Unable to play certain MP3's

Here's a pickle for ya... :devilish:

I have a nice collection of MP3's, and haven't in the past had a problem with any of them. Every CD my brother or I buy, we rip onto our PC's, and have done for years.
I've recently formatted both PC's and done a fresh install of everything on them. Both PC's are running Windows XP SP2 Pro.
Didn't notice any problems for a while, but now I've noticed that some of my MP3's don't seem to work. If memory serves, I think Nero was used to rip the MP3's in question.

When I load one of them, I get the message:

Quote:

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Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The player might not
support the file type or might not support the codec that was
used to compress the file.

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However, if I load the file with the old media player, or any other media player (creative media player, or anything else) it seems to work fine.

When browsing my MP3's on my PC, they all show the information held in the tags, artist, album etc etc, however, the MP3's that don't play in the latest media player don't show this information.

Whats even more interesting, if these 'bad' files are changed from extension .mp3 to .wav, then voila, they work absolutely fine. Unfortunately, there are one to many that don't work, and I don't particularly fancy changing every extension...


Therefore, any ideas? :shocked2: :crazy:

Parm

Never used nero for ripping before, are you sure it encoded them to mp3 corectly, Other media player might be more apt at seeking out the corect codec. You could get a codec pack for WMP. Which might solve the problem. I'm not sure if the mp3 codec ever changes like the WMA one.

Do you happen to know any codec packs I could try?
I'm pretty certain they're encoded properly. Firstly, they all work with other media players, and secondly on some albums, some tracks do work and some don't.

Odd.

Is there any reason you're using windows media player and not something like winamp? Could it be worth the change since it works on winamp?

The main reason is that I quite like WMP, I haven't had a problem with it before, and it's on all the PC's on the network, so it's really easy to maintain.

To show this problem properly, I've uploaded a problematic MP3 to my webspace.

The file can be downloaded here.

Please feel free to give this a go and report your feedback here.

I see what you mean now. I sometimes get that error message when people give a link to something on the internet (usually streaming). I generally just close and move to something else if I see that as I haven't found a way to fix it.

It says it might not support the codec used to compress the file. Are you sure you're using the same ripping program? Maybe you could try re-ripping that particular song. If that doesn't work, I stongley recommend using CDex to rip your CD's instead.

jms@minimoose:~$ file Desktop/ProblemTest.mp3
Desktop/ProblemTest.mp3: MP3 file with ID3 version 2.3.0 tag

How large are the files that are named .mp3 but play when renamed to .wav? Are they much larger than most of your other MP3's? Are you sure the files played before the reformat?

Sounds more like Nero did a poor job. Often CD's are fisrt ripped to wav and then converted MP3. Could be that the files were not converted from WAV to MP3 but did get renamed. And remember that some software will ignor file extentions and just play the file. Some software is more fussy, making sure it the right file type.

I would get a proper dedicated ripper. Personally i recommend Audio Grabber or EAC. In conjuction with the LAME codec for MP3. Then use Winamp or media player classic.

The files are the same filesize as most mp3's, so I'm as certain as can be that they're not wav files.

Some of the problem files were ripped a while back. I now use EAC and LAME to rip all my stuff. Unfortunately, I don't fancy re-ripping everything.

The most annoying thing is that they do load absolutely fine on the 'old' windows media player. gah.

Didnt work for me ether. However it opend in Adobe Audition fine.

Filename: ProblemTest.mp3
Folder: C:\Documents and Settings\TrippleDence\Desktop
File Type: 44100Hz, 16-bit, Stereo
Uncompressed Size: 6.88 MB (7,224,000 bytes)
File Format: mp3PRO® (FhG)
MPEG Layer-3, 128 Kbps (Stereo)
Size on Disk: 640 KB (655,366.00 bytes)
Last Written (local): 3/8/2005 18:42:10.000
Length: 0:40.952
1,806,000 samples

Whats FGH on the file formatt anyone?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Trippledence

Whats FGH on the file formatt anyone?

