Audio CD shows Unknown Artist, Album Name & track data are ok

[leo4must]

I have successfully added all track data and Album Name, but the Album Artist remains "Unknown Artist".

I have checked the options, but can't find one that fixes the problem.

 

As far as I can tell, the Album Artist is in the .cue file (PERFORMER) just like the Album Name (TITLE).

But on a CD player only Album Name shows properly, Album Artist shows "UNKNOWN ARTIST"

 

For each track they both show ok.

 

BTW. ImgBurn is today one of the very few that can actually write the data to an Audio CD properly. All others I have tried end up with an Audio CD that has the music, but the CD Player only shows track 01, track 02 ... for track names and Unknown Album, Unknown Artist for the album.

I have a set of mp3 files on USB memory stick, proper cue file (attached) but still see the text  "Unknown Artist" on CD player in car etc..

Log files attached, too.

 

I do remember doing Audio CD's with Microsoft Windows Media Player and they would show all data properly. But that has changed during the last years. I have tested other programs like CDBurnerXP, NCH Express Burn but they are doing as bad as Windows Media Player, their support doesn't have a clue.

 

Best Regards, Leo

Ken Hensley - Variaous Demos.cue

ImgBurnKHVD.log

Edited September 16, 2013 by leo4must

[leo4must]

Still no answers. Is this some copy protection scam? I am _not_ doing anything illegal nor unethical here. Just checking if we could raise some money to support some charitable causes with full knowledge and co-operation of the artist himself.

Edited September 16, 2013 by leo4must

[LIGHTNING UK!]

If you go into Read mode and click on the 'View Media Information' button in the Source box, does it list the correct Album Performer?

 

If you can find a disc that shows the CD-TEXT album artist correctly on your player (in your car?), please read that disc to an image file using ImgBurn's 'Read' mode and then send me the *.cdt file it creates.

[leo4must]

As you can see from the attached cue file, the Album Performer: is listed properly on the file and shows properly when Media Information is shown on the ImgBurn. It just doesn't show on CD Player, nor Windows Media Player.

Ålease see the attached Screen shot Mediainformation.jpg

The CD that I am trying to create has not been published. It is a copy of a c-cassette that has various demos from Ken Hensley on years 1986-1991.

So how dows one get a Disc ID?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Windows Media Player doesn't show CD-TEXT info unless you install the WMPCDText plugin.

 

http://bmproductions.fixnum.org/moreprogs/wmpcdtext.htm

 

That screenshot was from the burnt disc in 'Read' mode and not from the image file in 'Write' mode yeah? I just want to double check

 

Don't forget, if you can find a disc in your collection that *does* show the Album Artist / Performer correctly in your car, please do what I mentioned in my previous post.

 

I've no idea how you get a Disc ID, sorry.

 

btw, there's a typo in the album name in the CUE - 'Variaous'.

[leo4must]

This is getting weird. All the official CD's that I have tested this far are showing all information properly in Windows Media Player (with no extra plugins that I know of) as well as car CD player, but ImgBurn shows everything as Unknown for the Album (except total time and number of tracks) and all info about the tracks is missing (just their length). And yes I have tested it in Windows 7, 8 and XP. ImgBurn Version: 2.5.8.0

Edited September 17, 2013 by leo4must

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Windows Media Player will query an online database to get Album info.

 

Online album info and CD-TEXT are two very different things

 

Very few CDs actually contain CD-TEXT. You can tell the ones that do because they'll have a CD-TEXT logo on them (on the disc itself probably, rather than the case).

 

The logo can be found on the right of this page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-TEXT

[leo4must]

C'mon. My car has no internet connection, neither does my DVD player. The info comes from the CD or DVD disk and shows on all, except ImgBurn. See for yourself, my CD's and DVD's can't all be that different than yours.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

It really doesn't.

 

Proper Audio CDs use CD-TEXT, some sort of database lookup (online or otherwise), or nothing.

 

Players might be able to read MP3 style data discs and extract the metadata from the files, but that's not what we're talking about here.

[ianymaty]

Your car may have a built in Gracenote recognition technology, usually it's in the navigation system.

[leo4must]

I also tested it on a DVD player that is so old that it can't have any connection to Internet or other external source and still finds the data that is on the CD disk itself. And that finds the info on commercial CD's but on ImgBurn made Audio CD's it show Unknown Artist

 

But the real topic is that Audio CD should show Album Artist, Album Name and Track Names.

ImgBurn is one of the very few that show Album Name and Track Names, but not the Album Artist.

