Remove all WMA tags?

2006-12-27 07:33:03

Hello all.

I'm in the middle of completely retrofitting my music collection with standardized (made by me) album art.  I ran across this problem before, but it wasn't critical, so I ignored it.  I will run on tangents just because I don't have a clear target - my apologies.

I know album art can be rendered in one of three ways in WMP10.

• "Official" System Recognized Album Art - Downloaded Album Art with a GUID that, as far as I know, you cannot "make".  Only WMP can use this option.  Somewhere there is a magic file with the GUID to filename relationship....
• Folder.jpg - Everyone knows this one
• Picture Tag - Picture information tag

I am using a the tag method.  My music collection is a tad short of 3,000 files overwhelmingly consisting of 192 kbps WMA or MP3.  There are a few stray kbps, 160, 256, 64 etc.  Or even variable bitrate, but 192 is the standard.  Anyway, When I tried updating the current batch of music (Dubstar's Disgraceful), WMP will not display the image after being inserted in the tag.  I double check, and yes the image actually is there in the tag.  Sometimes you have to switch to another song and switch back for the image to display.  That is not the issue here.  Something is inhibiting the display of this image, and something tells me it's the infernal corruption of my tags by AMG.  I always resented uneditable tags in my music (aka information provider, copyright etc.) but accepted it as a fact of life.  Nowadays I make absolutely sure I am tangibly disconnected from the internet (cable is 100% removed from PC) before I rip the CD and I enter the info myself.  I have long since denied WMP access to the internet.  All AMG does is screw everything up.

Anyway, I hate long posts, (this is already too long) so I'll cut to the chase.  How do you completely eradicate ALL tag data?  I've seen some tag editors online, but they're just mundane automated processes of things I can already edit (title, album etc).  A large portion of my library is "infected" with AMG, and if cured, I suspect it will allow my Dubstar - Disgraceful collection to show album art.

Thank You,
Scorp

PS: I tried opening my MP3s (mp3>txt) in plain text editors, but they're too large for notepad, wordpad (not really a plain text editor, but meh) freezes if you try to type, edit etc, IE will not open the TXTs, and firefox seems incapable of copying information correctly.  Ex: Copy five lines of code and the pasted result is three unicode characters.  What a royal pain in the ass. :\

Remove all WMA tags?

Reply #1 – 2006-12-27 09:18:10

Any tag editior can blow away tags.  I'd probably recommend mp3tag... it can handle MP3 and WMA with ease.  (Note that mp3tag will not respect multiple artists/genres defined in WMA metadata... so, avoid editing with mp3tag if you care.)  FYI: There are no "uneditable tags" in content.  And remember to avoid ID3v2.4 in MP3... stick to ID3v.2.3 to stay cross-compatible.

Anyway, embedded images in music files will override any "Folder.jpg" or GUID based images in WMP 11/10.  Not sure what you are seeing... Remove the files from your WMP library, and drag/add it back in... it should re-import the embedded art.

You are bit paranoid about online CD metadata... for me, it's fairly accurate (for non-classical albums)... and if anything is obviously incorrect, I can easily fix it before I even start the rip.

Remove all WMA tags?

Reply #2 – 2006-12-27 10:47:28

Thank you Grommet.  Mp3tag did the trick as far as the longstanding issue of branding is concerned.  Alas, album art still is nowhere to be seen.  So far my method has worked flawlessly on near 1,000 files.  This is the first bunch that refuses do comply.  Alas, the tags were just a hunch.  It's still good to have them gone.  Nonetheless, I can't figure out why the WMP won't display the images.  I thought perhaps the image was at fault, but I used other image that have worked, and they show up fine.  I thought it was perhaps filesize, but I've used larger kb files successfully.  It's definitely something to do with the music file itself, short of re-encoding the file, I'm stuck. 

PS: I just hate branding.  I don't do brands on clothes or products, much less files.  "HEY!  WE WERE INVOLVED IN THIS FILE!  HEY!"  No thanks.  I'll just look up the info on Amazon/Google and type it in myself.  I have a minute.

Remove all WMA tags?

Reply #3 – 2006-12-28 10:40:18

WMP sometimes just doesn't handle album art well for some files, and I'm not sure why. However, there is a way to force it to display art for any natively supported audio file:

1 - Upgrade to WMP 11 (As a hardcore WMP user for the past 5 years, I assure you that it's never advantageous to be running an outdated version. It will not hurt your library, so don't worry)
2 - Under the "Library" tab, select "Albums" at the left
3 - Search for the album you're having an issue with
4 - Find album art from Google, or wherever you normally do
5 - Copy album art to clipboard
6 - Back in WMP, right click on the icon for the album in question and select "Paste Album Art"

Should fix your problem.