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[gregeas]

So I have had nightmares trying to find a single lossless format that I can easily use with my Squeezebox, my PC/DAC via Media Center, and now, my iPod 5G. After starting with APE and moving to FLAC, I finally decided to convert everything to Apple Lossless, which actually works across the board. The problem was that I had lost 15-20% of the tagging data somewhere along the way (across 300 albums, that hurts). So last week I painstakingly retagged everything in Media Center and then tried to import the Apple Lossless files in iTunes. To my horror, the changes I had made weren't showing up!

So then I tried to import the same folder to my iPod via Media Center. To my surprise, the tags are perfect! Can anyone explain this? Seems to good to be true.

Also, if I made changes to tags and add music files to the master folder, then sync the MC with iPod, will these changes show up?

[JimH]

MC can apply your tags in its own library only or in the files.  But I didn't know you could tag Apple Lossless in MC.  Is that what you meant?

[gregeas]

Yes, I tagged the Apple Lossless files in Media Center...

[JimH]

OK.  MC must be using the Quicktime engine to read/play the files, but I know it can't use QT to write tags, so they must be stored only in MC's library database.

[Yaobing]

That is correct. MC does not write tagging data to file. It only store them in the MC library. That is why the tags do not show up in iTunes. If you get perfect tags in your iPod, it must be that MC transferred the tag data to the iPod from the library along with the files.

[jam]

If MC could pass tag information to external encoder, the encoder can tag m4a directly for us.  Therefore, we could take m4a file out from MC database without afraid of losing tag information.

For example, we are using iTunesEncode.exe as external encorder like with "-i %IN -o %OUT" parameters.  If MC could pass title, artist, album information to the encoder by specifying parameters like "-a %ARTIST -l %ALBUM -t %TITLE -i %IN -o %OUT", we don't lose tag information.  Is it possible to do this by MC?

This feature really help ppl who use iTunesEncode.  Thx!   

[gregeas]

I did some experimenting with MC-->iPod with Apple Lossless.

I made some changes to fix typos and such, and when I resynched with MC, I would up with two copies of the files that changed (with the old tag and the new tag). So it looks like nothing was removed from the iPod. Any idea how to do this?

Also, there is a bug with the album art function. It looks like the iPod, upon powering up, will find the correct album art for the first song played. But when you play a song from a second album, the art from the first album is displayed again.

Any thoughts on how to fix this? Album art was working fine when I synched with iTunes.

Also, is there a way to tag the Apple Lossless files directly (instead tagging the MC library) so I can don't have to worry about losing the tags again? I've already spent way too much time on this...

[JimH]

Also, is there a way to tag the Apple Lossless files directly (instead tagging the MC library)

No.  We could do it if we could get cooperation from Apple, but we don't.

[gregeas]

Two more questions:

* Does anyone have thoughts on the album art problem, or is that an Apple issue?

* I have all of these files also stored as FLAC. I suppose I can tag these files directly, but I need to use something beside MC, correct?

[JimH]

Please post the cover art problem on the Portable Devices board here.  It's more likely to be seen there.