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Topic: iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible? (Read 5274 times) previous topic - next topic
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iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible?

Recently, I decided to convert a bunch of ALAC files to more compressed MP3 files for use on another player.  Much to my surprise, some of these files have no ID3 tags.  What is worse, I can't write any with some of the common tagging tools.  After searching around for info on what iTunes does with tagging, I found Otto's directions to NOT write ID3 tags when using iTunesEncode.  Well,  even though I missed this in the setup, iTunesEncode and EAC worked fine for me.  The iTunes DB has the information and the files play everywhere.  But there are no tags on the files that can be read by other programs and I get write errors when I try to add them.  I'd like to do two things: be able to write tags, and get the iTunes info into those tags.  Is there anyway to do this?

Thanks for your help.

Resolved.  See post below.

iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible?

Reply #1 –
I'm confused.  If you were converting ALAC to MP3, why did you need iTunesEncode?  And what errors do you get when you try and tag the files?  Are you sure they're MP3 files?

iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible?

Reply #2 –
Have iTunes update the ID3 tags (select tracks and go to "Advanced" menu-->"Convert ID3 Tags..."). That should force it to rewrite the ID3 tags using the information from the iTunes database file.

iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible?

Reply #3 –
Quote
I'm confused.  If you were converting ALAC to MP3, why did you need iTunesEncode?  And what errors do you get when you try and tag the files?  Are you sure they're MP3 files?
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The original rip was with EAC and iTunesEncode ALAC.  If iTunesEncode is set up like it should be, the files ALAC file (.m4a) files are tagged and those tags are visible and editable by programs other than iTunes.  If you goof up, like I did, iTunes is happy, but the tags aren't there.

Using MP3Tag, for instance, the error is "File <filename> could not be opened for writing."  dbPowerAmp doesn't give me any error at all, it just doesn't write.

The tags on the new MP3 files are editable, it's the ones on the original m4a that aren't.

iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible?

Reply #4 –
Quote
Have iTunes update the ID3 tags (select tracks and go to "Advanced" menu-->"Convert ID3 Tags..."). That should force it to rewrite the ID3 tags using the information from the iTunes database file.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=369198"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That option only works for MP3 files, not for m4a files.  I can get tags with the iTunes data on MP3 files if I use iTunes to convert the ALAC to MP3.  Of course, I wanted to use a LAME encoder to make the conversion, which was how I discovered the problem.  I'd still like to get the information written in the m4a files in a readable/writeable format.

iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible?

Reply #5 –
here's an idea: first make sure that itunes is set to properly write tags (i don't use it much, but for example, winamp5 can be set to manage metadata in its internal database without ever touching the file tags, and that's not what we want here.)  then, if there are any tag fields which are unused through your whole collection (composer?  grouping?  bpm?  artwork?), select all the files and do a mass tag edit (for example, write a period into every "composer" field, or something similarly benign)

this doesn't really help you in this situation, but for future reference: every once in a while i have to rip a cd on my ibook instead of with eac on the pc.  i didn't want to have to re-type all the metadata every step of the way, so i did some experimentation and found that this works while preserving all the tags, and you only need to connect to a cd database when you first put the disc into the drive.

1)  query cddb on cd insert
2)  rip cd to alac via itunes
3)  convert alac to flac via dbpoweramp
4)  convert flac to mp3 via foobar

i do it this way because flac is my lossless format of choice, and because the good folks at illustrate insist on paying proper licensing fees for use of the mp3 format, so you can't convert directly to mp3 without the paid version of dbpoweramp.

iTunes db to ID3 Tag Possible?

Reply #6 –
Thanks for the useful advice on keeping out of this mess in the future.  I got everything fixed up.  The situation was a little more complicated than I first reported.  Here's a summary in case anyone else runs into this.

After ripping and/or transcoding to ALAC for use in itunes and the iPod, there were two sets of files.  One set had the names of the tracks for filenames, just as I specified in the third party tool setup.  These files had messed up metadata.  I took a quick look with a hex editor.  It looked like both the ID3 tag and the mp4 tag were in the file. 

However, there was another set of files with temp type names.  They were all in a folder labeled Unknown Artist/Unknown Album.  These files had regular iTunes metadata and these were the files that iTunes was using.  iTunes was not set up to re-write the filenames on import and keep the directory synced.  I checked these two options, let iTunes reorganize everything, and voila, the files were all renamed and reorganized.  Tags are now readable and writeable.  I did have to manually delete the corrupt files.