Zune Library Organization: Tips and Tricks/Sorting Duplicates/Adding to Library

[Khu]

One of the things I have found in the past is that sometimes with large batches of files, the Zune software does not always seem to see the changes. For example, I may tag several albums at the same time but 3-4 tracks may still look unchanged. In those cases, I will edit and/or save those tracks for each individual file.


I have found that with mp3Tag, if large batch changes are not working as expected, you can often improve your results but working with smaller groups of files.

[speedster00]

Thanks Khu...

One thing I think is odd. I added about 500 songs today. Used MP3Tag to set them up and it says they were all right...synced my zune and they were showing up unknown. So to test...I went to one album, windows showed NO tags on the songs. I used MP3Tag and it said the tags were right. Aparently windows disagrees because it didnt show it. So I had to adjust about 5 albums manually using windows properties. Its a pain in the @ss. I have no Idea why MP3tag says its there and windows doesnt see it. I have mp3tag only writing v2.3 utf-8 tags.....

any ideas.. oh yea, Windows Vista in case it matters.

[speedster00]

Originally Posted by IloveNachos

I dont know if I am ******ed or what. I opened my entire song collection through Mp3tag v2.39 and edited every blank field. As I was doing it I was checking to make sure the songs were going into the correct albums on my Zune software. It was working fine. When I finished, I expected to see no Unknown artists. Much to my surprise they were all still there!!! I even went through again to make sure I covered everything. I then unistalled my zune software, then reinstalled it. When it opened, the son of a bitch had already sync with my library, and didn't change a thing. It was almost like it remebered all the thing improperly tagged and brought them back from the dead! This is the 3rd time and 3rd differant way I have re-tagged my entire library. What am I missing!?!?!? Please help before I do something stupid like buy an iPod!

No reason to reinstall. Just download the meda reset tool and use that. It will wipe the memory of your zunes library so it has to find all the info again. I had a similar problem that you did. Most of them I had to go back ans save one by one before it would take. But if you read my above post, MP3tag said the tags were complete but windows didnt. So I had to manually chang the tags in windows through the mps's properties. Luckily I only had to do that with a few of them.

[andthedarkrose]

jubby, even that didn't work for me.. for anyone who is still having problems with it:
the absolute only solution that i've found is to rip the album using the zune software (i was using windows media player) and before or during the rip, right click the album and choose edit album details i think it is. you'll see it. and in the space next to artist just type in the correct information

[mr.handsomeman]

I wonder how long it took you to type all this stuff out?

[HeWhoWatches]

After spending too many hours trying to get the album art right, I am going to try the ID3v2.4 tag method as described in MP3tag. Most of the art for ripped cd's displays correctly on mine, but I have a fair number of downloaded songs by various artists. I have always grouped them by decade, and even got the software to apply a generic album cover to each group. But this refuses to display on the Zune itself. I have seriously considered changing my wallpaper to a picture of Ballmer or Gates getting beaten to a pulp!

[HeWhoWatches]

The conversion to tag version 2.4 helped considerably with eliminating the duplicate artist name, and helped add dozens of new album covers to the software. But no matter what I do there are a few albums where the art does not show on the device. And this is when the correct art is showing in the software, both in collection and zune. I deleted the zunealbumart.jpg files in my collection and that got rid of most of the incorrect album covers. But now some of those will not show the new cover, just showing nothing. But at least I'm making progress, over 90% of 3000+ tracks display correct art.

(edit)
Okay, it's very tedious but using the MP3tag method works. If I manually fix album covers that are missing or wrong, I still need to delete the album from the device, then close the software, restart it, and sync the album with the new art.

[willie40]

After many very irritating efforts, I think I have finally solved all of my Zune meta data problems. Like many people I was pissed off that the Zune software always stuck certain tracks with the wrong artist or album (or both).

I tried all the tips suggested on these Boards with no success. Then I read on another site that someone suspected that the Zune software didn't actually mess up the tags, instead it was suggested that the Zune software just mis-read the tags.

This appeared to be true because all my tags appears to be correct when I look at them in Media Monkey - but they are messed up at the same time when viewed in the Zune software.

Then I did some research about ID3 tags used in MP3s. It seems as though all MP3 files have room for BOTH ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags. So media Monkey was reading the ID3V2 tags and everything looked fine. I suspect that Zune either only reads ID3V1 or it reads both ID3V1 and ID3V2 and gets confused.

At any rate, I noticed that Media Monkey has a feature to clean the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags (this means to remove them). And it has a tag sync tool to sync the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags so they are the same.

So, here is what I did:

1. I identified every problem track
2. I used Media Monkey to clear the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags.
3. I used Media Monkey to sync the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags


When I looked back at the Zune library - all the problem tags had been corrected!!!

At last.

[Kidd Ace The Legend]

With the new updated version of Zune media player, tagging the songs, albums and video are a whole lot easier in my opinion. Before the upgrade I would just work with Windows Media Player and change everything to how it was supposed to be. I usually add all of the songs that I randomly download in seperate albums and get a album cover that looks nice to go with it.

[snmbmx1992]

sucks my library doesn't look like that, i have hundreds of unknown artist tracks

[Frank9000]

I Don't Remember What I Downloaded But When I Try To Play A Songs On My Zune's Software It Says Opening But It Never Does So I Didn't Hear A Song By The Zune Software In Months Plz Help Me

[marinegundoctor]

I use MP3 TAG v2.42 and think it's great. I also use Flash Renamer (vers 6.1) to clean up the cASe in filenames. It also has a built-in tag editor, but not near as powerfull as MP3TAG;.
I love MP3TAGs ability to let you use custom scripts and the extended tags window lets you add/ edit ANY tag field.
They put the most common tags in the left pane, but I wish they would let the user edit what tags are displayed there.

[hellbounddd]

Nevermind...