mp3 file woes - General Questions and Answers

<rant>
why the *beep* is it so maddeningly, annoyingly unreliable to copy mp3 files to a phone?????
</rant>
No matter how I transfer my mp3 collection to my phone, there are ALWAYS some files where the stupid thing fails to read the mp3 tags, so they show up as "unknown artist - unknown album".
the part that drives me to the point of picturing phone shaped holes in my window is that its always different files, plus all my mp3 files in fact DO have proper tags.
Device in question: every one I had so far. right now: S8+ running 7.1.2 stock, rooted, adopted storage.
...could the adopted storage be the reason?

[Lemmy] said:
<rant>
why the *beep* is it so maddeningly, annoyingly unreliable to copy mp3 files to a phone?????
</rant>
No matter how I transfer my mp3 collection to my phone, there are ALWAYS some files where the stupid thing fails to read the mp3 tags, so they show up as "unknown artist - unknown album".
the part that drives me to the point of picturing phone shaped holes in my window is that its always different files, plus all my mp3 files in fact DO have proper tags.
Device in question: every one I had so far. right now: S8+ running 7.1.2 stock, rooted, adopted storage.
...could the adopted storage be the reason?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried zipping them?..if so idk

... you mean all android music players can play mp3 files from within a zipped archive without unzipping it first? really?

He meant zipping them for transfer, then extract them on the phone.
Broadcasted from Zeta Reticuli

Simple answer. There are different Tag formats. It sounds like you might have some songs using tag formats that some players don't recognise. All might look okay when you see your media library in a desktop player like Foobar2k that reads all tag formats, but once you move them to your phone the mobile apps that don't read all formats fall over on a few files.
Download Mp3Tag and work through your collection. Start with the songs you're having problems with and compare with a song that you're not having a problem with. See what is different about them. Delete all tags from one of the problematic songs and rewrite them using Mp3Tag. See if that works.

It turns out to be an encoding issue- I change tags to Unicode and rescan my library, and all is fine...

Related

Transferring Music to TP

Is there ANY other program you can use to sync songs to a TP besides WMP? I've been using WMP, but it keeps on making random duplicates of all my songs, and it's REALLY annoying.
I would greatly appreciate any advice.
Oh and I don't want to just drag+drop, I would like some sort of program.
Thanks.
i agree i moved from a iphone and i got to say its annoying, the way windows mobile phones organize music, and when i use windows media player mobile to update my library it seaches the entire device and grabs even system sounds.
Hmm, I just put my microsd card into my computer and dump all the music I want to listen to (mp3, flak, ogg, what ever) into the music folder to play with the built in player / core player.
Eric03 said:
Is there ANY other program you can use to sync songs to a TP besides WMP? I've been using WMP, but it keeps on making random duplicates of all my songs, and it's REALLY annoying.
I would greatly appreciate any advice.
Oh and I don't want to just drag+drop, I would like some sort of program.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How is drag and drop ANY more difficult than a program?
dr g said:
How is drag and drop ANY more difficult than a program?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well at least with WMP I can see my music in a "library" setup, as opposed to just opening my music folder which has thousands upon thousands of subfolders. It's just much easier for me (at least the way my music folder is setup) to use a program such as WMP.... but WMP sucks. That is why I am asking for an alternative to WMP.
10332007 said:
Hmm, I just put my microsd card into my computer and dump all the music I want to listen to (mp3, flak, ogg, what ever) into the music folder to play with the built in player / core player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats exactly what I do and it works like a charm. It is easier than using a program in my opinion. Are you doing something wrong? is it giving you trouble moving the files to the microSD card?
When I start Winamp and have my phone plugged in, it detects it and asks if I want to use it to manage my music on the phone. Winamp has a great name out there, maybe it oculd be useful.
I also used Yahoo Music Engine at once point and that worked great, like itunes. I think that whole deal is still around too, albeit Yahoo music has changed a bit, the app was called Yahoo Music Engine.
I have not tried sync with WM11. There must be a simple option or something you are missing. Perhaps it has to do with Media Player on WM6 and the library function. If you scan the device and organize the library to ignore your Windows folder then it probably won't be a problem on the WM11 side.
Does that make any sense?
WM11 is simple drag and drop; the problem is that when it loads music onto your Phone/SD card it puts it into the file structure Artist/Album/Track based off id3 tags. So if your music is improperly tagged or if you have more than one copy of a song like an album and a compilation album you'll end up with duplicates.
Personally I just wipe out the Music folder on my SD card every 2 weeks or so and dump a new playlist onto it. You can use the WMP sort function in the playlist to eliminate any duplicates before you copy them over. You can still add to the card later and it won't reinstall the same file so long as it's not a duplicate on your desktop like I mentioned above.
As for getting rid of ringtones showing up in your library on your phone I use Pocket Player for my MP3 player and it has an "Exclude Directory" option on it so it will only update from the SD card music folder.
Did Wm4 or CE or whatever handle music?
So that whole development time while WM5 was on market and ipod appeared, was MS just sitting there saying, "Well these are business devices let's focus on getting four Excel cells to show up on this ****tay 320x240 screen instead"
Great.
And the even funier part is the new Blackberry virtualization occurring over WM6. If they were so good at business apps then why is this occurring, HELP ME UNDERSTAND hahahhaha
This was all tongue in cheek utterance from a bewildered fan of MS and their spastic roll outs!!!!!

