Can change the ID3 tags, but: now they revert, and art disappears

[ParrotSlave]

I wasn't having problems with explorer seeing id3 tags, but with changing the tags. I tried Foobar to correct them, but just as I was celebrating having found something that would allow the tags to be corrected, I found some files it did not work on. So I tried MP3Val, which analyzed some as needing repair. Even repairing the files with MP3Val did not allow Foobar to fix all of them to where they could be changed, so I tried MP3Tag, which has worked on every single one. So my SOP now is to use MP3Val, then MP3Tag.

However, this leads to a separate problem. Much of my collection is from vinyl or tape, with incomplete tags, since I never paid attention to the tags, going only by file names. In trying to fix the tags so that my iPhone would display information besides "unknown" song by "unknown" artist from an "unknown" album, I have run into a problem of id tags changing (on my system, not the iPhone.) I don't know if it's WMP or iTunes doing it, or both, or something else, but I am getting sick and tired of my tags getting changed overnight, especially when I tell the programs NOT to go looking on the internet for stuff.

I put my exact source into the tag so that if I need to re-rip it or re-record it, I'll know exactly where to go. Windows is now telling me that my "Double Shot of My Baby's Love," recorded off a 45 and digitized by my LiveDrive and SoundForge, is taken from an Artyfacts cd. I took a Johnny Cash song, "I Saw the Light," off of a VHS tape of a Colombo episode ("Swan Song") about 10 years ago, but Windows decided, bless its heart, that it would assist me by adding to my tag information, telling me that the mp3 came from a Survivors album, and putting in other lies about the file. When I put a date or something into a tag, I want it to stay that way, and I don't want to see the cover of some album I don't own when a song is playing. In the cases I mentioned, I remember, regardless of what Windows hallucinates, where I got those songs, but with thousands of songs, I cannot possibly remember them all.

I have even tried write protecting the files once I get them the way I want them, and I have found that that doesn't seem to work. I fail to undertand how Windows is not only changing the tags, but in some cases it is REVERTING them to the way the tag was before I started adding information to it and/or removing the album art. Many of my original files were in the format "artist"-"title" which ended up as the "title" in the id tag (when there was a tag), but after spending hours correcting them one by one, I discovered that many had reverted the next day. It might be that Windows is getting too busy, and in my hurry to immediately write-protect the file after correcting the tag, when I am working on a dozen or so at one time to, say, add album art, it might be that it write protects the remaining files before the first command (to add art or album title or something) has completed. It could not possibly be reverting any files that are all on an external hard drive because of some shadow copy nonsense. Some of the files that I was most careful to protect--i.e., that I was most paranoid about keeping Windows from messing with--like some hard-to-find singles, such as "All These Things," by the Uniques--were mysteriously no longer write protected a day or two later.

Instead of copying and pasting the album art from the internet, I've decided to save it all since Windows will take it away when I'm not looking and I'll have to add it again. What is the deal here?

 

[exoTron]

I have found that automatice ID3 taggers which use the Gracenote online music database to be most accurate when finding and assigning missing information in tracks.

If you are interested, there is an extensive discussion thread about ID3 tag here:

ID3 tag editor - MacRumors Forums