Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone (Read 1884 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Pretty much as above.

My phone is an iPhone 11 Pro.

I went through & re-wrote all the tags to a large set of albums in iTunes, to make use of the way that foobar sorts albums. Which is to say that foobar sorts albums by title - as you'd expect - & I had previously used sort fields for this particular batch of albums, which foobar doesn't recognise.

Some of these albums were already on the phone & others were added as part of this recent sync.

Having finished the sync, all of the new albums are showing the new title, but the albums that were already on the phone have not updated at all & so are still sorted by the previous title.

I've tried going into the media library folder & re-scanning, but that doesn't fix it.

Anything else I can try before I re-sync to nothing & then put the entire library back on again?
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #1 –
So, no replies to this, but further to what I wrote initially, I've noticed the following:

I ripped a box set of Wagner operas & used a generic image for all of them in dBpa.

I batch converted to m4a & synced with my phone. Now, if I go to Composers > Wagner & see all the Wagner albums, all the albums from the box set have the generic cover, as you'd expect.

I then went through, in iTunes, & changed the sleeve artwork for each of the operas so that the each now had a unique sleeve. When I re-synced, the Composer > Wagner "list view" still showed the generic sleeve across all the albums but when I clicked on the album to play it, it shows the unique sleeve.

The only way I can get the Composer > Wagner "list view" to show the updated sleeves is to remove Wagner & sync, then re-add Wagner & re-sync. Which is quite time consuming, as you can imagine.

I'm not sure if this should go down as a bug or not, but there it is.
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #2 –
It’s not clear how your question relates to foobar2000.

You are syncing iPhone with iTunes? Also, Artwork edits made with iTunes are maintained in a separate database and non-iTunes programs often don’t read this database. If you want to do album art embedding, you should do this with your dbpa program. And iTunes doesn’t care about filenames. It uses metadata from tags.

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #3 –
Quote from: garym on
It’s not clear how your question relates to foobar2000.

You are syncing iPhone with iTunes? Also, Artwork edits made with iTunes are maintained in a separate database and non-iTunes programs often don’t read this database. If you want to do album art embedding, you should do this with your dbpa program. And iTunes doesn’t care about filenames. It uses metadata from tags.

Okay, so I do all my ripping & converting in dBpa these days, but it's really clunky for some editing so I basically I do the generic parts & get it to a ballpark state & then finesse in iTunes because it's much easier.

I sync iTunes with my phone & then play music through Foobar. It indexes the library & then displays everything in a way that I much prefer.

Also, I am talking about the tags. When I update an album name or somesuch in iTunes, it's updated in the metadata not the file name & that info is not showing as updated in Foobar for any albums that are already on there. As I say, I have to remove them & re-add them if the updates to the tags are to show up correctly.

Does that make more sense?

I understand about the album art, so I may just have to remove & re-add it, as it's preferable to me to do most of the work in iTunes rather than dBpa, but surely changes to the metadata should update, no?
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #4 –
foobar2000 can sort and display your files in almost unlimited ways. It’s just a matter of your settings. And foobar2000 certainly uses sort tags (e.g.,ARTISTSORT). 

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #5 –
I’m not at my computer, but somewhere in foobar2000 is a way to tell it to reload the info from the files. And the sledgehammer way would be to remove the library in foobar2000 then add the library back to foobar2000. This should then reread all your file metadata.

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #6 –
Yes. This is what I have to do each time.

Just to recap: My issue is that when I go into iTunes &, for example, change the album name to something different, (which as far as I'm aware, will update the metadata), then when I sync my music, that change is not reflected in Fubar (& this is the crucial bit) if that album is already on the phone!

All the new additions show up exactly as they do in iTunes but if it's already on the phone, it seems to ignore any changes.

I have to remove it & put it back on for it to show up any changes.

It would be very handy to be able to reload info from files if this is a different instruction than "rescan" in the Library Configuration" window. However, if "Rescan" is what you mean, that doesn't work either.
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #7 –
Quote from: snowdog on
change is not reflected in Fubar (& this is the crucial bit) if that album is already on the phone!.

I think you mean that the change in metadata is not reflected in foobar2000 if the file is already in foobar2000. The phone has nothing to do with foobar2000.

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #9 –
Quote from: garym on
Quote from: snowdog on
change is not reflected in Fubar (& this is the crucial bit) if that album is already on the phone!.



I think you mean that the change in metadata is not reflected in foobar2000 if the file is already in foobar2000. The phone has nothing to do with foobar2000.