Clear music from "Music" tab library?

I'm one of the few people who actually like the Music tab's interface (using the zoom to scan a song is very nice, IMO) but I have a question about removing songs from the library...
I deleted the stock songs from my device and now, when I go to the music tab, I get the 'searching...' message and, when I go to library, all the old songs are still there, but with exclamation marks rather than album art.
I went to WMP and deleted all the songs in the 'My Music' list, so I know the two aren't tied together.
Edit:
Also, I've added a bunch of music in a folder I created (Storage Card>My Documents>My Music) and neither WMP or the Music tab see this folder. Where do I put music on the storage card so the media players will see them?
Try Deleting the AudioManager.vol file in \Application Data\HTC\AudioManager_Eng. That should force AudioManager to re-search your device for Music (you'll need to disable TF3D and make sure Audio Manager isn't running in the background to delete the file. You also may need to use Total Commander or Resco, however selecting "Show all Files" in File Explorer may also work).
I personally haven't tested it by deleting any files first, but I don't see why it shouldn't work (though you did indicate it shows "Searching" everytime you go to the tab, so this may not work). It's something to try, at any rate.
Captain_Throwback said:
Try Deleting the AudioManager.vol file in \Application Data\HTC\AudioManager_Eng.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That didn't work. The deleted songs still show up and it still doesn't see the new songs. You figure they'd want these devices to be user friendly and make it easy to copy your music onto it. Or remove songs you don't want.
bryceowen said:
Edit:
Also, I've added a bunch of music in a folder I created (Storage Card>My Documents>My Music) and neither WMP or the Music tab see this folder. Where do I put music on the storage card so the media players will see them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have my Music in \Storage Card\Music (because that's where Windows Media puts them by default when you sync it), and I've never had any problems with AudioManager finding my Music. Perhaps you should elaborate on your setup, ROM-wise.
Stock ROM. Just got the phone a week ago. The songs I'm trying to load are .mp3. I've tried putting the songs on the device directly in the /Music folder, I've also tried /My Documents/Music, /My Documents/My Music (both on the device and on the storage card). The MP3s will play, if I pull them up in TC or File Manager.
I've tried copying the 'Dogbark.wav' file to the storage card (/My Documents) and WMP has no problem finding THAT file. I was thinking it might be a file name issue, but I've tried renaming one of the mp3s to something as simple as one letter and it STILL isn't seen.
Do you NEED to sync it with Windows Media Player? (This is a bit of a problem, as I use linux and don't have ready access to a Windows machine.)
bryceowen said:
Stock ROM. Just got the phone a week ago. The songs I'm trying to load are .mp3. I've tried putting the songs on the device directly in the /Music folder, I've also tried /My Documents/Music, /My Documents/My Music (both on the device and on the storage card). The MP3s will play, if I pull them up in TC or File Manager.
I've tried copying the 'Dogbark.wav' file to the storage card (/My Documents) and WMP has no problem finding THAT file. I was thinking it might be a file name issue, but I've tried renaming one of the mp3s to something as simple as one letter and it STILL isn't seen.
Do you NEED to sync it with Windows Media Player? (This is a bit of a problem, as I use linux and don't have ready access to a Windows machine.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you shouldn't need to. I'm really not sure why it wouldn't be working.
What Carrier are you on? What location? There may be a ROM update floating around somewhere that will solve your problem.
I'm with AT&T in Florida. I'd like to avoid a ROM flash, if possible...
bryceowen said:
I'm with AT&T in Florida. I'd like to avoid a ROM flash, if possible...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if that's possible, unfortunately. I'd actually suggest a hard reset to see if that fixes the issue. If you're going to do that, you may as well update to the new AT&T ROM. I, unfortunately don't have any other suggestions for you.
Actually, the only other thing I can think of is that it's an issue with your SD card, but that wouldn't explain why AudioManager won't update.
go to the music tab, bottom left softkey "library", slide over to "all songs", and play something on your phone. it should clear off all old songs and the new ones.
I actually found the solution on the AT&T support forums. (HOLY CRAP! Useful information was ACTUALLY found there for once!)
Two words:
Soft reset.
Don't know why I didn't try it sooner.
The Jack of Clubs said:
go to the music tab, bottom left softkey "library", slide over to "all songs", and play something on your phone. it should clear off all old songs and the new ones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem I was having, Jack, was that the music player wasn't detecting any of the new songs I had on the phone. 'All Songs' was blank, because I had deleted all the songs that were included with the device and it just wasn't seeing the new ones. At least not until I did a soft reset.
bryceowen said:
The problem I was having, Jack, was that the music player wasn't detecting any of the new songs I had on the phone. 'All Songs' was blank, because I had deleted all the songs that were included with the device and it just wasn't seeing the new ones. At least not until I did a soft reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assumed you'd tried that. That's usually the first thing everyone tries, so I didn't even bother suggesting it. Glad you got it working.
i dont like to restart the phone. it takes a really long time to boot up. it always finds the songs with the way i listed. i even have all my album art.

