M4A Files

[James77]

Hi,
I have been using Freebox exclusively with .wav files.  I now have a few .m4a files that I would like to use.  I have them set up in a folder (I have a few different artists mixed together, though I changed all the album names to the same in the tag).  The files have embedded album art, though I saved a cover.jpg to the folder, and am using that.  The files load, the cover shows correctly but the file names show A mp42iso for the album, artist and the track names.  They also do not play.  Is this file format not supported, or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

[Novalak]

m4a, isnt that ipod files?

if so, i think you need to convert them to mp3, do a google search

[dbeeks1]

Here's a complete step by step with links

http://www.bpurcell.org/blog/index.cfm?entry=1036&mode=entry

[James77]

Yes, its an AAC MP4 file.  Itunes uses it, though m4a is not protected like m4p is.  I was just wondering if Freebox supported the tags.  I will look into converting them, though I would rather keep them in the better codec.

Thanks

[Barcrest]

It sort of reads the tags, the M4A Reading isn't rock solid.

[James77]

Well I converted them to MP3 and all is well.  On my "compilation albums" I set Freebox to disply track first, then the artist.  This works fine, but in both this setting and the normal setting after a few songs it does not display the artist info, just the track info (in the album listing only, when you click on the song it displays the correct artist below the album artwork).  I noticed this when I go from a few Bruce Springsteen tracks, then go to somebody else, than back to Springsteen.  It then looses the artist info from the track info.  Anybody else seen this?

[James77]

I deleted the artist info, and rearranged the tracks and redid the artist info, and it still is doing a similar problem, even if I have all the "springsteen" tracks together.  I also renamed all the springsteen tracks to test artist and it still did it.  Is there a version of tags I should be using?

[James77]

Some more info:

I deleted all my id3v1 tags, and created new id3v2.4 tags.  When I group all the springsteen tracks together, the first songs displayed in freebox do not show the artist in the track listing until you page down to see the remainder of the tracks, then you can see artists name on the songs.  Going back to tracks 1-8 does not show the listing.  I then removed tracks 1-4.  Now the track listing starts at 4.  Now tracks 4-12 do not show the artists name, but remained of the tracks do when you hit more.  Tracks 9-12 did show the track listing moments before I removed tracks 1-4.   Any thoughts?

[James77]

I put in some new files, and just page 2 when you press more does not show the artist info in the track listing. Hmm....

[Barcrest]

It is because it works out if it's a compilation based on the tracks being shown. If the ones being shown all have the same artist it will not show that artist. I need to do some work to fix this.

[James77]

Oh, ok, thanks.  I thought I was going crazy.

Will future versions of Freebox have better m4a support?  Now that Itunes is DRM free, it will be more usefull.

Thanks,
James

[squirrellydw]

I have been trying to get Barry to add this for awhile.  You willing to help support the cause with me?  $$

[James77]

I would be willing to help out with $.