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Fraunhofer Institute, the people who invented MP3 and MP3 pro.

ooh, mp3PRO, that might be the problem

mp3PRO is a broken, twisted version of mp3, which claims to give it the same quality-per-meg attributes as vorbis or wma (but only work as such in one player, and should play as normal mp3 in all other players).

oooh, I feel we're making progress here! :)

I supose you could re encode everything using a batch prosesser, like Advanced WMA wizard. Presuming it will read them ok.

did you have licensing on when you ripped them with nero... ??

Licensing?

DRM, shiny advanced technology to ban you from access to your data.

Hmmm, not that I know of.

heard of this problem before.. id suggest going back to wmp 9 if you love it that much. sounds like they werent encoded properly. the only solution i ever heard was that they were converted at too high a frequency. just a possibility but have you ever used i tunes? when i installed it once it started randomly converting all my files and gave them all no name. thus i have a gig of music i am slowly sorting through and trying to work out who it is! quite annoying.

i too reinstalled windows and found that i get the same message when i tried to play most of my thousands of mp3s:

("Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file")

however changing the filename to wav doesn't help, and neither does using winamp.

even more strangely, of those that still will play, maybe half now play different songs, despite the filenames and locations not changing.

i can see no pattern in which files are in which conditions with many albums/folders containing working files, mis-playing files and non-playing files.

my mp3's live on a different hard drive from windows and everything else, really. so if there is a problem with this drive it doesn't seam to effect anything else.

after noticing that some didn't play but before noticing that some songs had changed, i restarted and windows went thru that whole blue-screen disc recovery thing.

its all very odd and annoying. most of my mp3s are backed elsewhere so its not too tragic, but before i put them back onto my hard drive and spend hours trying to shuffle them into a good structure, I'd like to know why this happened, so i can avoid a repeat.

any ideas?

thanks a lot.
d.

One word; Foobar2000.

If that wont play them, almost nothing will (apart from maybe VLC).

Most likely is that Nero (or whatever you ripped with) used some kind of proprietary MP3 codec, rather than LAME etc. If the above wont work, the only way would be to try and figure out exactly what codec was used.

If they played once, an obscure MP3 codec (which you/some software might have installed yourself and cant remember/did not know about) is the only realistic answer. That is unless somehow they have all become corrupt, which would be odd for so many files (maybe even an MP3 killing virus. It has been known, but very unlikely i would have thought). Possibly a DRM issue, but again fairly unlikely with MP3.

In future make sure you use a good ripper, such as EAC (the best) or CDex and the LAME codec. If someone has to rip to MP3, always use the lastest version of LAME. When i say 'has' to rip to MP3, i mean that you really have to have a good reason, like the portable player you have, because there are much better options than ye old e MP3.

If none of the helps and cant find a solution here, a visit to the god-like MP3 knowledge base that is www.hydrogenaudio.org and their forums. If someone there can't help you, know one can.

EDIT: fixed bad link.

Exact Audio Copy, Lame3.X.

Take it as a lesson learnt.

Well....
I (the one with some mp3s that "play each other" and others which don’t play at all) did use eac and lame.
They all played fine before I reinstalled windows.
I have a horrible feeling that the disc corrupted, or something (but what do I know) I which case I’m hesitant to spend hours replacing them all in case it happens again.
I don’t know if the ones which play the wrong thing are maybe the misguided result of windows disc recovery.
....or might it be a virus? - I have avg plodding away in the background and have not had too much trouble with viruses in the past.
Anyway, I’ll have a look on www.hydrogenaudio.com but if anyone has a clue what’s going on or what I should do, I’d be very grateful to hear.

www.hydrogenaudio.com just appears to be a load of adverts.
am i missing something?

Sorrt, it's www.hydrogenaudio.org

They have a great WiKi too.

oops, double post.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by just_laze

Exact Audio Copy, Lame3.X.

Take it as a lesson learnt.

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Either that or FLAC it in the same way and then convert to your chosen player's preferred format (don't need to re-rip to new formats every time you change your portable player...)