ogg file scanning - does not read artist info

I have some ogg vorbis music files. When the Music folder is scanned it reads in the information properly from mp3 files, but not ogg files. It shows "Unknown Artist". I have checked the tags and the Artist is there. In addition, some programs display the Artist information (from the tag) when playing. But when you go to search by artist, all apps (I have tried several) show "Unknown Artist".
Does anyone know where the media scanning code is located? Maybe I could look at it and see why it isn't handling ogg files.
Thanks.
A fellow Vorbis user!
I have never gotten any ROM to view Vorbis tags - I also had this issue on early Pandigital Novel tablet ROM's, which were later corrected. I already asked VS CS to fix this, but I always assumed that I was the only one who ever called them about this.
I'm not sure if this is kernel or framework based.
Well, I see there is an MediaStore and associated classes and given that multiple music apps seem to be sharing the scanned library, I suspect it is in the Android code, not the Linux kernel. On my Ubuntu there is no problem with ogg files either. So any idea where to find the media scanning code?
Thanks.
Unfortunately I don't know. I usually use an app like Rockbox, which uses its own database.
Deleted duplicate
Yeah, I've noticed this as well, even on my Droid. It's definitely in the android code.
It's tough being a vorbis user...
Hey, just thought I'd chime in if you didn't mind me.
Yeah, I have a huge collection of Ogg Vorbis files on my computer, and my media player software on my laptop does not read tags either (my files were converted from mp3s, I thought maybe the tags were stripped out).
Same thing on my GTablet and my Nexus One, non of my media player software on Android reads the tags either (if they still exist).
In my case, the tags are definitely there - I know because I'm meticulous with adding them. My Cowon S9 sees them, Rhythmbox sees them, but not the music players on this device (except Rockbox).
Want this fixed? Call VS and complain, in all seriousness. I think the guy on the phone almost laughed at me when I told him Vorbis tags were broken. Not exactly high on their priority list.
Btw, transcoding MP3's to Vorbis should be avoided, if at all possible. It's a lossy to lossy transfer, which means that there will be quality loss. Think of the old days of copying a VHS tape to another tape - each generation is inferior to the previous one. If you can, keep your "master" copy as a lossless file like ALAC or FLAC, and from the best source you can find (like a CD). That way, you can make lossy copies from that lossless source to reduce quality losss.
(I'm a big music fan).
roebeet said:
Btw, transcoding MP3's to Vorbis should be avoided, if at all possible. It's a lossy to lossy transfer, which means that there will be quality loss. Think of the old days of copying a VHS tape to another tape - each generation is inferior to the previous one. If you can, keep your "master" copy as a lossless file like ALAC or FLAC, and from the best source you can find (like a CD). That way, you can make lossy copies from that lossless source to reduce quality losss.
(I'm a big music fan).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, well, gotta conserve space somewhere (and I don't have a FLAC converter).
Still, I need space for more music and since OGG helps me to save space a little bit, it's totally worth it for me.
Sorry, but I lose my master copies as soon as the conversion is done. The originals were copies from CDs using other software (as in, straight from the CD audio .cda to .MP3 and then to .OGG, but not always. Sometimes, I go straight to .OGG.).
I put the CDs back in their cases and the temporary file is deleted is what I mean.
I remember VHS tapes!
Wow, I feel old... I wonder if their quality degrades over time?
I'd hate to see what they look like now...

