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[Houckster]

I have looked over the FAQs but haven't seen anything like the issue I'm facing.

On three separate occasions, I noticed that after entering songs into the database that the files in the directories are changed in size by about 4K.  Several hundred files have been changed.  I'm not sure what's happening here.  Can anyone point me to the relevant information?  It sure would be appreciated.

[JimH]

Maybe you're tagging WAV files?  Cover art?

You can turn off tag support in WAV in options.

[Houckster]

What's really strange is that this is not happening to all the files, just most of them.  As the files are entered into MC17, most of the tag information is being modified on every record, i.e. title, artist name, album name and year.

I am using the standard setup for MC17.  The changes are not doing any harm to the playlists I created in Nero Burning ROM 10 but still it is confusing.

With regard to tags, I though that when I modified the information such as adding a title to my "Track 1"'s that it would show up in my file management software but this doesn't happen so I just don't understand what's causing my files to be modified.

[Scolex]

Don't know if this could happen or not but I think it is worth checking.
With the way file size is reported "size" and "size on disk" can be different
by up to 3.99k this is due to chunk size or whatever they call it.
Open the properties of one of the files and see if they are the same.
If size and size on disk are the exact same something caused windows to
report size on disk for both.

[Houckster]

I checked this and yes there is a difference between the size that is listed in the directory and that data in properties.  One reports the actual file size and the other reports the amount of space on disk that was used.  The issue though is that while all records that I've entered in MC have been modified in some way, as noted above, not all files have been modified.  Some show the original install date while others have been updated.  What MC is doing mystifies me.

[Scolex]

In MC select one of the files that was not changed and then right click-->Library Tools-->Update Tags (from library) and then check to see if that file shows any change. That won't tell you why only some have changed but it will at least let you know if the change has anything to do with tagging.

[Houckster]

I followed your instructions, I brought an album that has not been updated and right clicked on it.  The file did change but there is only a 12 byte difference between this file and the copy on another hard drive (32,736 vs 32,724).

[Houckster]

Someone out there must be able to tell me what's going on.

[Matt]

If Media Center gets cover art, analyzes audio, or you make a change in it, it might save tags to WAV files.

This is normal and harmless.  Tags are good.

WAV tagging is configurable:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WAV_%26_AIFF_Tagging

It's also possible to turn off tagging all together in Options > General, although there should be no reason to do this.

[Vincent Kars]

If you tag file size might change or remain unaltered.
If a digital audio file is created the application doing this might decide to allocate space in the header (4k is a common value indeed) or not.
If not, the moment you add a tag the file has to be rewritten.
If yes, only the header is edited but as the space is sufficient to accommodate the tags, the file is not rewritten.

[Houckster]

Thanks.  That's what I needed.  This is a big program with lots of things to learns and I just couldn't find the information I needed.  I just wanted to know what was going on.

I guess from this information, the original tag information in the WAV file can't be modified so MC just adds a "chunk" of information at the end.  I just wish programs like Windows Explorer could use this information instead of the typically useless information that one normally finds in the WAV file.