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cc-metadata - Re: ccTag makes mp3s unreadable by Windows Media Player

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Subject: discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

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  • From: Marcus Valentine <marcus AT irational.org>
  • To: discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work <cc-metadata AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: ccTag makes mp3s unreadable by Windows Media Player
  • Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:01:53 +0000

Hi

I've been thinking about a workaround. I've been using the tag editor in "Winamp" to edit the ID3v2 Tag of the mp3. It is straightforward to add the required information to the "copyright" field. Then I was planning simply to add the sha1 value that ccPublisher calculates into the "comment" field.

But then I started pondering, how does ccPublisher calculate the hash of a file when the hash it calculates needs to be part of the file? Or I am missing something here? Do the hash calculations not include the body?

Marcus Valentine

At 23:10 09/12/2004, you wrote:
Hi

The original attempt used ccTag 0.5.7. I have now tried with 0.9.11 of ccPublisher, and get the same results - Windows Media Player will not read the tagged file due to the presence of the compressed ID3 header.

Question - is it possible to tag an MP3 without using a "compressed ID3" header? Is there such a thing as an uncompressed ID3 header?

Some observations on ccPublisher:

1. It looks good and it's easy to use. I liked the fact it offers to save the
html markup in a text file. I'd forgotten it would silently embed the tags in the original file (as does ccTag). Is there an argument for a "Save as" facility for the tagged MP3s?

2. When you get the end of the process, the gui just sits there enigmatically. How about a "quit" or "start over" button?

3. In the windoze version, on some pages (e.g. "Tell Us About Your File"), the "Prev" and "Next" buttons are falling off the bottom edge of the gui.

4. How are you meant to find this application from the creative commons site? Is there not an argument to reference it in

http://creativecommons.org/technology/embedding

Into the realms of pedantry now I'm afraid:

5. Clicking the "How does this work" button on page 1 gives a window reporting version 0.9.8. The installer file name says it is 0.9.11

Best regards

Marcus Valentine

At 21:15 08/12/2004, you wrote:
Marcus,

Thanks for checking out the app. Did you attempt to do the embedding with ccTag or ccPublisher? ccPublisher is the newer, better (I think) version of ccTag. While it's primary advantage is that it allows you to seamlessly publish to the Internet Archive, it also preserves the "self-hosting" functionality present in ccTag. I strongly encourage you to try it if you haven't yet. You can download it at http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/software/publisher. There's an MSI file for Windows and a DMG for Mac OS X.
I'll try tagging a file with ccPublisher and using Windows Media Player myself this evening. Please let me know if you still run into problems using ccPublisher.

Thanks again for checking out our apps,

Nathan R. Yergler
Software Engineer
Creative Commons


Marcus Valentine wrote:

Hi

As buried in the comments on http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4279,

an mp3 tagged with ccTag is unreadable by Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player 10 helpfully provides the following information:

<Windows Media Player says>

C00D0BB8: Cannot play the file

Windows Media Player cannot play the file. You might encounter this error message for the following reason:

You are trying to play an MP3 file that contains compressed ID3 headers. The ID3 header is a portion of the file that stores the song's album information (for example, the song name, artist name, album name, and genre). This information is sometimes called a "tag."

To fix the problem, make a copy of the file and then use a non-Microsoft ID3 tag editing program to remove or reset the file's ID3 headers. After you remove the ID3 headers, Windows Media Player should be able to play the MP3 file.

</Windows Media Player says>

To my mind this is a serious problem. I am attempting to embed a media player in a web page to play tagged mp3s. The following simple snippet of code successfully embeds a player when viewed with Firefox with quicktime available.

<embed src="my_mp3.mp3" type="video/Quicktime"></embed>

When viewed in IE, it appears IE decides to embed windows media player as the player, without any help from quicktime, thank you very much. I am not aware of a way of forcing IE to use quicktime.

Needless to say, when a tagged MP3 is used, windows media player then folds its arm and refuses to play the MP3.

Any ideas?

Marcus Valentine

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