META inf files?(SOLVED)

Where are they held?
The reason I'm asking is when I put music onto my SDcard no matter what player I use it misses over half of my albums. Itunes to my Ipod has no such conflict. So doing a little research lead me to the meta inf? If a folder gets transferred to storage it should still contain the meta data right? How do you make that data readable to the system?(for the record mizing, uber, miui, and stock all have the same results).
Thanks
hechoen said:
Where are they held?
The reason I'm asking is when I put music onto my SDcard no matter what player I use it misses over half of my albums. Itunes to my Ipod has no such conflict. So doing a little research lead me to the meta inf? If a folder gets transferred to storage it should still contain the meta data right? How do you make that data readable to the system?(for the record mizing, uber, miui, and stock all have the same results).
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How are you putting the music onto the sd card?
From harddrive to folder to sdcard. So all the info pulled from the harddrive should be there? My music collection is very tight. Meaning all songs and album art are held in a single folder. Any ideas?
Are there by any chance any .nomedia files in the folders?
No .nomedia files in any of the folders.
What formats are you using on your music?
.m4a is the file type.
You might've downloaded some aac files from the itunes store right? Are you sure none of them have drm? Android won't be able to read them if they do
Sent from my awesome SGS4G
No aac files and I've never used itunes store. All of my music comes from other free sources. It's weird. I have about 50 albums and half are recognized half are not. The ones that aren't have the correct song names come up and even the correct album name but for some reason the artists name isn't being read.
hechoen said:
No aac files and I've never used itunes store. All of my music comes from other free sources. It's weird. I have about 50 albums and half are recognized half are not. The ones that aren't have the correct song names come up and even the correct album name but for some reason the artists name isn't being read.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What are you using to manage your music library anyway?
FBis251 said:
What are you using to manage your music library anyway?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the computer I use Itunes(I have a Mac) on the phone either the stock player or the miui player that comes with AUDIOPHILE FTW. I've tried mizing as well. Thanks FB for looking into this.
hechoen said:
On the computer I use Itunes(I have a Mac) on the phone either the stock player or the miui player that comes with AUDIOPHILE FTW. I've tried mizing as well. Thanks FB for looking into this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah this is a little odd. I'm sure you've tried the folder mode on mixzing? Can you give winamp a shot?
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nullsoft.winamp
FBis251 said:
Yeah this is a little odd. I'm sure you've tried the folder mode on mixzing? Can you give winamp a shot?
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nullsoft.winamp
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried winamp same thing. What is going on? On a side note tried winamps shoutcast for a second. How does Van Morrison end up on alternative?!
The only thing I can think to do is redo my music folder and download it again to my phone. It's crazy the files aren't corrupt because they play.
hechoen said:
Tried winamp same thing. What is going on? On a side note tried winamps shoutcast for a second. How does Van Morrison end up on alternative?!
The only thing I can think to do is redo my music folder and download it again to my phone. It's crazy the files aren't corrupt because they play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It might be a tagging issue. Not sure what method itunes uses to tag its files since mp3 files tend to use id3. That's why I'm glad on windows, Mediamonkey handles all the tagging. I have my folder structure really organized so that if I try to look for music from just a computer, no music player, I can find it.
/music/Album Artist/[<Album year>] Album/Track# Track title.
