Re: [Easytag-mailing] Question about m4a/mp4 tags

["Alastair" <ajebay errichel co uk>]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:17:34 -0700 Ernest Wagner wrote:
>
>Alistair,
>
>Easytag checks for characters that might cause problems with Windows files(NTFS) and 
>automatically 
>changes the offending characters to an underline or something. This character can be 
>changed in the 
>preferences dialog.  For example, the colon, backslash and question mark characters are 
>illegal on an NTFS system and will
>give errors if a file read is attempted by an MS Windows app.  Those illegal characters 
>might
>cause Twonky not to serve them as the primary recipients of the media files are Windows 
>users.
>
>Concerning the m4a files downloaded from the BBC web site, are they Digital
>Rights Managed (DRM) if so, I'm not so sure that the Twonky server will serve such 
>protected
>media as the Twonky server is proprietory software.  I had a WD Mybookworld myself.  
>BTW, there
>is a NAS culture out there that does a lot of modifying/porting of applications to the NAS 
>(ARM)
>architecture. There are several Open source media servers that can be installed. I can't 
>remember
> offhand if they will serve DRM protected files.
>
>I don't understand how you managed to read m4a tags with Easytag as the 
>version(2.1.7) I have only works with mp3 and ogg/vorbis files.  I can't get Easytag to
>even see m4a files in the folder browser.
>
>Recently, I found a tagger called Ex Falso in the Fedora 17 distribution that does a decent 
job 
>with mp3
>and m4a files. 
>
>Regards,
>
>Ernie
>
>
>On Mon, 2012-08-20 at 13:23 +0100, Alastair wrote:
>> Hi,
>> No reply last time so will try again!
>> Recently the BBC downloads using get_iplayer and AtomicParsley on Linux (openSUSE) 
>> system have been saved as .m4a files.  
>> 
>> When I check the tagging of these files with Easytag but before I try and make any of my 
>> own changes, all the tagging is in place and looks fine but when I wish to move to 
>another 
>> file they are highlighted in red and Easytag asks me if I want to write the tags.  There is 
no 
>> clue however as to what changes it wishes to make.  Please could somebody explain 
>what 
>> is happening here.
>> In addition to the above symptoms suggesting all is not well, Twonky will not serve 
these 
>> files from my NAS.    In fact it doesn't seem to see them.  Perhaps somebody else has 
had 
>> this problem?
>> Alastair.
>> 

Hi Ernest,
Many thanks for the info.  I have checked the automatic edit settings but have not found 
source of the problem.  It is not however critical as tags are otherwise OK, no windoze 
here!

The issue with BBC files is not DRM but the BBC's choice of tags.  I think I have solved the 
problem now but have much work to do re-tagging.

I use Easytag 2.1.7 too and it recognises .m4a files and tags.  Suggest you check this list.  I 
had a big problem with .m4a BBC files at first because they were not tagged at all.  That 
was my fault for not having AtomicParsley installed.  Once I installed this all was OK except 
for the BBC's genre settings!

Thanks again,
Alastair.