Music file tags can't be edited

[kuy]

Hi guys,

On some (not all) of my music files, I cannot edit the details/tags/metadata (call it what you will). If I right-click the file, go to Properties then the Details tab, I cannot click in the fields to edit them. If I use the details panel at the bottom of the folder, or try to edit the metadata in Winamp, I get the following error:

Any ideas what's wrong, or how to edit the details of these files?

Thanks!
Kuy

 

[baarod]

Hi guys,

On some (not all) of my music files, I cannot edit the details/tags/metadata (call it what you will). If I right-click the file, go to Properties then the Details tab, I cannot click in the fields to edit them. If I use the details panel at the bottom of the folder, or try to edit the metadata in Winamp, I get the following error:

Any ideas what's wrong, or how to edit the details of these files?

Thanks!
Kuy

Get MP3tag (freeware) Mp3tag - Download. Configure tag settings thusly:



Perform a full backup of your music. You won't need it if you do this right but...

Highlight problematic files (or all files as this will cleanup and reduce tag garbage). Click the red X in the toolbar (remove tags). This will remove all tags from the selected files. Click the Undo button next to it. This will write clean tags in only a single consistent format to your files.

 

[kuy]

Thanks for the help, but I've already tried that, and it doesn't fix the problem. The troublesome files have ID3v2.3 tags, if that helps. They are also missing entries in the mp3Tag columns headed Codec, Bitrate, Frequency and VBR, and their Length is 00.00. However, they play fine! (I'm using Winamp v5.571 to play music files, if that matters)

 

[baarod]

Thanks for the help, but I've already tried that, and it doesn't fix the problem. The troublesome files have ID3v2.3 tags, if that helps. They are also missing entries in the mp3Tag columns headed Codec, Bitrate, Frequency and VBR, and their Length is 00.00. However, they play fine! (I'm using Winamp v5.571 to play music files, if that matters)

How many files are there? If you post them somewhere I will fix them. None of those tags are required but if they are there and suffering from Mojibake due to character encoding issues they will stop some programs dead. That's why REMOVING the tags and enforcing UTF-16 encoding when they are rewritten helps. If that doesn't fly then clear the those tags using MP3tag.

 

[kuy]

How many files are there? If you post them somewhere I will fix them. None of those tags are required but if they are there and suffering from Mojibake due to character encoding issues they will stop some programs dead. That's why REMOVING the tags and enforcing UTF-16 encoding when they are rewritten helps. If that doesn't fly then clear the those tags using MP3tag.

Thanks a lot for the offer, but there are quite a lot of files! I've tried everything I can think of with mp3tag - changing the tags to v2.3, removing the tags and hand-editing, trying different encodings, etc - as well as a few other solutions that people on this and other forums have suggested, and nothing's changed the error/problems I'm encountering. I think I'll just give up and re-rip the albums!

Thanks for the help.

 

[boohbah]

kuy have you re edited them from the root folder

 

[kuy]

kuy have you re edited them from the root folder

Showing my inexperience here, but what exactly do you mean? Do you mean adding the entire root directory to mp3tag rather than a specific subfolder? Or do you mean just trying to edit the troublesome files using Windows Explorer's details bar? or something else?

 

[boohbah]

no, go to the folder with your music open an album highlight 15 tracks at a time and re-name the album and other details

 

[kuy]

Ah right, yeah I tried that and the error stated above appeared on the problem files (with the addition of a 'Skip' option). It does change the non-problem files, though. Thanks for the help anyway

 

[boohbah]

ah you mentioned explorers detail bar , so i guess you tried that then.

 

[baarod]

How many files are there? If you post them somewhere I will fix them. None of those tags are required but if they are there and suffering from Mojibake due to character encoding issues they will stop some programs dead. That's why REMOVING the tags and enforcing UTF-16 encoding when they are rewritten helps. If that doesn't fly then clear the those tags using MP3tag.

Thanks a lot for the offer, but there are quite a lot of files! I've tried everything I can think of with mp3tag - changing the tags to v2.3, removing the tags and hand-editing, trying different encodings, etc - as well as a few other solutions that people on this and other forums have suggested, and nothing's changed the error/problems I'm encountering. I think I'll just give up and re-rip the albums!

Thanks for the help.

Zip up a particularly good example and attach it or upload it to http://drop.io/wl5o9ln with password "kuy" and I'll fix it and tell you how to fix the others.

 

[kuy]

Zip up a particularly good example and attach it or upload it to http://drop.io/wl5o9ln with password "kuy" and I'll fix it and tell you how to fix the others.

Thanks a lot, that sounds great. I've uploaded two files (named 04 Hello Brooklyn 2.0.mp3 and 12 Success.mp3) to that website.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
try the latest version of MP3tag -- works 100% -- as well as MP3 you can edit FLAC and loads of other audio files too.

Image enc

Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)

cheers
jimbo

 

[kuy]

Hi there
try the latest version of MP3tag -- works 100% -- as well as MP3 you can edit FLAC and loads of other audio files too.

Image enc

Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)

cheers
jimbo

Thanks, but like I said I've already tried mp3tag

 

[fseal]

Are these mp3s file that you "created" under a different user account from a previous install of windows?

They may be write locked to your current account because by permission they still belong to that other account. You can "Take Ownership" of them (Search this forum for those words) to get full edit permissions for them. This can be done on whole folders at once.

Before just blindly taking ownership though, right click one of the files then click Properties then Security, then click your user acount name and see if "Full Control" is checked (As well as Modify/Write). If not then you need to take ownership of the files.

 

[kuy]

Are these mp3s file that you "created" under a different user account from a previous install of windows?

They may be write locked to your current account because by permission they still belong to that other account. You can "Take Ownership" of them (Search this forum for those words) to get full edit permissions for them. This can be done on whole folders at once.

Before just blindly taking ownership though, right click one of the files then click Properties then Security, then click your user acount name and see if "Full Control" is checked (As well as Modify/Write). If not then you need to take ownership of the files.

Cheers, but Full Control is checked, as is everything else.

 

[baarod]

Zip up a particularly good example and attach it or upload it to http://drop.io/wl5o9ln with password "kuy" and I'll fix it and tell you how to fix the others.

Thanks a lot, that sounds great. I've uploaded two files (named 04 Hello Brooklyn 2.0.mp3 and 12 Success.mp3) to that website.

You are not crazy. Something is seriously amiss with these two files. Sorry, I don't usually give up but...

 

[hybridfan]

Foobar2000 can rebuild a .mp3 stream, try it might just work

foobar2000

 

[Gornot]

The troublesome files have ID3v2.3 tags, if that helps. They are also missing entries in the mp3Tag columns headed Codec, Bitrate, Frequency and VBR, and their Length is 00.00. However, they play fine! (I'm using Winamp v5.571 to play music files, if that matters)

This is usually the result of improper ripping settings and bad ripping software, and although they may play fine in your media player of choice, the files are indeed corrupted, so be sure to try out hybridfan's tip above. If not, I suggest you simply re-rip the stuff. For MP3 you can use Winamp if you bought the Pro version, but there are always open source alternatives such as Exact Audio Copy.

 

[kuy]

Thanks all, in the end I decided that I'll just re-rip the files and take more care in future! Thanks for all the help