If you can get on parallels or bootcamp and can get mediamonkey on windows I'd give it a shot. I'll tell you how to force an update of the songs' metadata.
FBis251 said:
It might be a tagging issue. Not sure what method itunes uses to tag its files since mp3 files tend to use id3. That's why I'm glad on windows, Mediamonkey handles all the tagging. I have my folder structure really organized so that if I try to look for music from just a computer, no music player, I can find it.
/music/Album Artist/[<Album year>] Album/Track# Track title.
If you can get on parallels or bootcamp and can get mediamonkey on windows I'd give it a shot. I'll tell you how to force an update of the songs' metadata.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My music is organized the same way. I'll give media monkey a try when I get some time. Still gonna try just redownloading my music to the sd card when I get some time as well. I'll let you know how it goes. If you have any other ideas let me know.
Thanks
I have this same problem. I use Winamp to sync with my android. And i made sure using both Winamp and an independent tagging program that all my files have tags (artist, album, cover, etc.) and yet half of them still are not read on my phone. Not by Google Music app, not by Winamp, and not by Samsung Stock Player.
Could it be the file types that dont work?
The ones that DO have Artists reading all have the correct album artwork. The ones that DO NOT have artists according to my players all have albums, but about half of them do not have album artwork (the rest do). I'm not sure what's going on. I think it's an error within the Media Scanner?
(on a side note- if you include the track number in the file name of your song, it will show up as that when playing. I would recommend not putting the track number in the file name.)
Nickcu
I never figured out what's going on. Just learned to live with it. I think I might start playing around with it again and try to come up with some answers. If you figure it out let me know.
Im gonna look into it some more later, but i THINK it has something to do with the file type at this point. But don't quote me on that haha.
Just redid all my music. pulled all Itunes related crap out of the folders and it's still not recognizing about half of them. Gonna try some other stuff later. File type isn't part of it I don't think. It still recognizes and plays just shows up under unknown.
I just looked through mine and it seemed that all the files with unknown artist were in .m4a whereas the ones that recognized the artist were in .mp3
could you check and see if yours is the same way?

[Q] How do I embed the metadata that shows up in iTunes 11 on my Android 2.3 phone?

So I have around 1000 songs on iTunes that I want to transfer over to my phone since I just got a new SD card for it. The problem is, the ID3 tags that display correctly in iTunes show up as a bunch of jumbled characters on Android 2.3's default, as well as other music players including doubleTwist, Poweramp and so on. What's weird is that the phone only does this for certain songs. However, other songs using the same set of characters will display properly.
I've tried to sync my iTunes library with my phone using programs like doubleTwist and SnapPea already. Both produce the exact same result as dragging and dropping the files into my SD card's 'media' folder would--all they do is take the files from 'My Music' (the ones with the messed up ID3 tags) so the file titles are all messed up in the phone's music player.
For example, I have a song starting with the symbol 'θ' that will display properly on my phone but 'β' doesn't display... it turns it a Chinese character for some reason. I've used apps like ID3Fixer to no avail. Besides, it'd take too long for me to go through the metadata of 1000 songs... surely there's a way to fix this if iTunes can display them correctly? I've been looking for ways to forcibly embed the iTunes metadata onto the standalone files themselves (in 'My Music') but I still haven't found anything. In fact, the ID3 tags for these songs are messed up outside iTunes because I only edited their metadata in iTunes in the first place.
Any help at all is appreciated. Thanks.

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