BlackBerry® Storm™

[AlanSilberlight]

 I would like to post my observations on mp3 files and the Blackberry Storm. I'm sure, however, that they also apply to other Blackberrys as well.

  From what I see, the file name of the song means absolutely nothing. Blackberrys react to the ID tag. Therefore, if the ID tags are not written properly, it might be difficult or impossible to access a particular song.

  I have over 1400 songs on a 16 gb memory card. I made each mp3 file myself, writing all of the ID tags

myself. No downloads.

  My observations are the following:

1) I added one song without any ID tags. I just wanted to hear how it sounded. It was impossible to access this song on the Storm. Once I added ID tags I had no trouble accessing the song, either by title or by album name.

2) I recently constructed an album of nine songs. I wrote the ID tags but neglected to assign each song track numbers, even though the file names were preceded by 01, 02, etc. The Storm listed each song alphabetically. Once I gave track numbers through the ID tags the songs were played in proper order.

3) To test my theory, I constructed an album of 4 songs, all with properly written ID tags, including track numbers. However, I changed the file names to gibberish titles (aaaaaaaaaa.mp3, bbbbbbbbbbb.mp3, ccccccccccc.mp3, dddddddddddd.mp3). The Storm played the songs properly, in correct sequence, and showed the true titles of the songs, as written in the ID tags.

  I believe this shows that if someone does not know how to write ID tags, he or she will have a very difficult time with the Blackberrys.

  Any comments, suggestions or observations on my posting? Thank you very much.

Alan Silberlight

[sdgardne]

Hi there!!

Very interesting observations -- I must attest to the fact that I have no experience with the things you are discussing. I simply drag-n-drop (not via Media Manager, btw) my music files to my BB and then set it to random shuffle through my entire library (something like 536 of my favorite all time tracks). But, you do seem to know what you are talking about, so FWIW here is the link to the RIM KB that discusses media formats, encoding instructions, and other things (things that I freely admit I do not completely understand). Maybe it'll be helpful to you in this very worthwhile quest!

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=KB05482&sliceId=1&docTy...

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=KB05419

Cheers!

[AlanSilberlight]

Thank you for responding to my post. I do appreciate it and I thank you for the links. The links pertain to the types of files that Blackberrys will accept, audio, video, music, etc. My post referred only to mp3 files

Blackberrys, like many other mp3 players, can access a song by name of song, artist, genre or album. This information is put on ID tags.

Here is Wikipedia's definition of a tag: "A "tag" in an audio file is a section of the file that contains metadata such as the title, artist, album, track number or other information about the file's contents."

If you download a song from an online service, the tags are already there. If you rip a CD (extracting the songs as music files) with Windows Media Player, the tags are put on if you include them in the rip.

In my case, the sound source is DVD, laserdisc, VHS tape, etc. I use a 3rd party program to construct the ID tags. Without these tags, the Blackberry will NOT access the song properly. If no tags are put on, the Blackberry will not access it. Conversely, if the tags are properly written but the file name is gibberish (aaaaaaaaaaa.mp3, bbbbbbbbbbbbb.mp3, etc.) the Blackberrys will display the correct title from the tags.

I also posted my observations on Vodafone's (U.K. carrier) forums.  One individual wrote back, indicating the following:

"I noticed that sort of thing when I put a two disc album on the card for my storm. I wanted both CDs in the same folder so that they would just play straight after each other, but had to go in and manually change the track id number for the second album (via pc) otherwise it was playing track one from one disc, then track one from the other disc, and so on, despite the fact the initial name of the file itself clearly seperated the two discs if listed alphabetically.

So yes, does seem that track ID is important if you want things to run in the correct order."

I hope this response helps. I do appreciate the fact that you said you did not understand my post and am grateful for the two links. I hope that this explanation clears up the confusion.

Alan Silberlight

[davidt06]

I too just bought a 16 GB card for both myself and my wife.  I ripped all of our CD's into Windows Media Player and it converted them to wma format.  The problem arises when I use the Blackberry Media Sync to send the music to the phones, some of the track numbers transfer and some (most) don't.  Do you know what I need to do to get the track numbers to transfer over?  Also, I just purchased some mp3 albums from Amazon and they seem to behave the same way...the tracks are listed alphabetically instead of by number.  One last thing, when I click on properties in the blackberry player I can see the track number in the name, but the system is just not picking it up.  I'm new to all of this, any info is appreciated.