Background: I have just been downloading some pretty obscure music. The files download as .rar archives (sometimes in more than one part) and I have been using Zipeg <http://www.zipeg.com/> to unarchive the downloads.
This has been working fine and I have had no problems with the unarchiving or importing the files into iTunes - with just one exception. The album unarchived OK and I can see all 23 tracks along with the included artwork. However there seems to be a problem with two of the tracks (#20 & #23), relevant points are: 1) - if I look at the folder in finder, all the other tracks show the artwork as the track icon, whereas the problem two show the generic mp3 icon 2) - quicklook will play the tracks with no problem as will audion 3 3) - if I add the album to the itunes library the problem tracks do not get listed, all the other tracks are listed and play fine. 4) - if I right click the file and select open with iTunes, nothing happens - it seems that iTunes does not recognize these two files as legitimate mp3 files. 5) - If I drag the files into a "Audio CD" in Toast, the problem files are not added (message xxx was not added, because it is not a sound file, or is not in supported format.) the others are added OK. 6) - if I "get info" on the files they are correctly shown as mp3 audio files but they seem to have some metadata different/missing compared to the working files (genre is other, author is OK, title is missing, album is missing, last opened date is different) 7) - I tried changing the metadata tags using MP3 ID3X <http://www.three-2-one.com/321apps/main/global/index1.htm> The tags were successfully changed but iTunes & Toast still didn't recognise the files. 8) - The files play in Audion 3 and if I encode them to mp3 then itunes & toast recognise them fine - however re-encoding an mp3 file to mp3 is obviously not my prefered solution! After some googling, I came upon a blog: <http://trevinchow.com/blog/2008/09/17/fix-for-mp3-songs-not-playing-in-itun es/> which discussed a similar problem and said: > After quite a few more days of troubleshooting and experimenting, I finally > stumbled upon the solution. It turns out that the MP3s that wouldn¹t play had > out of spec MPEG headers, which I verified and repaired using a freeware tool > called MP3 Validator. I checked out MP3 Validator: <http://www.gromkov.com/faq/repair/mp3_validator.html> Which looked very promising - except that it is Windows only :( Because the files sound to play just fine, I suspect that the problem is indeed in the "other" info around it headers/metadata whatever and that the file just needs "cleaning up" So, I am now considering my options: 1) Just "encode" with audion 3: I know this works but it takes some time and I guess reduces the quality by trying to compress an already compressed file - so this is not a prefered option. 2) Fire up parallels, download & install MP3 Validator and give that a go: The software looks like it should at least highlight the problem(s) with the file and probably fix it - its just that I try and keep windows use to an absolute minimum and I'm worried that this might introduce new problems. 3) Try and find an OSX equivalent to MP3 Validator: I found a feew tag editors - but that didn't fix the problem. So far I can see no equivalent to MP3 Validator. So, has anyone out there found/seen/heard of an equivalent program - or had & fixed a similar problem? I would really hate to think that the only way to solve the problem of iTunes not handling a (presumably) slightly damaged file was to turn to Windows! TIA Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
