Why Some MP3 Files Work & Others Do Not

[Bill Hunt]

A poster to the Adobe PP CS4 forum *might* have found a reason why some MP3 files will Import perfectly, but some will not:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b7b6fb/0

It seems that some contain "album art," and these do not Import properly. While others do not contain this extra data, and work fine.

Might be worth noting.

I've always wondered why some do, but others, that appear the same to me, do not work. Out of habit, I just convert to WAV in Audition (or Audacity), so I never found the difference. It also explains why the MP3 files that I DO use (short SFX files), alwyas work perfectly - no album art.

Hope this helps someone in the future,

Hunt

[Ron]

For the record, I have never had a problem importing any mp3's into iTunes.
In other words, how does one get album art that's embedded in mp3?

[Bill Hunt]

I would *anticipate*, that iTunes can correctly handle any embedded album art. Where this often pops up is in the Adobe forums. I've downloaded some of the "offending" MP3's and they Open fine in Audition. They look just like my MP3's that Import fine. They look just like the MP3's, that others can Import fine. I never thought that there might be something embedded in the file itself, that would cause the problem. This *could* be the problem.

Since the only MP3's that I ever Import into Adobe are SFX files, I never saw a problem. This was always on others' systems, with others' MP3's - some worked fine, while others (that looked identical to an Audio editor) just would not Import. Any other Audio MP3's were always just converted to WAV, so again, I never saw the problem. Still, many did, and I could not figure out what was different about the "bad" ones. This explanation makes sense to me. I'd guess that the "bad" MP3's probably come from some music program, like iTunes, or Amazon, and do have album art in them for display on iPods, etc.

Hunt

[Ron]

I've bought from Amazon and never had a a problem. I thought that album art (in iTunes) was done via a separate file; a jpeg as a matter of fact

I don't doubt that it can be done, I was just mentioning that, with my particular music management, I've never ran into that problem.

[Bill Hunt]

Ron,

I'm with you, on where the album art is stored. I assumed that it was separate too, especially as I have a rather large folder full of Album Art within the iTunes structure. That is one reason that I never thought that some might have it embedded, until the above cited user posted observations. That *could* explain why most Import perfectly, but then a minority do not. Or, maybe it is something else entirely?

I think I have cleaned out the "test" MP3's that gave Adobe problems, as I had not purchased any of these. If I do find a user with problems with specific files, I'll ask for one to be uploaded, and I'll bring it into iTunes, just to see if it DOES have album art inside it.

Thanks for the observations,

Hunt

[Barb O]

Hunt,

This link is to an older technical document for Photoshop Elements at the Adobe site: however I still ocassionally see posts on the Adobe PSE forum that most probably are related to this situation discussing Album Art

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgeb ... ?id=332125

[Bill Hunt]

Barb,

Thank you for that link. I never found it in any of my searches, but do not believe that I ever thought to look in any of the Photoshop forums, or search from a product root. Never crossed my mind. Until I started reading the PE forum, I did not even know that PSE could do slideshows!

That would possibly have saved me a lot of testing and head-scratching (about 2 years' worth!). In the case of all of the test MP3's none had DRM (anymore?), but just would not Import. Obviously, as I could Open these in Audtion, they were no longer protected.

Glad to see support for the album art theory. My assumptions on how album art *might* get to the iPod, or similar, were either not correct, or complete.

Looks like it might be - "Case Closed."

Now, I can sleep at night, or worry about other things...

Appreciated,

Hunt

[IRISH4U]

Hi Guys
Well let me throw a monkey wrench into this discussion. I've been uning "Media Monkey" to maintain my music library since version 1.xxx, and have been religious in tagging my music and embedding the album art in the file. Also, for a couple of years now, i've been using "mini lyrics" to also embed the songs lyrics into the file, so i would say, conservatively, that 75%-85% o fmy library is tagged with both. I use PE 2 and PE4, and i've had no problems with using any of these files. Why? i don't know! I suspect (just my opinion) it might have more to do with DRM, there i have had some problems, but that's it. I know i haven't solved any problems here, but i just thought i needed to comment, that's all.

[Bill Hunt]

Dang,

Just when it looked like I was getting somewhere - must be a media-monkey-wrench!

The files that I have tested on either did not have DRM, or Audition was able to easily and transparently bypass it. On each of those, I attempted to Import into PP2, and got the same error message. Once into/out of Audition as PCM/WAV, they Imported perfectly. I usually got a batch of MP3's, say 5, and 4 worked perfectly, but 1 did not. Same for me, as for the user, who supplied the files. My task was to find out why, and from an Audio standpoint, I never could. They looked exactly the same. It was just that most worked and then 1 did not.

Maybe I need a mediamonkey on my back...

BTW Does Media-monkey handle AV files, or just Audio?

Hunt