Damaged Mp3's

[Neenie]

Hi there,

I have heaps of Mp3's that seem to have malfunctioned slowly over the years. The problem is that many of them have changed the song name to numbers like this "U2E8E4~1" and some them won't play at all.

I've done a search for Mp3 repair tools and they don't fix the problem. I just haven't found the right tool yet. It's really annoying

I thought I'd ask you technical experts for any advice

Thank you

 

[Qyöt27]

What kinds of things have you done with them? Have they just been sitting around on the hard drive? Do you move them around a lot? Has you computer been infected with any viruses that could corrupt the data?

I've had some MP3s for almost 5 years now and I've never had this problem.

MP3s have something called a header, followed by the actual music content. Maybe the only thing getting corrupted is the header, as even something as little as that can cause the audio not to play or play correctly.

I don't know how well transmuxing tools would really help with this, since I've not done it recently (and can't remember if they could take damaged headers), but search down MKVToolNix and MKVExtract GUI. It's got a pretty intuitive interface, so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to use. You can try to put the MP3 into the MKV (Matroska) container with MKVToolNix, and then try to put it back into MP3 with MKVExtract GUI.

If worse comes to worst, then you may have to just decode the MP3 to Wave and then encode it back to MP3 (or whatever other format, like Vorbis or AAC).

 

[Neenie]

The Mp3's have been moved around a lot from hardrive to hardrive. I've also had a few viruses in the past, not sure if they caused it, but wouldn't help.

I downloaded the MKVToolNix from bunkus.org, the mp3's that still work but have a different name such as U2982D~1 can be added. But when I clicked on "muxing" it says in the warning box "no valid header can be found" though it still saved as a mkv file. I then opened the MKVExtractGUI (like you said) clicked on browse and opened the mkv file then extracted it back to Mp3. It must of not worked because it didn't find the header in the first place.

I'm pretty slow and it took me a while to figure it out,hope I did what you meant.

I might have to do what you said about decoding the mp3's to wave then mp3 and re-naming them, if worst comes to worst. But I have hundreds of Mp3's with this naming problem. One positive is that when I click the properties of the Mp3 then click summery, it says the song name. I'll keep trying different repair programs and see what happens.

Thanks for you're help though.

 

[JJay]

Maybe the codec needed to play them got corrupted when SP2 and the new Media player came online, with the RIAA and MPAA banging the consumers head for more money for stuff they areadly own on cd's they make it harder now using media player with older mp3 and older codecs used well it's how I see it anyway, Some codec's do cause conficks.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm

To download every audio and video codocs need to play certain types of formats. You can even try www.winamp.com which is a good player. Try this, if you were able to listen to them before then there just might be a codec confick going on. Downloading the K-lite codec package just might fix this problem for ya. Good luck.

 

[Neenie]

Thanks for the codec link PostMaster. I downloaded the full package of codecs for audio/video, but the problem is still there. Though I’m glad you directed me to it because I'm able to play videos that wouldn't play before I didn't know what the codecs for those were.

You're properly right about them making it harder now to use the new media player with older mp3's, I mostly use winamp though.

Thank you for the help you've already given.

Here's a pic of the problem. The first few are all right, but the rest are corrupted.

 

[JJay]

Thanks for the codec link PostMaster. I downloaded the full package of codecs for audio/video, but the problem is still there. Though I’m glad you directed me to it because I'm able to play videos that wouldn't play before I didn't know what the codecs for those were.

You're properly right about them making it harder now to use the new media player with older mp3's, I mostly use winamp though.

Thank you for the help you've already given.

Here's a pic of the problem. The first few are all right, but the rest are corrupted.

They look like old short cuts, index of old short cuts, not sure I think so. Try to right click on them and click on the properties so see the size of the file. IF they are only 1 Kb or 2Kb then you can just remove them, for there just old sort cuts and they no longer point to the right spot to where it was last.

Let me know about the size though.

 

[Neenie]

They are all about 5MB each so they aren't shortcuts (it doesn’t have the shortcut arrow as well). The weird thing is that the song name appears on the player when it's playing but not in the folder like I showed. It's annoying because most of my concert files have this problem that weren't there a few months ago. And you have to play each Mp3 to see what song it is.

Maybe these Mp3's are corrupted permanently. I'm about to give up, their driving me crazy

 

[JJay]

They are all about 5MB each so they aren't shortcuts (it doesn’t have the shortcut arrow as well). The weird thing is that the song name appears on the player when it's playing but not in the folder like I showed. It's annoying because most of my concert files have this problem that weren't there a few months ago. And you have to play each Mp3 to see what song it is.

Maybe these Mp3's are corrupted permanently. I'm about to give up, their driving me crazy

Can you go to the folder where they are located and then right click on one and click open with and scroll down and open it with something other the media player? Can You send me one of these files so I can see on my end what's the problem. I use Msn messager if you like to share one file with me. I'll look at it for you.