Okay! lol As far as I'm concerned, my music library is on the phone & Fubar scans it to create its library. If the phone has nothing to do with Foobar, where does it find the music from?

So yes, however you want to phrase it, if I change some metadata & re-sync with my phone, when Foobar does its indexing thing & scans all the music on the phone, if its an album that already exists in Foobar's library, it seems to ignore the updated one that now exists on the phone & which it should - in my opinion - take notice of & update in the foobar library.
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #10 –
Hmmm. Are you syncing your phone with iTunes or foobar2000?  Are you using foobar2000 mobile on your phone?  If the files are showing up in your phones MUSIC app, that means you’re using iTunes to sync. And foobar2000 has nothing to do with that. Respectfully, I think you’re confused about what is actually happening with all these processes. And if you’re happy with the iTunes approach to everything why are you using foobar2000?
.
Edit:  how is foobar2000 scanning music on your phone?

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #11 –
Quote from: garym on
See
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=75983.0

Interesting.

Re: "1) Preferences -> Display -> Context Menu. Add "Reload Info from File(s)" command."

I don't appear to have a "Display" entry in my preferences.

I suspect the old tags thing may apply to some of my older MP3s. I'm gradually replacing them all with AAC m4a files, so I guess the MP3s with the older tags will gradually be deleted.

In the mean time, is there an easy way to check for & strip out old tags?
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #12 –
Quote from: garym on
Hmmm. Are you syncing your phone with iTunes or foobar2000?  Are you using foobar2000 mobile on your phone?  If the files are showing up in your phones MUSIC app, that means you’re using iTunes to sync. And foobar2000 has nothing to do with that. Respectfully, I think you’re confused about what is actually happening with all these processes. And if you’re happy with the iTunes approach to everything why are you using foobar2000?
.

I'm bound to be confused about a lot of things! lol

I'm syncing iTunes with my phone & using the Foobar App to play the music.

The reason I'm doing this is because (& you have probably been part of these discussion across several threads, since I started enquiring about how to improve my situation) Apple updated their operating systems on both my Mac & my iPhone & I was no longer getting seamless playback with my MP3s through Apples Music app.

I made enquiries & one of the things to come out of it was that this app I'd never heard of, called Foobar2000, would offer seamless playback (which it mostly does, although it's by no means perfect).

Another thing to come out of my enquiries was the MP3s were never designed for seamless playback (although that had been my experience from the beginning - all my operas played back seamlessly) & that the AAC m4a format was a better, newer codec that I should use instead of MP3.

So, that's why I'm using Foobar.
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #13 –
To be clear, you are using the foobar2000 mobile app (running on the iPhone itself?)

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #14 –
Quote from: garym on
To be clear, you are using the foobar2000 mobile app (running on the iPhone itself?)

Yes.
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #15 –
Aha. I thought you were using the desktop foobar2000. Yes, the foobar2000 MOBILE will play the files synced from iTunes. Not sure why the files synced don’t update. But whatever it is, this is an iTunes/iPhone issue. Foobar is simply using the files as synced from iTunes. It seems that iTunes doesn’t resync files with changed metadata. If it was me, at this point I would fix my metadata. Then deselect all the files for syncing in iTunes.** Then resync with phone. This should leave you with no songs on the iPhone.  Then go in a select all the files you want to sync in iTunes, resync them to your phone, and all should show up with your corrected metadata and artwork.

**I assume you have these files in iTunes on your local computer or a hard drive attached to your local computer.
 

Re: Album metatags not updating if album is already on iPhone

Reply #16 –
Quote from: garym on
Aha. I thought you were using the desktop foobar2000. Yes, the foobar2000 MOBILE will play the files synced from iTunes. Not sure why the files synced don’t update. But whatever it is, this is an iTunes/iPhone issue. Foobar is simply using the files as synced from iTunes. It seems that iTunes doesn’t resync files with changed metadata. If it was me, at this point I would fix my metadata. Then deselect all the files for syncing in iTunes.** Then resync with phone. This should leave you with no songs on the iPhone.  Then go in a select all the files you want to sync in iTunes, resync them to your phone, and all should show up with your corrected metadata and artwork.

**I assume you have these files in iTunes on your local computer or a hard drive attached to your local computer.

Yes. And that's more or less what I'm doing. Except that I have over 400gb of music on my phone so I just remove whichever artist I've been working on, sync without & then re-sync with again. Otherwise I'd be here all bloody night every time I changed anything. lol

Thanks for your help!
"Elements of the past & future, combining to make something not quite as good as either."