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Topic: Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames (Read 20613 times) previous topic - next topic
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Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Just a warning for any one that uses TXXX frames in his ID3v2.3 tags.
When you use windows explorer in Windows 7 to change a tag (i.e. change the star rating) it will alter all TXXX frames.
The original content is removed and replaced with part of the name of the TXXX

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #1
Wasn't only the Release Canidiate affected by this?

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #2
The released Windows 7 does the same.

Here is an example of the ruined tags (screenshots from Mp3tag):

Before:


Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #3
A reason to switch to ID3v2.4! 

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #4
A reason to switch to ID3v2.4! 
Which isn't supported at all, so you see no tags at all?   

Yes, I've reproduced this.  It seems through the entire 7 beta, nobody caught this.  Oh, well.  I haven't looked more deeply at what it's exactly writing, but yes... the custom TXXX frames are damaged if one uses the Explorer UI to manipulate the ID3v2.3 tag.


 

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #6
I haven't looked more deeply at what it's exactly writing...

The ruins:

  I guess there wasn't much love for free-form TXXX frames.  I can't even imagine what the buggy code is trying to do with those results.

Now, how many months/years will it take to get 7's shell fixed? 

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #7
Someone should make sure to post about this on the official Windows 7 developer forums. Microsoft employees read those forums and usually the people responsible for that area of Windows will join the dicussion and work to get the problem fixed.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums...tegory/w7itpro/

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #8
Someone should make sure to post about this on the official Windows 7 developer forums. Microsoft employees read those forums and usually the people responsible for that area of Windows will join the dicussion and work to get the problem fixed.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums...tegory/w7itpro/


Just use mp3tag, or switch to Linux

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #9
Or we could try get the bug fixed and not have to resort to workarounds.

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #10
Just use mp3tag, or switch to Linux


Or don't switch to Windows 

Actually it is a valid concern is for people who dual boot Windows and any other OS, or who connect their portable device to a variety of different systems to add/manage/sync media.  If you have spent considerable accumulated time and care in tagging your audio using an OS (or a good 3rd party tagger on MS) that doesn't have this issue then becoming aware of it by accident could be a very unhappy event indeed....and possibly aggravated if you have a great deal of cover art named as folder.jpg as that will all get unceremoniously mangled as well if you let WMP loose on your files.

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #11
That's why I set all my audio files as 'read only'. This way, Windows will never be able to modify any tags.

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #12
Only if Windows (or anything else) respects that file attribute. It's not foolproof.

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 ruins TXXX frames

Reply #13
It seems through the entire 7 beta, nobody caught this.


Because of a bug in the WMP12 library (both Beta and RC), such library had to be rebuilt from scratch every time you opened WMP12. Microsoft should have realised that, with such a bug, nobody would be seriously testing WMP12 in the Beta and in the RC so they should have immediately fixed the library problem to allow testing of the other WMP12 features. Instead they chose to carry the library bug until it was finally (sort of) fixed in the RTM. At that point people finally started using WMP12 and found another million bugs!
WMP12 is a case study for software development mismanagement: from design decisions to code quality, from build cycles to interaction with the underlying OS. Anything that you can do wrong in a software project they have done it wrong. Seriously I think someone could write a book on this saga.