Album Art and ID3 Tags

[BluFire]

If you have zen media explorer installed, go to "Browse Media" in it, then go to the track you want, and right click and select the option that says something like "edit tags." There you can change the album name, genre, title, etc so if you want the song to have an album name to go with it, you can add that. I think.

[CrowdAds]

[massey]

I have a tag editor in mediamonkey so the tags are there, it just seems that if i don't have an album name then the song can't be found in the menu.

possible solution....re-tag all problem files with album name as 'unknown album.'...will report back!


Edit: Just tried this and it worked a treat. Just incase anyone else has similar problems.

[sarmadster]

Hi,

I've embeded some album arts to related tracks and I've done it using "Jet audio" in the "edit tag" section, but my player doesn't show anything( just shows a few number of them ,also some of the old ones are disappeared).
what do I have to do?

2- is there any way to See the lyrics when playing a music?

[iamtheworld]

well im not sure, but it could be that your album art is bigger then 200x200. the ZEN can only display album art that is that big or smaller.

as far as lyrics, no lyrics yet, but maybe in a future firmware?

[illiniguy73]

I have a lot of loose mp3 not associated with albums (tag is blank). Some are blank because they're old files downloaded from the old Napster. Others are intentionally blank because I only purchased a single or few songs from a particular album. I don't want the album nodes in my media players, media extender menus, mp3 player menus, etc., cluttered with incomplete albums ( I normally browse for these songs by artist alone or genre. So does this mean a Zen would not be a good choice for me (assuming I don't want to alter tags)?
Thanks for any comments.

[illiniguy73]

Another question, if I retag blank album tags with "unknown", will songs from all artists with this tag show up as songs under other artists that also have unknown album tags? This is how the Samsung Z5 sorts music and I find it to be its most annoying feature (it assigns unknown as an album tag to songs with blank tags).
Thanks

[ZenChick]

Although you really should never leave incomplete tags, it won't affect a Zen much, since you can still list by artist, genre, or title. Album art, however, will be a no-go, though I doubt you'd be too concerned about that.

As for songs from one artist showing up in other artists' lists because they have the same album name ("Unknown"), the Zen is smart enough to not do that. I'm actually surprised this happens with the Samsung.

[illiniguy73]

Thanks for the comments, leaning towards a Zen now. I'm assuming the sorting issue is a general Samsung problem, even on new models, otherwise it would have been fixed in a firmware update.

[RisingEvil]

Can you resync the tags that you have already synced to your Zen? I had some recent tag changes for the music that is already on my Zen. Please help.
Also, are there any good tag editors/tag databases? URGE is giving me a hard time, for the bonus track versions of the same album don't have album are for some reason.
thanx

[illiniguy73]

mp3tag (download.com) lets you retag entire directories (and subfolders) and you can pick and choose which tags to change. It also does file renaming based on tag and vice versa. It can access databases but I haven't played around with that feature yet. I mainly use it to apply proper genre and band (album/artist) tags, which the databases don't get right (I know, it's subjective). I believe it can also embed album art.

[Caladin]

Just curious if anyone else if having the wrong album art show up for CDs that have the same names. For example Artist A and B both have CDs called Greatest Hits. The Zen will show Artist A's album art while playing music from Artist B's Greatest hits CD.

[Almoxil]

I noticed that while playing some tracks from my Zen Vision:M. I had two albums with the same name on my player, and the tracks were "merged" when I tried to play one of them.

I guess you will have to edit the ID3 tags on these albums creating some distinction in the album name (repeating artist name, for example, like "Artist A - Greatest Hits" and "Artist B - Greatest Hits", or appending the release year, like "Greatest Hits (1985)" and "Greatest Hits (1979)". After, delete the albums from your Zen and resync them through your preferred management software. This should fix the problem.

[ZenChick]

Originally Posted by RisingEvil

Can you resync the tags that you have already synced to your Zen? I had some recent tag changes for the music that is already on my Zen.

The only way to do this is to use whatever tag-editing features come with your sync manager. If you use WMP11, I believe it will pick up tag changes applied by other tag-editing programs, and change the associated tags in your player during the next sync.

[ZenChick]

This is a well-known problem for Creative players (and probably others as well). This is what's known as the "Greatest Hits" bug, and happens when the player caches the album art from a previously-played track, and another track from a different album with the same name is played.

For this, and other reasons, it is not a good idea to have more than one album with the same name. This will also affect how the albums in question are listed in the "Album list". Do what Almoxil suggested to fix this. Alternatively, you can use the method I use, which is to simply prefix "Greatest Hits" with the name of the band, so that Shania Twain's "Greatest Hits" album will be tagged as "Shania Twain's Greatest Hits".

If you use WMP11 to sync, then you can simply retag the affected albums through WMP and resync. No removal of tracks will be necessary.

[RisingEvil]

Thanks

[qwerty_uk]

Speaking of Artist/Album tags, how come when browsing by Artist it uses track artist? I'd prefer to use Album Artist > Album > Tracks

For example, my compilation albums all have Various Artists as the Album Artist name, but in the media library, they're all broken up into one-track albums under each Track Artist. That's ridiculous!

Maybe this should be a new thread as it's not quite the same as the previous Artist/Album issue....

[ZenChick]

Actually, I'm kinda glad the player uses track artist vs. album artist. I, too, have several compilation CD's, and in Windows Media Player, they've all gotten "Various Artists" assigned as their album artists. This, to me, would be more frustrating than having the individual track artists listed.

[qwerty_uk]

But if you want to see all your compilation albums together in one place, where do you go?

How about having both options, then everyone's happy

[clinkytheclown]

I have an album art problem, some of my songs i got from my old rhapsody subscription have album art but a majority do not. i use wmp 10 to do syncing and do not have a music store, any idea how to get album art onto my 16gb zen?

[ZenChick]

Even though it's a ZVM thread, some of the solutions offered here might help you.