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Is it possible to write a track's length to its ID3 data?
Much of the ID3 data for track length in my library is either blank or incorrect, and I was wondering if it would be possible to write track length data to the ID3 tags so that in case I lose my library, when I re-import my music, it will all be correct. What I've done in the past is play each song with missing time and skip to a random point in the song so that it displays correctly in Songbird, but after just yesterday moving all my music to a new computer and discovering all of my work was gone, I was hoping I would be able to write it directly to the ID3 tags so that this doesn't happen again in the future.
I know that there's the extension Tagger, but it doesn't support track length, and I've read about enabling metadata.ratings.enableWriting, but there doesn't seem to be something along those lines for track length.
Thank you.
I know that there's the extension Tagger, but it doesn't support track length, and I've read about enabling metadata.ratings.enableWriting, but there doesn't seem to be something along those lines for track length.
Thank you.
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Inappropriate?Hi Kevin!
I don't think that there's way of doing this. I think the problem here is, that Songbird doesn't get the correct bitrate information to estimate the track lenght. By playing the file, as you already mentioned, Songbird can read the bitrate and therefore displays the correct duration. This is a media import problem, because at the moment of importing the media files, Songbird cannot read the bitrate information from the files (maybe a gstreamer problem?). There are several bugs in bugzilla tracking this issue, for example:
http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...
http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...
There's also a workaround mentioned to correct the information in your files:
------- Comment #18 From qaol 2008-12-10 10:07:44 -------
i found a work-around for those who are really annoyed by this problem (and
have enough time as you actually will redo all the tags)
- get an external tag editing program such as mp3tag (even though it's name
suggests otherwise it also supports other file types)
- remove the songs without track duration from you songbird library
- add said songs to mp3tag
- right click them and choose remove tag
- add the songs to the songbird library (you can drag them from the mp3tag
window right back to songbird; doesn't work the other way around though)
- the songs should now be called something like 'songname.mp3' but have the
length listed
- right click the files in songbird and add the tag informations (you can go
back to mp3tag and press undo so all the tag information are restored
(sometimes without the cover(!!!) so copy it before you start deleting); after
that you can copy and paste all of them
i'd advise you to then re-remove the tag in mp3tag before saving them with
songbird as for the song i didn't do it afterwards had no cover shown in mp3tag
(it did in songbird though so it's not all that dramatic, plus i was able to
add it in mp3tag afterwards again without problems)
tested only for mp3s but should work with other supported files types aswell
hope that helps some people who can't wait seeing all the track lengths again
;)
Maybe this helps you. Otherwise you can add your email to the CC in bugzilla to get updates on this bug.
regards,
Manuel
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