What is the crowd's opinion of
MP3 Diags?
From 3.5 billion comments
8 reviews of this app found across the web:
As a side note, I tested this by changing the VBRI header to Xing using this (frankly, terrible) software: http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/
And all my problems went away. Length is reported correctly and ff & rew work perfectly.
I see.
It wouldn't surprise me if the youtube solution was different, but I have no idea.
Try these tools to see if the file has any problems:
There are tools to check the integrity of specific filetypes, but it is a hard problem to solve generically since a computer won't be able to know if you meant to type &^&^(^!HJ)*(SGN into your text file.
mp3diags will help with mp3s.
jpeginfo can detect bad jpegs, although I don't know if it runs on windows. There's probably a Windows tool if you Google.
ffmpeg can check video files.
Other file types may have specific tools as well, other than that it may be a matter of opening them and doing it manually.
The freezes are usually tied to the music used, specifically with bad headers on the file. (So not bad tunes, but bad headers on the tunes). Try running your files through something like http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net to see if there are any issues with your headers.
EDIT: I figured out the issue. The MP3s were VBR (Variable Bitrate), but they didn't have the proper VBR Header Tags. Fixed by checking the files with MP3 Diags which confirmed the files were missing the header tags and then repairing them with VBRFix.
Pic is one of the more extreme cases. Most are only slightly off, but still wrong nonetheless. Some are shorter than the correct times and will just sit at the shown end time while continuing to the actual duration. Some are longer and will have a wall of silence at the end.
The durations shows correctly on my computer. Pulled 'em up on Windows Media Player, iTunes, Windows File Properties, all fine. It's just on my phone. Downloaded a different music player on my phone, same problem. So it has to be something with my phone and/or the files.
I had to install a program called MP3 Diags (http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/) to test the mp3's. Turns out there's some extra broken data inside the mp3. Removing that makes the mp3 work perfectly. I can provide a zip file to you if you'd like a "fixed" set, or you can fix the mp3's yourself.
I had to install a program called MP3 Diags (http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/) to test the mp3's. Turns out there's some extra broken data inside the mp3. Removing that makes the mp3 work perfectly.
How did you assign the information to the MP3 files?
I've used iTunes for a very long time, and one of the reasons I started using it was that I discovered that it actually wrote the metadata to the mp3 itself (unlike, say Windows Media Player, which insisted on keeping its own database).
That said, here are a few pointers that may help you:
Select all your songs in iTunes. Go to Get Info (while holding Shift). Make a change you don't worry about (like adding a BPM entry or a Grouping). Press OK. iTunes should write everything to the file
I recall a problem with artwork not being written to the file if you used the "Get Artwork" feature. In this case the only workaround I ever found was to use Get Info on the album, right-click copy the artwork and then Paste it back. Or to use a third-party tool.
A very unique problem could be that the mp3s don't have the right ID3 header (ID3V2). It's rare, but if the files are old, or encoded with unusual settings, they might have an older header (kind of like an index) that only supported a very limited number of tags (no artwork, shortened song and album names, etc.). Take a look at this tool to see is that may be able to give you some insight. If the files don't have the right header, iTunes won't write the metadata (or it used to not do so) no matter how often you try.