ID Tag Question

[KarterJK]

Can someone explain if this is a bug or not?

I have a server that I have a portion of my audio files
All of my audio files indeed have either and ID1 or ID2 tag with all information including album art.

But, when I access the server, via direct connect

The information on some of the files is either not being parsed or read and not displayed in the left hand window pane. (artist, album)
It appears, (I think) that if a filename contains non-standard characters (i.e. [] square brackets and others) that the information is disregarded.

The files do show on the main screen, is this a bug, or do I have something, set up improperly?

Thanks ahead of time...

[Sam]

Yup there's a bug with non-standard characters causing metadata to be dropped. Been there for a long time. We'll hopefully fix it for the next release.

[Lord of the Rings]

Further on the id3 tag topic, are the proggies aware there's a bug between LW's describe function & wmp? If a file is added to wmp, then described by LW, it corrupts the file. This only seems to happen with wmp. It was discussed & tested out by a couple of regulars on gforums last year I think it was. I can't find that thread link (I think it was deleted.) But here's a couple of others anyway: 1. Link 1 (http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?t=50715&highlight=playlist%2A+corrupt), & also Link 2 (http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showpost.php?p=189790&postcount=7)

Also, the playlist function save issue has a flaw. Link A (http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?t=55243&highlight=playlist%2A), & also the original finding here Link B (http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54542)

[Sam]

This is a bug with WMP. It can't read ID3 tags that are compressed. I'll check out that playlist bug -- in a nutshell it's that you can't resave the playlist under the same name after changes are made?

[Lord of the Rings]

Yes

Otherwise it comes up as a blank file next time you open it.

Some people like to edit playlists they've created previously.

[Sam]

Okay -- we'll fix it. JIRA issue is https://www.limewire.org/jira/browse/GUI-31 for reference.

[Sam]

The playlist bug is fixed for the next release.

I'll look at the ID3 tag problem tomorrow. The JIRA for that is http://www.limewire.org/jira/browse/CORE-55 if you want to track it.

[Sam]

KarterJK -- After taking some time to look into your problem, I can't seem to actually find anything wrong. I apparently was mistaken that LimeWire had this bug, it seems to be working just fine.

Are you able to find any pattern that leads to LimeWire not displaying the info in the left?

[Sam]

Nevermind -- found the bug & fixed it. Should be set for 4.13.

[KarterJK]

Thanks for the great feedback....

I thought that might have been the case... I will await the new updates :)

Thanks for a great program.....

[Wyethia]

Just a note about the bug between LW's describe function & WMP.

I've found that it doesn't only happen with WMP. For me, it has corrupted every audio file that I have tried to describe with LW. So far, the only files types I have used are mp3 and wma, so I am unsure if it does it with any other types.

I've tried it with files that haven't been added to WMP and found that it does the exact same thing as files that have been added.

If I get a chance to, I will try it on a computer that doesn't have WMP installed.


Edit: On trying it again, on a file that I know for a fact wasn't added to WMP, I found that it still corrupts, however:

- It doesn't usually corrupt until LW is closing.
- It corrupted when I changed the artist, but when I changed the comments it did nothing (it didn't even save the changes after LW was closed).

I shall do a more thorough testing later.

[Sam]

LimeWire should never alter a WMA file -- it doesn't even know how to write the metadata (it just knows how to read it). How do you determine the file becomes corrupted? Do you open it in WMP, or something else?

I'll take a look into it and see if we can possibly coerce the ID3 writer to write uncompressed.

[Wyethia]

Alright, correction, it doesn't corrput WMA, only mp3. I've tried other non-audio files such as .zip; .txt; .bmp; .rar; and it only seems to corrupt mp3. In fact, the changes made to the other files can only be seen through LimeWire.

As for how I know it is corrupted, you can see it easily via the file propeties. Please see following screen shots.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c290/smseafire/ss-1.png

^ That is how it normally looks.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c290/smseafire/ss-2.png

^ And that, is how it looks after being corrupted.

The corrupted files are also unable to be burnt to disc in audio form.

[Sam]

It could be that Windows itself can't read compressed ID3 tags. Guess that's a bigger reason to not compress them. Can Winamp read them?

(PS: I hope you're not sharing that file. You should not share copyrighted material. Familiarize yourself with bands that promote sharing, and you'll have a better time with LimeWire and your wallet will thank you.)

[Wyethia]

Yes, Winamp can read them, and all the file information is available via Winamp.

And no, I'm not sharing that file. I just picked a random song to use as an example.

[Sam]

Cool -- so 'corrupt' isn't really the right word. LimeWire's just more advanced than Windows. :) We'll dumb down our ID3 handling to play nicely.

[Sam]

FYI, the JIRA for this ID3 compression thing is http://www.limewire.org/jira/browse/GUI-40 if you want to track it.

[Sam]

Okay, bug is now fixed. The problem wasn't actually compression, it was two different things. The first was an "unsynchronization" scheme that ID3v2 editors are supposed to use when writing, to ensure that older clients that didn't support ID3v2 can still parse the audio data. Windows breaks on this scheme. I figure older parsers are pretty darned rare now, so I turned it off. The other problem was "extended headers" -- this is an optional CRC check on the headers to make sure that nothing was malformed. Windows can't handle that either, so I turned it off too. So, writing ID3 tags just became a little more brittle, but Winamp writes'm that way, so it's probably okay.

[Wyethia]

Ah, good to see that is could be easily fixed.

That also means that the 'corrupted' files can be fixed by renewing the ID3v2 tags with Winamp.

[Sam]

Easily fixed, Yes. Easily found, No. It took a little over half the day just to figure out what was going wrong. :) (But yes, you can change the files so that Windows can read them by re-saving the file in Winamp.)