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Software Support => DOS/WinCab => Topic started by: dibb1er on April 16, 2006, 09:52:39 am

Title: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 16, 2006, 09:52:39 am
I would like to start by saying that Wincab is excellent.
Its the software I've been searching for so as to give me a reason to start a jukebox project.

OK, enough of the buttering up, now for the couple of problems I've experienced..    ::)

1. I have about a dozen songs in my collection that only show up the first letter of the artist when listed in wincab
I've double checked the id3 tags and the filename, and they appear to look normal.
Is there something I'm missing?

2. I get the occasional song that will play really quick (like its on fast forward), and then wincab crashes back to the desktop
The songs in question will always produce the same result (i.e. crash), but they play OK in winamp, wmp, my portable mp3 player etc.
Is this something to do with the decoder in wincab, or do i just have some corrupt mp3s?

3. I have 1 song (well, i have only found 1 so far) that has the id3 tag absolutely perfect (just like my first prob), but the artist tag is showing something that is not even present in the id3 tag. Sort of looks like album info, but this song doesn't have album info in the tag.
Where could it be getting this info from?

anyway, thanks in advance for any help that anyone can give.
oh, and I'm about halfway through building my desktop jukebox, i will post some pics soon.

Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: cscon115 on April 16, 2006, 09:39:39 pm
I  too was inspired to start a juke http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=49823.0 and Wincab was a big part of it.

I have also had similar problems. They seemed to have started when I installed ITunes to "rip" my cd's and convert them to MP3's so I could load a few into my juke to work on my skins.

My problems are similar.

1) When I put some MP3's on the juke and they worked.

2) I added ITunes to the box and started to rip 5 CD's for testing. The first think I noticed was the ripped CD's showed the songs totally out of order. I double checked the ID tags - they were correct.

    a) I deleted the data base files and let the software rebuild the Database

    b) They were still out of order (BUT in the same crazy order as before) 
    :badmood:

    c) However (adding insult to injury) - this time the correct track numbers
        were showing in the song title. for example it might say:   
        05  02 The raven 
       (when The raven is the 2nd track and now its the new
       5th track! )    :cry:

     d) I rechecked the tags. The raven is track 2 of 11  and all the
         other tracks are correctly numbered in the ID tags. :banghead:

     e) I noticed that one song (the Tell-tail heart) had a hyphen in the name.
        I removed it from the tag - deleted the db files - rebuilt.
        The crazy numbers disappeared,  but... Still - out of order!  :dizzy:

      f) Lastly, I tried drinking 3 LaBatts - that seemed to help.  :cheers:

So...
 
      Is ITunes to blame?
      Does ITunes load tags in a funky way that the Juke can't understand?
      Is it a hyphen in the title?
      Is it too little beer?
     
Here is a screenshot to help, it is Men at work puttin in overtime.
The real tracks - in order - with the song lengths:
1) Who can it be now  (3:20)
2) Be Good Johnny (3:35)
3) Blue for You (3:53)
4) Everything I need (3:35)
5) Maria (4:34)
6) Down Under (3:42)
7) Snakes and ladders (3:17)
8 ) High wire (3:00)
9) No Restrictions (4:28)
10) Man with two hearts (3:55)
 
but this is what shows inside wincab...

(http://www.drwedding.com/jukebox/menwork.bmp)


Is there a crazy - mix up the title option that I don't know about???
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 19, 2006, 10:24:13 am
um, if it helps, i'm not using the album view, but the classic jukebox type view (A1, B1 etc)

the artist tag problem is doing my head in  :banghead:

can't seem to figure out why it is occasionally only grabbing the first letter of the artist name, when the id3 tag has a complete name

Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: jp on April 19, 2006, 12:09:14 pm
maybe a hint to a solution:
what id-tag are you using,"id-3 v1,or id-3 v2 "
they don't need to be the same( one saying "artist name", the other a letter) you're testing v1 , while jukebox uses v2 ?
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 20, 2006, 06:10:10 am
maybe a hint to a solution:
what id-tag are you using,"id-3 v1,or id-3 v2 "
they don't need to be the same( one saying "artist name", the other a letter) you're testing v1 , while jukebox uses v2 ?


thanks jp, did some testing and wincab didnt seem to like the id3 v2 tags on these particular songs. 

anyone else got any answers to the songs that play real quick and then crash wincab?
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 20, 2006, 08:28:01 am
i seem to have found an answer to the fast playing songs.

they are all VBR that have been corrupted or were created using some crappy software or something.

to fix, i converted back to .wav, then re-encoded back to mp3.
they run ok now without crashing wincab.

ive only identified 2 songs so far, but i do have 6500 songs, so it might take a while to find all the problem ones   :badmood:
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 20, 2006, 08:42:36 am
anyway, here's some "In Progress" pics of my desktop juke
got a few things to yet, like install the buttons which havent arrived yet, and paint it of course....

i will be putting in some rca outputs in case it needs to be hooked up to a larger sound system for parties   

Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: cscon115 on April 20, 2006, 09:57:11 am
OK!

So, as I read this I take it like this...  Wincab uses ID3v1.

When I look up the specs on ID3V1 I see the layout looks like this...
          Song title        30 characters
          Artist               30 characters
          Album              30 characters
          Year                  4 characters
          Comment        30 characters
          Genre               1 byte

And when I use ITunes to rip the CD's the tag shows track number, group number, etc. So I can only assume that because this info is not in the V1 Standard, ITunes must be using a different standard (Something greater than V1).