If it writes properly 2 of 3, it should not be very hard to fix it so it would write all 3.

 

It should not be hard to duplicate the problem with any CD or DVD Player that has no Internet connection.

 

I would be happy to support your product financially and help in getting it distributed in stead of the other products that are so popular currently but their support is completely incompetent and can't help at all on a problem like this. On other products they don't even write any of the CD-TEXT data to Audio CD's, but they refuse to do anything to fix the problem.

 

There is something going on to prevent illegal copying of CD's. And to be clear with the matter, I am all against that. I just find it more convenient to play my music from mp3 player that from CD Player, that is why I copy them from CD to mp3.

 

If the computer is not connected to Internet, now everything shows as Unknown. Only my car stereos show it as they should.

If the computer is connected to the internet, then it shows all names as it should (even the front image) on commercial CD's.

 

The Audio CD that I have made by using ImgBurn shows everything, just only not the artist name no matter if the computer is connected to internet and on my car stereos. 

[LIGHTNING UK!]

It doesn't matter how many times you say it, there's still no 'data' on a proper Audio CD besides CD-TEXT... and I know that as so few discs use it, your hardware must have an offline database of some sort if it's showing track names for the commercial discs you're putting in it.

 

The 'Disc ID' probably gets generated from a calculation based on the number of tracks on the disc and the length of each track. Then it's just a case of looking that calculated 'Disc ID' up in the database and showing the names associated with each track.

 

Obviously that can't work homemade discs - unless you program the data into the database.

 

The actual topic is here is why your devices can't read CD-TEXT properly if ImgBurn can and the WMPCDText plugin can. When I custom make a CD and add my own CD-TEXT, both ImgBurn and WMP (with the aid of WMPCDText) display all of the correct disc / track info - including the Album artist. I tried it on an old Pioneer DVD/Video combo player that clearly shows it's reading the CD-TEXT on the disc and the Album Artist shows up on that just fine too.

 

Do you not get any 'artist' info at all - either at disc level or track level?

 

The album name and track names are stored in '0x80' packs within the CD-TEXT info. The album artist and track artists are stored in '0x81' packs within the CD-TEXT info. If you aren't getting anything from the '0x81' packs then I'd just put that down to a bad CD-TEXT implementation in your hardware.

 

Something I did find funny when looking at this stuff is that my PS3 and newer Sony BD player both lack support for reading CD-TEXT... and yet CD-TEXT is something Sony came up with!

 

Anyway, I'm happy with my imeplementation of CD-TEXT encoding/decoding. What I generate in code from info in the CUE file (that's then sent as-is to the drive when burning) matches what came from the original pressed/commercial disc in the first place. You can't ask for more than that.

[ianymaty]

Read again #3 and help him to help you.

[leo4must]

All track info is ok. For the Album, the Album Name is ok, just the Album Artist (PERFORMER) is not showing on Audio CD but shows Unknown Artist in stead.

[dgpretzel]

I just found this thread.

I am having the same problem.  I burn a CD (from a concert I have personally recorded.  (I added the CDText.)

 

When I play it with Windows Media Player (with WMPCDText plugin), it shows the album name, the track name, but the artist is listed as "unknown".  Interestingly, when I click File-->Properties and then the "Content" tab, the CDTEXT data, INCLUDING the artist is shown.  But, when I go back to Windows Media main ()library) window, it still says "Artist: Unknown".

I think there must be some bug in WMP.

But, I am using obsolete software (Windows 7).

I have had this problem for years.  I don't think I ever saw "Artist" metadata in WMP under Windows 7.

Just an FYI.

I love ImgBurn.

 

DG

[dbminter]

I found the WMPCDText plugin to be highly unreliable.  Enough so that I eventually uninstalled it.
 

 

[dgpretzel]

An interesting observation to add to my post above about observing "artist unknown" when playing a CD burned by ImgBurn, and that had artist metadata included when I burned it...

If I open (with Windows Media Player) the wav files that are used to burn the disk, all the CDText data is there (including artist).  But, when I burn the wav files to a CD, and then play it with Windows Media Player, WMP displays "artist unknown", but does display the other metadata (Album Name and Track Name).

Maybe, as dbminter comments, it's just that WMPCDText is flaky.

Is there an alternative?

 

DG

[dbminter]

It's been like a decade, probably, but I didn't find any alternative to WMPCDText when I tried it out before.

 

I don't use WMP anymore.  I've moved to MPC-HC.