 

[Neenie]

Can you go to the folder where they are located and then right click on one and click open with and scroll down and open it with something other the media player? Can You send me one of these files so I can see on my end what's the problem. I use Msn messager if you like to share one file with me. I'll look at it for you.

Yeah, I tried opening it with other players. I don't use messenger but I'm uploading one through yousendit. I'm going to PM you now.

 

[JJay]

Good morning Yes it plays fine here.
on Media player and classic media player. Have you done a windows update lately? www.windowsupdate.com to see if you're missing some shared dll files that might have gotten removed/deleted.

The file is renamed and I renamed it back to what it should be and it still works fine on my end. Are you running Windows XP?

 

[Neenie]

Good morning Yes it plays fine here.
on Media player and classic media player. Have you done a windows update lately? www.windowsupdate.com to see if you're missing some shared dll files that might have gotten removed/deleted.

The file is renamed and I renamed it back to what it should be and it still works fine on my end. Are you running Windows XP?

Yeah, I'm running Windows XP and I'm on dial-up speed at the moment, I'm going to do download the update tomorrow because it's past midnight here. I'll also get messenger going to, I'll let you know.

Thanks

 

[Qyöt27]

Maybe the codec needed to play them got corrupted when SP2 and the new Media player came online, with the RIAA and MPAA banging the consumers head for more money for stuff they areadly own on cd's they make it harder now using media player with older mp3 and older codecs used well it's how I see it anyway, Some codec's do cause conficks.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm

To download every audio and video codocs need to play certain types of formats. You can even try www.winamp.com which is a good player. Try this, if you were able to listen to them before then there just might be a codec confick going on. Downloading the K-lite codec package just might fix this problem for ya. Good luck.

The codec needed is the Fraunhofer MP3 codec. It's come standard on every Windows OS since Win95 SE. Updating to SP2 would do nothing to it, and if Media Player corrupted it, it wouldn't be able to play any MP3s. MP3s don't get played back by the codec that made them. They all get defaulted to Fraunhofer's decoder. And there's no such thing as an MP3 codec lockout, either. AFAIK, if K-Lite installs the Fraunhofer codec, it installs the Professional version, which has no restrictions on the bitrate or frequency of the MP3s you want to encode. The decoder is exactly the same, so it wouldn't change a thing.

Fraunhofer's decoder also only applies to DirectShow/ACM players, like WMP. Winamp uses it's own internal decoder for MP3.

As for the video codecs, the ones that you're probably referring to are DivX, XviD, and MPEG-2. There aren't too many others that K-Lite installs that are widely used (and technically, XviD and other MPEG-4 based codecs can be played back just fine with DivX if you tell it to decode Generic MPEG-4). The only multi-purpose codec that you should install is ffdshow, which plays back virtually anything (this actually may be what K-Lite installs nowadays, but I dunno). Codec packs have a nasty reputation of screwing with computer setups and causing more conflicts. The only exception is if you actually know what you're doing when you install them, and only put in a few filters you know for a fact won't mess with anything else.

 

[JJay]

The codec needed is the Fraunhofer MP3 codec. It's come standard on every Windows OS since Win95 SE. Updating to SP2 would do nothing to it, and if Media Player corrupted it, it wouldn't be able to play any MP3s. MP3s don't get played back by the codec that made them. They all get defaulted to Fraunhofer's decoder. And there's no such thing as an MP3 codec lockout, either. AFAIK, if K-Lite installs the Fraunhofer codec, it installs the Professional version, which has no restrictions on the bitrate or frequency of the MP3s you want to encode. The decoder is exactly the same, so it wouldn't change a thing.

Fraunhofer's decoder also only applies to DirectShow/ACM players, like WMP. Winamp uses it's own internal decoder for MP3.

As for the video codecs, the ones that you're probably referring to are DivX, XviD, and MPEG-2. There aren't too many others that K-Lite installs that are widely used (and technically, XviD and other MPEG-4 based codecs can be played back just fine with DivX if you tell it to decode Generic MPEG-4). The only multi-purpose codec that you should install is ffdshow, which plays back virtually anything (this actually may be what K-Lite installs nowadays, but I dunno). Codec packs have a nasty reputation of screwing with computer setups and causing more conflicts. The only exception is if you actually know what you're doing when you install them, and only put in a few filters you know for a fact won't mess with anything else.

Hello very good you seem to know alot about this, I asked her to do a full windowsupdate so lets see if that fixes the problem, being she is on dail up it will take like a long time. So lets wait and see

Jay

 

[Neenie]

Hey guy's! (sorry for the late reply) I downloaded the updates and the songs that didn't play at all before seem to be playing again I don't weather it was the updates or codec but broken MP3’s are playing again. The problem of the re-named Mp3's is still though...But I'll re-name them all again, because the advice you told me to do would've fixed the problem that caused it in the first place. I got messanger going to.

Thank you

 

[JJay]

Great

Have you now try to create a separate folder and try to cut and paste thoughs file there that are misnamed and or have numbers and then try to rename them. Can always try safe mode, I was able to rename without a problem that one file I downloaded from you.

If ya want you can add me to your MSN messager.