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[mstan]

I have imported about 1300 albums in MC19 and have about 6 where cover art won't stick.  These are all .aiff files and a check of the ID3 tags shows there are none.   I have tried updating library info to tags but t doesn't take.   Are these files incapable of ID3 tags?  How do I correct this?  Use an external tag editor?  Convert to another format?  I seem to recall something about .aiff files and little vs big endian format making a difference.

[Matt]

Could you provide a sample file to yaobing at jriver (dot) com, and include a link to this thread?

Thanks.

[mstan]

Done.

[Yaobing]

Thanks for sending in the sample.  I took a look and found the cause.  But I am not sure whether there is a way for us to handle this situation. 

Basically the ID3 tag chunk that was originally in the file was corrupt.  Whichever software program wrote the tag, got it wrong.  It came with a chunk size that is about 85 times the actual file size.  So when MC reads the file, and found the incorrect chunk size, it skips the chunk and stops reading anything beyond that point.  It appears that the software that wrote the tags did not follow the fact that AIFF files are defined to be big-endian.  So that huge chunk size value, I suspect, is the result of flipping the byte order of the correct chunk size.

Because of this error, when MC tried to write tags, it assumes that there is no existing ID3 chunk in the file and proceeded to write a new chunk at the end of the file.  This was repeated several times.  Because these new chunks have been written at the end, MC would skip them too when reading the file.  If you try to let MC write tags repeatedly, the file would grow longer and longer but the tags are still not readable.  We need to find a way of detecting and fixing this situation.

[mstan]

Yaobing, appreciate the analysis.  This file, and I think the others with the same problem, came from HD Tracks.   You think they are using faulty software?  These files were previously used under iTunes before I migrated over to JRiver.  You think iTunes could have done something?

[AndrewFG]

This file, and I think the others with the same problem, came from HD Tracks. You think they are using faulty software?

Perhaps this question is the ultimate unwitting irony; the HD Tracks downloading machine is supplied by JRiver; (but to be fair there is no evidence that JRiver had anything to do HD Tracks' file transcoding machine...)

[Matt]

From Yaobing (our expert on these matters):

I just tested converting three FLAC files to AIFF inside MC19.  The converted files all have valid ID3 tag chunk.

The bad chunk found in the problem sample file does not contain the field "Tool Name"/"Media Center".

In other words, we do not believe JRiver is responsible for the incorrect ID3 tag.

[mstan]

Matt, any idea how to fix these files?

[Matt]

Matt, any idea how to fix these files?

Since presumably the audio inside the files is good, you could convert them to another lossless format with MC (APE, FLAC, WAV, Apple Lossless, etc.).

Then convert them back to AIFF if you like.

[mstan]

Matt,

That worked great.  As soon as I converted to Apple Lossless and deleted old .aiff files the art work popped right in; and there are now proper ID3 tags.    Love the conversion tool, BTW.   

I got to say, you guys make some of the best overall software I have ever used.