Getting Vista, Zune Or Another MP3 Player? How To Migrate From iTunes
Part III (Optional) - Remove Non ID3v2.3 Tags Such As Ape
Mp3 files can actually have more than one type of tag embedded at a time. This can be a pain as some music players don’t read the ID3 tags first, so despite having all of our information here, you could still end up with gibberish when you use another player. To prevent this happening you can remove other tags that might be in your files. Remember, if you make a mistake, then mp3tag has a handy undo (undos only one operation though!) option (‘Edit/Undo’) which can be used at any time if you do anything wrong.
- In mp3tag click on ‘tools’ then ‘options’ and then the ‘tags’ menu
- In ‘Read’ only tick ‘ID3v2′
- In ‘Write’ tick only ‘ID3v2′ and then select the ‘ID3v2.3 UTF-16′ option just below
- In ‘Remove’ tick ‘ID3v1′ and ‘APE’ and then click ‘Ok’
- Now go back to the main window. Select all your files and the click the ‘disc’ icon in the toolbar. This will convert ensure that a ID3v2.3 tag is written for all files.
- Thank click on the ‘X’ in the toolbar. This will remove all non ID2v2.3 tags from your files
Stage III - Export Library
Now that you’ve got all of your ID3v2.3 tags are nicely sorted with embedded art, all you have to do is import your library into your new media player and low and behold all of your tracks will appear with the correct track information AND cover art.
I hope that you found this guide helpful. If you have a lot of files where you don’t have the full track/album details then read my popular post ‘Tidy Up iTunes MP3 Collection - Fix ID3 Tags or More’ which explains how to find and add missing artist, track details, album names, cover art etc to your files.
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Comment by Grant on 4 January 2007:
Great post, although there is a way to shorten the process of getting album art into the tags using Tag & Rename. It has a spiffy feature that will automatically add “folder.jpg” to music files within the folder.
http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm
Comment by Everton on 4 January 2007:
*Grant
mp3tag does the same thing. I went for a long winded approach to make sure that some tracks don’t end up with multiple embedded artwork and to make sure that the iTunes one which is normally the best one is the one that gets embedded.
Pingback by Dr. Thinky » Blog Archive » Nifty Gadgets on 5 January 2007:
[...] iRiver Clix 2gb This is a fantastic little mp3 player. I guess I am a bit of an iRiver fanboy - I really enjoy their design and UI - this is the 4 iRiver mp3 player I’ve purchased. I am a big fan of the look of this player, a simple small rectangle with no visible buttons on the surface. In fact, each side is a button, so you navigate by pressing the sides of the surface. The UI itself is simple and quick. I really enjoy its ability to display album art with mp3s. I rarely buy albums anymore, so it is great to see the cd covers with the music. I am trying to encode all my mp3z with album art from iTune through the geeky process described here. The clix gets bonus points for it’s ability to display photos and movies, both look great. One downer is that it only supports Windows Media Player or MediaMonkey. Also, you have to plug it into a computer to recharge unless you buy their special charging cable. [...]
Comment by miro on 26 February 2007:
excellent artilce
I to have been ruminating about migrating back to MP11
with over 45GB of music - i am tired of having itunes duplicate everything on my hard drive
sure they say that life would be simpler if you migrate completely to their side - but I am an old fashioned/prudent computer user and prefer to keep my files and structures the way I want to - and unencumbered by any one system
long live freedom of choice
cheers
Comment by Everton on 26 February 2007:
I actually wimped out and went back to iTunes despite all the hassle. It was the only way I could get my album art onto my iPod
Comment by Bill on 8 May 2007:
I went through this too and found Media Monkey to be the answer. It has great tagging capability, works well with the iPod, supports album art on the ipod, supports winamp plugins, tons of flexibility, and stores the ID3 tag info in the tags themselves.
It’s free except for advanced features, $30 or so for advanced features and lifetime upgrades.
http://www.mediamonkey.com
If you insist on going with WMP11, then there is a 3rd party ipod plugin available, but I don’t remember who wrote it.
Comment by Cody on 7 June 2007:
I downloaded the material suggested, went through the steps, but I have a problem now. In Media Play the playlists showup, but have now songs in them. It tells me that no songs are available. What do I do now? Have I done something wrong? Please let me know.
Comment by Everton on 8 June 2007:
@Cody
you could try itunes export to copy your playlists
Comment by James Dalton on 19 August 2007:
As much as I am trying to get away from using Itunes, it is so hard. The thing that keeps pulling me back is my song listing and the amount of times played. Yes it makes me feel good knowing that the Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers themes song has been played a whopping 20 times