Does anyone know of a ripper that uses V1 tags? Does anyone know of software that will convert the tags to V1?

Here is another question... If wincab is using v1, how does it get the title, author, and track number? Is that from the file structure (file names, folder names, etc.)?

Dan


Oh - Nice Juke Dibb1er, I'll be looking for the final pics!  (My final pics are going to be posted soon!)
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 20, 2006, 10:22:28 am
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html

i use mp3tag if i have to change a heap of songs (if i have mistakenly put the wrong artist or something), but i usually just use winamp for modifying single songs.

in mp3tag you can specify whether to use id3v1 or id3v2 or both.
its also freeware
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: Chris on April 20, 2006, 03:32:54 pm
Sorry I haven't been replying to this thread...

WinCab uses ID3v2 tags; it falls back to v1 if a v2 tag isn't available.

My guess is that ITunes is doing something odd with the track number tag. The library I'm using to read the tags is the official one... what does Windows Media Player show the track number as? If you are using Windows XP, you can go to File | Properties | Summary and edit the track number.  What does the track number say here?  If you edit it here, what does it show in WinCab?

--Chris
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: cscon115 on April 21, 2006, 12:49:13 pm
I am running under win 2k.

I downloaded "tag and rename" and it seems that the tags are OK. This code shows both V1 and V2 tags. Both have the correct tag for title, track number, and the rest.

I am going to try and move the code to an XP box and see if the problem follows.

Dan
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: Chris on April 21, 2006, 01:38:30 pm
It's also worth noting that MP3 files can have more than one ID3v2 tag inside them.
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: cscon115 on April 21, 2006, 08:56:08 pm

WHAT THE  :censored:


Be calm Dan, breath deep, take long slow breaths. More than one tag? If I ever get my hands on the guy who tried to design tags, I may have to throw him a "blanket party".

Ok... do you have any software you recommend for a win 2k box that can clean up tag messes? Tag and rename seems to agree with ITunes and the tags are clean. Tag and rename shows both the V1 tag and the V2 tag. Both agree. I may still copy this to an xp box for testing.

Anyone else having trouble on a win2k box?


Dan

Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 21, 2006, 10:38:50 pm
It's also worth noting that MP3 files can have more than one ID3v2 tag inside them.

Hi Chris,

Do you have any suggestions for viewing and modifying this "extra" id3v2 info?
As the id3v2 that i can see using the software i have only shows correct info.
it would be nice to be able to remove the incorrect stuff from my songs

thanks
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: Chris on April 26, 2006, 03:06:37 pm
I don't know.  I don't even know for sure that this is the problem.  But I've seen this before where WinCab picks up info that isn't in the "visible" tag.  I can't imagine why the spec allows for multiple tags.
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: dibb1er on April 28, 2006, 08:19:49 am
I don't know.  I don't even know for sure that this is the problem.  But I've seen this before where WinCab picks up info that isn't in the "visible" tag.  I can't imagine why the spec allows for multiple tags.

ok, no prob, I've taken to editing the tags through the file properties in XP
havent had a problem song since.


here's another "in progress" shot showing the control panel (minus the "confirm" and "random play" buttons which havent arrived yet)
Title: Re: wincab probs
Post by: cscon115 on April 28, 2006, 10:57:54 am
OK, I guess tonight I copy the songs to my XP box and edit the tags that way...

However these are the tests I have performed so far ---> and their results:

    1) Copied songs and wincab to an xp box and ran Wincab.
    RESULT: Scrambled files again

    2) Returned to Win2k box. Edited tags with multiple tag editors
    RESULT: Scrambled files again   

    3) Downloaded test version of Virtual Muke Box
    (http://www.virtualmusicjukebox.com/) and ran the VMB using the same files
    that appear scrambled by Wincab.
    RESULT: No scrambled files! Files that were scrambled by
 wincab were in the correct order in VMB

    4) Loaded Audio Grabber and tried ripping test albums with it.
     I wanted to see if Itunes was a source of evil in my life.
    RESULT: Scrambled files again


Conclusion: So... I see that dibb1er had success with tag editing with XP. I am going to give it a try and see what happens. I will have to report back later. 



 
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*** Please note *** After trying the VMB I was less then impressed. Chris has made a more user friendly and much finer product in my opinion. For example, in VMB you have to use a scroll bar to access any more than 8 tracks on an album. I am using buttons only (no kybd ,mouse, or touch screen) so this part of VMB STINKS ON ICE in my application. Chris' code automatically splits the album up into Vol 1 and Vol 2 at the 13th song mark. MUCH MUCH NICER! The only time this gets in my way is when I have 14 songs and I end up with one song floating all by its self. But as soon as I beat the tag issue I think I will just manually split the few albums like that into my own Vol1 and Vol2 directories. There were about 5 or 6 points that make Chris' code better than VMB in my application.

VMB was not all bad. It had two features that I did like. When scanning the CD's VMB showed the Artist first, the album second, and song list  third. I liked that better than the Album, Artist, song list order on Wincab. But the order is only a matter of taste and opinion. Therefore I can't even call it a drawback - I just would like a slightly different layout.

But even through the scrambled order of the songs, I am going to keep hammering at this problem. I am HeckBent on using Chris' code. I have tried it and I have found it to be the absolute BEST.

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