I thought it couldn’t possibly be true, but sure as hell: my Clip can’t properly read many (30% plus of my library) ID3 v2.2 – although it handles 2.3 perfectly. Except for any v2.3 tag that has the characters é, ö and ë in the song title or artist. If those characters are present the song title is displayed properly and handled correctly in the database, but the artist and album becomes “unknown”.
This on firmware 01.01.30F. And now I see that the issue is at least partially known. So I take it that SanDisk simply doesn’t respect its customers enough to fix the problem?
I am a new Clip user and technologically challenged, so I may be overlooking something obvious…
I am trying to listen to an audiobook. The tracks are listed in the proper order but do not play in that order. I assume this is the ID3 tag issue of this thread. MP3Tag won’t work for me because I am using a Mac.
I am a new Clip user and technologically challenged, so I may be overlooking something obvious…
I am trying to listen to an audiobook. The tracks are listed in the proper order but do not play in that order. I assume this is the ID3 tag issue of this thread. MP3Tag won’t work for me because I am using a Mac.
Thanks for the suggestion; they do have a build for OSX. Unfortunately, I don’t have the technical knowledge to use it. I can download and install a file, but it appears to me they have a script to be copied instead? Further, the documentation is full of terminology way above my understanding. I remember seeing a shareware program named Audiobook Builder (or similar) so I may try it.
Sansafix has indicated they are working on adding ID3v2.4 in an upcoming FW. Don’t know about 2.2.
In the meantime, just use MP3Tag to change all your tags to ID3v2.3 with ISO encoding and you won’t have any problems.
That’s not entirely true. As I’ve pointed out before, the Clip does not handle track numbering such as “001/122” even though this is part of the id3v2.3 standard.
For me, this was a huge problem since everyone says the Clip fully supports id3v2.3, but obviously it doesn’t, and it took me many hours/days to figure out why my audiobook tracks weren’t in the correct order.
Best wishes from someone who checks the sansa forum and rockbox.org every other day to see if there’s a new Clip firmware with better tag support (or perhaps an option to disregard tags and use folder names and file names instead) so that the tracks are ordered correctly.
Highlite the files you want to convert in iTunes, then right click, choose “convert ID3 tags” and choose what version you want converted to (2.3), hit enter.
Also works in 10.4.11 with iTunes 8.0.2. Now, what do I select among the choices for the tracks to play in order? I have no clue as to what the tags are or how they work, let alone which to choose from (1.0, 1.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4).
In the meantime, just use MP3Tag to change all your tags to ID3v2.3 with ISO encoding and you won’t have any problems.
No, I will have problems, unless I change every song title or artist that contains the characters é, ö and ë – and possibly others, though I haven’t tested. Nothing I enjoy more than changing accurate tags to inaccurate ones so that one (broken) device can function.
My Clip does not work as advertised. The fact that a painful and laborious workaround exists does not change that. Nor does it make me any less bitter about the weeks I had to spend figuring this out for myself, or the months SanDisk has know about this without an apology, never mind a fix.
The Fuze and Clip are going through many firmware improvements, including new codec support (OGG Vorbis and FLAC). For the ID3 tags, the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) setting is the hot ticket for now.
Highlite the files you want to convert in iTunes, then right click, choose “convert ID3 tags” and choose what version you want converted to (V2.3), hit enter.
The conversion dialog box also gives you the option to “Translate Text Characters” “Latin to ASCII” “reverse Unicode”
“what do I select among the choices for the tracks to play in order? I have no clue as to what the tags are or how they work, let alone which to choose from (1.0, 1.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4).”
I think (per my original post) that Version 2.3 ID3 Tags are suported by the Clip.
There is no shortcut to learning how to use ID3 tags to lable your music.
It requires some reading effort on your part. I think you are up to it.
Here is the WikiPedia description.
It should answer most of your questions about ID3 tags.
For more information Google “ID3 Tags”
I prefer to tell people how to find the information they need, instead of looking it up for them.
