Why Some MP3 Files Work & Some Do Not

A poster to the Adobe PP CS4 forum *might* have found a reason why some MP3 files will Import perfectly, but some will not:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b7b6fb/0



It seems that some contain ''album art,'' and these do not Import properly. While others do not contain this extra data, and work fine.



Might be worth noting.



I've always wondered why some do, but others, that appear the same to me, do not work. Out of habit, I just convert to WAV in Audition (or Audacity), so I never found the difference. It also explains why the MP3 files that I DO use (short SFX files), alwyas work perfectly - no album art.



Hope this helps someone in the future,



Hunt
Why Some MP3 Files Work %26 Some Do Not
Good find, Hunt!



And, of course, there's also the issue of digital copy protection, which is why you can't load any music downloaded from iTunes into a video editor without pulling up an error code.



But this MP3 issue you've brought up seems to be above and beyond that.
Why Some MP3 Files Work %26 Some Do Not
I had puzzled over this for some time. Many others have uploaded MP3's for me to test for them, but they always showed fine in Audition. Now, I may know why. Usually, a user would get a batch of MP3's to Import perfectly, but then have 1-2, that would not, no matter what they tried. I never saw the difference in Audition, where they played fine.



I only use MP3 for SFX work, so there would be no album art associated with the files. Also, I never looked at these in, say iTunes. Since these test files were not owned by me, all were immediately deleted, after the test. Next time, I'll try iTunes first, to see if there is album art. My assumption (same as Ron on Muvipix), was that the album art was just linked to the MP3 and was a separate file. Maybe not in every case?



Since I always convert any music MP3 to PCM/WAV in Audition first, I never had a problem. Now, I may know why.



I posted the link to Encore, here and Muvipix, as some users have experienced the problem with some MP3's. Could be that I now have my answer about what is different. Never thought of this, and never saw one problem with the ''bad'' MP3's in Audition. They looked just like the ''good'' MP3's.



Hope that this helps somebody,



Hunt