Speaking of Macs and what not

I have a question.

I have been burning my mp3 CDs for my friend to play at work on her itunes thingy on her mac. but when she goes to play the CDs, they play, but all of the coding or whatever to tell her what song is being played, is screwed up, so you cant tell the title or artist of each song.

what am i doing wrong??? anything?

what are you using to burn them? id3 tags shouldn't matter across operating systems

You are not burning them as MP3's?

You are burning them into a native CD format that will play in all regular CD players?

That is my guess.

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
what are you using to burn them? id3 tags shouldn't matter across operating systems

I am using easy CD Creator, but i am burning them as Mp3s. I have even tried burning them as "data Cds" or "mp3 cds"

neither seems to work. wierd.

Originally posted by Deepak Chopra:
You are not burning them as MP3's?

they are mp3s.

Originally posted by sonickteam2:

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
what are you using to burn them? id3 tags shouldn't matter across operating systems

I am using easy CD Creator, but i am burning them as Mp3s. I have even tried burning them as "data Cds" or "mp3 cds"

neither seems to work. wierd.

You could always use itunes to burn them…..

If they are really MP3's. If she inserts a CD and double clicks on its image it should come up with the artist and song names without any problems.

I sometimes have to online to get itunes to read the info on a CD it is copying from. Worth a try.

You can test the id tags by just playing one song from the disc and seeing if it come's up labeled correctly. Just double click it. I'm not positive on a Mac, but I know on a PC id Tags are carried with the song file, they are not cataloged on a seperate file. If it plays in the player with the proper tag, then the issue is not your burn.

It sounds like a DB error to me, probably created when she imported the songs to the library. Look for an odd character or slash in the name of one of the songs or bands.

My portable Napster player is not able to play Stellastarr** because of the "*" in the bands name, although the media player in the Napster Desktop can play it fine. It turns out the DB that runs the Napster player uses Boolean for some categorizing and the "*" represents an unknown character. It screws the Stellastarr** folder up and few of the playlists that have Stellastar on them.

When I removed the "*" from the name, no more problems.

So look for a !,*,/,\,%,& and see if it might be the culprit that screws up the DB. Songs like 1% by Jane's Addiction and bands like !!! and +/- are all well known culprits.

well, apparently it happens before that i have been informed.

apparently the files come in messed up when she puts my CD in her Mac.

Itunes doesnt change the name, her mac does.

why, i dont know. perhaps i have burned them as "data" cds and not "mp3 cds" in CDCreator.


i dont know I guess i never will……

Originally posted by sonickteam2:
why, i dont know. perhaps i have burned them as "data" cds and not "mp3 cds" in CDCreator.

It shouldn't matter.

Originally posted by sonickteam2:

apparently the files come in messed up when she puts my CD in her Mac.

Itunes doesnt change the name, her mac does.

I'm assuming it's not changing the file name, correct? Just the id tag, right?

So, can she browse to the file using a file explorer, and play the MP3 that way instead of locating the file through iTunes? This way, she'll know what the song it supposed to be by the file name, and then the id tag may display something different on her default player. If you try that same disc on another machine and see the correct id tag and file name, you'll know that the id tag is screwed up in her music library. She'll likely have to clear out her library and import again. However, if you don't determine which song creates the error in the library, the error will repeat itself.

thanks for the help, smackie

I use this info to try to remedy the situation.

the problem is, she doesnt know whats really happening, and i cant be there to see whats going wrong, nor have i ever seen Itunes run on a mac, so i have no idea whats happening.

i agree, i think she needs to re-import her files, but apparently, nowhere on her computer can she actually see the file name. not even a file browser (whatever Explorer is for Macs)

One way to check if the tags are corrupt or not is to try playing the file in Quicktime. iTunes shouldn't care what the file name is, it displays the Tag info stored as part of the MP3 file. It's possible that the extension or something didn't transfer over.

Originally posted by sonickteam2:
i agree, i think she needs to re-import her files, but apparently, nowhere on her computer can she actually see the file name. not even a file browser (whatever Explorer is for Macs)

It's called the Finder.

FYI, iTunes is available for Windows. You could download it and install it. It should behave identically to iTunes on a Mac. That would probably be the easiest way for you to diagnose the problem.

The MP3 files should have valid ID3v2 tags before you burn them to a CD. Do they? ID3v2 tags are embedded in the MP3 file. There are numerous ID3v2 tag editors available for Windows (e.g. iTunes). Download one (check download.com or Google) and inspect your MP3 files with one of them.

When you import MP3s into iTunes, the song name in the ID3 tag takes precedence over the file name. Upon importing, iTunes will rename the MP3 file to match the song name specified in the ID3 tag. It will place the file inside a folder named after the album name in the ID3 tag. That folder will be inside another folder named after the artist as specified in the ID3 tag. That folder will be inside the iTunes Music folder in ~/Music/iTunes/. This is all assuming the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" preference is checked in the iTunes application preferences under the Advanced tab. Your friend could turn that option off, but I wouldn't recommend it.

If you select a song in iTunes, one can select "Get Info" from the
File menu. The "Summary" tab of the resulting "Get Info" will tell you exactly where the file is located and what it is named.

Hope this helps,
Ed

WOW. thats a lot of stuff, and i am not really sure whether my ID3 tags match the file names and what not. I dont really play with ID3 tags.

i play songs in Winamp and sometimes, the song goes to play and winamp is showing "Track 01" or something , but i dont care really.

thing is….when she opens her files with her finder……they are all displayed as this….

so, i sent her the new Interpol CD. and it said this..

Interp~1

01NEXT~1.MP3
02EVIL~1.MP3
02NARC~1.MP3

and so forth.

when she imports the songs into Itunes, the songs remain the same titles as they are in her finder.

OK, then your MP3 files don't have ID3 tags. I'm not sure what you are using to rip your CDs into MP3s, but you might want to switch to a program which looks up the CD in CDDB and creates ID3 tags automatically. FYI, iTunes for Windows does this, as do most MP3 rippers, I thought, but clearly whatever you are using does not.

Originally posted by Darth Ed:
OK, then your MP3 files don't have ID3 tags.

It's either that or you've let a woman use a computer. Or both. Neither of which I recommend.

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by Darth Ed:
OK, then your MP3 files don't have ID3 tags.

It's either that or you've let a woman use a computer. Or both. Neither of which I recommend.

Flawd?

Dad of Flawd?

:mad:

Originally posted by Darth Ed:
OK, then your MP3 files don't have ID3 tags. I'm not sure what you are using to rip your CDs into MP3s, but you might want to switch to a program which looks up the CD in CDDB and creates ID3 tags automatically. FYI, iTunes for Windows does this, as do most MP3 rippers, I thought, but clearly whatever you are using does not.

i really dont think its the ID3 tags. I mean, it just doesnt show up on her finder right.

she also says that it happens sometimes with files OTHER than MP3s as well.

what does that ~1 mean anywho?

Originally posted by sonickteam2:
i really dont think its the ID3 tags. I mean, it just doesnt show up on her finder right.

she also says that it happens sometimes with files OTHER than MP3s as well.

what does that ~1 mean anywho?

~1 at one time was used to cut off long file names, for instance when only file names of 8 characters could be used it would be called sonick~1.mp3 rather than sonickteam2.mp3, so for some reason the file names on her mac are being truncated, sounds like something is wrong with her mac, or is it a really old mac?