Track lengths not loading when scanning media files

[cyberstasz1]

Help! I've been trying to contact Andrei about this for quite some time now with no response. I scan all my albums using 'scan media files' and rarely, if ever, do all the track lengths load. I have to right click on each track with '0:00' and enter it manually. What a pain! I'm starting to grow tired of it. If I do not get some sort of resolution to the problem I'm going to start looking for alternative software. And so no one else falls into this same pit, I will have to give reviews online of the software and its operation.

Thanks,

Michael

[Jazz_North]

You don't say what format your media files are in which is necessary to offer proper comment. (I assume you are not using Scan media files with physical cds.) As well, some indication of what kind of music this is would help (a couple of album names where you didn't get times would be useful).

[cyberstasz1]

Hello Jazz_North,
Thanks for the reply! Most files are in wav with a few mp3's at times. My operating system is Windows 7 64bit. I scan music every day and it can happen with a CD or digital download. As far as any specific album, pick one - it happens almost all the time.

[Jazz_North]

I would have guessed that wav files were a problem. They are very poor at metadata and the track length information may not be encoded in them so OCD would have no way of knowing what the length is; track length is almost always encoded in mp3s. I asked about type of music because classical music also has various encoding problems because the databases were originally set up for rock & pop.

Are you using Add media files or Scan CD-ROM drive with cds?

[cyberstasz1]

With CD's I will rip it to the hard drive and then use 'scan media files'. This is strange because it will load some of the track lengths but not all.

[Jazz_North]

Try using Scan CD-Rom drive to enter the data from a CD. I think you will have more luck. I don't know what you use to rip your cds but that program ought to encode the length data from the CD; it has to read it from the cd to know how to break the cd into tracks. However, if you are ripping to WAV, it may not do so as the WAV meta-format is very poor and does not standardly include length. (Audacity has a good description of WAV metadata here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/WAV - scroll down to metadata and you will see that length is not one of the standard tags.) I don't know if OCD tries to get data from freedb if it is missing from the media scan (I doubt it), but length data is sometimes missing there, too (and always missing, in my experience, from data taken from Amazon). So I doubt that the problem is not that OCD is not reading the length data, but that the length data is not there for OCD to read.

Out of curiosity, what do you use to rip your music and what do you use to play it?

[cyberstasz1]

I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip the music. I use both Windows Media Player (OCD default) and JRiver Media Center for playback. Funny you mention Audacity, I do much editing with it and scan media afterwards. I can't recall anything in mp3 format not transferring. I keep wav files for uncompressed sound quality. I stay far and away from anything Apple because of hardware compatibility.

Seems the root of this problem (and I had mentioned this to Andrei long ago) is once again Microsoft blundering. I noticed the issues going from XP to 7. The ability to edit audio files in 7 was almost non-existent. I searched high and low for a resolution and from the MS forums it was concluded that it was a known issue the was never addressed. Typical MS, lets drop 7 and start with 8. Now, they're trying to come back with a 'solid' version 10 to sweep the shortcomings of 8 under the rug. Again.

My collection is at over 8,000 total records. As this point I'm not sure what to do. Of course sound quality is my greatest concern.

[Jazz_North]

I downloaded and tested EAC (I normally use dbpoweramp as it gives a lot more tagging help) on a number of cds, ripping to WAV. All of them had track lengths in the metadata and all had track lengths when brought into OCD using Media Scan of the WAV files. I am using Windows 7. I don't have any other suggestions; the only time I have not had track lengths is some Adds from Discogs and almost all Adds from Amazon (I add as soon as I have purchased and album and then revise when it arrives).