying to "fix" those pesky MP3 files by reverting the ID3 tag back to 1.0. 2.2, etc and it's not making a difference. Any advice?

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