No Artist or Album in AudioPlayer

[markvibari]

When I xfer mp3's to MS for use with AudioPlayer on my Clié, the song title is displayed, but the artist info just says (no artist). Same for the album name and genre.

I know the data's there, 'cause I entered it myself when ripping the files from CD. If I mount the MS as a drive and view the file's properties, all the tags (Title, album, artist genre, etc) are intact.

It seems this problem's been around for a while. I found references to it dating back to 2001 and the Clié 710

Has anyone found a fix for this yet?

Thanks

- Mark

[rob_squared]

Isn't there an update .prc on sony's site? It might just be for the NR series, but I can't remember.

[williepalm]

There's still no fix for it yet coz it depends on the "format" the mp3 was converted.

[markvibari]

Originally posted by williepalm
There's still no fix for it yet coz it depends on the "format" the mp3 was converted.

I'm not which "format" you're refering to.

Are you saying that different CD rippers and conversion utilities use various conversion routines, and that some will preserve the tags while others won't??

If so, which ones work??

TIA for the clarification.

[tanker_bob]

I'm not an audio expert, but I think that Sony's audio player only support album and artist info for ATRAC3 recordings. I have a stick full of regular MP3s created with several quality programs, and none has album/artist info. The manual was basically written for ATRAC3, but never mentions this info for regular MP3s. Another audio program might pick up the info from regular MP3s, but I'm not familiar w/any.

[markvibari]

Originally posted by tanker_bob
I'm not an audio expert, but I think that Sony's audio player only support album and artist info for ATRAC3 recordings. <snip>

Thanks, tanker_bob. It's not the answer I wanted to hear, but it's what I suspected, given Sony's propreitary bent...

Oh well.

- Mark

[rob_squared]

All the ones I downloaded have song titles, some even have albums.

[sindu]

I have none of those problems. I ripped MP3 using different softwares (eg. Real) and it shows all the data such music title, artist, and album. The only thing i am trying to work on now is to let audioplayer display chinese character...So far, i have not suceed. I speculate this theory...and please, i don't mean to show my ignorance. Did anyone of you that have the problem forget to press/tap "VIEW" button on the screen menu ?? If you were to tap the "VIEW" button, it recycle the column to "TIME", "ARTIST", and "ALBUM".

[tanker_bob]

Pressing VIEW indeed presents those columns, but the fields says "no artist" or "no album".

[markvibari]

I got the same results when pressing the "View" button... It rotates through the fields, but they're still empty (no artist and no album).

I haven't tried ripping with Real, however, since the tags are already present when I view the file information through Windows, I'm not sure how they could be coded "differently" by Real Media's app.

[tanker_bob]

FWIW, I tried InterVideo's MP3 plugin for Windows Media Player and dbPowerAmp. Neither resulted in the artist or album information in Audio Player.

[Unregistered]

Some of my CDs have the information (title/artist) and some don't. If the information is present when ripped it shows on the PDA. If I add the information in the windows application it still does not show up on the PDA.

I just thought about the fact I added the information after I created the MP3 file. I need to go back and see if recreating the MP3 file with title/artist added creates a different file.

It seems that the older the CD is has an impacts if additional data (title/artist) is present.

[markvibari]

I think "Unregistered" might have hit upon something... I'll have to see whether I have any CD's that are *new enough* to have embedding tags.

Given my taste in music tends toward straight-ahead jazz, bebop and "old-school" funk, it's highly unlikely :p

[cbulock]

This could have something to do with which version of ID3 tags were used. I know there is ID3v1 and ID3v2. Maybe the Audioplayer only recognizes one type. I noticed this on my NX. Some MP3's I ripped long ago didn't have the ID3 info while ones I ripped using Windows Media Player had all the info intact.

[sindu]

When I ripped with Real, I manually added the all the info (title, artist, and album) and it shows up in the audioplayer...

[clieblue]

Most probably has to do with the version of ID3 tags that the MP3 files contain.

As of version 2.2 AudioPlayer only recognizes ID3v1, not ID3v2.

So, if your MP3 files contain only the song album etc. under ID3v2 but not ID3v1, you won't see them on the Clie when using AudioPlayer.

There are many ways to fix this. I use WinAmp (v2.8.x) and simply bring up the ID3 tags info box. There is a button that lets you easily copy all the fields from ID3v1 to ID3v2 (and vice versa).

Hope this helps.

[markvibari]

Originally posted by clieblue
Most probably has to do with the version of ID3 tags that the MP3 files contain.

As of version 2.2 AudioPlayer only recognizes ID3v1, not ID3v2.

So, if your MP3 files contain only the song album etc. under ID3v2 but not ID3v1, you won't see them on the Clie when using AudioPlayer.

There are many ways to fix this. I use WinAmp (v2.8.x) and simply bring up the ID3 tags info box. There is a button that lets you easily copy all the fields from ID3v1 to ID3v2 (and vice versa).

Hope this helps.


Bingo!! We have a winner!

I copied one of the MP3 file from my MS to my desktop, opened it in WinAmp (v3.0), added the Artist/Album information on the ID3v1 tag properties page, copied it back to the MS and voila!! We have data in AudioPlayer(v2.2.1) :D

Thanks to clieblue, cbulock and everyone else for helping to figure this one out.

Next...

- Mark