Chapter 1. Overview

This FileHandler allows to inspect various technical aspects of MP3 files and displays a variety of so called tags which store meta data about the music in the file.

In addition, it detects various problems which might prevent players from correctly playing the music in the file. Such problems might include unrecognized data, corrupted audio frames or inconsistent meta data in different tags.

The supported/recognized information includes:

By supporting to display some of these outdated information formats, it is possible to get at the embedded information despite the fact that many tools these days do not support them anymore. In combination with other tagging software, the data can be migrated to a more up-to-date format and isn't lost.

The viewer has a set of detectors for these different information items and just locates them in the file. This ensures a very quick overview over all that information for properly formatted MP3 files. Sometimes however, MP3 files get corrupted by inappropriate/outdated/broken tagging software or by data corruption while receiving such a file over an instable network connection (such as internet radio). To detect such problems, it is necessary to examine the whole file and verify the structure of each audio frame. This can be achieved through the Scan all operation available through the corresponding toolbar button.

Performing this on a large file can take quite some time, especially if that file is located on some location which is accessed over the network (such as a network share in windows).

After finishing the analysis, more information is displayed in the Audio tab, such as the exact duration of the entire music. In addition, more problems might get detected, which will be listed on the Problems tab (this tab will often contain only English messages).