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beaTunes corrupts Whitelabel.net .wl.mp3 files

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riff.millar

30 Jun, 2010 12:07 AM

beaTunes 2.1.6 on Macbook Pro with OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4

As a Serato Scratch LIVE dj, I subscribe to Whitelabel.net for pre-release and special release tracks from vvarious artists and labels. For anyone not familiar with Whitelabel.net, they release tracks that are double-encoded to a .wl.mp3 format -- the .mp3 is a 32-bit MP3 wrapper, which plays low bitrate in any media player, but decodes the .wl inner data as high bitrate within Scratch LIVE.

I bought beaTunes for the Mac to help organize, clean-up and add additional ID3 info to my library, but have just discovered that it ruins Whitelabel files -- after committing a change to a Whitelabel .wl.mp3 file, either the file is completely corrupted and will no longer play in either iTunes nor Scratch LIVE, or will no longer decode the .wl within Scratch LIVE, playing only the 32-bit preview.

This is apparently a known issue with some 3rd-party editors, as pointed out on http://whitelabel.net/faq#2441 . Unfortunately, I only found this after beaTunes destroyed several tracks, many of which are no longer available for download.

I'm trying to find backups, but apparently my backup plan was not comprehensive as several are not in my archives.

Now, since I specifically bought beaTunes to improve my library specifically for use within Serato Scratch LIVE, I expect it to work on files for Scratch LIVE from Whitelabel.net without corrupting them. Otherwise, beaTunes is worthless to me.

Will there be a fix available any time soon? Or must I request a full refund for this product?

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by hendrik on 30 Jun, 2010 07:58 AM

   

   Hi,

   I've contacted Whitelabel to find out what specific requirements they have for tagging (unfortunately that's not specified on the site).

   In the mean time:
   When you analyzed files in beaTunes, did you have "embed non-iTunes fields" (general prefs) turned on? Or did you only use the inspection feature?

   -hendrik

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2. Support Staff 2 Posted by hendrik on 05 Jul, 2010 12:11 PM

   

   Hi,

   I did some research and Serato also got back to me.

   They are using id3 GEOB frames and it looks like some of those are dropped by jaudiotagger - the third party library beaTunes is using for tagging. That unfortunately means, that there is no quick fix. But it also means that there will be a fix eventually.

   There will be a guaranteed fix in beaTunes 3, probably also one for 2.1 (current version is 2.1.9).

   -hendrik

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3. 3 Posted by riff.millar on 05 Jul, 2010 06:54 PM

   

   Hi, Hendrick. Apologies for not replying earlier, it was a busy week for me.

   Answering your first reply's question -- I was using the analyze + inspection features with "embed non-iTunes fields" enabled, as I wanted to capture the tonal key analysis results for each track, as I'm interested in seeing what key matching can bring to DJ mixing, and to verify that the Key field as specified by beaTunes is the same as exposed in Scratch LIVE. I was also curious to see if any additional fields from beaTunes appear in Serato.

   I'm glad that I was able to assist in identifying this issue, and that you and Serato were able to isolate the root cause. I also appreciate the refund you just sent me for the current version of beaTunes. I will definitely be watching the releases for news of the fix. I would also be interested in beta-testing any potential fixes now that I have proper redundant backups setup correctly.

   Thanks again for your prompt attention and follow-up.

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4. Support Staff 4 Posted by hendrik on 06 Jul, 2010 04:34 PM

   

   No problem. I'll let you know, when there is something to test.

   Regarding comparison with whatever Serato already embedded:
   In pretty much all cases manual tags (BPM, key, ..) are superior to automatic values as they are generated by beaTunes. You might want to read http://www.djtechtools.com/2009/11/02/key-analysis-software-smackdown/ - key analysis is not an exact science, but a better than nothing approach.

   -hendrik

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5. Support Staff 5 Posted by hendrik on 25 Oct, 2010 07:27 PM

   

   Hi,

   I believe I finally managed to incorporate a fix for the Whitelabel issue. If you're interested, please try out

   http://www.beatunes.com/download/beaTunes-2-1-14-SNAPSHOT-jre-win.exe
   or
   http://www.beatunes.com/download/beaTunes-2-1-14-SNAPSHOT-osx.dmg

   Please make sure to first back up any songs you work with.

   Does this fix the problem?

   Thanks for your help,

   -hendrik

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6. Support Staff 6 Posted by hendrik on 01 Nov, 2010 06:47 PM

   

   The issue has been fixed in beaTunes 2.1.14.

   Thanks for reporting it.

   -hendrik

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7. hendrik closed this discussion on 01 Nov, 2010 06:47 PM.